French Chocolate Cake

It’s been a hectic stretch of time for me, so I fell out of the habit of baking as a hobby, unfortunately. However, I’m trying to get back into it. I mean, yeah, I promptly tried to move this before it cooled completely, and ended up with French Chocolate…Bricks, but all in all, a good…

Coffee Jelly Roll

Woof. I really need to not go for several projects without posting these. Anyway, I was flipping through one of the massive tomes of desserts my wife found at the AAUW Booksale this year, and found an entire section on jelly rolls (given the title of this post, a shocker, I know). The only thing…

Carrot Cake

Oddly enough, I’ve never made carrot cake before. I’ve made hummingbird cake, which is similar, but never this extremely classic cake. It was simple enough to make, and turned out quite well. Unfortunately, it was yet another example that getting a perfectly smooth coating of icing is still beyond my reach (for now). The only…

Peach Custard Pie

This was actually inspired by a post from a Twitter friend/fellow geek who posted about something similar a while back. I remember reaching their delicious description, and immediately throwing out what I’d originally planned to make that week. I ended up using a pie shell recipe that used shortening, rather than all-butter, like I had…

Mocha Kahlua Cheesecake

Wow, it’s been a minute since I’ve done this. To be fair, I recently switched to an overnight position, and adjusting has been…hit or miss, with sleep. Nothing like being up for 20 hours in a row, and just not being able to sleep :p (My sleep has since become much more normal). Anyway, this…

Tequila Smash Scones

I had the pleasure of going to Geekly Con 2018 recently, where I met a bunch of Twitter and podcast friends for the first time, amidst various games, panels, and general good times. One such friend  had asked me to make him something that reminded me of him. Given that at the time, I’d been listening to…

Macaron Mishaps

Continuing on the tradition of new and exciting macarons, I decided to make popcorn pastry cream, and chocolate shells with orange cream. They…weren’t as good as usual. While I’m annoyed and embarrassed at the developments – I went through both the book, Le Petit Macaron, as well as the previous recipes I’ve used. From what…

Chocolate Pear Tart

My wife recently checked out the AAUW annual booksale, and came away with a couple genuine gems in the sea of books. I was immediately enraptured by this, and the other recipe book she found – while one focused more on presentation, the above was clearly written by people who had a shining passion for…

Banana Gelato Parfait

One of the unfortunate side-effects of getting more competent with baking, and sweets, is that the simple pleasure of shopping for dessert is…lessened. Case in point, there was a delicious-looking brand of banana pudding gelato at the supermarket. Given my wife was in the market for an after-dinner snack, I was tempted – and then…

Raspberry Chocolate Mini-Cakes

The Cake Merchant is an excellent blog, that I super recommend, if only so you can all be hungry with me. They have a lot of cakes, among other things, and I was feeling a bit hoppy, so I decided to try and mimic their mini strawberry cakes. First off, I decided to make them raspberry instead, because…