Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

My Birthday Cake 2024 My birthday was coming around again, yikes! While flipping through my recipe binder, I spotted a recipe for a buttercream I wanted to try: Pineapple Buttercream . That gave me the idea to make a Pineapple Cake . It would be something different, and it would give me a chance to decorate the cake like a pineapple, something I'd been wanting to try. Since I wanted to make a 6-inch cake, I looked for a recipe for pineapple cupcakes. I found  this one  in a website I'd never tried before, called "Baked by an Introvert".  Usually, a recipe for 12 cupcakes will yield two thick 6-inch cake layers that make for a cake tall enough to decorate.  The recipe I was wary when I saw that the recipe called for using crushed pineapple and its juice. I was worried this would yield a dense cake, but I followed the recipe as is. After 32 minutes the two cake layers were done. I was surprised to see how thin they were! It seemed like they barely rose in the oven at al

Bubby usually takes the day off from school on his birthday. But since he's graduating this year, we decided he should go. We celebrated with lunch and cake back at home on Sunday, and on Monday he wanted to bring in cupcakes to share with his favorite teachers and classmates. I decided to make strawberry cupcakes. A few years ago I'd made a couple of strawberry cakes, one from Preppy Kitchen and one from Sally's Bake Blog. The Preppy Kitchen cake was better, so I looked for a strawberry cupcake recipe on that website. I found  this recipe . It is different from his strawberry cake recipe, which uses strawberry preserves, whereas the cupcake recipe uses fresh strawberries. Since they'd all be eaten right away, no worries about mushy fruit over a couple of days, so I went with it.  Amazingly I had the precise amount of frosting needed from the birthday cake (Hamburger Cake from previous pose) to pipe a 1M swirl on each of the 12 cupcakes. I piped the frosting with the cu

Bubby had a Big Birthday coming up! I always try to tailor his cake to whatever he's into or sometimes even obsessed by at the time. Last year it was Twilight Zone and before that it was Wheel of Fortune.  Right now, it's all about hamburgers!  He'll grab a burger anytime he can and loves Burger King commercials. Yes the child who grew up eating homemade organic foods and hardly ever being served beef can't get enough of fast food. He didn't have any specific requests regarding the flavor. I thought a darker cake might work better than a butter-colored cake, so I decided to make a Red Velvet Cake .  Since it was only our tiny family celebrating this year, a 6-inch cake was the right size, and I chose to make  this  cupcake recipe from Sally's Bake Blog. Making a cupcake recipe, which usually yields two dozen, in two 6-inch pans makes for two thick cake layers, and what I really like about this is that you only need one layer of frosting in between. This cuts dow

 My girlfriends were coming over for a light summer dinner.  And to watch a movie we'd all been wanting to see, the French 70's classic La Piscine with the incredibly gorgeous Alain Delon in his prime. With that to look forward to, a preemptive chocolate fix was in order! I love making tarts for an easy dessert that looks fancy enough to make any meal special. I'd had my eye on making a Linzer torte from Anna Olsen's YouTube channel, but that will be for another day because it's a recipe for using blood oranges. And as I said, with Delon on the menu we needed chocolate! I found  this recipe  from the Nestle Toll House website, modestly called verybestbaking.com.  I liked the look of the recipe, I liked that it uses a press-in dough that doesn't need chilling, and I liked that I "happened" to have all the ingredients at hand.   This recipe was developed for using their chocolate chips, but I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate instead. I kn

Bubby is graduating high school this year! It feels like I just dropped him off at preschool 5 minutes ago, and it's hard to even remember everything that happened in between. He's participated in an afterschool social group for the last two years, and yesterday was their farewell event. When they asked parents to send in snacks, I knew a cake was in order.  And I had all the ingredients in the pantry to make a Vanilla Sheet Cake.  Something I've actually never made before! I used  this recipe  from Joy of Baking. I used a Pyrex 9x13 glass pan, which is great for transporting cakes because it has handles and a lid. More on that later... The cake was supposed to take 35 minutes in the  oven but thankfully I checked at 33 minutes and it was ready to come out. In fact, it looked a bit overbaked, and I hope it wasn't dry. I took the cake out of the pan, which I'd lined with parchment, to cool on a rack so I could frost it faster. In the meantime, I made a simple vanilla

Mini muffin Financier s Another Thursday means another watercolor meetup and another baked snack to bring for our coffee and tea.  Today's meetup was in a lovely home only 7 minutes from us, and I got there in the pouring rain and ready for coffee. I wanted to bring something small and casual and I had all the ingredients for Financiers handy, including a leftover egg white that needed to be used.  I do have a special financier pan, but haven't yet found a recipe I like for full-sized ones, and that pan only yields 6.  Instead, I used a mini muffin pan and  this recipe  from John Kanell's Preppy Kitchen.   This recipe doesn't fully explain how to brown butter, but it's important to keep stirring the butter and to remove it from the flame and immediately transfer it into a different bowl the minute the milk solids start to brown, because it can burn very quickly. Although today, the butter could have stood an extra minute on the stove, and didn't brown quite as m

Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Cinnamon Swirl Last week I made my Lemon Poppyseed Bread to bring to a watercolor painting meetup.  I've made the recipe before and it's tried and true and I knew everyone would enjoy it. My bread received a lot of compliments and as an added bonus the woman who was hosting us loves lemon desserts and had been wishing to have a lemon birthday cake and felt this was kind of a wish come true. It made me very happy to hear that!  Here is a picture of a slice: Lemon Poppyseed Bread Now I had a lot of sour cream left over and the group's next meeting was at my house.  I thought of a Sour Cream Coffee cake. My mother used to make such a delicious one when I was growing up, one with so much cinnamon and walnuts that you literally couldn't stop eating.  I wish I had that recipe! But I don't, so I decided to try  this one  from Sally's Bake Blog. It came together easily. I baked it in my 8x8 Pyrex and maybe because it's corning ware inste