Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2017 – )

[TdeV]

Raspberries, blueberries, and huge beautiful blackberries in Hot Summer Spoon Cake from King Arthur Flour. It's eaten hot with a dollop of ice cream.

 

Mine was a little gummy, so could have stayed in the oven longer. Also, I washed the fruit before I used it, so perhaps too much liquid.

 

Very tasty indeed.

 

We have leftovers. King Arthur Hotline said the "proper" texture is halfway between cake and pudding and it's a toss-up whether to reheat because some of the texture will dry out. Since mine was a bit gooey, she definitely votes for reheating it (and adding ice cream).

 

 

[weinoo]

I made a half batch (8) of these totally easy buttermilk scones (with a few currants) this morning...

 

 

Baked four off in the steam girl, and froze four unbaked. They're quite good.

[TdeV]

Hi @weinoo, those scones look fabulous. Will you share your recipe?

[weinoo]

Sure - they are these...https://theunlikelybaker.com/classic-buttermilk-scones/

[JoNorvelleWalker]

6 hours ago, weinoo said:

Sure - they are these...https://theunlikelybaker.com/classic-buttermilk-scones/

 

Yours are prettier than theirs.

 

[Kerry Beal]

 

Mikaluk's Crustless French Flan

[ElsieD]

6 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

 

Mikaluk's Crustless French Flan

 

Drool.

[Katie Meadow]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

 

Mikaluk's Crustless French Flan

Looks terrific. Do you have a recipe?

[Kim Shook]

I know that this is going to come across as me being an ungrateful bitch, but if I can’t bitch here, where can I 😁?  My MIL always insists that everyone must have a cake for their birthday and sees anything that we chose that isn’t cake as invalid.  She will literally come to our house for a birthday party and if the dessert isn’t a cake, she’ll bake one and bring it by the next day.  It’s always seemed like an odd flex, but we’ve gotten used to it over the years.  So, my birthday was July 9^th and when she heard that we were eating out that day, she asked what kind of cake I wanted.  I suggested strawberry cake with 7-minute frosting.  She always uses a cake mix fixed up with Dream Whip, and that’s what I figured she’d do this time.  She didn’t.  She found a recipe for a strawberry cake with fresh strawberries in the batter on Pinterest and made that with a buttercream icing made with more strawberries.  She ended up having a very busy day and instead of bringing the cake over that night (as planned), she requested that we come and have cake at her house. I wasn’t even planning on getting dressed after our out of town adventures the day before, but we went over.  The cake was beautiful, but just a wet mess:

 

 

The flavor was good, but the texture was just saturated.  I’m not a big fan of buttercream and this was so incredibly sweet that it was almost inedible.  She explained that the strawberries made the icing so loose that she had to keep adding more and more 10X to try to tighten it up.  It seems so strange that she would screw up so badly, being such an experienced baker.  By the time we got home with the cake, the majority of the icing had slid down the sides. Very sad looking. 

 

The other day Mr. Kim brought home some cherries and blackberries from the downtown farmer’s market.  Blackberry shortcake seemed like a good idea.  I made some Sweet Shortbread Biscuits:

They are just slightly sweet and very fragrant with lemon zest and are perfect for blackberry shortcake:

 

For coffee after church today, I got some breakfast bread at Publix, made Honey-Walnut Cream Cheese, and put together little sandwiches:

They were very popular. 

 

I have to say that my MIL completely redeemed herself.  She brought by some cherry pie that she had made:

It was excellent! 

[Smithy]

I could forgive a LOT for a slice of that cherry pie!

[heidih]

I am so so tired of people on about how things are "supposed to be". I'd have pitched the cake in a public bin on the way home. Gish she really mad it all about you - NOT

 

Your berry sweets are nice. I am sure they highlighted the berries well.

Edited July 21, 2022 by heidih (log)

[Kerry Beal]

Chop it up - mix with some unsweetened whipped cream - some cubes of strawberry jello and some more fresh strawberries and I'll bet it will eat just fine. 

[Kim Shook]

6 minutes ago, heidih said:

I am so so tired of people on about how things are "supposed to be". I'd have pitched the cake in a public bin on the way home. Gish she really mad it all about you - NOT

 

Your berry sweets are nice. I am sure they highlighted the berries well.

We took it home to be polite. Mr. Kim dumped the cake and washed and dried the cake carrier and plate before we'd been home an hour!  

[heidih]

8 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Chop it up - mix with some unsweetened whipped cream - some cubes of strawberry jello and some more fresh strawberries and I'll bet it will eat just fine. 

I would not have salvaged and eaten something that ticked me off - oops no heaven brownie points 

[Kerry Beal]

26 minutes ago, heidih said:

I would not have salvaged and eaten something that ticked me off - oops no heaven brownie points 

One of the many differences between you and I. I am my mother's daughter and waste makes me terribly guilty. 

[rotuts]

@Kim Shook 

 

where o you think all the water came from ?

 

was the cake itself

 

very vey moist ,   on the wet side ?

[Kerry Beal]

1 minute ago, rotuts said:

@Kim Shook 

 

where o you think all the water came from ?

 

was the cake itself

 

very vey moist ,   on the wet side ?

Wonder if it was the fresh strawberries in the batter - they don't appear to be sitting in it - so must have been immersion blended into it!

[heidih]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

One of the many differences between you and I. I am my mother's daughter and waste makes me terribly guilty. 

I get that. My dad and his wife refused to throw away the prune juice they accidentally bought thinking it was grape. He drank some a month or so ago - massive runs. Had some more couple days ago. So the man with hospitalized diverticulitis several years ago who does not follow the dietary directives is shocked at bloody massive diarrhea. Turned out not a disaster but - but they finally tossed it. I know the prune was not the reason but maybe a tipping point to an about to happen episode. Never a bleepin dull moment. 

[Kerry Beal]

21 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

We took it home to be polite. Mr. Kim dumped the cake and washed and dried the cake carrier and plate before we'd been home an hour!  

I know it's too late but in further discussion it seemed that with the icing scraped off - this wet cake would be a perfect thing to make a trifle from. Drizzle a little sherry, some jam, some custard... Bob's your mother's brother!

[Kim Shook]

20 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Wonder if it was the fresh strawberries in the batter - they don't appear to be sitting in it - so must have been immersion blended into it!

I swear I thought I'd responded to this already.  I must have typed it in and then closed the window without entering it.  

 

I'm sure that you are right about the fresh strawberries being the culprit.  I think when one is using a particularly wet fruit in cooking you have to somehow mitigate the moisture.  I do a strawberry cheesecake where you roast the strawberries before putting them in the batter.  If I were making a cake with strawberries, I think I would cook them down to reduce them or lessen any other liquid ingredients.  As far as the icing goes, I would probably have crushed some dried strawberries to flavor it.  Putting in more and more 10X was an error.

 

And, honestly, as far as wastefulness was concerned, we are a family of two diabetics and the three of us tip the scales at over 700 lbs. total, so I didn't worry overmuch about wasting passive-aggressive cake.  😄😜

[Matthew.Taylor]

After a week of Covid, my mother decided I was better enough to try baking again. We had a box of peaches that where starting to get bad, so here’s Peach Cobbler.

 

https://www.southernliving.com/recipes/fresh-peach-cobbler#recipe-body

 

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Grand-daughter requested a white chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and caramel drizzle for her birthday.

[TdeV]

 

My pie was a disaster in almost every way. Gretchen McKay's Blueberry Cream Pie recipe appeared in my local paper, though this is a different link.

 

I didn't want to make a single pie––too hard to cut cleanly. Brief internet research revealed that individual pies take more crust ingredients than a single pie; it was suggested that doubling the recipe would be adequate, extra pie shells could be frozen for another day. 

 

Having no graham crackers, I thought to substitute ginger snaps. Nabisco Ginger Snaps were a favoured youthful dessert so I bought a box, but the modern version is a hard tasteless (ginger-less) hard cookie.

 

It seems that different manufacturers have different graham cracker sheet sizes, so there was no way (for me) to calculate its weight. Also unclear on whether the recipe called for a single graham cracker or a sheet of crackers, I counted out 24 Nabisco ginger snaps, thinking that I was doubling the recipe. And so added 12 tablespoons of melted butter (excessive). And whizzed in the Cuisinart for too long into a fine powder. Perhaps you can see how rock solid this "crust" is.

 

 

The blueberry filling went fairly well, though I added an extra tablespoon of ground blueberry powder, and used lime oil in place of lemon juice. (I'm probably not a very reliable cook 🙄).

 

For the topping, the cream cheese was too cold. With the addition of heavy cream, it wasn't long before I turned it into butter.

 

While I managed to get the "crust" loose from the pie pan after baking, this was not possible once the crusts were filled. Using a sharp vegetable knife, I eventually got them loose but probably wrecked the pan.

 

 

Now, here's the funny part. Everybody ate almost all of the pie! Moreover, no one lost a tooth.

 

My friend took to calling it Blueberry Cream Toffee Torte. 🤣

 

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by TdeV
Spelling and punctuation. (log)

[Matthew.Taylor]

On 7/21/2022 at 1:53 PM, Kim Shook said:

I know that this is going to come across as me being an ungrateful bitch, but if I can’t bitch here, where can I 😁?  My MIL always insists that everyone must have a cake for their birthday and sees anything that we chose that isn’t cake as invalid.  She will literally come to our house for a birthday party and if the dessert isn’t a cake, she’ll bake one and bring it by the next day.  It’s always seemed like an odd flex, but we’ve gotten used to it over the years.  So, my birthday was July 9^th and when she heard that we were eating out that day, she asked what kind of cake I wanted.  I suggested strawberry cake with 7-minute frosting.  She always uses a cake mix fixed up with Dream Whip, and that’s what I figured she’d do this time.  She didn’t.  She found a recipe for a strawberry cake with fresh strawberries in the batter on Pinterest and made that with a buttercream icing made with more strawberries.  She ended up having a very busy day and instead of bringing the cake over that night (as planned), she requested that we come and have cake at her house. I wasn’t even planning on getting dressed after our out of town adventures the day before, but we went over.  The cake was beautiful, but just a wet mess:

 

 

The flavor was good, but the texture was just saturated.  I’m not a big fan of buttercream and this was so incredibly sweet that it was almost inedible.  She explained that the strawberries made the icing so loose that she had to keep adding more and more 10X to try to tighten it up.  It seems so strange that she would screw up so badly, being such an experienced baker.  By the time we got home with the cake, the majority of the icing had slid down the sides. Very sad looking. 

 

The other day Mr. Kim brought home some cherries and blackberries from the downtown farmer’s market.  Blackberry shortcake seemed like a good idea.  I made some Sweet Shortbread Biscuits:

They are just slightly sweet and very fragrant with lemon zest and are perfect for blackberry shortcake:

 

For coffee after church today, I got some breakfast bread at Publix, made Honey-Walnut Cream Cheese, and put together little sandwiches:

They were very popular. 

 

I have to say that my MIL completely redeemed herself.  She brought by some cherry pie that she had made:

It was excellent! 

The cake also looks a little under done in some spots. I would suggest trying freeze dried strawberries, crushed into a powder next time. They might help with the cake’s problems. I tried to make a strawberry cake once, did not go well.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Another birthday, our household is Leo's den!     By request, white velvet cake with whipped cream and strawberries.  

I'm DONE for the birthday season.