Pretty dishwater

I took this shot yesterday while washing up my mess from making a rainbow colored cake. Inspiration via The Morale Agency. More pictures soon!

Dreaming

I love baking wonderful things and passing them off to friends, family, and co-workers. I love the challenge of a recipe mostly. (Isn't that odd? It seems like I should love the enjoyment of those eating the treats more than the mastery of a set of instructions). Things like this calendar make me daydream about quitting my job and becoming someone who bakes and delivers cookies all day.

Admittedly though, cookies are my weak point. I'm dazzling at cakes and cupcakes though.

Mission accomplished

I completed my second daring bakers challenge and I'm still standing. Yippy!

The danish braid recipe was chosen by bakers at Sass & Veracity and What's Cookin'? You can find the recipe at either of their sites. Here's what I learned:

1. When looking for cardamom, it comes ground or in whole pods. The pods still work if you take the time to grind them in a food processer. If you think you can crush the little black seeds, you will be wrong. When you throw the seeds in anyways, the dough will look charmingly flecked with little black dots. However, the flavor will also be restricted to those little zingy black dots as well.

2. When you're filling is way too juicy, you should consider straining out some of those juices. When your what the hell attitude prevails and you spoon in the filling with all that extra liquid, don't be surprised when it leaks all over the place and makes your kitchen look like a crime scene. Raspberry juice will also burn to the bottom of the pastry. Luckily, the burnt jiuice peels off easily.

This is one of the prettiest baked goods I've ever attempted. I took it in to work for coworkers to devour and stunned them with my bravery at attempting this recipe. It was pretty darn delicious.

My first official daring bakers challenge

So I finally sign up for the Daring Bakers after having been intrigued by them for ages. And of course, instead of waiting for a sensible time in my life, I decided to sign up just as we're in the middle of packing and preparing for our big move. It was definitely a challenge!



My opera cake had layers of buttercream, almond cake, raspberries, white chocolate mousse, and a white chocolate glaze. With all that white chocolate I was worried about it being much too sweet so the tartness of the raspberries reassured me. I'm so glad I included the glaze. Once it hardened up, it really gave the cake and extra stability and glossyness.

I also had a personal deadline for this cake. We had a dessert auction the friday before Mother's Day and I was determined to have this ready for it. So of course, that Thursday night I was up until midnight working on the glaze, assembling the cake, tripping sleepily over moving boxes, and ignoring my husband's expression that plainly revealed his doubts about my sanity.

Late night baking or not, everything turned out swell. I was happy to trim the ugly edges off so I could taste them and make sure I wasn't auctioning off something wretched. And there were plenty of scraps! It wasn't as pretty as I would have liked. My cake layers weren't as even as they should have been. I didn't smooth them out well enough before popping them into the oven. The buttercream was from the modified recipe and it came out wonderfully.

I'm so glad I didn't completely mess my first challenge up. I was scared when I printed off the pages and pages of instructions. If you're up for a challenge, you can see the recipe at Cream Puffs in Venice.

Next challenge will be done in my brand new, kinda ugly, but with way better light kitchen at our first real home. Can't wait!

Blueberries and honey

Last night I was a bit restless so I decided to do some baking. I had a recipe for blueberry honey muffins that I'd printed out forever ago from Food Makes Me Happy.

They were so good! You can't make it out from above, but the key thing is to drizzle them with honey when they're still still hot.

These will come in handy for some wonderful breakfast for the next overnight guests.

Cake!

The only thing I created yesterday was cake (that counts, right?). Oh and more origami stars - but my plans for them are so big that I won't have a finished project with them to show for eons. I can't ever think small. Anyway, here's the cake:

It's Blueberry Lime Curd Cake. Recipe is here: Delicious Days

Drippy lime curd detail. This cake was perfect - summery and fresh and nothing like the weather i'm seeing out this window. I want to try almost everything on her site. Maybe next it'll be the honey cake. Yum.