As promised in this thread, here is how I’ve been spending time in the kitchen. Just in case there is ACTUALLY anyone out there paying attention to my mundane little activities.
-I made a raspberry vanilla cake for my last day at work. I assume it turned out nicely, because when I got to it on the buffet, it was gone!! My first try with cake flour, and the fluffiness of the cake was very nice. But the cake seemed to not rise normally?? And the batter was rather thick. But when I tasted some of the pieces from what I had leveled off, it was very good. The frosting was pretty much a basic buttercream with some raspberry preserves beaten in and then colored a little more pink. I put some fruit on top for looks.
-Vanilla berry pie for a cookout. I made this one up from my head. I made a cookie crust, which I actually liked the taste of better than regular pie crust, then I filled it with vanilla filling, similar to instant pudding. Then I covered it with chopped raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. Then I made homeade whipped cream and covered it. I think I beat the cream a little too long because it looked a little too thick. But it tasted very good and everyone liked it. Needs some practice though.
-Key lime pie. Not good… not good at all. Used regular pie crust. DIscovered, I suck at pie crust. As I was rolling it out, my husband looked at me funny and asked why I didn’t buy the premade crusts. Duh. Though I guess that doesn’t give me much practice. Anyway, after rolling it out and trying to get it into the pie plate in one piece about a dozen times, I gave up and just tried to smoosh it in. Which turned out badly because when I baked the crust it cracked into a bunch of different pieces. Yikes. I made the filling, which was kinda fun because I got to juice a billion limes. But the recipe I used for the filling called for eggs. So I filled the pie and baked it and then covered it with whipped cream and chilled it and then we cut into it and it tastes like… eggs. Egg pie with a tiny hint of lime. Ick. It sat in the fridge for a week before I tossed it.
-Sugar cookies. Easy, of course. No problems. But I was making them to build tiny little wedding-cake shaped cookies. So I had three different sized rounds, and I glued them together with fosting and did some pretty decorations. I finished and stepped back and realized they didnt resemble wedding cakes, they looked like giant lopsided cookie mounds. Oh well.
-Applesauce cake. Yummy yummy yummy. I skipped the frosting and made a raisin syrup/glaze kind of thing which turned out really really good. Sticky, but good.
I’ve been out of town lately so that’s all I’ve had time for.
Next up:
Cranberry bread, which I’ve made before and turned out quite nicely. I’m going to try bread flour this time though.
Coffee cake. Never made it, actually.
Cinnamon buns. I just want to try the whole spiral dough thing and see how it works.
Any suggestions?