cakes Archives - Page 10 of 30 - Willow Bird Baking

Coconut Cream Snack Cake

Coconut Cream Snack Cake

Sitting in Chick-fil-a right now on a wobbly booth seat. Equipped with large Coke Zero and free Wi-Fi. Ready to write.

A plump-faced child in the booth in front of me is throwing straws at his grandmother. Another kid is standing on her booth seat to grab forks and ketchup from over the divider. They are all screaming. Every single child is screaming. From the sound of it, there are 8,000 of them. One little angel is loudly petitioning for cherry ice cream. She has repeated her request approximately 8,000 times. Her father is pretending not to hear her.

SOMEONE GIVE THAT KID A CHERRY ICE CREAM.

(more…)

August 9, 2015 by Julie Ruble | 14 Comments

cakes

Strawberry Sour Cream Kuchen

Strawberry Sour Cream Kuchen

Six years ago I sat down at my computer and wrote my first post on Willow Bird Baking. Since then, I’ve grown as a blogger in many ways, but perhaps most significantly in my photography. Great photographs seem simple and attainable — surely we can all position a dishtowel and plate of food on a table? — but are surprisingly elusive. The good news is that there are a few simple tricks that can dramatically improve your photos.

Strawberry Sour Cream Kuchen

one of my first photos (left) versus today’s photos

Here are 5 of the most important things you can do to improve your photography:

(more…)

June 16, 2015 by Julie Ruble | 8 Comments

cakes

Hot Strawberry Cake with Ice Cream

Hot Strawberry Cake with Ice Cream

No, YOU’ve made 80 different versions of the same cake because you care more about eating cake than you do about seeming creative.

One of many awesome things about being a food blogger is that I can do whatever I want. I’m my own boss. I can make 800 variations on this cake because it’s amazing and delicious and I want to eat 800 variations of it. I can use this space to tell the stories I want to tell and share the food I want to share.

But I’ve noticed around the interwebz that some people seem confused about what blogs are and whether blogs are the right choice for their food/reading needs. Some people would actually be better served by recipe websites like Food Network or AllRecipes. So I’m going to help you out.

Here’s how to tell if you should be using a BLOG or a RECIPE WEBSITE:

(more…)

June 9, 2015 by Julie Ruble | 23 Comments

cakes

Hot Raspberry Cake and Ice Cream

Hot Raspberry Cake and Ice Cream

From Barcelona journals:

I want to stop this thin woman with air-dried hair in a soft blue sweater holding a baguette and walking through the park. I want to understand her life.

(more…)

May 31, 2015 by Julie Ruble | 7 Comments

cakes

Hot Yellow Cake with Caramelized Pineapple

Hot Yellow Cake with Caramelized Pineapple

Aastha, one of my 7th grade students (almost 8th!), is a ballerina and a fantastic nail artist, but I can’t relate to those things. Grace is a foreign concept to me and I have to use clear nail polish or I look like I’ve been trying to finger paint in a cement mixer.

But Aastha is also a passionate writer and baker, and those things I can relate to. For her Passion Project, a project wherein students spend an entire year exploring their personal passion and using it to improve or inform their society, she decided to create a cookbook of cupcake recipes adapted for special diets.

(more…)

May 25, 2015 by Julie Ruble | 9 Comments