Baking A Sweet Life

Sometimes simple is best.  Probably more often than not, right? I have had an itch to make a sweet and simple 6″ cake.  I thought an all-American classic of yellow cake with chocolate frosting would be perect! Unlike the past layer cakes I’ve done, I decided that this time I would bake three small separate layers.  This was so much easier than hoping I would be able to torte 3 slices out of one layer.  It worked beautifully!  Not only saving time, but it drastically reduced the crumbs that I had to battle with since there weren’t any created other than what happened to fall off the layers themselves. Each layer was just the right thickness.

Matt and I brought this cake over to a couple that recently moved into our neighborhood and just had a baby.  So, although I have no pictures of the inside, I hope they’re enjoying this as I type!

Both of these recipes came from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Cakes.  This was the Golden Cake recipe, halved and placed into 3-6″ cake rounds, and the frosting was the Rich Chocolate Ganache that was cooled to spreading temperature and aerated slightly to smooth out.

I know this is a baking site.  This fact is not lost on me as I post this un-baked (savory, not sweet!) Thai coconut shrimp.  Charity and I are taking a hiatus from our SOB adventures and instead alternating picking ingredients and then making a recipe with that.  It can be sweet or savory, main feature or subtle flavor - the only rule is that the ingredient’s gotta be in there!

I was picking first, and I decided to go with coconut!  I love coconut - and ironically enough, that hasn’t always been the case!  I think its been in the last 2 years that I’ve come around.  I think it was helped along with Ina Garten’s Coconut cupcake recipe.  Hmm…
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In our third SOB installment, Charity (of sweetcharitypie) and I bring to you vanilla ice cream!  I was surprised about a few things -

1. I had NO idea how many egg yolks went into ice cream
2. How bad for you the-real-thing-from-scratch ice cream really is for your arteries
3. How cream colored the real thing is, and,
4. how much I enjoyed the taste of it.
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Today is the World Day of Bread - and truthfully, is there a better way to unite hundreds of countries than to celebrate a staple.  This staple is evident in all ethnicities and religions.  Oftentimes in celebrations.  Thank you to Zorra for putting on this blog event to celebrate! “Let’s break bread together”…

Its story is rooted in our history.  I was just reading Jeffrey Hamelman’s book “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes“. In the ingredients chapter he talks about rye and his surprise that true pumpernickel bread hasn’t enjoyed nearly the popularity that it maintains in Europe, despite the large numbers of European emigrants that we’ve seen in the last century.  It had never occurred to me to think of bread as crossing boundaries in that way; as would religion, or other family heirlooms.  But why wouldn’t bread? We’re raised on it. We celebrate with it.  Not long ago some people may have survived on it.  At the expense of sounding mellow dramatic, think of all the memories we’ve created while bread has been at the table.
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I live in Atlanta. And normally that resonates with the Braves, Turner TV, Delta, Home Depot, Coca-cola, etc, but lately its translated to GAS CRISIS. At this point in time my husband and I have been fortunate enough to regularly come across gas stations with fuel, but yesterday we did end up waiting for just over an hour to get a full tank. All the gas stations near us were totally empty. So we checked our local new station’s web site where they have this gas finder link and we saw that some stations north of us had residents reporting gas recently. We trucked on up. We passed many vacant stations, but finally came across one that had multiple cars there, and NO LINE. We drove on in and when we inquired why these people were there, we were told that the gas station is expecting a delivery before 10pm (its 8pm at this time). There’s only 2 spots left next to actual gas pumps, and we take one. Here’s the sweet folks to the left of us:

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Its time again for the monthly Bread Baking Day bake-off!  Zorra, the founder of BBD is hosting the one year anniversary edition - and the theme for this exciting occasion is Bread with Sprouts!  For my bread I decided to do a variety of sprouted grains - an equal mix of Hard Red Wheat, Kamut, and Spelt.  I chose these grains because I love the flavor of each, and for ease of sprouting - they are all roughly the same size.
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It is my pleasure to present to you the fine collection of Breakfast Breads baked up for this month’s BBD challenge. We had 53 54 55 submissions from 16 different countries - quite a variety of breakfast goodies!

Before I showcase all that breakfast is made of, I’d like to thank Zorra for founding this inspiring event and to let you all know to head over to her blog to get the theme of the one year BreadBakingDay anniversary edition!

Also, a big thank you to everyone that participated in this event - it was honor to not only host BBD for its 10th installment, but to get to (virtually) meet each and every one of you - I think that this diversity is what the essence of food blogging is all about - From sisters in Saudi Arabia, to California (our most popular state this month), people coming together from all parts of the world to share a common passion is so incredible - thank you for letting me be a part of it! And I’d like to say a special thank you to Antonella; she doesn’t have a blog but was so eager to still participate.

And the fun begins!
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