HOMEMADE FUNFETTI CUPCAKES WITH LOTS OF RAINBOW SPRINKLES AND A CREAMY MARSHMALLOW BUTTERCREAM! THIS IS A HIGH-ALTITUDE CAKE RECIPE WITH SEA-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED!

HOMEMADE FUNFETTI CUPCAKES WITH LOTS OF RAINBOW SPRINKLES AND A CREAMY MARSHMALLOW BUTTERCREAM! THIS IS A HIGH-ALTITUDE CAKE RECIPE WITH SEA-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED!
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Reno just finished second winter. It’s like when hobbits eat second breakfast, but in this scenario, Reno is a hobbit and winter is breakfast. Normally, I’m totally pro-snow, but the combination of negative temperatures, daylight savings, and sudden warm weather mixed with a doctor’s recommendation to tone down the caffeine has turned me into an unmotivated Doughboy who only wears baggy sweatpants. But, Sunday was the first official warm day of the year, so to celebrate, I made a cake, packed up my favorite vintage tablecloth, and headed to the arboretum for a brunch/picnic. I wore a sundress and even got a bit pink from the sun! After, I went to my favorite coffeeshop and enjoyed a cappuccino in front of the Truckee. It was ~perfect~.
Picnics have always been the epitome of spring, in my opinion. When I was little, my mom would have picnics for us practically on a weekly basis. (One of the perks of growing up in Vegas – picnic weather is year-round). In some ways, I think it was a way to avoid making a mess in the kitchen at lunch, but I also think it was just her fun way of entertaining me and my little brother. We had these super strange, tiny grass hills in my childhood home — I would probably actually call them lumps — and they were my favorite picnic spot. I have a very specific memory of a lunch that consisted mostly of Goldfish crackers and those rainbow-colored Nilla wafers that tasted like food coloring. Those were the good days before we acknowledged how bad Red 40 is for your insides.
Now, my brunch tastes are slightly more refined and consist only of homemade food that is filled with all kinds of organic, Red 40-free ingredients. It almost makes me feel ok about eating cake for breakfast while the athletes of Reno jog around my picnic blanket. This brunch in particular consisted of my croque madame galettes, lots of fresh coffee, oj, skillet cake, and red fruit salad!
For the skillet cake, I made one of my favorite desserts ever. It’s filled with almonds and blueberries and kind of looks like a giant muffin, which essentially makes it a breakfast food. However, it’s also perfect for a spring BBQ or basically any time you need to use up some berries ASAP. The hardest part of the recipe is flipping it from the skillet to a plate, and even that isn’t really a requirement.
One of my favorite parts of spring is getting to bust out all of my sundresses and fun accessories. By the end of the cold season, I get a little lazy with the whole “getting dressed” aspect of adult life, and I tend to rely exclusively on oversized sweaters. When you spend your days getting splattered with coffee, climbing rocks in Lake Tahoe, and spilling cookie dough all over yourself, high-quality, durable pieces are a must! I’ve been looking into updating my wardrobe with some more staple pieces lately, so it was perfect timing when Jord asked me to be a part of their spring campaign! Jord makes a series of unique mens’ and ladies’ wooden watches, and they’re so beautiful! I’ve actually been wanting to buy a watch for forever, but I was never able to find one that matched my style or looked good on my petite frame. I’m not a super blingy girl, so the organic, simplicity of the wood was perfect for me.
Another bonus was the option to get a personalized, engraved watch. I chose to get some lyrics from “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty engraved on the back of mine. The song has a lot of meaning to me, and having it on the back of my watch is so special.
If you love these wooden watches as much as I do, enter my Jord giveaway for the chance to win $100 off a watch! Even if you don’t win, you still get 10% off just by registering. To enter the contest, click here. The giveaway will be announced on April 1!
P.S. Pretty watches also double as fancy cake timers!
Blueberry-Almond Skillet Cake
Serves 8
10 Tbs. butter, softened and divided
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
2/3 c. buttermilk
1 c. sliced almonds
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. blueberries
Preheat oven to 350* F. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Butter and flour a 10-inch skillet.
Mix 6 Tbs. with the sugar until creamy. Add eggs one at a time until incorporated, and then mix in extracts.
Mix in half the flour and half the buttermilk, and then repeat with remaining ingredients. Fold in 2/3 c. almonds.
Melt remaining 4 Tbs. butter. Stir in brown sugar, and mix with blueberries. Spread in pan, and sprinkle remaining almonds over the blueberries. Cover with the cake batter. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs.
Cool, flip onto a plate, and serve with cream or ice cream.
Xo Sara Lynn
Thanks so much to Jord for sponsoring this post! As always, all thought and opinions are my own. I am wearing the the Cassia series watch in zebra and ivory. Make sure to check out their other products too! Shop Women’s watches. Shop Men’s watches.
I have this new hobby now where I come home on Friday night and immediately start baking. Gone are my college days where Fridays meant getting excited about actually going out in public. Now, I just want to make some brownies, eat Chinese takeout, and try to stay awake until 11 p.m. While I can firmly say I would not trade working full-time for studying until midnight or being the only participant on “team projects” anymore, I also 10/10 understand why adults don’t do things. At best, I can mentally prepare myself to go out on a Saturday night after a proper day of sleeping in and lounging around the house. On the other hand, I have extreme FOMO, so if you offer something really tempting, I’ll probably down a few cups of coffee and make myself socialize. But only if I can bring my dog.
One of the most stressful things of late has been deciding what I actually want to bake on these Friday nights, because if you see my “Recipes to Try” list, it’s as long as the Game of Thrones books. Granted, not all of it is baked goods, some are cocktails which actually would be the perfect for Friday-night recipe developing, and a lot are rando health-foods that are not acceptable for Fridays. But the baked goods list is long and arduous, and when I have to spend three weekends developing a cake, I get sad 🙁 Mostly because it means I have nothing to share for a weekend, but also because it means no cake for that weekend!
For example, this cake took me three fing times to figure out. THREE. And ok, I know that’s typical, if not modest, in recipe development world, but I’ve made cakes similar to this formula literally hundreds of times, so for it to not work three different times was appalling. As a person who considers herself an experienced baker, I was fairly offended about screwing up such a simple cake and felt like I had to prove myself worthy to baked goods. And although my salty-af first attempt inspired me to write a fairly impressive Vday-inspired caption, I also just really wanted this cake to work out some way or another, because black sesame + blood orange = 😍
In a perfect world, this cake would have been ready in time for Vday, because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that blood orange season is right around Valentine’s Day. That’s just way too damn convenient. However, I’m kind of fine that it didn’t end up working out that way, because the first batch of blood oranges I bought for this recipe were so-so, and the last batch I bought were unreeeeaaaaaal. They were the most beautiful color, and their frangrance made my whole kitchen smell like it had just been professionally cleaned, although I can guarantee that wasn’t the case. I think blood oranges are so underappreciated, because like, besides their ruby-red hue, they are so sweet and floral. Maybe we should be adding lavender to this cake instead of sesame?
However, I really liked how the sweetness of the blood oranges meshed with the earthiness of the sesame seeds. This color combo is perfection, and I liked the polka-dot look of the cake itself. I’m putting black sesames on everything from now on thankyouverymuch.
A few notes about this recipe before we get into things:
Black Sesame + Blood Orange Pound Cake
Serves 12
1 c. butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. blood orange zest
3 c. flour, sifted
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 c. milk
2 Tbs. black sesame seeds
In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. Heat oven to 350* F.
Meanwhile, cream butter and sugar until it’s very incorporated, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly until the butter mixture is very light and fluffy, about another 5 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and blood orange zest.
Stir in half of the flour and half of the milk until just mixed. Repeat with remaining flour mixture and milk. Stir in the black sesame seeds.
Pour batter into a buttered and floured bundt cake pan. Bake for about 16-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs attached. Flip it onto a cooling rack and let it cool before glazing.
2 c. powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 c. blood orange juice
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Milk, as needed
In a small bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, blood orange juice, and vanilla extract. Mix in milk 1 Tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency. If the glaze gets too thin, add more powdered sugar a couple Tablespoons at a time.
Pour glaze over cake. Sprinkle with black sesame seeds!
xo Sara Lynn
*Song of the day: Become the Warm Jets by Current Joys
In high school, I went to a baking and pastry high school and to make a little extra money, I would sell homemade cupcakes. Some of my bigger projects were for weddings and bridal showers, and I also did smaller events like 9 year old’s birthday parties. I actually won third place next to a bunch of professional pastry chefs at a couple of competitions, which was my crowning achievement at the time. I was famously known for my marshmallow buttercream that people used to call “crack frosting”. Obviously I lived that rockstar life back in the glory days of my youth.
Honestly though, going to my high school taught me invaluable lessons about food and the melding of flavors. It helped me land my first job in the industry that eventually led me to my coffee-career and love for food blogging. In a way, it was kind of like a weird, food version of Glee, but I got to do cool things like meet Vic Vegas and work in a bunch of kitchens in the casinos on the Strip. I think going to my high school gave me the confidence to actually start this food blog like, almost 6 years ago?! And luckily, I’ve come a long way since my first post, because *wow* I did not know how blogs worked 😬 I still have memories of having a mental breakdown, because I couldn’t figure out how to make an “About Me” page. I’m still not quite sure why I couldn’t just have a Tumblr page like every other 16 year old in the early 2010s.
I haven’t been making cupcakes “professionally” for a while, but of course, I still love to bake, especially now that I’ve gotten more adventurous with my flavor profile. So when a few weeks ago (well, before Christmas) Molly Yeh posted a recipe for marzipan buttercream, I diiiiiied. Marzipan buttercream is everything I dream about. Plus anytime I make anything with almonds, I immediately have the instinct to shove oranges in there somehow. And (!) since I’m not still in high school, I added orange liqueur, because boozy cupcakes = the best cupcakes.
This recipe is adapted for high altitude, because as I’ve mentioned in the past, for some reason I have to use high-altitude recipes for cakes and nothing else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve been celebrating extra hard, because I *finally* figured out how to adapt my fave cupcake recipe to high-altitude almost five years after moving to Reno!! If you need me, I will be celebrating with extra orange liqueur.
Orange Liqueur Cupcakes + Marzipan Buttercream
Makes about 16 cupcakes
1 3/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder*
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. butter
1 c. sugar*
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tbs. orange liqueur (I used Triple Sec)
1 tsp. orange zest
1/3 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. flavorless oil
3/4 c. whole milk**
In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Preheat oven to 375* F***.
Beat the butter and sugar together until thoroughly mixed. It will likely remain grainy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing completely. Add the vanilla extract, orange liqueur, and orange zest. Stir in the buttermilk and oil.
Mix in half of the flour mixture and half of the whole milk. Repeat with the remaining flour mix and milk, stirring just until combined.
Using a scoop, fill cupcake tins about 3/4 of the way with batter. Bake, checking for doneness at 15-18 minutes. Cupcakes are done when an inserted toothpick has a few crumbs stuck to it.
Let cool and frost with Molly Yeh’s marzipan buttercream (1/2 recipe). Top with sprinkles!!
*use 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder for sea-level
**use 2/3 c. whole milk for sea-level
***bake at 350* F for sea-level
xo Sara Lynn
*Song of the day: Misty Morning by Travis Bretzer