Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

 Usually I make a Yule Log for Christmas dessert. But this year we were visiting Sis, and she wanted something different. I'd come prepared to make the Yule Log, with several of my favorite recipes from over the years, bakers chocolate bars for the ganache, and piping bags and tips for the meringue mushrooms. However, what Sis really wanted was a simple vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. Why not? It would be a challenge to figure out what to do. I've made cakes in Sis' kitchen before, and I've left some equipment there including 6" cake pans, cake strips, cooling racks, and bakers sheets. Small offset spatulas, cake rounds, measuring cups and spoons and a beautiful lime green Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a glass bowl are there too. As it turns out, what would have been really useful is an oven thermometer. Boy does Sis' oven run hot! I used Butternut Bakery's recipe for a 2 layer cake. I decided on a 2-layer cake to avoid making 2 batches of frosting. Ho...

 On this Thanksgiving, our family decided to have a mixed menu, including some traditional items like roasted turkey breast, mashed potatoes and stuffing, but also some different things like baked haddock, bay scallops and kale with chestnuts. We spent Thanksgiving at Grandpa's house, and we arrived the day before on Wednesday after a 3 hour drive. This seemed like a good year to try a dessert that was not pumpkin pie. I remembered that Uncle S. had talked about how much he used to like penuche frosting as a kid. So, I decided to make a cake with penuche frosting, and ended up choosing this recipe from King Arthur Baking.  This way we wouldn't have to travel several hours with a perishable pie in the car, and I wouldn't have to make a pumpkin pie in someone else's kitchen, rolling out pie dough and deciding when the custard is done. The latter is difficult enough in my own kitchen! I used two kinds of apples for the cake, Granny Smith and Pink Lady. Is brought to scale,...

Parmesan Cheese Gougères This week our book club got together for the final meeting of the year. We went to a friend's house and she said beforehand that she wanted to make dessert.  I usually bring dessert, so I decided to find an appetizer I could bake. Not sure how, but I thought of Gougères . I'm glad I did!  They're a favorite of my sister's so maybe I was channeling her.  The Gougères recipe is very simple: Pâte à Choux with added cheese, piped into small rounds and baked. But it's also very exacting!  I've made Pâte à Choux many times before, using Sally's Bake Blog's recipe.  Here  is that recipe. But I couldn't find the gougères recipe I've used before in my baking binder, so I started taking a look at other websites. I decided to combine  Brown Eyed Baker's  recipe and  King Arthur Baking's  recipe, using Parmesan cheese since that's what I had at hand.  But when I started cooking the dough, it wasn't coming together int...