Old Fashioned Caramel Cake

I’m not sure why, but I decided that I wanted to make caramel cake to bring to my shabbat hosts. I was in a place with no internet, but luckily I have internet on my phone, so I quickly googled recipes for caramel cake.

There isn’t really anything caramel-y about the actual cake. It’s the frosting that’s caramel. Maybe I should change the name to Old Fashioned Caramel-Frosted Cake?

Milk and butter are very important parts of this cake, but I made it pareve. The caramel frosting was still rich and super-sweet, and the cake was nice and moist. Next time I will make it dairy and see how it turns out. Continue reading

Surprise Carrot Cake

I never knew that I liked carrot cake. Before making this one, I don’t even think I’d ever tried carrot cake. Why would I want to put vegetables in my cake, anyway? Well, vegetables make delicious desserts – trust me!

This carrot cake was a surprise for two reasons: I baked it for a surprise party, and I didn’t have time to add any carrot-like decorations on the top, so it was impossible to know what kind of cake it was from the white-frosted exterior. Surprise!

carrot

The cake was a big hit, and I don’t think everyone would have eaten it just to make me feel good about my baking skills; I genuinely think it was delicious. The recipe is from AllRecipes.com, and since I don’t like baking with nuts, I left out the pecans.

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Apple Cranberry Crisp

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apple crisp

It’s cranberry season! That means I get to buy bags and bags of cranberries and bake lots of desserts with some and freeze the others (you can keep them in the freezer for about a year – just throw the bag in the freezer and that’s it!).

Well, when I added too much sugar to an apple crumble recipe, I knew that adding the recently bought cranberries would be perfect to save the dessert from being too sweet. With that addition, it occurred to me that this is a great fall dessert!

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apples

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Meringues Chantilly with Roasted Berries

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As you probably figured out by now, I really like Ina Garten. I watch her on the Food Network all the time and own one of her cookbooks, Barefoot Contessa at Home. Every time I look through it, I bookmark more recipes to try. The day after I put a post it on her pavlova with mixed berries recipe, I watched the episode where she made meringues chantilly with roasted berries. I liked the idea of everyone having his or her own serving. I also liked the fact that the berries would be roasted instead of just fresh, especially because the raspberries I had were frozen (yep, from the same batch as the raspberry jam). I also found some packaged strawberries in the freezer, my dad probably bought those when they were on sale.

swirling

These were surprisingly easy to make, probably because I used the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The hardest part was the shaping, but after one or two even that got easier. I didn’t have a pastry bag (uni-tasker!) or a star tip, but I did have a zip top bag and some scissors, and that worked almost as well. Continue reading

70 Percent More Edge Blondies

Okay, I admit, the 70 percent more edge part is just based on the pan you use to bake it in, and most people don’t have Baker’s Edge pans. But I do, so that’s what I use to bake mine in. Even if you don’t you should make these blondies in a regular pan. They’re easy, they’re rich and delicious, and they are easily adaptable.

What is a blondie, you ask? A lot of people ask me that question, and the way I like to describe blondies is that they’re chocolate-chip cookies in brownie form.

YUM

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Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, and all I want to break the fast on is cinnamon buns. This recipe is very easy, and though there’s a lot of wait time, it’s worth it.

Can you tell that I really like cinnamon buns?

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The recipe yields a tender dough. The egg yolks make it rich, and the buttermilk adds a hint of tang to the recipe. I changed Alton’s recipe only a little bit because I didn’t have any instant yeast.

Everyone’s really excited to eat these tomorrow after 25 hours of fasting. Continue reading

Throwdown Banana Cream Pie

Somebody I know really likes banana cream pie. I really like Bobby Flay. So I decided to make Bobby Flay’s banana cream pie.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Mainly because Bobby’s recipe calls for powdered vanilla pudding mix. Usually his recipes are a bit more complicated than mixes; not that there’s anything wrong with that. At least I made my own graham cracker crust…

banana cream pie

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Chocolate Babka

A couple of weeks ago I had some store-bought chocolate babka. It was delicious, and I was inspired to try it out with my sister as our next experiment.

Later on, we were scouring the internet and cookbooks for recipes.

We couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for, so we mixed and matched a few recipes to come up with what we hoped was the best chocolate babka ever.

It took a long time, but it was worth it!

It took a long time, but it was worth it!

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Cinnamon Buns

Everyone likes cinnamon buns, and I usually make Alton Brown’s recipe. They’re a hit at every gathering. They have a pretty classic flavor with a cream cheese icing on top. When I saw that The Art and Soul of Baking had a maple syrup topping, I knew I had to give this alternative a try.

cinnamon buns

One thing you need to make sure to do is manage your time right. This dough takes time, but it’s well worth the wait. It is moist and buttery, much better than the bread-like versions I’ve tasted. I made the dough on Tuesday morning and refrigerated it until Tuesday evening. On Tuesday evening I made the topping and filling, shaped the rolls, proofed and refrigerated. I woke up somewhat early and baked the buns on Wednesday morning and served hot, fresh sticky buns to my happy colleagues.

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Croissants

flaky deliciousness

flaky deliciousness

Ever since I saw Ina Garten going to the bakery and buying six croissants for a breakfast party (why she needed so many for so few people at her breakfast party I have no idea) I wondered how hard they would be to make. I googled “croissant recipes,” but really got no good instructions. Everyone I mentioned making croissants to told me I was crazy, just buy them. Instead, I bought a cookbook that happened to have really good instructions for folded pastry dough.

We planned to bake these on a day when we had lots of time, a fast day. We stayed up all night doing the first three turns and then shaped, proofed, and baked them the next day. It was hard to do this without just tasting the dough, but we had a delicious meal to break the fast with. We froze the leftovers and had them for Saturday lunch.

In the end we had 24 croissants. They weren’t giant like bakery croissants, but they were definitely delicious.

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