Last year’s loose goal was to get better at cakes. I think, all things considered, I did a pretty good job. I didn’t really have anything in mind for this year…until I was browsing Pinterest last night and found a recipe for birthday cake flavoured roll-out sugar cookies. WHAT? HOW?! TIL: there is birthday cake flavoured extract you can buy! And oh man did that send me down a rabbit-hole. 2023, I am going to experiment and have fun with flavours! Yay! I had to stop myself from going overboard and limiting my purchase to: marshmallow, cookies & creme, cookie butter, pistachio and the aforementioned cake. What will come of it? Who can say. All I know is that it is going to smell fucking amazing. And more cake decorations. Dollarama has been stocking Wilton silicone molds and they are a godsend for easy decor. I may or may not have also purchased a pound of sprinkles. The price was nuts
Recap from 2022:
Gingerbread cake: yes please! It turned out awesome, so moist and somehow dense but not too dense? I filled it with pre-chilled custard that I mixed 50-50 with cookie butter, finally achieving that cookie butter flavour for a filling without it being too strong or splitting on me.
I calculated my flour usage and it turns out I am up to about 10kg/10-11months. Not too shabby.
Was watching Great British Baking Show and came upon a tip to help my panettone. I am going to try chilling the dough for 12 hours before shaping and proofing. Except then I remembered a recommendation from family: lemon panettone! And my brain immediately started thinking: if I can get lemon baking chips and then inject lemon curd into the baked panettone!!
The cookie showdown was another great success. This year we had an added slot for birthday cookies. The winner, unsurprisingly, the soft ginger cookies. They are my stalwart go-to. Maybe for 2024 I can create a holiday collection, I am almost there with reliable recipes that I can rotate through the year.
The Cap’n Crunch holiday cereal inspired me to adapt Rice Krispie Squares and sweetmotherofgod what an amazing snack that was.
I also learned that if you add cocoa powder (Droste, always Droste! Nothing else compares!) to American buttercream, you gotta add more milk as well. It was thiiiiick. But I fixed it.
Spatulas up!
Inside My Head 