It’s no secret that I love mini cakes, or all things miniature for that matter. If you don’t share in these sentiments, you may want to cover your eyes because it’s about to get obnoxiously mini up in here.

In college, my friends use to tease me about all of my mini kitchen things when they would come over. I would hear things like, “Why are your spoons so tiny?” or “When we go to Natasha’s house, we have to use miniature bowls.” In my head I’m thinking, duh, you have to use small spoons to eat out of small bowls, but I guess not everyone thinks like me.

Fast forward about 10 years or so to a few days after my wedding. I’m out shopping with my family who is visiting from India and we’re smack in the middle of tea time with no homemade chai in sight, so my aunt asks me to run into the coffee shop nearby and get her a cup of coffee. “I only want this much,” she says, showing me with her thumb and forefinger what would be a cup about this size. A few other family member chimed in saying they wanted the same. Perhaps they didn’t realize that they had traveled to supersized land, and the smallest cup at Starbucks was the size of their head. In the end, three people shared a tall latte still and couldn’t finish it. This leads me to believe that my affinity for miniatureness must be a cultural thing. Or a family thing. And now that I think about it, all of my small bowls and silverware were hand me downs from my mom anyway, so it must be my genes. See, I just can’t help but make mini cakes.

These mini cakes go perfectly with a cup of afternoon tea. I’ve gotten out of the habit of observing tea time, but having my family visit recently made me want to start doing it again, even when it’s just me and Aaron in Dallas. I loved the fact that no matter what kind of chaos was going on during the hustle and bustle of the wedding, once a day, everything stopped for a little while so we could sit down and have tea. Mini cakes were not usually served (that would be my own personal touch), but since I’ve been missing my family a lot lately, I observed tea time with these mini cakes eaten off of mini plates with my mini cup of tea just for them. And also for my belly 🙂

Like most of the mini cake recipes on this site, this makes a small batch of two cakes that were baked in tin cans. Tin cans make the best little cake pans (I used 15 oz. cans). Just make sure they are BPA free and that you clean them thoroughly before you use them. This version of mini cakes are made with ground pitachios in the batter. I had originally planned to make lemon pistachio cakes, but made a last minute change and added some orange zest instead (mostly because I was out of lemons). I ended up really liking the orange/pistachio combo, and also added a tablespoon of Grand Marnier to the frosting because I just so happened to have a mini bottle (I didn’t even plan it) on hand.

Just in case I haven’t convinced you that mini cakes are the best yet, here are a few more reasons:

1. They have a better frosting to cake ratio than cupcakes
2. No wastage (cake wastage is the worst)
3. You can have a whole cake to yourself. Seriously, when’s the last time you can say you ate a whole cake?
4. Less calories (than a large cake). Obviously this does not have less calories than kale.
5. You can pretend like you’re a giant and eat an entire slice in one bite.

I didn’t add a lot of sugar to the cream cheese frosting since I wanted the cake to be less sweet, but it did make the frosting a little runny. You can add more sugar if you like, or stick the frosting in the fridge for about 15 minutes like I did.

Cake recipe adapted from Epicurious

One of the best things about my wedding was seeing family members that I hadn’t seen in years. My family is spread out all over the world, and they came from California, Canada, Australia, and India among other places. My grandmother’s 89th birthday just so happened to be two days after my wedding, and with so many family members still around, I had the perfect reason to bake a great big chocolate cake. I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it since it was gobbled up so quickly, but the cake I am sharing with you today is a miniature version of what I made for my family.

My grandmother doesn’t eat eggs, even in cake. This used to be quite an ordeal for me when I tried to bake her birthday cakes growing up. The lack of eggs along with the fact that her tiny little oven only has 2 settings (off and incinerate) made for some interesting cake like concoctions. Having a good eggless recipe comes in handy not only when baking for my grandmother, but also when trying to pair a recipe down for a mini cake. Have you ever tried to use 1/3 of an egg? It’s kind of a pain. Recipes are so much easier to make tiny when there is no egg involved.

For my first recipe after a long hiatus, I just couldn’t resist doing a mini layer cake. They are just too cute, and the perfect size for two (or one if you’re really hungry). I used a 4-inch cake pan and then sliced the cake into three layers, because I wanted more room for frosting. You can also slice it into two, or just leave it as one layer if you like. I also added a shot of espresso to the frosting to give it a mocha flavor, but you can easily leave it out and add an extra tablespoon of cocoa powder for a rich chocolate frosting.

Notes:

The frosting makes enough for a 3 layer cake with a crumb coat and a little left over. If you don’t plan to divide your cake into layers or crumb coat, you can cut the frosting recipe in half.

You can make this recipe vegan by using non-dairy milk in the cake, replacing the butter in the frosting with margarine and/or shortening, and omitting the whipped cream.

Cake recipe adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

Baker friends, do you make your own special occasion cakes? I always make my own birthday cake as well as the birthday cakes of every nearby family member, but I have been forbidden to make my own wedding cake. You would think that this would be a relief (and it is, especially with the wedding right around the corner), but it’s just so hard to give up control sometimes. I feel like the entire wedding planning process has been an exercise in letting go, but it’s especially hard where the cake is concerned. However, no one is stopping me from making a pre-wedding cake, right? I’m celebrating my last days as a single lady with this over the top purple cake!

I’ve been wanting to make a purple ombre cake for as long as I can remember, but just haven’t found the right occasion until now. I can’t think of anyone other than myself who would love a cake that looks like the color purple exploded, and I had so much fun making this! Even though my wedding is in just a few days and I probably shouldn’t have been spending my time baking, it really helped relieve some of the stress.

For the cake, I used my Pink Almond Party Cake recipe but omitted the almond extract and divided the batter between 5 6-inch cake pans. Rather than add the food coloring all at once, I divided the batter between 5 bowls and tinted them individually. I highly recommend using gel food coloring rather than liquid. Add a tiny amount at a time until you get the color that you want. Since you are dividing the batter into 5 parts, the thinner layers will only need to bake for about 15-18 minutes.

I used the same frosting recipe as my Pink Almond Party Cake as well but upped the quantity. The recipe for the larger batch of frosting is below. You probably won’t use all of it, but I find that it’s best to have some extra when you’re tinting the colors. Just in case you overdo it with the food coloring, you have some extra white to add back in.

For the cake recipe, click here.

Cake recipe adapted from Cook’s Illustrated via epicurious.com