Other Adventures in Baking

Alright I admit it. I have a hard time focusing sometimes.

This "baking my way through a cookbook" thing is very fun and I'm always doing something different which I love. But I've ventured off a little bit and found myself spending some time with other baking projects.

I made these precious little cupcakes for a friend's birthday. They're actually a Martha Stewart recipe so I'm still on track in that respect. It's a basic yellow cupcake. I was a little challenged with the frosting. It was like a regular buttercream but for some reason it had milk in it, and as I was following the recipe I was thinking "This is going to have to make it too thin." Lo and behold. Very thin frosting. And I kept adding more confectioner's sugar to thicken it up but I actually didn't have enough! So I ran out and I had to stop with this consistency. It wasn't bad. It was not quite as thin as a glaze but it was kind of in that ballpark. It still tasted great!

Last week was Purim, and I had a special request for gluten free Hamentashen. How could I resist such an exciting new project? I have been doing quite a bit of gluten free baking and I'm really enjoying it. Plus I've always wanted to make Hamentashen because they are so darn cute and so darn tasty.

As usual, I wasn't entirely happy with the appearance of these, but considering how difficult the dough was to work with I'm actually pretty impressed with myself.

Gluten free dough tends to be very very sticky. Since gluten is the protein that actually binds wheat together, without gluten baked goods wouldn't stick together at all, so xanthan gum is added. Xanthan gum makes it really sticky. Like, really really sticky. Like I almost glued my hands together. But I figured out that dipping my hands in ice water helped when I was forming the cookies. I dropped some strawberry jam in the center, dipped my hands in ice water, and folded the edges up. It took a while and it was crazy but it was fun, and the cookies tasted delicious.

This cake was my first ever attempt at gluten free. I have to say the attempt was a success. I have to work on the frosting a little but the cake itself was outstanding.

I wasn't really sure what to expect with gluten free baking. I knew the texture would be really different, and for some reason I thought it would be gritty or chewy or just something weird. On the contrary, the gluten free stuff I've made so far is super light and fluffy. There's an almost airy quality. For cake it's really nice.

I got a lot of compliments on this cake. I tasted a bit and it was really good, but I don't really know what to compare it to. Someone said it was better than some professional cakes. I gave myself a little pat on the back for that.
;)


Still 139 recipes to go!