Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

  Scary Halloween Mummy  Chocolate Cupcakes Halloween is such a favorite holiday of mine! No stressful and obligatory family gatherings, dressing up in costumes and lots of sweet treats. What's not to love?  This year I decided to make Chocolate Cupcakes  for us to enjoy and just to spread the love.  I used  this recipe  from Sugar & Sparrow's blog. I followed the recipe and the batter was so liquid and barely filling the cupcake wells in half. Although the recipe says it makes 15 cupcakes, each portion just looked so scant I ended up dividing the batter among the 12 cupcakes in the pan.  Well, that showed me!  These cupcakes really rise and some of them turned out pretty big.  Next time, I'll make 14. I'd planned to do a simple "mummy" decoration with the frosting, so it really wasn't a problem that some of them were so domed. The strips of the mummy's wrapping are done with a basketweave piping tip done in a bit of a random pattern but covering t

Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Cake Recently I got to make a birthday cake for a young friend of ours who was turning 18. He is a film fanatic and especially likes gangster movies.  I knew I'd have to make a cake in honor of this! The flavor requested was a simple Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Buttercream .  The mom told me there would be up to 30 people at the party, so I knew it would have to be a 9" cake.  I have several vanilla cake recipes in various sizes I've made over the years, but I wanted to try a new recipe this time. I chose  this recipe  from Sugar & Sparrow, an online blog I've recently found. I tend to like her recipes a little bit better than my old go-to, Sally's Bake Blog.   The recipe makes two cake layers.  So I made two layers several days beforehand. Knowing I'd have a spare cake layer, I "cored" one of the cakes to try a small bite beforehand and was satisfied that it baked up well and tasted good.  I froze these two

  Blueberry Scones A friend was coming over for coffee early in the morning and I know she loves baked goods. It was a crisp morning in late Summer/early Fall and we had to light a fire in the woodstove to make it comfortable to sit and chat in our sunroom. Perfect timing for Blueberry Scones ! I'd made blueberry scones before using  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog. But wanting to try something new, I went with a recipe from Preppy Kitchen.  Here  it is.   I followed the recipe to the letter and it was very easy.  When I dumped the dough onto the counter, I just made sure there was quite a bit of flour. Using a bench scraper and well-floured hands, I continued pushing flour under the dough until it came together from the top but wasn't sticking to the counter. It was quite easy to pat it into a circle and then to push it out to be 8 inches. I didn't manage to cut the scones evenly, but that was ok.  I scraped off the dough that stuck to the bench scraper and once th

  Banana Muffins After not getting together all summer today our watercolor group met again to paint together. I didn't know if anyone else was bringing anything, but I didn't want to arrive empty handed.  I didn't have a lot of time, but I did have 3 ripe bananas on the counter. Rather than wait for a banana bread to bake, I decided to make Banana Muffins . I used  this recipe  from Sally's Baking Addiction blog.  It's called Quick and Easy and that's exactly what it is. You can melt the butter and you don't have to use a mixer. I didn't change or add anything. They baked up quickly in 14 minutes, now that my oven temperature no longer seems to be running low. I was surprised at the deep golden color, very nice, no doubt from the brown sugar and the cinnamon. They tasted very good, as well. Very soft and moist for a muffin, and not too sweet.  I'm sure they'd be very good with added walnuts, too. An easy solution!

Peach Shortcake The Summer of 2024, so eagerly anticipated, flew by faster than any other. And was less fun.  Between Bubby's transition from school, a prolonged heat wave, patio construction, and friends returning to their post-pandemic lives, we've had fewer gatherings and there have been less opportunities to bake things.  And for me, in my scant free time I've been focusing more on my watercolor painting than on my baking and cake decorating. But when Grandpa called for an end-of-Summer family gathering, I remembered that several times lately he's talked about wanting Peach Shortcake . I didn't need to think too hard about what to make for this one! I turned to  this recipe  for Strawberry Shortcake from Preppy Kitchen.  According to my notes, I made it for Father's Day in 2020 and I labeled it "Best Recipe".  This time I compared it to other shortcake recipes, such as  this one  that I found online. But I went with my impressions from the previous

Norwegian Skolebrod custard buns Earlier in the week I'd made a French Fruit Tart and I had a good amount of pastry cream leftover. I didn't want it to go to waste, and it's not something you can really freeze. Although I've never tried to freeze pastry cream, I've read that it separates when it thaws, and trying to reconstitute it sounds like a pain.  So, I decided to make Skolebrod Custard Buns .  The word Skolebrod is Norwegian for "school bread" and I've read this is a traditional treat schoolchildren would enjoy when they got home from school, or maybe they were sent to school in their lunchboxes.  Apparently in Norway you find them in every bakery. I've made them before, and they're delicious. Here  is the recipe I used. It was already in my recipe binder.  This time, I decided to halve it because it looked like I only had 7 spoonfuls of pastry cream.  However, I wish I'd made the entire recipe and  made smaller rolls.  Each bun ended