Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

I volunteered to make a Galette des Rois for my book club and then I began to have second thought. Puff pastry has always intimidated me and I've never worked with it.  But I couldn't backtrack, so I did it. It came out pretty good too! I made the frangipane the day before. Here is the recipe I used:  108g almond flour 1.5 tablespoons all-purpose flour 100g sugar 100g butter, room temperature 2 eggs, room temperature 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon almond extract 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1. Cream butter and sugar for 3 minutes. 2. Add eggs, vanilla and almond extract 3. Add dry ingredients 4. Beat until smooth 5. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or overnight. I didn't want to make the dough myself, so I bought Dufour pastry sheets. First and last time, too, because it was damned expensive.  I needed two boxes, and each box was $13.99 at Whole Foods. Ouch! Each box contains one 9/14 x 13" sheet of 1/4 inch thick dough. So, there's minimal rolling out to do.  I rolled mine ou...

 On this day of Epiphany 2026, we're not having our usual festive dinner.  We're all still tired from the holidays, my elbow is injured, R* has to work late, on and on.  We're just having salmon patties and a salad, so it's extra important to have a nice dessert. And yet, I haven't been to the store and am trying to avoid shopping, so I needed to make do with what I have at hand. Pantry ingredients, 3 squares of bakers chocolate, and 1/2 cup of whipping cream.  I thought of my Nordic Ware Charlotte Cake pan! It's easy to make a sponge cake and it looks beautiful right out of the pan. I didn't have any fruit for the topping but a bit of chocolate ganache and some whipped cream will put it over the top! I found  this recipe  on the Nordic Ware website. Here are the directions: From reading the reviews, it was evident the recipe makes too much batter and the pan overflows.  I modified the recipe as follows: 3 eggs instead of 4 100g of sugar instead of 133...