Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

 Usually I make a Yule Log for Christmas dessert. But this year we were visiting Sis, and she wanted something different. I'd come prepared to make the Yule Log, with several of my favorite recipes from over the years, bakers chocolate bars for the ganache, and piping bags and tips for the meringue mushrooms. However, what Sis really wanted was a simple vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. Why not? It would be a challenge to figure out what to do. I've made cakes in Sis' kitchen before, and I've left some equipment there including 6" cake pans, cake strips, cooling racks, and bakers sheets. Small offset spatulas, cake rounds, measuring cups and spoons and a beautiful lime green Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a glass bowl are there too. As it turns out, what would have been really useful is an oven thermometer. Boy does Sis' oven run hot! I used Butternut Bakery's recipe for a 2 layer cake. I decided on a 2-layer cake to avoid making 2 batches of frosting. Ho...

 On this Thanksgiving, our family decided to have a mixed menu, including some traditional items like roasted turkey breast, mashed potatoes and stuffing, but also some different things like baked haddock, bay scallops and kale with chestnuts. We spent Thanksgiving at Grandpa's house, and we arrived the day before on Wednesday after a 3 hour drive. This seemed like a good year to try a dessert that was not pumpkin pie. I remembered that Uncle S. had talked about how much he used to like penuche frosting as a kid. So, I decided to make a cake with penuche frosting, and ended up choosing this recipe from King Arthur Baking.  This way we wouldn't have to travel several hours with a perishable pie in the car, and I wouldn't have to make a pumpkin pie in someone else's kitchen, rolling out pie dough and deciding when the custard is done. The latter is difficult enough in my own kitchen! I used two kinds of apples for the cake, Granny Smith and Pink Lady. Is brought to scale,...

Parmesan Cheese Gougères This week our book club got together for the final meeting of the year. We went to a friend's house and she said beforehand that she wanted to make dessert.  I usually bring dessert, so I decided to find an appetizer I could bake. Not sure how, but I thought of Gougères . I'm glad I did!  They're a favorite of my sister's so maybe I was channeling her.  The Gougères recipe is very simple: Pâte à Choux with added cheese, piped into small rounds and baked. But it's also very exacting!  I've made Pâte à Choux many times before, using Sally's Bake Blog's recipe.  Here  is that recipe. But I couldn't find the gougères recipe I've used before in my baking binder, so I started taking a look at other websites. I decided to combine  Brown Eyed Baker's  recipe and  King Arthur Baking's  recipe, using Parmesan cheese since that's what I had at hand.  But when I started cooking the dough, it wasn't coming together int...

Lately I've made lots of seasonal food: Mushroom & Chestnut Soup, Roasted Delicata Squash, and a couple of weeks ago my Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies.  I still had pumpkin puree left over and I was making chili for dinner tonight. So it was the perfect occasion to make Pumpkin Bread .  So easy, so good! Here  is the recipe, from King Arthur Baking.  I halved the ingredients to make one loaf. It did take longer than usual to bake to 190F: almost 45 minutes instead of 30-35. I'm not sure why this happened. By then I had to eat, right before a zoom meeting. Not a problem to cut a slice from the hot loaf and eat it right away! And I admit, after the zoom meeting was over I cut another (thick) slice and enjoyed that as well. It's that good! Pumpkin Bread

Chocolate Cake with Smarties Recently a friend lost her grandma and was very sad about it. In a casual conversation I said we should make a dinner featuring some of her grandma's dishes and my friend mentioned that they had a tradition of making a cake and decorating it with Smarties. I thought that was a great idea! A few months later we were organizing a dinner among friends and I decided to make her a Chocolate Cake  decorated with Smarties in memory of her grandmother.  European Smarties are different from American Smarties which are a sour candy.  The European ones are like pastel-colored M & Ms. I was surprised to be able to find them in a local specialty shop! They were expensive, and since it's November all they had was a Christmas variety in red and green.  Later on I saw some candy at Trader Joe's that looked exactly like the Euro Smarties in all the colors, unfortunately too late for this cake but I plan to try them for future reference! I wanted to m...

 It was so hard to say goodbye to summer this year, but I'm finally in the mood for Fall. Yes, now that it's mid-November! Better late than never.   It was the last session of this Fall's watercolor class.  I wanted to bring something for the other ladies and you can't go wrong with Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies .  I just love  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog.  It's so easy and you don't even need a mixer.   I used a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop like the recipe calls for, but instead of 18 I ended up getting at least 25 cookies.  I was tired and made the dough the night before, then froze the individual cookie scoops. It was super easy in the morning to bake them and let them cool for an hour before I had to get to class. I didn't get any pictures, but I brought along a pretty Fall plate that I have in the shape of a pumpkin and I arranged them on that.  Everybody liked them, several people said they were so good and one fr...