Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

We look forward to celebrating Epiphany each year because it's a low-key tradition that makes the transition from the holidays to the regular routine less brutal. There are no expectations beyond having a nice meal and writing down our wishes for the coming year. Bubby likes to look back at our wishes from the past, and he looks forward to a special dessert. In recent years January 6th has been a day off from school and we've gone to our  condo in Vermont and spent the day skiing. So with little time during the day, and an unreliable oven in the mix, it has to be a simple dessert. This year my one requirement was to use up a container of mascarpone I'd had in the fridge for over two months. Looking through Instagram, I'd become curious to try a kind of French cake called a "fondant" or "moelleux", and I found a simple recipe for a Fondant au Mascarpone et au Citron that I put to the test: Ingredients: 250 g mascarpone 3 eggs 1 tsp lemon extract 50 g...

     Welcoming in 2023!  Trying to find the cheer and keep in mind all I have to be grateful for, especially during a tough holiday season missing those family members who are gone and not looking forward to a milestone birthday I have coming up. But deciding to worry about that later! My first bake for 2023 was a Cranberry Upside Down cake  to share at our family celebration. I decided to make  this recipe  from Joy of Baking because it required minimum effort, and I had all the ingredients at hand. Having spent all of Christmas Eve in the kitchen, I didn't want to do the same for New Year's. My cranberries were frozen, and I thawed them out by running them under cold water until they were soft, then drying them thoroughly. I needed more than the 227 grams the recipe called for in order to cover the bottom of the pan. Only thing I regret is taking some caramel that was left in the pan when I unmolded the cake and sticking it on top of the cranberries....

Freezing temperatures and burst pipes had us postpone our family gathering. I'd spent Christmas Eve preparing a Boston Cream Pie that Grandpa wanted and we ended up "having" to eat it ourselves. Fortunately, our neighbor was willing to take half! The recipe is Lucinda's Boston Cream Pie  from Martha Stewart, and the No Fuss Pastry Cream  also from Martha Stewart, and the ganache is from Sally's Baking Addiction . Though the cake was delicious I'd say the ratio of cake to pastry cream was a bit off because the cakes were a bit tall for my taste. If making again I'd still choose the 8"cake pan size but perhaps remove some of the batter to make into cupcakes. In this ganache recipe you use corn syrup for shine. Maybe the cream needed to be at room temperature cream instead of straight from the fridge, because the corn syrup didn't fully dissolve and I had to put the mixture through a sieve. So I don't know if it made a difference in the end. For...