be a better baker

i bake pretty decent now, but sometimes things are flat, or dense and im just not that good with dough. i might try to take a baking class, but more likely i will just read up on it and practice. i know my roommates have yet to complain about my weekly cupcakes.

I think that, with all of the cookies/brownies/sweet stuff in general that I’ve made, not only this summer but over the past two years, I can say that I’m pretty damn good at baking – especially since people in my dorms would constantly ask when I was going to make cookies or whatever again, since I always shared :D

Just give it away

again, in the break i have made some chocolate sponge cake, 3 batches of chocolate chip cookies, 2 batches of Peanut butter cookies and some metloaf ( does that count as baking????)

well, in my absence on this site, I have made brownies, crem brulee, and banana muffins. I also got a bunch of recipies from my friends, and have gotten a couple new cookbooks. I’m going to try to make my digital camera work on my computer now so that I can add pictures of my things.

I made bread from scratch! No mixer, no bread machine, but my own two hands. I must say it’s satisfying pounding the crap out of dough for 20 minutes.

It’s a Brioche and it’s delicious! Eggy, dense, and a flakey, crispy crust.

I should change this to ” Bake More Often” ‘cause according to my standards, I do this HARDLY enough. When I do something new though, I’ll post my results. :[)

I tried making cupcakes and they rose and then sank. I think it was because I made a significant change to one of the ingredients—sugar. The recipe called for brown sugar and when I went to get mine, it looked a little funny so I decided not to use it. I substituted for regular sugar plus some molasses. I think it was the heaviness of the molasses that caused the cupcake structure to crumble. I will try it again when I have real brown sugar.

Brownies have been my down fall. Too cakey and not fudgey enough or they just don’t turn out at all.

Today I tried making brownies from Rose Levy Beranbaum book “Rose’s Christmas Cookies”. I used a scale to help make these brownies turn out. It was a baking scale (I used a postage scale), but it still turned out pretty nicely. They’re moist with a chewy top. I think I’ll take them out 5 minutes earlier next time for a more fudgier brownie.

I tried the Williams-Sonoma molten lava cake mix and I overbaked which meant the molten lava was a fudgy inside (which was still good).

I think the next time I try it, I will use the frozen truffle method which ensures a gooey centre every time…I hope.