Chestnuts Roasting...

In my toaster oven...

It's been that time of year: the time to cook, bake, eat, sleep, stress, laugh, and generally stare out the window to watch cold air blow upon the carefully hung Christmas lights, now is terrible but beautiful disarray. I love Christmas time and the holidays and I can't say I feel any rush to go back to school.

I've been baking and cooking like mad but just too busy or conversely relaxed to bother blogging any of it. Sorry!

But here are some of my less recent creations. Yesterday I did whip up a cornmeal brioche from The Bread Bible - slightly too dense but wonderful toasting bread, as I had intended it to be - and perhaps the best whole wheat sandwich loaf I've ever made. Not to pat my own back - I'm much too busy holding that two-fisted sammy.

I also experimented with making Seitan and a good stand in for mac and cheese from Healthy Happy Vegan Life that actually really hit the spot, tossed with some Green Beans, Chard, and Zucchini.

Cookies and Sourdough galore, below are the few actual pictures I did take - sorry! I'll pick up better blogging later into the new year. Only so much time for so many resolutions at once.

Apple-Pear Gingerbread Upside-down Cake

A great end to a wonderful Hanukkah dinner with friends

I even made un petit gâteau for home use...Pumpkin Sherry Quick Bread

Great for, well any time... The Brandy I subbed does bake off but really brings out the spices. Thank you again Bread Bible!

Batch two and just as good as the original!

There was, by the way, Chestnut stuffing on the Christmas table, but here's my contribution to that meal. I did bake up some Challah from a wonderful recipe I'll have to share once I get it down. Here, however was my personal pride and joy:

Pumpkin-Chocolate Yule

The Snowflakes and green sugar were just right considering I forgot the marzipan Fungi...

The Recipe came from inspiration off of Joy the Baker. The sponge cake itself was a rich pumpkin, the filling a Neufchatel-unsweetened chocolate mixture, sweetened with a bit of Agave Nectar. The frosting is a rich Chocolate-Pumpkin butter-cream of simple softened butter, heaping tablespoons (2) of cocoa powder, a splash of soy milk, powdered sugar, and a few tablespoons of pumpkin butter.

Never has a dessert been so rich. It was enjoyed if not to blame for a worse case of Tryptophan-Coma than is commonly witnessed.

Enjoi! I promise I'll bring some more soon!

Nouveau Gateaux...

It was my mum's birthday and the two requests she made were to make dinner and a birthday cake. The former, a precarious undertaking, the latter more enjoyable.

Dinner was molasses and cornmeal coated salmon, pan seared and finished in parchment, baked. The cake, small, vanilla, layered with raspberries and a lightly sweet-tart lemon buttercream. Despite terrible difficulties in baking at first (Cake Mk. 1 was quickly thrown away) the finished product came out terrifically, if I might say so.

Hidden in the frosting is a great light-yellow speckling

The cake itself came from Joy the Baker's Vanilla Cupcake recipe and the frosting from memory and 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. It was:

• about 2 cups confectioners Sugar
• 8 tbsp butter, softened (unsalted)
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 lemon's zest
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 2 tbsp milk

There was about 1/4 yield left over, some people enjoy that solo, but you can scale the recipe if need be, apparently, depending on your cake's proportions.

I simply studded the cake batter with some raspberries and sliced it in half, making 2 thin layers, spreading a healthy dose of frosting beneath and atop a dense layer of fresh raspberries. Further frosting the outside, I finished it off with a few fresh raspberries.

Dense but that really isn't always a bad thing... This is not a "boxed" cake after all!

It was dense, sweet but not too much so, tartly refreshing from bite to bite, and brought each of the cakes many flavors together wonderfully. Best of all, it was liked as a birthday gift (thank you baked goods for making shopping less stressful).

Triple Birthday...

Cake!

A three-tiered Birthday cake. Insane you say? I didn't think so.

Look at that frosting job! I'm pleased...

Triple-Tier Blackberry Birthday Cake:

With this wonderful recipe for Chocolate Cake - a cake I sampled a few weeks ago - and this White Vanilla cake - which despite its high density tasted great and introduced a vegan touch to the cake - made a heavy but sweet and solid baked good.

Using the chocolate Frosting recipe from the 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes and some violet frosting I happened to have, the exterior came a long way from its earliest stages...

But whats special is wedged in between...

Between those layers of cake goodness is wedged a Blackberry-chocolate spread.

Blackberry Chocolate Filling

With...

12 oz Frozen (local and unsweetened!) blackberries

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

2 large tablespoons of Cornstarch (I used whole wheat rice flower because I couldnt find the starch...)

2 tbsp bittersweet chocolate chips, melted

First unthawing the berries and squeezing their juice lightly, combining the juice with enough water to make 3/4 cup of liquid, proceed to add the sugar, starch/flour, and lemon juice. Whisk in a saucepan on high heat constantly until it begins to thicken and specifically bubble. Set aside and add the berry pulp left over (you may strain the seeds if you like but I just left them in, avoiding only large pieces of pulp...). Melt the chocolate (in the microwave for about 45 seconds or on a double boiler) and combine it with the berry concoction.

Mmmm...Jams.

I spread this between the three layers of cake and carefully set the cake layers atop.

It should be tasted tonight, so wish me luck!

Trials in Cake...

My Better Half's birthday is coming up very soon and I have a plan for a multi-tiered chocolate and white cake with Raspberry and other good things. I'm trying to sample cakes - I'll update as I bake but here's cake #Uno:

A thin batter, it was more perfect in lightness than I could have hoped...

Yes, they got stuck in the cupcake tins, but a spring form pan should remedy that.

Look at that chocolatey(ness). They taste great but perhaps a bit too light - I was hoping for a bit more density - more like a flowerless cake perhaps but then again that would imply I want a flour-less chocolate cake, which I don't. I'll keep thinking.

This cake was good though... It wasnt exactly healthy (although, as usual, I subbed light whole-wheat for all purpose.

Here it is - Thanks to the creator: I'll continue sampling but not a bad option!

Cupcakes

I've been stressed lately and it's taking a toll on me and everyone around me. Subsequently I've been moody. Weird, I know.

So I think i'll take a trip down the path to baking. I began with some Red Velvet Cupcakes with Nutella-Butter Cream frosting. I'll perfect the recipe before I post it, but they smelled wonderful and my frosting got good preliminary reviews.

Now I just need to make the beat-juice work in place of food coloring... For now, I've simply perfected Devil's Food Cake (what can I say, I'm excited at a success for once)