Keith's Defense Cake

I wanted to make a fun cake for Keith, and we had a ton of cake mixes at home. I decided to mix Party rainbow Chip and Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mixes to create a CRAZY marbled cake.

The cake mixes for this epic cake

To create the marbled layers, I slowly poured the "white" cake batter out of the mixing bowl on top of the chocolate batter. This will spread pretty evenly on its own. I did some small twists and mixes to combined the layers a bit, and then pulled the spoon through side to side. And this is my marble cake batter.

The chocolate cake layer and then the white funfetti layer on top of it


After the marbling

Now this is a double cake batch, so I expected it to take around an hour to bake. The toothpick came out clean after 40 minutes, around the time that you would expect for a box cake anyway! The pan I used is the largest that I own, at 10.5"x15".

The cake after it was baked.

For Sarah and Marie's graduation cakes, we drew molecules, something that I'm experienced with drawing (I'll share those cakes at a later date). For Keith's cake I decided that it was prudent to first practice on a piece of paper to get the layout the way I wanted it to be. I took pictures of each step along the decoration because I wanted to have a good image of it for Keith in case I messed some of it up. I was amazed how adding a simple black border cleaned up the edge a lot and made the whole cake look very professional.

I am so proud of you, Keith! Congratulations!

Antibacterial Defense Cakes

What makes these cakes antibacterial? Well they each have the structure of an naturally produced antibiotic on them. Why these structures? Each of these structures was important to the PhD dissertation of myself and two fellow graduate students. We finished our degrees this spring, and had fun creating cakes for each other.

I have to say I'm enjoying the smudge tool in photoshop because it really does look like I've swirled the icing to obscure the last names!

I didn't do the script on any of the cakes, but I did draw the molecules on two. My handwriting is so bad, I was afraid to do the lettering on these cakes... and just imagine my fear before I had to do Keith's cake all by myself! Stay tuned for the next post....

Sweet Apple Desserts

Whenever I have a lot of apples, I automatically think of sweet desserts. I worked hard to find some savory apple dishes, but this post is 100% dedicated to the sweet dishes I created with my apple picking apples.


1) Apple crisp

If you are going to think about apple desserts, then Apple Crisp is one of the first desserts that comes to mind. (Okay, maybe Apple Pie would come first, but I don't have a pie plate so I can't make pies!)

The Apple Crisp with 11 apples before baking.

Next time: I would cut the toppings in half and just add it to the top, rather than the top and bottom of the apples as the recipe suggests. As it was, I reduced the amount of oats to 2 cups (from 2.5 cups). I also reduced the amount of sugar in this apple dessert (1.5 cups from 2 cups). I may reduce it even further in the future. (I like things sweet, but apples have such a good sweetness on their own that they don't need much extra sugar!)

Yum. I have nothing else to say.

2) Apple Cake

This apple cake is to die for. I used a bunt cake pan to cook it, and As you can see from the edges something in the batter caramelized, giving the edges a crispy sweet taste.

3) Caramelized Apples

The first night after apple picking, I wanted to make something sweet really fast. I found two different recipes for caramelized apples (Caramelized Apples 1 and Caramelized apples 2)

I have no idea what kinds of apples I chose, because they were all mixed up. I sliced up three apples (each of a different variety) and sauted them with 2T butter and 3T brown sugar. I poured reduced apple cider over them as a sauce.

The result? I'm not sure if I actually have caramelized apples here, but I do have a sweet and yummy dessert.

Where's the Chem in ChemEats?

Cooking is chemistry, but I would not be ChemKnits if I did not throw some molecules into the mix!

When our lab hosted Social Hour, we purchased a sheet cake and decorated it with a molecule that is important to the lab. Of course, there is a mistake to the chemical structure... what compound is it?

Happy Valentine's Day!

This heart shaped cake wasn't made for Valentine's day... and it also wasn't made by me! For my last two birthdays, Keith has made me a beautiful three tiered heart shaped cake. (So maybe the only layer cake pans we have are in the shape of hearts... but it does make for a fun birthday!) I wanted to share some love and bring this photo to you today.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I would love to invite you to check out my recipe for Chocolate Covered Strawberries.