How to Philosophize with Cake’s top 10 posts of the year

This is it. These are the desserts that, during How to Philosophize with Cake’s year of blogging, attracted the largest audiences. These are the recipes that made you all drool and roll your eyes and rush out to the kitchen, whisk and jar of coconut oil in hand, all of them gathered in one post.

But before I get to the good stuff, here’s your last chance to take the survey. Sadly, not many people have taken it yet, so I’ll consider this the last time to mention it before I just forget about the whole thing. I dunno. Maybe it’s too confusing or something. But it would be really great if you could try. Do it for the children!

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So. Having gotten that out of the way, we can get to the food.

Blogging this year has been, overall, a wonderful experience. If I thought baking was fun before I started writing on the internet about it, it’s basically my obsession now. Of course I have you all to thank. At this time of writing, I’ve got a total of 53,638 pageviews—not a lot, considering that some big bloggers get that many in a day, let alone a year, but it’s pretty neat that I can share my cakes and cookies and such with so many people. In the last few months, I’ve noticed my posts are being pinned to Pinterest more often as well. Some of this might be thanks to my successful submissions to Foodgawker and other food porn sites; some might be because I tend to be rather shameless about self-promotion in several venues. Even on Reddit, land of DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE SELF-PROMOTE and OMG VEGANS ARE LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER.

I know. Pretty brave.

All I’m trying to say is, this whole venture has been pretty successful, and I’ll probably keep doing it for a while. Or at least until we go broke from buying coconut oil and flour every other day.

And now—cue drum roll—the most popular posts on How to Philosophize with Cake, starting from the tenth most viewed post all the way up to the top.

10. Postmodernist bûche de Noël.

One of the biggest desserts I made for this year’s Christmas, this rather non-traditional yule log was a big hit with both taste-testers and readers. Unsurprisingly, because who doesn’t like layer upon layer of chocolate cake all covered with frosting and marzipan?

9. Salty sweet toffee cookies with dark chocolate glaze and candied pecans.

Salty desserts are pretty hot right now, and these cookies fit the bill. Also starring candied pecans—which are, in my opinion, the best kind of nut on the block. Add chocolate and yeah you have some pretty tasty shit.

8. “Better than sex” cake (rich chocolate cake with vanilla pudding, caramel, and whipped cream).

Is this cake really better than sex? Um. I can’t really answer that. However, I will say that it is one of the top posts here, so let’s just allow the numbers to speak for themselves.

7. Momofuku-inspired confett cookies.

This here is the first recipe I ever got accepted to Foodgawker, and frankly I’m still rather proud of it. Everyone needs a good sprinkle-y recipe in their repertoire.

6. Salty sweet pecan pie bars with bourbon caramel.

Are we surprised that the other salty sweet dessert on this here blog is also in the top ten? No. No, we are not. Nor are we surprised that the same recipe contains the it-child of the boozy food-world, bourbon. Basically a no-brainer of a recipe.

5. Mint chocolate chip macarons.

Hide yo Frenchmen, hide yo pastry chefs, because yes, it is possible to make macarons without egg! Mind-blowing indeed. Also really delicious.

4. Salted double chocolate caramel-stuffed cookies.

ANOTHER salted recipe! Oh my. It’s an epidemic. Not that I care, personally—I’m all for salty-sweet goodies, especially ones with this much chocolaty-caramel deliciousness.

3. Momofuku-inspired carrot cake.

Ah, yes! Another cake recipe. I loved this cake so much, it’s only fair that it made the top three. The cake-filling-frosting ratio may look a bit off, and you would be right—this is for hardcore frosting- and cheesecake-lovers only. But it’s okay, since there are carrots in there.

2. Chocolate chip cookie dough pancakes.

Another oldy but goody, these are probably one of the most shameless recipes on the whole blog. They’re polarizing. You either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. You’re either repulsed or in love. Or maybe not, maybe you feel kind of eh about them, in which case I can’t really say these pancakes are that polarizing. But nevertheless, these food porn- and Pinterest-friendly babies are numero dos, and that’s pretty damn good.

And now, for the most popular post of all time...

1. Homemade apple cider doughnuts with stewed apple pie filling.

I remember the day these were featured on Finding Vegan’s Facebook page (ah, that was a good day). Was sort of confused when I checked my blog stats for the day and realized that hey, I have like over 1,000 pageviews already! No, that can’t be right. I usually only get about a few hundred in a day, let alone 1,000 in a matter of hours! But it was real, and such a blessing it was. That is why those doughnuts have over twice the number of pageviews of any other post on the entire blog. And rightly so—there’s nothing like a good homemade doughnut.

That’s it for the top ten, folks! Here’s to another great year of vegan food!