Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Today I figured I'd get a head start on our New Year's dessert.  All I have energy for is a roll cake, but I thought I'd decorate it with the number 2024.  But, nothing is ever as simple as one thinks! I printed out a sheet of numbers to trace onto the parchment and used the biggest font possible. It still looked smaller than I wanted and I planned to enlarge it in the copy machine, then promptly forgot about it.  I realized this too late, after I'd already piped the numbers!   For the decorative slurry, I used  Gemma Stafford's recipe . I colored it green, which my mother always said was the color of hope.  I hope for a better year next year, after 2023 took my mother. I used a vanilla roll cake recipe from Martha Stewart and ran into a bit of trouble when I realized I was short on cake flour.  I had to substitute 1/4 cup of AP flour. I realized too late that I should have added 1/4 teaspoon additional baking powder, to help give it some lift. Next, I had trouble s

It was only the three of us for Christmas this year, and I didn't want to make another Yule Log.  It seemed like the perfect time to try something new and I've had a Cranberry Custard Pie on my bucket list for a while. There's no time like the present! I chose  this  recipe from Everyday Pie.  I liked that it didn't require Jell-o, and I was intrigued by the ginger crust. As it turned out, this pie was disappointing and I'm glad I didn't bring it to a family gathering as it would have caused me some embarrassment. First of all the crust, which turned out underdone, tough and too thick. This recipe calls for 1 and 1/2 cups of flour and 1 stick of butter; whereas the other crust recipes I've used and which have turned out well call for 1 and a 1/4 cups of flour.  So there may have been too much flour in the crust.  It called for crystallized ginger and I didn't want to buy a specialty ingredient, so I put some ginger chewy candy in the food processor with

 I wanted something easy and festive to gift Bubby's teachers and was sure  this recipe  would be a hit.  How could orange zest and chocolate not elevate gingerbread?  And yet, the results failed to impress.  The only change I made to the recipe is that it was missing about 1 teaspoon of molasses, because I ran out, but that wouldn't account for the bland, unexciting taste.  For once a recipe could use a bit more sugar, as well.  I do wonder if the problem might not be that where it said to chop the chocolate finely, I basically shaved it.   The recipients said they loved them, and they did improve after a couple of days and tasted a bit more chocolatey.  If I were making them again I'd leave the chocolate in bigger morsels, add a bit more sugar, increase the salt and possibly add another spice.  But with so many recipes out there, I don't know if I'll bother.  I'd rather keep looking for a chocolate gingerbread I really like!

Grandpa's birthday always falls over the Thanksgiving holiday, so we don't always have a chance to celebrate him with a birthday cake because pumpkin pie is the focus. But this year he was starting a new decade, so the occasion clearly called for a special cake. I've been wanting to make another 3D cake and have been intrigued by pumpkin-shaped cakes I've seen online with flowers on top.  I had to make one!  Since many people are not fans of pumpkin cake, I decided to make a spice cake.  It would still fit the bill for a Fall flavor. I chose  this recipe  from the "If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen" website, mainly because it called for 6-inch pans.  I didn't want to make the cake too big, as we are a small family and there would also be apple pie.  This was my first time trying this recipe. I was a bit nervous that the diced apples would be too crisp (it's happened before with apple pie), but they did bake up soft. The cake recipe calls for 30-35 minutes