Cooking With Dia

The past two days have been filled with so much sadness. When I get upset and sad I tend to bake muffins. I just keep baking them and baking them some more until I have so many muffins I don’t know what to do. I find baking very therapeutic, and today I just decided to make a mini variation of my vegan and gluten free Victorian Sponge cake. It is an amuse-bouche, fancy for bite sized! I hope you will enjoy this distraction from all of the horrible things happening in this world.

I have been hearing a lot lately from some people who didn’t get a cake on their birthday, and it got me thinking…I haven’t had a proper birthday cake since 1998…seriously! So, as my birthday is just around the corner I thought, “why the hell not?” And I made my own birthday cake! So…so…sad…:(…But it’s really freakin good. If you feel lonley on your birthday too and don’t know what to do, bake this cake and you will be on such a sugar high you will be feeling a lot happier.

The reason why I decided to do a 4 layer sponge cake is because on a recent Masterchef episode, Gordon Ramsay made the contestants make a 6 layer sponge cake, and I just wanted to prove to myself I could do it and do it gluten free and vegan, minus two of the layers.

I almost fainted when I tasted this cake this afternoon–one of the most delicious desserts I have ever experienced. You may think I’m a little biased, but believe me, I’m my worst critic! For me to say this is by far the most fantastic cake I have ever made, means it tastes wonderful! And it is refined sugar free!!

I remember the first time I experienced Monkey Bread–I was eight years old and at a very wealthy girl’s tenth birthday party. I expected an extravagant cake, so when this lumpy pile of balls approached the table with 1 measly little candle on it, I was taken aback. I asked, “What the hell is that?” “We don’t say hell in this house Miss Dia,” my friend’s mother whispered, “It’s Monkey Bread!” “WHAT?!?!” I screamed, “There are monkeys in this bread?” “Ha ha ha ha, no dear, it’s just called Monkey Bread,” the mother explained. “Why????” “Time to blow out the candles!!!” Needless to say I was ignored. My point is, I don’t know why it is called Monkey Bread–even Wikipedia doesn’t know:

These little cookies go under many many names: Russian tea cakes, Mexican tea cakes, Mexican wedding cookies, Christmas Snowball cookies, noel nut balls and now Dia’s New Year’s Mexican Tea Christmas Snowball Cookie Cake Balls. Even though they have many a name, the recipe stays pretty much the same, although when I am making Mexican [...]