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Scones and cream

7/28/2013

It's been a busy week with not much time to bake, unfortunately. So today, I decided to make a recipe I knew would be quick and delicious: scones and cream.
I used a recipe I found many years ago and I have to admit, although the end result is pretty good, I was so impatient this morning that I didn't follow the directions closely and it could have ended in disaster. Unfortunately, I am not experienced enough to be able to experiment and invent. However, as I said, the end result is pretty good, so maybe it is a fool-proof recipe.

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Moroccan Orange Cake with Orange Icing

7/21/2013

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I was cleaning up the kitchen and had three oranges that needed to be used before spoiling, so I searched for recipes that used orange juice and this is what I found.
This is a very simple cake but oh so good. It is light, with a very subtle taste (I didn't have the orange zest but it definitely can use it). It springs back when you cut it, it is moist. Definitely a success...

The cooking time was off, I had to bake it for 55 minutes instead of 40, but otherwise, everything worked. I looked for and found a recipe for icing using orange juice. I need to find a way to get all the lumps of sugar. If I hadn't been so impatient, I might have taken the time to sift the sugar and might have seen a difference. The recipe called for 1/2 cup juice but it's a lot of sugar.... and I didn't even get to the consistency mentioned (where you can spread the icing). I did add some orange extract to the icing and I think it is definitely something to do in the future as I'd need to use less liquid to have a thicker icing.

If it hadn't been an improvised project, I would have decorated with slices of orange in addition to mint leaves, or even mandarin orange slices. Something with a strong orange color. This cake could also handle a filling, I'd go for a soft and subtly orange cream or orange jam... Actually raspberry jam could work well with the orange.

I could see using this for petits-fours, cupcakes... The recipe called for a tube shape mold, so that could look great too.

Well, I'm very happy with the final result, I mean REALLY happy, it tastes so good!!!

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Moroccan Dinner

7/13/2013

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OK, this is not a strictly baking post, although there is baking involved. I LOVE Moroccan food, well, in the limits of my used-to-Belgian-and-American-food palate. And I wanted to try to make some dishes and since there is no fun in cooking if nobody's there to try it, I decided to make a special occasion out of it.
Now, you have to understand, when I make a special occasion out of something, I go all out and stress myself silly for days. My friends know this about me and tease me about it, but hey, that's what friends are for. So, I created invitations for this dinner party and they all agreed to come. There were 8 people total.
Special thank you to Sylvaine for taking pictures all evening long for me :-)

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Apple Pie a la mode

7/4/2013

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Using the ready-made refrigerated pie crusts, I decided to make an apple pie today. Appropriate, isn't it, for the 4th of July?
If you remember, when I made the apple pie pops, I thought the filling came out pretty good and that I'd try it for a regular pie, so TA DAAAA!
I was really happy with the result, especially when served with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream. Yum!

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Patriotic sugar cookies

7/4/2013

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Project of the day: something not too complicated, right? I found this recipe which uses those cookie pouches you find in the baking aisle of the store. It looked easy and fun and I thought I'd make a quick thing for today's 4th of July family dinner.
They came out ok, they taste like regular sugar cookies, of course. I usually have trouble determining when sugar cookies are done, and having colored dough made it even harder, but they're still edible ;-)

Lessons learned

Refrigerate the dough in between steps for easier manipulation. It warms up quickly, which makes it hard to manipulate.
I'm having real issues with rolling the dough (see pretzel attempt). So I ended up rolling a grape-size ball of each color all together to form one ball of dough and flattening it, no rolling/swirling...
The sprinkles I had were 1) too big and 2) messing up the baking. The cookies without sprinkles came out better and tasted better.
Bake the cookies following the directions on the cookie package, NOT the recipe referenced above!!!!
It always takes much longer than they tell you!!!!

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Scones and cream

Moroccan Orange Cake with Orange Icing

Moroccan Dinner

Apple Pie a la mode

Patriotic sugar cookies

Lessons learned

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