Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

 Tonight we planned a dinner of roast chicken, baked potatoes and salad.  It sounded like the perfect time to add dessert to the mix.  We've been trying to do a freezer cleanout, and there was a bag of frozen cranberries that looked like the right thing for today.  The weather outside is cold and gray, so a Cranberry Upside Down Cake fit to a tee. I made this cake for our holiday gathering, but I can't remember what recipe I used.  Today, though, I didn't have orange juice or sour cream at hand so I needed a new recipe anyway.  I ended up combining  this recipe  from Martha Stewart and  this recipe  from David Lebovitz's blog.  I liked that fact that David Lebovitz uses cornmeal, and I liked the fact that Martha Stewart doesn't call for you to make a caramel. The cake took about 55 minutes to bake, and I found it to be just OK but not as good as the one I made over the holidays. It was too rich and buttery and I'd have preferred a bit of a drier cake.  D.L. uses

 In all these years of baking today was only the second time I ever made Crackers ! We had run out of saltines (yes, I ate them), and didn't want to go to the store.  Previously I had trouble getting crispy crackers, but  this recipe  did the trick. I halved the recipe, it came together quickly and baked up crisp in about 13 minutes. I was a bit doubtful about lightly flouring the pan and putting the unbaked crackers directly on the lightly floured sheet pan, without parchment paper or anything, but it worked like a charm. I topped them with everything bagel seasoning from Aldi and next time I would use a more toned-down topper, but overall this is a really good recipe.  They're already mostly gone!

 This morning's blueberries weren't very good on their own, and after everyone left for work and school I had a craving for muffins. Stuck at home all day with workmen replacing several windows in the house, it was a perfect day to bake up a batch! I wanted to try a recipe using oil instead of butter that would hopefully yield a moist and delicious crumb. This  is the recipe I used. I used avocado oil and instead of regular milk, I used 1/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons of almond milk. As the recipe suggested, I eyeballed the batter to get a nice scoopable consistency that wasn't too stiff but also not runny. The batter was a bit gluey and unusual looking, but it baked up very well and I was pleased with the result. Delicious muffins, without the butter! Dairy-free blueberry muffins.

  I'd always wanted to make a Robin's Egg Speckled Cake for Easter and I'm so happy I got to take that off my baking bucket list!  Last year I made Robin's Egg Speckled Cookies and this year I made it as a cake. This cake was a carrot cake made in two 6" rounds using  this recipe  from the Sally's Baking blog, the exact same recipe I'd been successful with for last year's Easter cake. I baked the cakes on the Friday and wrapped them up overnight before frosting them on Saturday morning right before we left for Grandpa's house. In the recipe notes, I wrote that I baked the cakes for 37-40 minutes and they had come out perfectly baked.  This year, knowing that my oven runs a bit hot, I set the timer to check for doneness at 33 minutes. When I opened the oven, I immediately saw that the cakes had to come out, and a toothpick inserted into the center came out clean. However while they were cooling, one of the cakes got a little bit of a collapsed cent

Today I made Hot Cross Buns to freeze for Easter morning. We're visiting Grandpa, so I needed to make these ahead of time. I used  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog. I've made them before but I can't remember how it went. This time, however, I had a lot of trouble with the dough sticking to the sides of the mixer no matter how much extra flour I added. I have a feeling it could have been because I didn't follow the recipe to the letter. It calls for 3.5 cups of flour, but somehow I skipped looking at the amount in the ingredients, only looked at the directions, and started beating 2 cups of flour with a dough hook instead of with the paddle attachment. By the time I came to my senses, switched attachments, and put in all the flour needed, perhaps the die was cast.  I was late to a French lesson, to boot.  So I dumped the mess out on the counter, added a lot of bench flour, and somehow made a dough.  They baked up fine and I tried one after dinner and it was delic

On a busy and tired Monday, there just wasn't time to make anything fancy for a book club party in the evening. Luckily I thought of Spritz Cookies and it was the perfect idea!  No chilling the dough, they bake up in 7 minutes, and they look so pretty and are so tasty.  I use  this recipe  from Sallys Bake Blog and  this press . The first few times I made them after I got my press it was tough to get the hang of it, and even now with some of the disks the dough will cling to the press.  But I've learned to use room temperature dough and unlined baking sheets and although in the past I've needed to chill the baking sheets, this time the opposite happened, and the cookies stayed better on a room temperature sheet.  I have no idea why. These cookies were part of a dessert array that included cannelés, skull-shaped caramels, and apple tartlets with whipped cream, all made by the host.  Even in the face of such stiff competition, they were a success! Sunflower-shaped Spritz coo