baking Archives - DebGodBlog

I had plans to head to a friend’s house with my sister and her kid to watch the Superbowl on Sunday. Unrelatedly, I decided to do some grocery shopping on Saturday—a terrible mistake. Stores were overcrowded! But while I was out I decided to pick up a box of cake mix so that I could whip up something fun for the event. I picked a lovely purple swirly cake and purple frosting. Why not? I was sure the kid was going to love it.

So on Saturday night, after finishing my outside errands in the frenzied crowds then coming home and tiredly cooking my meals for the week, I decided to get that cake baking over with. Baking is usually a fun and relaxing activity for me, and I generally enjoy making pretty cakes for special occasions. This was my first time with a cake batter swirl pattern, so I was excited to see the finished product.

But this one didn’t come out the way I thought it would. Continue reading “This Cake Didn’t Even, But It’s Still Beautiful” →

On Saturday my coworker and roommate reminded me that there’s a CFI community potluck on Wednesday! It’s like the best day all month, with all sorts of tasty noms for eating and a fun crowd to hang out with. He plans to make pork and vegetarian dumplings, although I can’t believe he’d want to spend so much time pinching so many little dumplings closed. I have little cooking experience (or interest), so I usually bake desserts instead. For some reason, I’m completely willing to spend hours baking—I even enjoy it!—but cooking for more than 20 minutes seems like an unnecessary chore.

There were leftover carrots in the fridge from Christmas weekend, so I decided to whip up carrot cake with some tweaks to the recipe. Because I know there are raisin-haters out there, I made one batch with raisins and one without.

The cake with raisins is two layers (nine-inch rounds) topped with cream cheese frosting from scratch, chopped pecans on the sides, and some almonds thrown on for decoration. I got impatient so didn’t smooth out the top as well as I could have. (It still tastes fine, I’m sure.) Continue reading “Baking on a Sunday Afternoon” →