What Shall We Bake Today?

This is another brand new holiday recipe—Salted Caramel Bundt Cake!

Ingredients

CAKE

2 sticks salted butter, at room temperature

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups packed light brown sugar

1 tsp. instant espresso powder

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 Tbsp. vanilla extract

3/4 cup whole milk

GLAZE

1/2 cup unwrapped hard caramel candies, such as Werther’s Original (about 24)

2/3 cup heavy cream

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 cup white chocolate chips

Directions

For the cake: Preheat the oven to 350˚. Butter a 12-cup bundt pan, then dust with flour, tapping out the excess, making sure the pan is fully coated. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Beat the butter, brown sugar and espresso powder in a large bowl with a mixer on medium speed until well combined, 1 to 2 minutes. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 more minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth the top. Bake until a long toothpick or skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Let cool 5 to 10 minutes in the pan, then invert the cake onto a rack to cool completely.

For the glaze: Put the hard candies in a small resealable bag and roughly crush with a rolling pin. Pour the candies into a small saucepot and add the heavy cream and salt. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the candies are totally melted and the glaze is smooth and thick, scraping the bottom of the pan so the mixture doesn’t burn. Let stand 5 to 10 minutes to cool slightly and thicken a bit more.

Meanwhile, put the white chocolate chips in a small microwave-safe bowl and microwave in 20- to 30-second intervals, stirring, until smooth. Drizzle the salted caramel glaze over the cake, letting it run down the sides. Drizzle the white chocolate over the caramel. Let set, about 10 minutes.

ENJOY!

88 thoughts on “What Shall We Bake Today?”

Just The News: “The federal government spent tens of millions of dollars on gruesome and pointless experiments on animals from dogs to dolphins, according to 2025’s “Festivus” report by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., which uses the Seinfeld-invented Dec. 23 holiday to catalog more than $1.6 trillion in what he perceives as wasteful government spending.

Paul especially highlights animal experiments in the report, which credits investigations by the anti-animal testing White Coat Waste Project for bringing several to his attention. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also credited WCW and Paul with exposing the Navy’s sodomization of cats in last year’s Festivus report.

The National Institutes of Health has spent another $2.9 million giving beagles cocaine since they were featured in Paul’s 2022 Festivus report and “has added methamphetamine injections to the mix,” WCW said in reviewing its contributions to Paul’s report.

Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s experiments on beagle puppies are “still funded by three different Fauci-era NIAID grants which have cost taxpayers over $13.8 million so far,” Paul’s report says.

Carried out at the University of Missouri, researchers expose puppies to ticks “by having capsules full of the arachnids glued to their bare skin to infect the dogs with illnesses like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever,” and WCW’s documentation shows “dozens of the puppies are intentionally denied pain relief so that it does not interact with the infection or experimental vaccines.”

NIH, the Department of Defense and National Science Foundation spent $14.6 million on Brown University research to teach monkeys to play a video game resembling the Price Is Right game Plinko, screwing “headposts” into their skulls to keep the monkeys’ heads motionless so researchers could track their eye movements, the report says.

The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $1 million to “turn teenage ferrets into binge drinkers,” denying them water for a day once a week while leaving alcohol available to drink, and letting them drink both water and alcohol the other six days of the week.

DoD spent $2.8 million to create “BLT mice” implanted with bone marrow, liver and thymus tissue from aborted human beings. “The first Trump administration cut funding for fetal tissue research, but unfortunately Biden reinstated it
and allowed taxpayer funds to once again be used for this inhumane and immoral research,” the report says.

The Navy spent $77 million on a “Marine Mammal Program,” training dolphins and sea lions to detect mines and objects at sea but subjecting them to “sleep deprivation” and making them swallow seawater and wear “headphones with loud noises blasting,” the report says.

While the Navy said “modern aquatic drones can do these jobs” and announced plans to phase out the program more than 10 years ago, “Congress stepped in and enacted a spending bill that literally forced the agency to continue wasting taxpayers’ money on this.”

Other spending items are related to gain-of-function experiments that supercharge viruses, such as the since-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development awarding the EcoHealth Alliance $54 million to collect bat coronaviruses and transport them to Wuhan, China, a suspected source of COVID-19, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $1 million collaboration “to soup up bird flu viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s parent organization and a researcher affiliated with WIV.”

Among the human research faulted by Paul is “$2.1 million spent for researchers to collect saliva samples and survey partiers at EDM clubs and festivals in New York City about their drug use. The report includes a “bonus” section previewing next year’s Festivus report, which will include $2 million to a San Diego hospital that “facilitates gender transition surgeries for kids and another $2 million given to a town in Alaska with only 67 residents.”

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