Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

The family had a lobster fest for Father's Day, so what better dessert to bring than Maine Wild Blueberry Pie.  I used  this recipe  from Everyday Pie.   I used an all-butter crust. When making the crust, I read the essay on Sally's Baking addiction about crusts and changed my method a little bit.  I prefer to make the crust by hand and dump it onto plastic wrap and press into a disc shape.  But sometimes the crust is a bit dry and hard to roll out. So this time I added a couple more very scant tablespoons of water, and dumped the crust onto a floured counter and worked it until there was no loose flour and all the flour got fat incorporated into it. This process did make the dough get a bit warmer than I liked.  The next day when I went to roll it out, I could see a few spots where the flour was "stained" with butter in a manner resembling grease spots.  I'm not sure if due to this, or to the long baking time, but although not tough the crus...

Yesterday was my birthday and I knew exactly what kind of cake I wanted to make for myself: a small chocolate cake, with a whipped cream and strawberry filling, and a chocolate cake collar.  This technique is also called a "chocolate cage" and I had been wanting to try it. Most of the cakes I made are transported somewhere else, so I had to wait for an opportunity to make a cake for home. For the cake layers, I went with  this recipe  for Chocolate Malt Cupc akes  from the Browned Butter Blondie website. Instead of cupcakes I baked it in two 6-inch cake layers. Upon closer inspection it turns out the malt in this recipe is only in the frosting. This was misleading!  I ended up adding three tablespoons of malt powder. The recipe calls for coffee, and I swapped this for 1/2 teaspoon of espresso powder.  Next time I would actually use a whole teaspoon. The batter is very liquid. The layers baked up great in about 26 minutes. For the frosting, I used  this...

When a friend from my book club announced that she was having her second baby, the rest of us immediately started planning the baby shower. I knew I wanted to knit a gift for the new little one, as I've done for all the "book club babies".  I ended up knitting a vest with a whale motif  and that turned into the inspiration for the cake too! I decided to try an Oreo Cookie Cake because I've never done one before and I knew it would be a crowd pleaser.  I used  this recipe  from the Life Love and Sugar blog.  I made some changes to the recipe: taking out the Oreo fillings, using larger broken off pieces instead of crushed Oreos, and baking it for longer than 18-23 minutes.  My cakes were in the oven for about 27 minutes.  And actually, I didn't use Oreos, but instead went with Whole Foods' 365 brand chocolate sandwich cookies. They may not be a health food, but they do have better ingredients than Oreo brand. The cake layers were delicious but, dis...

 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 b...

 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...