one more post for January.

Is it really February as of tomorrow? Where did this month go? I realized that I only posted about 4 times this month, compared to my average of about 6 or 7 a month. I am going to try to bump that number up a bit. I usually post (food) articles that I like to my twitter account, and I got a suggestion a while back about posting the links on here, so I might start doing that. Anyway, I made a Hot Toddy Pudding Cake this weekend.

I didn’t try it, but I was told that it was good. It took a couple of tries to make it because you really need a shallow pan to bake it in. It is kind of like making a souffle, with whipped egg whites and everything. The mixing method is different from any other cake that I’ve made, and it is very low in flour, and there is no leavening agent except the air that is whipped into the egg whites, and I suppose there’s a lot of steam from all of the liquid added to the mix. So, it should be eaten right when it comes out of the oven, which also makes sense, since it is a HOT Toddy Cake. If you try to make this, let me know how yours turned out!

January: the month of newbies…Daring Bakers Challenge #1

So, I wanted to join this group for a while after reading about their challenges on other food blogs. So I thought, what better time to start something new than in the new year. So here goes:

“The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca.”

I have worked with gluten-free flours before, and with all of the rain, I just didn’t feel like trekking all the way down to the Mission to get what I needed, so I used wheat flour. It was a simple change to the challenge recipe, just replace the gluten-free flours with wheat flour.

The graham cracker dough was sticky, and I ended up adding a little extra flour while I kneaded and rolled it out. Since I don’t really like plain graham crackers (or s’mores) and I knew I would have extras, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the shapes of the crackers themselves, and just baked them for the crumbs. Oh, of course I tried one or three before smashing them to bits, and they are good on their own. But I will surely make a tart or pie crust of some sort with the leftover crumbs.

The Nanaimo Bars were pretty easy to make, and all of the layers make a tasty treat. I only have half of them left and I only made them on Monday.

I do have a lot of leftover ingredients that will have to be used some how, so look for recipes featuring these ingredients again (such as the graham cracker crumbs).

I hope this post gets the Daring Baker’s stamp of approval. Take the jump for the recipes.

they’re not the prettiest that I’ve seen, but they were tasty.

I promise it is worth the wait…

I’m sorry for the lack of posting lately. But I have been baking. This post features dessert that I made for the dinner Benjie hosted on Saturday (I’m always there to help and semi co-host.) Anyway, I made vanilla souffles with chocolate sauce. Also, in case those didn’t work out, I made a brown butter pound cake.

The souffles turned out okay, and for those of you who were at the dinner, and didn’t get a chance to try the pound cake the next day, I am sorry you missed out, because that was also good. I promise I will make it for you some time! 🙂

I had not made a souffle since my second year of pastry school, so I was tempted to try them, especially since I got the ramekins to make them in for my birthday. (Thanks, Mom!) I am so happy they turned out tasting okay, even if they were a little bit crooked (they didn’t rise straight).

The pound cake was a little bit dry, but I’ll admit to over baking them slightly, because I was distracted while they were in the oven, because I was watching Dexter, which, is a really addicting show. I almost went straight to watching it instead of posting this, but I figured you’ve waited long enough for a new post… 😉

Click on the link for the recipes and more pictures.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I wanted to use up the peanut butter and peanuts that were leftover from the brittle, so I made peanut butter cookies with peanuts in them. They are tasty, and it was my first time I adapted a recipe on my own, so they are a little too sugary for my taste. I got the recipe from A Field Guide to Cookies, written by Anita Chu. It is a very basic peanut butter cookie recipe, but right at the top of the page it read, “do not use natural peanut butter, because it separates” so I thought, well, that’s what I’ve got, so I have to make it work. I thought that it must separate because of the fat content. So I did not use butter in the recipe. I was going to replace the butter with peanut butter, but I didn’t have enough, so I just added oil. I think they turned out okay. I will post the original recipe on here, since the recipe that I ended up with is not perfect. I still have some peanuts left, so the next post might also feature them; sorry in advance for so many peanut posts, but I think this blog needs a little more balance of flavors, since most of the recipes on here are chocolate-y.