It's like autumn in your mouth in the spring.

It was my friend's birthday on Mother's Day, but since we all have mothers he decided to celebrate a week later with a lovely barbecue. Since I am the baker of us all and that I wouldn't be eating the meat that would be provided, I decided to bring a dessert. I had some leftover pumpkin puree from making cinnamon buns and my friend loves pumpkin pie, but I knew he had pie the previous week . I also know my friends love cheesecake as they bought me one for my birthday even though I don't eat sweet stuff just so they could eat it.

I decided upon pumpkin cheesecake swirl brownies, the recipe for which I found on Perry's Plate. It worked out fairly well although the brownie batter was a bit thick, so swirling wasn't so swirly, but the brownies were soo good. The whole plate was devoured rather quickly. They're even better on the second or third day as the pumpkin cheesecake makes the lower brownie turn almost fudgy.

There's another close-up photo of these things on my flickr account which also shows the colour and interior a bit better (minus the blurry bits because apparently I can't see what I'm doing with the digital. One day...).

A backlog of baked goods.

A bunch of my friends have birthdays in December, so to celebrate and please both the chocolate and vanilla lovers I made marble cupcakes. I used my go to recipe for marble cakes (more like a pound cake). They were tender and moist and even better on the second day.

I was also cleaning out my digital camera and came across these lovely pictures. Aparantly I forgot to import them which is a shame really. I'm pretty sure these are my infamous pumpkin cinnamon buns aka the best cinnamon buns I have ever made. I only make them in the fall because it seems weird to do something that has pumpkin in it outside of harvest season. It' like making a buche de noel in the middle of summer, but they're lovely! They proofed perfectly, the pumpkin gave it a nice golden brown colour and they were nice and tender even after a couple days (which you know can get shifty when it comes to yeasted breads) Check out flickr to see a picture of them with icing.

Lastly I made some apricot date squares for work for a party. We didn't have enough dates for a complete recipe of my usual date squares, so I pulled out my Taste of Home Cookies since I knew there was a recipe for some apricoty bars. They were fairly easy to put together, not quite as much oats as your typical date square-a little more on the shortbread side if you will. They topping is a little messy while eating, but only really tasty things are.

It's all in the cocoa.

We ran out of cookies once again, so my family requested brownies. I usually use my go-to recipe where I mix premium cocoa with Ghiradelli unsweetened Cocoa, a little coffee, and some cayenne which turns out some pretty dirty (and by dirty I mean good) brownies. They're extremely fudgey, moist, and melt in your mouth and are even better if you nuke them in the microwave before you eat them.

This time around I ran out of both of my usual cocoas as I made a bunch of my infamous coal cookies for my family and sister's boss so instead I used the only stuff we had left-generic store brand cocoa powder. I'm not saying that all store brand or no name products are horrible as I do enjoy President's Choice products these days, but this time the crapy cocoa made a difference. I had a bit of the old cocoas left and even just looking at the two I had my "Really? I'm not impressed?" grossed out face on. I even mixed in some truffle-filled chocolate bar chunks my sister brought back from Europe, but you could see and taste the difference.

See how light it is? Normally it's the rich, deep, dark colour of fertile earth or a flourless cake whereas instead it's a chalky brown. They still tasted like a good brownie, but they didn't taste like my best brownies. I'm going grocery shopping today and will be getting some new cocoa. Anybody want some partially used cocoa powder?...

Spoon bakes somes spoons.

I haven't baked in a while at home as things have been a little hairy the past week and a bit. My Grandma died so I have been busy helping my family as well as juggling work. That being said we also got cookies and sqaures from sympathetic friends as well as I baked a big batch of muffins that I kept in the freezer so I had no reason to bake. Today after three hours of ridiculous shenans I made some mock sticky buns and cracker spoons.

The sticky bun recipe called Cream Cheese-Topped Mock Sticky Buns came from The New Best of BetterBaking.com again and really resembles the Sticky Chewy Cinnamon Sticks I made before non? These ones as the book describe though are more of a scone in texture and they're shaped like a muffin. After lifting one of them up to see if they filled the cups or not, I found that the bottoms were all sticky like a sticky bun (and thanks to crap muffin liners from the dollar store) and they had leaked/overflowed.

I put in some candied cherries for colour as well as the raisins and as we do not have cream cheese I will make a quick brown sugar glaze and call it a day. If they taste anything like they smell, I'll be in business. These have serious potential.

As my title states "Spoon bakes some spoons" you're probably wondering how can a spoon bake a spoon? I have some pretty quirky nicknames one from my father being Spoon which he commented on while I was rolling and cutting them out. Why am I making cracker spoons? Because for work my boss was wondering if we could make them for catering so I went lurking about and used the recipe Crisp Semolina Flatbread from Wild Yeast.

I made four different kinds: sesame, plain with seasalt and cracked pepper, roasted tomato and olive, and fig and almond. I rolled the dough then using a couple of different shape and size spoons (one being an Asian soup spoon) cut them out with a knife, put them on their respective spoons, brushed them with a little oil, a little salt, into the oven and out comes the spoons.

I have to admit, my first couple were so ugly that you can't help but love them and want to eat with them because you pity their apearance. The verdict-while they look cool and would be neat to use if you were having a party or something they're labour intensive. I need a pasta machine to roll them out even thinner and more quickly. Do they make spoon shaped cookie cutters because that would help me not wanting to cry.

Don't worry, it's me. I know I smell like bacon...

I haven't updated in a few days and I've gotten a little behind on posting what I've made. Because of work I get to try new things which is why I can make multiple things and my family will not get overloaded with scones and the like (although they do love getting any treats).

Two of the recipes I tried came from BetterBaking.com's book once again, which seems to be a growing trend. I am really enjoying the book although I would like there to be more pictures of the product just to either compare or know what exactly she's talking about when it comes to putting it all together. I am a very visual learner.

The first sconey feature is the Double Cheddar Scones from BB. It's finally become cold this winter, so what better way to get warm than a bowl of soup and a tender cheesy scone straight from the oven? The batter for these ended up being really moist so I ended up adding quite a bit more flour and it did take a little longer in the oven to bake, but then again our oven is a little unpredictible so maybe it was just fine.  The cheese that you sprinkle on at the end reached that almost crispy, chewy point like what you get at the edges of lasagna. "It's like what you get at Tim Horton's only deadlier," says my mother and we all know how horribly good those sinful things are.

In staying with the cheese theme the next in line is Quick Cornbread from an old New York Time's cookbook.  It's pretty much our go-to recipe for a basic cornbread, but then we add things to it like our housesmoked bacon (I smelled like smokey-goodness so much that I got a weird look and a sniff from a woman when I went to the gym. Before I got changed. This is too awkward.) cheese, buttermilk, and chilis. I used drippings from the smoked bacon in place of butter to give it a really smokey flavour. They were easy to put together and make the perfect addition to a big bowl of Superbowl chili.

Finally are the Cinnamon Bun Scones.  Who doesn't like a nice sweet scone or a cinnamon bun? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? We generally always have a scones at the store and I have made cinnamon buns for it too, but the problem is you can already tell the difference if you were to leave a piece of bread out on the counter for an hour (same goes for the cinnamon bun). It's not inedible or anything, they still lip smacking good, it's just not the same a straight from the oven. Scones tend to fair well through the day so I combined the two ideas. 

My recipe came from here.  Coming out of the oven, I'm not going to lie, they looked a little questionable.  They didn't seem to have the moistness that other scone recipes I have done have had (the oatmeal made me question it a bit) nor did they have great oven spring.  But I always try to try a recipe as it is first then try it again tweaking it my own way, so I added the glaze, put them in some tupperware for a bit, and low and behold they absorbed a little moisture from the glaze and looked like something you could eat three of. They look damn fine, smell just like a cinnamon bun, and are tender despite my earlier reservations. Give 'er a go if you feel like a cinnamon bun, but can't wait for the dough to rise.

Very Berry Muffin

Note to self-"I can't believe it's not butter" does not work like butter when you make it into a streusel even though you would love for it to because you ran out of butter. Trust me-I believe that it's not butter.

Todays muffin is a wholewheat buttermilk muffin with blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries based on BB's Lawsuit Buttermilk Muffins. It's a recipe I have used numerous times in the past with different fruit combinations and each time it has proven to be tasty. As you can see, the top isn't so struesel-y as the pseudo butter did not hold out. It just melted all over and made a crunchy layer of brown sugar goodness omg. The muffin is so moist you can't hold it too firmly as you dig into it with wanton pleasure.

I seriously need to get a better camera as this one does not like to focus, so my apologies for the continuous poor picture quality. It won't be horrible much longer.

Jane Austen's Scones

I have had my The New Best of Betterbaking.com for only a week now and already I have made about four things out of it and all of them have been a success. We seemed to have a plethora of whipping cream and buttermilk in the fridge, but no eggs, so muffins it wasn't and scones it was. I made a half batch of Jane Austen's Rolled Oat and Golden Raisin Scones, substituting buttermilk for the light cream. They came together quite quickly and puffed nicely in the oven. Although the only sugar in them is brushed on top at the end the result was a moist, tender, and wholesome treat that would be perfect with tea and some Sense and Sensibility. Now that we actually have eggs I will be baking some muffins and cookies next.