The last three months....

So, I don't know if anyone still subscribes to this... but here goes...

So sorry about falling off the grid like that. December got crazy with moving. And then there's that working retail during the holidays bit. Oy. However, Christmas was good to this boy's kitchen and so I've been able to tackle more adventurous baking hurdles. Most were not photographed,  but a couple of the highlights are here for your ocular pleasure:

 First, here is my new beauty. She is pistachio green, and has a motor that goes all the way up...  I love her.

Baking Interregnum / Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake

Sorry, I got busy/lazy these past couple of weeks. Not with the baking so much, mostly with the posting. Work made me nocturnal and I also had to deal with an unscheduled apartment hunt. But fear not, I bring order back to my kitchen. I missed photographing a couple baking episodes, like the balsamic cherry chocolate cookies and the whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, but I'm going to start getting through the backlog now before I completely freak out over holiday baking. Get ready for holiday cookies people. They are coming...

Pumpkin Sage Bundt Cake

Mmm, more pumpkin. My fellow chino folders were getting punchy about more baked goods, so here was something easily transported with a descent shelf life. This cake is a pretty basic bundt cake with the addition of sage. The sage is steeped with the butter for a few minutes to infuse the flavor...

Avocado Pound Cake

I don't know why avocado hasn't made it's way into pastry more. It's fatty, it's colorful, it has a creamy and delicate flavor. I think avocado is the next pumpkin. Expect an avocado latte from Starbucks in the next couple of years. It's happening...

Petit Fours: Round One

My kitchen looks like a tornado ripped through Candyland and I think I just gave myself diabetes. Round one will be chalked up as a "learning experience." Mes petits gâteaux are actually little packages from Satan. Ok, maybe they weren't that much trouble, but I just spent an entire hour mixing icing. The icing was really the only terrible part. Icing *shudder*...

Chocolate Bourbon Bundt Cake

I'm back! I know, it's been a while since I baked something. While my body is probably thanking me for a respite from sugar deluge, I've gotten back to it. I started a new (hopefully temporary) job, and I haven't had the motivation to jump into a hot kitchen, but I had today off, so here we are...

Olive Oil Bundt Cake

Doesn't "bundt" seem like it should always be followed by an exclamation point? Bundt! cake. It's cake; you should be excited. Anyway, here's another experiment with olive oil as the lipid. It's a pretty basic recipe I found at Food & Wine. A little too basic in my opinion. The flavor was a little flat with just the orange zest. It needed some spice or herb flavoring to it...

Elderflower-Lime Travel Cakes

I've made these before. They're delicious and incredibly easy. I don't make them more because I don't have a food processor, so I only make them when I go to my parents. And for those avoiding wheat, these are gluten free as they are made with almond paste rather than flour. My icing never turns out as nice as the ones in the professional picture, but they taste incredible.

Lemon-Thyme Olive Oil Cake with Balsamic Whipped Cream Frosting

About a month ago I ran into Kathleen at Target when we both happened to be visiting our families in Abilene. Having not seen each other in years and realizing we were both now in Dallas we planned to hang out. She's a busy lady though, so I promised her cake as a means of tempting her to venture downtown to see me. I ended up making several mini-cake (no, not cupcake) versions of this recipe for lemon-thyme cupcakes. After my defeat with the cornmeal and rosemary...

Rosemary cornmeal cake with rosemary balsamic syrup

As some may know, I'll put rosemary in just about anything. When I found this recipe I thought it would be right up my alley. Nope. Cornmeal does not a perfect cake make. The flavor is akin to sweetened cornbread (which is essentially all it is). The texture was pretty good. Nice and dense and spongy. The balsamic syrup just made it taste like an appetizer from Macaroni Grill.

Here is the cake in the pan after I cut out a couple slices. The balsamic syrup is in the carafe to the left.

Here is the plated version dusted with powdered sugar.

While I enjoyed the rosemary, which was very prominent, the rest of the cake was a mismatch of flavors that I wouldn't want to serve at the end of a meal. Dusted with enough powdered sugar it's not terrible, but I won't be making this again. I should have known better than to trust Giada de Laurentis.