May 19, 2013 - Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ok, so here is my last post to get caught up.  My parents anniversary was coming up, so of course I had to bake them a cake.  I went with carrot cake, because I knew for a fact it would be something they would both enjoy.

I can't lie, this cake was rediculously awesome.  First step: shred a bunch of carrots.  After mixing the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separate, everything was mixed together along with the carrots and the batter was done.  The nice thing about their recipe for this cake is that they make it as a sheet cake so there would be no "cake layering" process involved.

After baking it was time to cool and mix up the icing.  After frosting the cake of course I had to add some cheesy writing in orange icing to make it even better!

Everyone loved this cake, including my parents.  It was perfectly moist and the flavor was great.  The frosting had the perfect mix of sweet and cream cheese without being overly cheesy (like my orange writing, haha).  Although delicious even the day I made it, we all agreed this was one of those cakes that got even better the next day.  Looking forward to the ginger-orange variation!

May 17, 2013 - Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I felt like making something out of the cookie recipe that day so I went with the Oatmeal Cookies, but I also felt like some chocolate chips (and so did the other members of my family), so I went with that variation.

These cookies were awesome.  I personally love oatmeal cookies of any variety (and lucky for me this book has a few different variation recipes) so this recipe was great for me.  Again, in the spirit of getting caught up I will keep this post pretty short.  The cookies were pretty quick and easy to mix up and get in the oven, but the end result was great.  The recipe made a pretty big cookie, but they were thick and chewy, with a great flavor.  Definitely looking forward to trying the other varieties.

 



May 16, 2013 - Cinnamon Swirl Bread

So it was time.  I wanted to try my first official yeast bread recipe.  I wanted to start pretty basic, so I figured the Cinnamon Swirl Bread would be a good place to start....and it sure was.

So this dough mixed up pretty quickly, and I used my mixer to kneed it (I'll get more crazy with the "Kneed by Hand" variation some other time).  Once the dough was done, it was time for the wait and rise part...I can handle that...pretty easy step in the process.

Once the dough was done rising, punched down, and rose again, it was time to shape the bread.  After rolling it out the dough was brushed with milk and sprinkled with the cinnamon and sugar mixture.  Then, the dough was rolled up and formed into a loaf.

Once the loaf was formed, the dough rose once again, and then into the oven it went.  The smell of it baking was incredible, but the tast of it finished was even better.  I could not have tried for a better result at my first loaf of yeast based bread.  The bread was firm, yet light and flavorful in on the inside.  My mom tried it and basically said that this was her favorite thing I had made so far in this process.  A definite winner of a recipe and something that I would totally make again!

May 15, 2013 - Golden Northern Cornbread

So it's been a while since I've had a chance to sit down and get caught up on this thing!  A couple of weddings, busy weeks at work and various other things...crazy month.  But here we are an I need to get caught up on a couple of things.  First up:  Golden Northern Cornbread.

 

So let me just start out with the fact that this recipe was awesome in the sense that it was incredibly quick to make...literally about 10 minutes to mix up and get in the oven.  This was perfect because I distinctly remember this even I was having BBQ for dinner and I thought this would be a great compliment to that.



I am going to make this post short due to needing to get caught up, but needless to say it was literally mix some dry ingredients together, add the wet ones and get it in the oven.  The bread itself was great.  Not overly dense, but not too cakey, moist and great corn flavor.  Definitely a great go to recipe for a quick "bread" to go with a meal!

May 12, 2013 - Yellow Layer Cake with Rich Coffee Buttercream Frosting

So today being Mother's Day I thought it only fitting that I bake my mom a cake.  She's a fan of yellow cakes, so I went to that recipe and gathered my necessary ingredients.  The book offers three different frosting recipes to go with their yellow cake, so I went for the Rich Coffee Buttercream, mostly because it sounded awesome to me.

 

The cake itself was actually pretty quick to mix up and bake.  Within about 15 minutes I had the batter in the pans and the pans in the oven.  20 minutes of baking and then 10 minutes of cooling and the cakes were cooling on their wire racks.  Perfect time to go for a quick run!

 

After I got back from my run I was surprised to see that the cakes were already pretty much cooled.  I looked at the frosting recipe and started cooking away.  Amazingly, I found the frosting recipe more intense to make than the cake itself.  However, let me just say, this might be one of, if not the most amazing tasting frosting in the world.  So rich and buttery, and that coffee flavor gives it an unreal taste.  Seriously, I could eat it with a spoon. 

 

I assembled the cake and frosted the layers.  I will say this, I didn't take the time to level the cake layers, and I also didn't take the time to completely smooth out the frosting.  It was getting late and we all just really wanted to dig in I think!  Slices were cut and the results were incredible.  The cake itself was light, and buttery and moist.  Add on that amazing coffee buttercream and the overall result was so so good.  I will definitely look forward to trying the other frosting variations on this awesome cake!

 



May 11, 2013 - Thin, Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies

So yesterday my family decided to go out for dinner to celebrate Mother's Day since we couldn't all be together on the actual day.  I had some time in the afternoon before we left, so I decided to squeeze in a quick bake session.  I settled on the Thin, Crisp CCC's, mostly because I figured they would be pretty quick.

As I figured, the batter whipped up pretty quick, and before I knew it I was baking my first pan of cookies.  That's one of the beautiful things about chocolate chip cookies (crispy or soft)...you can literally mix up the batter and have them in the oven in about 10 minutes.

 

 

These cookies turned out pretty much how I thought they would:  delicious!  They had that great buttery flavor, and were crisp and crunchy.  Have the batch was gone in about an hour (and no, I did not eat them all myself), so I'd say they were an overall success.

May 10, 2013 - Apple Cake

So it's been a few days since I've baked/blogged anything.  It was a crazy week (had to get a new car), so I haven't had much time for baking.  However, last night I had some time so I thought I should try and squeeze somthing in.  I looked through the book and found the recipe for Apple cake.  I had only made 2 cake recipes so far so I figured this would be a good one to go for.

 

I love any dessert with fruit, so this looked right up my alley.  I mixed up the cake batter then chopped up my apples.  It was interesting to me that you bake the apples completely uncooked and just rely on a combo of brown and white sugar at the base of the pan to help them get the awesome flavor they had.  The batter went on top of the apples and it baked for about 40 minutes.

 

The cake demoulded perfectly, and smelled awesome.  After letting it sit for about 45 minutes I couldn't wait any more so I cut a slice.  Wow.  This cake was awesome.  The cake itself was very light and fluffy, and the apples added such an amazing tart yet sweet flavor.  Combined together and it was a great tasting cake. 

 

 

May 5, 2013 - Gingerbread

Today I went back through the "Quick Breads, Muffins, Biscuits, and Scones" chapter to see what I could whip up.  I zeroed in on Gingerbread.  I know I know, gingerbread is typically a more fall / holiday thing to eat, but it sounded really good and I personally love gingerbread so I decided to make it anyways.  Not to mention, I have a lot of recipes to get through so I can't really afford to be picky about the appropriate time of year to make any specific item!

 

I actually finding that as I go through this book so far, that a lot of the recipes are not as complicated as I thought they might be.  Now, I'm sure once I get to the more intricate breads and pastries I'll take back that statement, but for now most of the ones I have made (including this one) have been pretty straight forward.  The batter for this bread mixed up very nice and quick, and before I knew it the bread was in the oven.  The only modification I had to made was that I didn't have any allspice handy, so I just heavied up on the other spices a bit (no biggie).

 

 

Let me just say, of all of the things I have made so far, the smell of this baking and once it came out were just incredible.  Like I said, I am a sucker for gingerbread, and the smell of all of those spices together is just incredible to me.  This one really turned out great.  It had that amazing mix of spice taste combined with a perfectly moist texture.  This will definitely be something to add to the "make again soon" list.

 

 

Amazingly, as I looked through my book today and at all of the recipes I have made so far (I think I'm at 19), I realized there are still 3 chapters that I have made absolutely nothing from:  "Pastry", "Pizza, Focaccia, and Flatbread", and "Crisps, Cobblers, and Other Fruit Desserts".  I may have to branch out soon and try something from each of these chapters to expand my horizons a bit.  But until then, I am pretty dang happy with this gingerbread!

 



May 3, 2013 - Lemon Bars

Last night my family decided to have a cook out, so I thought I would bring a dessert.  I flipped through the book and found the recipe for Lemon Bars.  That sounded to me like a great dessert to have to go along with grilling out.

 

I started out mixing up the shortbread-like crust, pressed it into the bottom of my pan and put it in the fridge to set.  In the meantime, I started to zest and juice the lemons.  Anything lemon for dessert is always a win for me, and the smell of that zest and juice was amazing.

 

Once the crust had set, I put it in the oven, and while that was baking (which also smelled awesome) I started with the lemon filling.  I mixed everything together and got it on the stove top to thicken.  The crust finished baking, so that came out of the oven....

 

 

and just about the same time the filling got to the perfect thickness, so through the strainer it went...

 

and then it went onto the hot crust.



The pan went back in the oven until it was just about set, and just slightly jiggly in the middle.  After it cooled, it came out of the pan and was cut into squares.  These lemon bars were great.  The crust had a great buttery shortbread-like taste and consistency, and the lemon filling was delicious.  It had a great tart lemon flavor and soft, almost silky smooth texture.

I was very happy with how this recipe came out.  Although I must say that so far nothing out of this book has really disappointed!