Other Baking

As I said before I sometimes get distracted from my project and start doing lots of other random baking. I'm in the kitchen so much now that I've actually come to really love it. Also, I've been getting a really great response to the things I've been baking for friends and family and I've been getting people requesting specific things and I've been experimenting with gluten free baking and lots of other fun things. So I wanted to share some of what I've been up to.

Quite obviously, this is a birthday cake. It was for my nephew's 4th birthday, and there he is enjoying his birthday moment. So what's with the inside of the cake? It's a checkerboard cake. We've had this checkerboard cake pan in the the house pretty much forever, and I've been wanting to make one pretty much forever. 

It was pretty tricky to make. It takes a lot of patience. There's a divider that you put in the round cake pan and you have to alternate chocolate and vanilla cake batter and make sure they don't get mixed in together. And you have to do that three times. But look how cool it is! It was definitely worth the effort. I'm not sure my nephew fully appreciated the checkerboard design, but he definitely enjoyed eating it.

Is it a cookie, a brownie, a pie, a cake? What is it? It's a Brookie! I had so much fun with this. I actually had taken a little break from baking, about a week without baking anything, and I mentioned that I was anxious to bake and try something new. A friend of mine recommended I try this because she had just seen it on the Martha Stewart show. A cookie meets a brownie. Genius.

The recipe calls for making them in mini pie pans, but I didn't have enough of them so I just made one that way. Also it seemed way too large for such an indulgent treat. So besides the one round one, I put the rest of the batter and dough in a brownie pan and cut it into squares. I liked the squares better.

These were really delicious. The cookie was great and the brownie was amazing. Really rich and delicious. And you can see in the second picture how the chocolate was all melty and gooey. Yum yum yum.

I have quite a few friends with allergies, and one of my joys is providing them with tasty allergen-free baked goods. Sometimes it's gluten-free, sometimes gluten-free and egg-free, sometimes gluten-free and sugar-free, nut free, dairy free, etc etc. As crazy as it sounds, these kinds of challenges are really exciting for me. A lot of the stuff I've made hasn't really worked, and a lot of it comes out really delicious. I find it very satisfying and fulfilling when the recipes work.

These chocolate chip muffins were gluten-free and egg-free. For the first time I used flax seeds as a substitute for eggs. I had heard about it and I was very curious about it because it sounds so strange. Surprise of surprises, it totally worked. You have to grind the flax seeds up in a coffee grinder and then let them sit in water for about 10 minutes, and then it becomes a gooey gelatinous substance, similar to eggs. I think with eggs they would've risen a little bit more, but these had a nice moist yet crumbly texture. They were tasty. 

OK, it's not a dessert item, but bread still counts as baking. It turns out I love baking bread. This was an Irish soda bread I made for a St. Patrick's Day party. It was delicious. Seriously. So sweet and rich and delicious. I ended up making like, 3 loaves of it cos it was so great.

This is a gluten free Focaccia bread. I would've liked it if it had risen a little bit more, but obviously the gluten-free is going to be a little different. It was delicious anyway. The topping is red sea salt and some mixed herbs. I felt it was maybe a tiny bit too salty, but still delicious. I enjoyed it very much and will be making it again.

Still 127 recipes to go.