September baking

Here we are observing the last day of September. It’s been a super busy month for me and I wanted to let you know that I’m still here and have good intentions of getting some baking related things posted to the blog. While I catch my breath I’ll let you know about some of things I’ve recently baked.

Earlier this month I mentioned that my two children both celebrate September birthdays. I managed to get my son’s birthday cake on the blog, but so far haven’t gotten my daughter’s cake on the web. She requested something “chocolatey” with “really good frosting”. I was tempted to make my “go to” chocolate cake from “Applehood and Motherpie”. The recipe came to me years ago via my sister-in-law who is originally from the Rochester, NY area. However, I was in the mood to try something new and different. If you’ve been reading this blog you know I try a lot of recipes from Cookie Madness, King Arthur Flour, Cook’s Illustrated, as well as a few other tried and true sources. The Sour Cream Fudge Layer Cake on page 362 of Baking Illustrated won out, and we were all glad it did. The cake is smooth, rich, and chocolatey. The chocolate butter icing is the perfect compliment to the cake and from someone who doesn’t love frosting or icings that says a lot. Someone posted the recipe here.

Sour Cream Fudge Layer Cake

Another thing I made to celebrate birthdays was another chocolate cupcake. This time I used the Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake recipe from King Arthur Flour. I liked these better than the cupcakes I recently wrote about from Food and Wine. The texture was better and I liked the chocolate flavor better. I was so happy to give them to my daughter to share with her bicycle racing friends. I was told that her team likes having a teammate whose Mom likes to bake.

Chocolate Cupcake from KA Flour recipe

Split view so you can see how nicely they dome.

This past weekend I made some of the best homemade pizza I’ve ever made. I ordered the Perfect Pizza Blend from King Arthur Flour and it’s almost like magic. I used the recipe provided on the bag of flour. The dough was so easy to work with and the crust was crispy and flavorful. I will definitely try to keep a supply of this on hand as we like to make our own pizza and their flour mixture truly made a difference in the end result. I don’t have any pictures of the finished product, but don’t hesitate to try it out for yourself.

Homemade bagels were also on the agenda this past weekend. We had guests to help us eat up the pizza and bagels so don’t worry about the two of us looking as round as pizza and bagels! The bagels were interesting. They tasted good, and the crust was thin and slightly crispy, but they seemed too moist. The best bagel I’ve ever had is a Bruegger’s Bagel. I understand that in the eyes of those who know their bagels, they don’t even count as real bagels, but in the upper midwest there aren’t a lot of good bagels to be had. The homemade bagels were very good, but they weren’t quite what I expected. I’ll try them again someday but I’m going to do a lot more research before I dive in again. I got the recipe here. Once again, I have no photos, but I did have happy guests with full tummys who were in awe that I could or would make homemade bagels for them.

Two weekends ago I made these Sticky Buns again to share with twelve friends for brunch one Sunday morning. I can’t recommend this recipe enough. They are so simple, and everyone loves them.

I’m going to be gone a lot in October, but I’ll be home just enough to do some baking so don’t forget to stop by and say hello.

Muffins and Birthday Cake

Our son was home for a few days before the fall term starts. It was great to have him here!

While he was here we celebrated his 20th birthday. Hard to believe that we no longer have a teenager! For his birthday celebration I made an angel food cake per his request. The pictures aren’t very good. They were taken at night with poor, funky lighting, but the cake tasted great. The recipe is from Baking Illustrated and I will definitely make it again. This time I used frozen egg whites that we’ve been saving when we have an ice cream recipe that calls for yolks. The frozen egg whites worked fine but next time I’d like to try it with fresh egg whites just to see if there is a difference. You can see the recipe here. The original recipe calls for lemon juice too, but I omitted that. It just doesn’t seem like it belongs in angel food cake. For the icing I used the Fluffy White Icing from the America’s Test Kitchen’s Ultimate Lemon Layer Cake. This is the ultimate fluffy white icing in my opinion. The recipe has already been posted here, and once again I omitted the lemon juice that the original recipe calls for.

You can see that I didn’t beat the icing long enough. The peaks should be a bit firmer, but it tasted good and had a lovely shine.

Angel Food Birthday Cake

Sliced Angel Food Cake

I also made some muffins while he was here. Sadly there are no pictures of them, but you can see the recipe here. It’s a good basic muffin recipe. I made them with fresh peaches and a streusel topping. Half of the muffins were plain streusel the other half had pecans in the streusel. I was out of eggs so I subbed some reconstituted dried egg whites and the muffins turned out fine. If you click over to the recipe you’ll see that there are a lot of variations listed. The recipe looks to be exactly the way it is written in the book so it’s worth looking at. With all of the variations listed you’re sure to hit on something you like.

I also made a loaf of honey white bread, our son’s favorite, and sent that with him without taking a picture.

I hope you all had a wonderful labor day weekend!