Welp...one of the few recipes that we use all the time that hadn't been on this blog is this one for chocolate zucchini cake. I originally found it here, and would just link people to it...except that that whole damn site is now dead of linkrot. So....
( Recipe... ) 
Posting this because I'm making cake and just forgot to do this >_<
Possibly I'm the only one who didn't know about this, but somehow I'd managed to bake cakes for at least a dozen years before finding out about flouring the pans. After greasing a cake pan, sprinkle a bit of flour into it, then gently tap the pan and tilt it all around until the inside has a perfect, fine, even coating of flour on all surfaces. Knock out any excess, then pour your cake batter in. This makes your finished cake release one hell of a lot easier, especially when you're using intricate pans like character forms, bundt pans, etc.
Also, it's past 1am and I'm waiting for birthday cakes to come out of the oven. I think there is a rule that you're not allowed to engage in serious baking or pastry work until after midnight. At least, that's how it always seems to pan out here.
Le confédération internationale des boulangers et pâtissiers dit que on ne peut faire du boulangerie ou pâtisserie avant minuit.
We're vegetarian, I'm lactose-intolerant, and my youngest daughter is allergic to eggs, so vegan food makes with the happy for us. Birthdays get interesting, since the requisite centerpiece cake is problematic: most any bog-standard cake contains eggs, and we can't dodge the issue with an ice-cream cake either.
What we do (and we're not the first to have done this) is to take one of the basic cupcake recipes from the excellent Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and turn it into a cake.
( Recipes follow... )I'm not a kitchen "gadget freak". I shun gimmicky single-purpose kitchen gadgets like cupcake irons, garlic presses, melon ballers, grapefruit knives, milk frothers, the much-pilloried Slap Chop™, and anything that sits in a "junk" cupboard and only comes out once a year. That being said, there are a number of genuinely useful, versatile tools that I get a lot of mileage out of but rarely see other people using. These things are all inexpensive and most serve multiple purposes. Take a look and let me know what you think.
( The list... )
