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

[pjm333]

Host's note: this topic is continued from Your Daily Sweets: What Are You Making and Baking? (2016 - 2017)

 

 

Strawberry Pate de fruit !

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by Smithy
Added host's note (log)

[Thanks for the Crepes]

On 4/20/2017 at 5:23 PM, rajoress said:

My annual Easter cakes! One of them also served as a birthday cake - that one is a double egg surrounded by edible grass! Strawberry and green apple flavors - it was determined that it tastes like those little penny candy space ships we used to eat as kids or communion wafers....!

thanks for looking!

Ruth

 

Nice work! So pretty.

 

My mom used to make us special birthday cakes from the Angel Flake Coconut "Cut-Up Cakes" pamphlet style cookbook. They were one of the highlights of our young lives. I am sure your birthday honoree will think so too.

 

I have the Baker's "Cut-Up Cake Party Book" copyright 1973 by General Foods Corp., but it is not as cool with creative designs, It's okay and does include the Butterfly design from the Angel Flake version, but I sure would love to have the original one. They are both pretty cool though and allow the average home cook to create very attractive cakes from mixes with standard pans, cut out shapes, and assemble and decorate a very attractive cake that thrills kids, and (secretly) me.  Mom would give us the little booklet weeks before our birthdays and let us pick the design. Such a quandary! Such anticipation! Thanks for bringing these memories back.

[sartoric]

Another day, another cake. I had bananas going south, so banana and walnut cake emerged from the oven. I subbed melted butter with coconut oil, and a recent failed experiment in making coconut ladoos became the icing. 

 

 

Coconut ladoos are milk, sugar and desiccated coconut boiled until dry enough to roll into balls. It just didn't happen for me, so I whacked it in the fridge hoping to firm it up. That also didn't happen. It did, however, make a perfectly acceptable icing for the cake.

[Tri2Cook]

I did the banana theme today too. Not too exciting a picture but it's banana bread baked in a 13x9 because there was a large amount of batter and I didn't want to bother with multiple loaves. I took my usual banana bread recipe (which is of the standard variety) and mucked around with it a bit. I had 4 sliced bananas that had spent several days soaking in rum in order to make a rum liqueur and it seemed a shame to waste them so I mashed them with 4 more non-soaked well ripened bananas and used that for the banana component. I added some almond extract in addition to the usual vanilla because orgeat has taught us that rum and almond are good dance partners. And I added a very small amount of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and clove. I mean tiny, as in 1/4 tsp of cinnamon and allspice and 1/8 tsp of nutmeg and clove in a large batch of batter. I didn't want the spice forward. Didn't even really want them particularly noticeable, they're just supposed to be a supporting element to enhance the rum and banana a bit. I normally don't add any of those spices to my banana bread. Also, the bananas were already pretty boozy but I tossed in a bit of additional rum just to be safe. It smelled good baking but it'll probably be tomorrow before I taste it so I don't have an interior shot. With 8 bananas, brown sugar instead of white and 1/2 lb of butter, I can't imagine it being dry.

[Anna N]

13 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Also, the bananas were already pretty boozy but I tossed in a bit of additional rum just to be safe

 Perhaps you should wait to dig in until the sun is over the yardarm.

[Tri2Cook]

2 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 Perhaps you should wait to dig in until the sun is over the yardarm.

Probably a good idea.  Two things make that easier, I leave for work at around 5:30 am and eating sweet items before I've eaten something else has a habit of making my gut unhappy. So it'll probably be tomorrow evening.

[Patrick S]

I was wanting to take the new 100mm macro lens for a spin, but didn't have time for a major project. So I ended up making one of those vanilla "magic" cakes. It starts with a foamy batter with the consistency of egg nog. The recipe worked as advertised, separating into more or less discrete layers upon cooking. But I didn't find the end result particularly magical. Finished with dulce de leche.

[Jim D.]

@Patrick S, I had exactly the same experience with the magic cake. Everything happened as it was supposed to, but all I could think of after eating it was "This is what magic tastes like?" I love custard, but did not find this cake appealing. I always wonder what I did wrong when so many people rave about something (such as this cake), but your experience appears to confirm mine.

 

Would you mind if I sent you a PM about your macro lens? I have had no success with mine--people on eGullet get better photos with their smartphones than I do with my $$ lens.

[Patrick S]

1 hour ago, Jim D. said:

@Patrick S, I had exactly the same experience with the magic cake. Everything happened as it was supposed to, but all I could think of after eating it was "This is what magic tastes like?" I love custard, but did not find this cake appealing. I always wonder what I did wrong when so many people rave about something (such as this cake), but your experience appears to confirm mine.

 

Would you mind if I sent you a PM about your macro lens? I have had no success with mine--people on eGullet get better photos with their smartphones than I do with my $$ lens.

 

Sure, feel free to hit me up via PM anytime!

[Kasia]

On 4/22/2017 at 9:12 PM, pjm333 said:

Strawberry Pate de fruit !

 

That reminds me about my childhood

[Kasia]

My last baking initiative - Plum scones.

 

Ingredients:

400g of flour
200g of 18% cream
200g of butter
3 tablespoons of caster sugar
plum stew
caster sugar for sprinkling

 

the whole recipe and its story you will find here

 

 

[Shelby]

I wanted oatmeal raisin cookies yesterday.  Got everything mixed up and began rooting around trying to find the raisins.  No raisins.  Yes, I am a chronic abuser of the mise en place system.  So, I used a bag of smashed up Heath bars.  Pretty good.  Kind of a happy accident.

 

 

 

[MelissaH]

I always prefer Heath bars to raisins. When I make oatmeal cookies with inclusions, I generally use either dried cherries or dried cranberries, sometimes dried blueberries. And chocolate chips too, either the ordinary kind or white chocolate chips.

 

My baking yesterday was the soft cream cheese cookies from Food52. I have fiori di sicilia, but I used vanilla and lemon zest instead because I then used the juice from the zested lemon to make a little bit of glaze, to amp up the citricality. I scooped the cookies with a #60 Zeroll scoop, which gave me about 4 dozen cookies. I didn't bother to flatten the dough balls because even after an hour in the fridge, it was pretty sticky stuff. My assessment of the finished cookies: they're good, but probably not the best use of cream cheese. Make sure you leave more than an inch between dough balls, or they'll spread together in the oven. The first sheet I made was probably a little underbaked, and thus didn't cleanly release from the parchment. I left the other two sheets in the oven to bake a little longer, and that worked better.

 

They are still decent, the day after baking.

 

[Tri2Cook]

7 hours ago, Shelby said:

I wanted oatmeal raisin cookies yesterday.  Got everything mixed up and began rooting around trying to find the raisins.  No raisins.  Yes, I am a chronic abuser of the mise en place system.  So, I used a bag of smashed up Heath bars.  Pretty good.  Kind of a happy accident.

Happy accident indeed... that sounds really tasty to me.

[shain]

Chocolate, espresso and caramel fondant cakes.

 

[Kasia]

17 hours ago, shain said:

Chocolate, espresso and caramel fondant cakes.

 

 

@shain it's awsome - I just swallowed my tongue 

[Kasia]

Today something sweet for a family dessert. Lemon-coconut cheesecake. I did it few weeks ago in April and was asked already few times to repeat it.

 

Ingredients (small cake tin 15-18cm):

base and crumble topping:
 

90g of desiccated coconut
50g of butter
2 tablespoons of sugar

 

 

cheese mixture:

500 g of grated curd cheese
2 lemon jellies (powdered)
500 ml of boiling water
200 g of 30% sweet cream 

 

the whole recipe is here

Edited April 29, 2017 by Kasia (log)

[Franci]

Fresh fruit tart with pastry cream completely decorated by the kids 

Edited April 29, 2017 by Franci (log)

[sartoric]

I made this chocolate and pear cake yesterday. It's yummy and disappearing quickly, but I have some questions...

 

This is the pan I used, 9 inch square, silicon fused to a metal edge. There's a ridge just below the top of the silicon sides, which made it kind of tricky to turn out. Could I have your thoughts on that ? It was picked up (still in the original packaging) at an op shop for $5, so I'm more than happy to recycle it back to them. Also, after cutting two pieces for testing, it broke in half as I manoeuvred it to the storage tub. I was using my largest spatula, about 3 inches wide. Is there a workaround I could have used to prevent the break ? Thanks...

[jmacnaughtan]

3 hours ago, sartoric said:

I made this chocolate and pear cake yesterday. It's yummy and disappearing quickly, but I have some questions...

 

This is the pan I used, 9 inch square, silicon fused to a metal edge. There's a ridge just below the top of the silicon sides, which made it kind of tricky to turn out. Could I have your thoughts on that ? It was picked up (still in the original packaging) at an op shop for $5, so I'm more than happy to recycle it back to them. Also, after cutting two pieces for testing, it broke in half as I manoeuvred it to the storage tub. I was using my largest spatula, about 3 inches wide. Is there a workaround I could have used to prevent the break ? Thanks...

 

 

If you're having trouble getting it out in one piece, you could try chilling it before unmoulding.  Cakes are always much more fragile when warm, so if it's down to fridge temperature it will be more robust.

[chromedome]

I have a lot of the thin, flexible plastic sheet-style cutting "boards," which I find ideal for that task. They slide easily between the cake and the cooling rack, and provide enough support (with a careful hand under the middle, of course) to easy shift the cake to a plate or cake board. 

 

[cakewalk]

Chocolate and pear is such a nice combination, and it looks great with that ice cream on top. Have you ever made anything else in that pan? The pears make it a very heavy, and also uneven, cake. I think that might have something to do with the difficulties you mentioned, and I'm wondering if the same thing happens with cakes that don't contain chunks of fruit. With some cakes, I find it is better to leave them in the pan. This might be one of them. 

[David Ross]

One of my favorite Spring ingredients, rhubarb.  In a simple crisp.  Just rhubarb tosses with sugar and a bit of cornstarch as a thickener, a few pats of butter.  Then into a dish and baked about 15 minutes.  Then the topping--1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 6tbsp. butter.  Pulsed to blend and cut the butter into pebbles, then on top of the rhubarb. Back into the oven for another 25 minutes.  And I'll be making a rhubarb chutney next, and rhubarb pie, and rhubarb...

[Anna N]

 Love the simplicity of your treatment.

[JohnT]

Your "crisp" is basically my "crumble" - 1:1:1 ratio of sugar, flour and butter. However, I have always used standard granulated white sugar but see you use brown, which, to tell the honest truth, has never crossed my mind. I have always just done it the way I was taught. Is your brown sugar plain granulated brown (light brown) or one of the brown sugars that contain some molasses?

Edited May 1, 2017 by JohnT (log)