Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

 My friend S was back from spending the Summer in Paris, and we'd planned to get together for coffee.  I wanted to bring something and decided on Lemon Blueberry Scones because I had exactly the right amount of blueberries in the house. This was only my second time making scones!  Years ago I made chocolate chip scones and remember the dough being super unwieldy, hard to shape and not fun.  I decided to try again using  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog. It calls for grated frozen butter and although a pain, it made all the difference.  It was taking forever to grate and hurting my arm when I realized pressing down hard on the butter made it go faster.  The last bits I had to cut into small pieces with a knife, so as not to grate my finger.  The rest of the process was easy, no mixer required. I used DIY buttermilk, because I didn't have heavy cream, and it worked fine.  To cut the individual scones, I floured the bench scraper thoroug...

Here is a Star Bread I made using home-made walnut & basil pesto, prosciutto and Kalamata olives. We grew the basil for the pesto in our garden. The bread was for the birthday party of a friend of R's.  The friend seemed very surprised that I brought something, and R told me later that the invitation specified "no gifts".  So, I felt a bit foolish in retrospect.  But the friend was very appreciative and many guests enjoyed it. This star bread always impresses people, even though it's much easier to make than it looks.   I changed the fillings in the  recipe  as well as used all-purpose flour and no wheat flour.   

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!