A Year of Baking

It's been a hectic year full of fun, travel, work, play and yet still lots of baking in between. I just haven't taken the extra time to catalog much of it here. I have enjoyed trying all kinds of fun recipes - usually to make something sweet for dessert when we have friends over and sometimes just to try something new.

This past year, I tackled making croissant dough again, piping beautiful pillowy meringue on tarts, decorating holiday cookies with royal icing and a few things in between. Nothing was perfect, but all of it was fun. It was a way to exercise some creative energy, focus on doing something that made me happy and feel good about sharing something with others to enjoy. I often have wondered why I spend hours pouring myself into baking projects in my very little down time, but my sister recently shared this Huff Post article with me where psychologists explain the benefits of baking for other people. It's so true and after what I've been through in life and to help focus on something beyond the daily stresses of work life, baking has been it for me.

I made a few banoffee pies, including this one with the buttery Digestive biscuit crust and chocolate flakes sprinkled on top. 

I love baking with berries and made this blackberry clafouti for dessert one evening. 

We always have this homemade pecan, coconut and dried cherry granola in the house - whether it's to snack on or top our yogurt for breakfast. 

I've always loved lava cakes and tried a new recipe a few times for these molten chocolate cakes. 

In the summer when we were not up for a heavy chocolate dessert, we made homemade ice cream topped with lemon curd, blackberries and homemade candied pistachios. 

In the autumn after we picked apples, I made this tarte aux pommes for a dinner party. 

With my mum from England, I like trying different kinds of scones, so I made these two kinds of fruit scones and several batches of cinnamon chip scones (not pictured). 

 I love making cakes of all kinds for people's birthdays (and even my dog's birthday) I made a few more cakes after the unicorn this past year.  

This was a pumpkin cake with cinnamon buttercream frosting. 

Our dog, Tootsie, turned 13 and reaching that age deserved a two tier cake!

I love sticky toffee pudding and cake and made this amazing sticky toffee cake with caramel sauce and sea salt. 

I have made my own croissant dough before, but this time I tried making pain au chocolat.  Not perfect, but all my work and they sure still tasted good. 

We had extra lemon curd so I made some lemon curd tarts with meringue piped on top. I have made meringue before, but experimented with getting it the right consistency and piping it in different patterns on the tarts.

 We had our annual homemade cinnamon rolls at Thanksgiving and Christmas this year - all cozy by the fire. 

 I also did lots of fireside cookie decorating at the holidays including these snowflakes, ginger people and ornaments with royal icing.  

I had some white chocolate to use and tried these white chocolate blondies with raspberries and cream. 

I took an amazing puff pastry class and made this puff pastry pear tart with caramel sauce. We also made cheese straws and I used the puff pastry I brought home to make chicken pot pie topped with puff pastry. 

There's a lot more baking in store for 2019. I look forward to learning lots more and trying new projects. 

Unicorn Cake

I started planning to make a nice red velvet cake for a birthday girl and it turned into THIS.  Well, she really loves horses and unicorns too, so I thought I would try to make it a little fancier than just a typical layer cake.  We have all seen all kinds of these unicorn cakes and they are sprinkled all over Instagram if you follow some of the bakers out there. I was not too sure how this would turn out, but was quite pleased for my first try as an amateur.

I was not sure where to start, so I researched different cakes on Instagram and online and came across this YouTube tutorial that was both entertaining and helpful. In the tutorial they made a funfetti cake, but I stuck with red velvet and followed other recipes for my cake, buttercream and made my typical marshmallow white chocolate fondant.

I made three layers of red velvet cake and a simple vanilla buttercream to put in between and then spread on top and the sides to get the fondant to stick. 

I made the white chocolate marshmallow fondant and cut out the ears, horn and used the rest to cover.  For the horn, I wrapped a piece of fondant around a plastic chopstick to hold it in place and affix to the top of the cake. 

After the cake was wrapped in fondant, it was time for the fun part - the flowers to shape the unicorn's mane. I also used little sugar pearls to put on the center of the flowers and the detail around the base of the cake. 

She looks like she's closing her eyes to avoid the sparks.  What a fun birthday cake! 

German Chocolate Cake

German chocolate cake is my dad's favorite dessert.  So, when he visited for Thanksgiving, this had to be on the menu -- along with pumpkin and apple pie, of course. I researched a lot of recipes and ended up using the recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch. It does taste better than any other German chocolate cake I have ever had and this was confirmed by my dad who has tasted for more variations of this cake than I.

First I baked the chocolate cakes in spring form pans and then made the chocolate frosting. I just put chocolate frosting between the layers, but in the future I will try using the pecan coconut frosting in the middle in addition to the top as I had extra (and it's SOOOOOO good).

This chocolate frosting recipe was so nice and smooth. 

The pecan coconut frosting came together nicely. I thought it was going to be too runny at first, but it thickened nicely when it cooled down. 

I put the chocolate frosting between the layers and on the outside. I spread the pecan coconut frosting on top and then used the extra to pipe a little design around the sides.  

I typically do not like chocolate cake as it's drier than other cakes, but this cake was moist and flavorful. It was unlike any other chocolate cake recipe I have tried. 

Donut Birthday Cake

For Miss A's birthday, we decided on a donut theme. This theme all started with a sprinkled donut pinata that she found and begged to get for her party.  I went crazy from there - donut decorations, donut party favors and since it was a sleepover party, donuts for breakfast in the morning!

The cake was more work that it looks and than I thought, but it was so fun to make and the girls loved it.

She decided on funfetti cake for her donut which is quite fitting. I have to admit that I've never made funfetti cake from scratch. The few times I've made it, I would buy a box cake (the horror!?). But I refused to do that and now realize that all you need to do is dump a load of sprinkles in the batter and voila!...funfetti! I used the funfetti cake recipe from The Cake Blog and it worked really well. 

I bought a special donut shaped cake pan on Amazon so we could have the perfect giant donut cake. I filled each side with batter almost to the brim. 

Here it is after I took let it cool and took it out of the pan. The baked quite well and I just evened out the flat side by cutting it with a bread knife so the donut would fit together nicely. After I evened out the flat side, I scooped out a trough in the center of each side with a spoon to pipe in the filling.

I made a pink buttercream for the filling and a neutral buttercream for the outside of the donut. 

I forgot to snap a photo of the trough with the filling, but here it is all put together when you cut through it. The trough allowed room for the filling and I used a piping bag with a large round tip to fill it in with the pink frosting.

One I put both sides together (and hoped it would hold!), I set out to frost the outside of the donut. I did one crumb coat and a second coat to make sure it was covered.

After I put the cake in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, I smoothed out the buttercream with a warm knife (by periodically dipping it in hot water) to get the frosting nice and smooth like this. 

I made my homemade white chocolate marshmallow fondant and then kneaded in this bright blue color (Miss A's favorite color). I rolled it out nice and smooth to cut the "glaze" for the donut. I used the donut pan to make a template on parchment paper to guide me and then used a paring knife to cut it a little jagged to look like the glaze was dripping down the donut. 

I made a mixture of equal parts vodka (strange, right?) and corn syrup to brush on top of the fondant glaze so it looked glossy and immediately sprinkled the sprinkles all over it and it also helped them to stick on the glaze.

I got this cute sign from Etsy and the donut cake is complete (6 hours later). But, SO worth it when Miss A saw the finished product and her girlfriends came over all excited for the giant donut cake. 

We're decorated and ready for the party! 

"Happy birthday to you!"

SO yummy and fun slices of the donut. 

After a fun sleepover (and some sleep) we had glaze your own donuts for breakfast too.