The Great Graduate Bake-off

13/100: Par for the cake!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 17:30:00 +0000

My dad turned 60 this past month! To celebrate, my brothers and I arranged a surprise family trip for him (with the helpful nudging and planning of our friend Jiahong!). My brother Ben recently had an adorable baby boy named Winston who is still a bit young to fly, so it was a no brainer for me and my twin Eric and his wife Kyria to meet up in Seattle where Ben, Tristan, and Win live. Additionally, they have a beautiful house that feels like home and in which they are absolutely wonderful hosts. As I said, no brainer!

Eric and Kyria and I got into Seattle before my dad (who had absolutely no idea we would be there) and we started scheming: how do we surprise him? We settled on "let's just sit in the house and pretend like it's totally normal that we're in Seattle." Joke was on us, however because when my dad walked through the door he simply said: "oh, hey." Even though he swears he was surprised and had absolutely no idea, he's got the play it cool face down pat. I've learned my lesson: next time I surprise anyone I am absolutely jumping out from behind a coach! Maybe noisemakers could invoke some more surprise, too (haha).

Nevertheless, this bake was very special because I got to bake with my whole family! During the brainstorm process we decided to make a vanilla cake. However, it would not just be any old vanilla cake. It was going to be an Ellen-patented "cool cake." What's a cool cake? Well, since high school I have had the penchant to make cakes that had cool 3D designs. They have run the gamut from a graduation hat, a water polo ball, a mini cooper, a frog, a totoro, and countless others. For most of these projects, my partner in crime has been my dad, so it only made sense to continue the tradition. As my dad is an avid golfer, we decided to ring in his 60 years with a golf ball cake. So, we picked up the ingredients from the store and started baking!

Turns out cakes are pretty ingredient minimalist. Full disclaimer: we used boxed frosting. While creaming butter by hand is feasible, I draw the hand-mixing line at frosting. I'm sure people not eating chunks of unincorporated frosting butter around the world are thanking me! My dad got to creaming the butter and sugar and I mixed together all of the dry ingredients. Then we subsequently alternated adding dry ingredients and buttermilk to the wet ingredients. We transferred the batter to a springform cake pan and I performed the most important part of any bake: the batter test. This was fun, because the house was full of people including a couple of Ben's friends and everyone took a taste of cake batter. The verdict: absolutely delicious. I liked that foreshadowing.

Dad creaming butter and sugar

The ingredients are combined and in the cake tin!

I did not cook the cake in the advised manner: 2 eight inch rounds, so I was a little nervous whether the entire cake would cook through before the top burned. Nevertheless double the cooking time later (~65 minutes) the cake was done and it looked golden brown and delicious! I wonder at what point the top WILL burn before the inside can cook. My brother Ben and I actually had this debate in which I said that the top will absolutely burn if you were to cook the cake in a semi-circle type of pan. Due to the success of this bake, I'm actually curious to see how a semi circle would have done!

How did we land on the topic of a semi-circle? Well, because we wanted to make a golf ball, eventually we were going to need to get the cake into semi-circle form. To avoid any burned-top cakes we chose to bake the cake in a cylindrical slice shape, but then the challenge became carving the cylinder to become more rounded. Luckily for us we'd been around that block before with the water polo ball cake, so that was a cinch. We carved a rounded shape and moved on to the real hard part.

Question: How do you create golf ball like indentations in a cake?
Answer: You don't!

Online you'll find that many people have great success making golf ball indents, but my dad and I had no such luck. Any time we would indent the frosting (with a measuring cup, end of a cooking utensil, you name it we tried it) the frosting would follow our utensil making raised frosting rather than indented frosting. Clearly the frosting needed to be harder, but how did other people do it? Either they: 1) created indents in the physical cake, 2) somehow created harder frosting, 3) used fondant. It was too late to make indents in the cake, harder frosting probably wasn't going to happen with this boxed frosting, so we pushed forward and innovated with what we had. After all, doesn't most invention come from lack of something?

(A quick aside: I listened to this really cool podcast that talked about the five things you need to move a project forward: permission, skill, motivation, clarity, resources. They mentioned, however, that sometimes if you are a little bit short in resources you may actually perform better. For example, if you are a photographer and you take out all 50 of your lenses with you on a photo excursion your attention may be short and unfocused. You'll be thinking more "what lens is right for this shot" rather than "how can I get a great shot with what I have." As I reflect on this cake experience, I realized that not having the perfect tool (or full resources) did not stand in the way of having a great cake and experience with the family, which means the project was still a success. Often perfectionism causes us to miss the goal of the project for details that do not pertain to the project's actual success. Talk to me or check out the podcast to learn more!)

What did we create? Well, we decided to make ball circles to mock the look of indentations. My dad is very good at precise drawing and extreme attention to physical detail, so he took the helm for this part of cake making:

Reminds me of the song: "where's it going to go from here"

And what did we have??

A golf ball cake! Can you see it?

Our skeptic faces from self timer photos!

All of us sat around the table eating cake and enjoying family time. My brothers were adamant that this was the best thing I had ever baked in the history of all my baking, so I think that means this recipe checks out! I highly recommend this recipe as it was quite easy and very flexible (the baking time was malleable for different sizes). It was really nice to be with family. We are all quirky and love our puns. We were deciding what to name this blog and I came up with "out of the (golf) ball park" and building on that idea Eric came up with "par for the cake." It's nice when people can jump on your train of thought, and often I think that's what the feeling of family is. It has been so wonderful to become closer and jump on more thought trains with Kyria and Tristan, too! When they're not rolling their eyes at our puns ;).

Now, a special little side note. My brother Ben would love for you to know that he too is the best baker. What did he bake, you ask?

Cakes in a pan! What do you think: do you cook or bake pancakes? Our family probably spent a solid 30 minutes determining what the definition of baking is (it's not just something that raises, as some things that are baked have no rising agent. Do all baked things have to have flour? Does it have to go in the oven? Just a few of the thinking points). You be the judge ;)

Thanks for reading, and thanks again for a wonderful trip, Ben and Tristan!

12/100: Nectarine and blackberry gobbler!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 17:54:00 +0000

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the delay in blog post, but it's been quite an exciting week: I submitted my paper! This is one of those VERY big milestones in my graduate career because after submission I can schedule my defense date, write my thesis, defend, submit my thesis, and GRADUATE. Literally people, those are my last steps in graduate school! I can barely believe it, and I've been letting the moment soak in slowly. I think once the paper moves into official "under review" I will schedule my defense date and move into full thesis work mode.

Yes, I am absolutely inundating you with all of my future plans, but this is a good sign for me! I think one of the difficulties about graduate school for me has been the lack of fixed time tables to execute a plan. I've been working on this exact and specific paper for 5 years, and I've had all the data for ~3 years- that's a long time to hold on to something! Though we always said we were a year away from publishing the paper, I've been crafting it and shaping it and refining it and perfecting it for the past 3 years. To finally push this baby out into the world is a huge relief and a huge feeling of accomplishment and excitement for what's next. I can't wait to have other professional faculty members reading my paper and giving it their full attention. They will probably tear my paper to shreds, but I am so excited to see where my paper has legs and where it does not. Plus, hopefully they'll be able to beat my committee members to the punch, so I'll get extra preparation for my defense. In total, I'm starting to look to the future and make plans, and that makes for a happy Ellen.

It's been an optimistic week for me, for more reasons than one. I've had amazing talks with friends new and old, I booked a spontaneous vacation to properly celebrate and prepare myself for this new finishing phase of graduate school, and I've been tapping more into what brings me joy (like ping pong and bowling and puppies!). So, long story short: I've been a little slow with baking this week because graduate school (and life) is moving forward!

So, this past Saturday I had the pleasure of baking with my dear childhood friend Lauren. I wasn't entirely sure what to bake and a lot of ideas were swirling around in my head. As I've gone through this baking process I've noticed myself listening to the generation of "ideas" and where they come from. So bear with me for some Ellen-philosophy!

The other day I asked some friends of mine whether they were idea people or execution people. They both trended toward being people with big ideas, where as I was loud and proud about being an executer. I love making a plan and figuring out all of the holes and where things could go wrong and fixing the holes before they start or learning from the holes in retrospect. I think even on this blog I see this pattern: I love to explain about the process and the flaws and the ways it can be improved, but very rarely do I get into the genesis of "why I decided to bake something." So, with idea generation on my mind, I wondered: what inspires an idea?

The largest idea generator I have in my outside-of-work life is this baking blog. Every week I have to come up with two new ideas! For me, I've noticed my ideas generally come from two main factors: people and curiosity. In some ways, people factors could be seen as extrinsic, and curiosity factors could be seen as intrinsic. For people, the ideas come in a multitude of ways:

1) a challenge: if someone can tell me that something is incredibly hard to bake, I absolutely want to try my hand at it (there's some Alex Honnold in me there haha)
2) a memory: what did I really enjoy doing with my family or enjoy eating in my childhood, and how can I optimize or refine that experience
3) a person: who do I want to make smile today, what is their favorite baked good and what recipe would fit that

For curiosity the ideas come in two ways:

1) working with a completely novel ingredient
2) learning a novel skill

Marrying these two factors is generally when I hit my baking "sweet spot" and I am VERY pumped to bake. In sum, I think for me idea generation comes from talking to a ton of people and gathering thoughts or inspiration, and then checking within myself to see what brings me curiosity and a drive to push the envelope forward and research. Knowing where my ideas come from in baking is ideally an extension to understanding my idea generation in work, which is something I want to harness and wield fully in my future jobs. Give it a thought and see where your idea generating place is :)!

Thought experiment over- how did all of that get us to nectarine and blackberry cobbler? Well, I had the extrinsic motivation of Lauren liking something fruity. I kept looking over raspberry cookies or fruity shortbreads, but none of those items were really sticking out to me as a home run. I kept searching through lots of recipes, each one not really calling out to me. In this searching process, I remembered cobbler, a childhood favorite of mine (my mom makes the best!). I was fully sold because I hadn't made a cobbler before, which meant learning a new skill. Clearly I've tapped out on my cookie baking for a bit!

Funny thing to note: cobbler is crazy easy to make. I used this New York Times Recipe for nectarine and blackberry cobbler and, as I have learned to trust this site, it was a great success. If you can find the right fruit at the right ripeness, you're essentially good to go. But, I'll take you through the steps! First, we gathered the ingredients.

The oats, (some) sugar, flour, butter, and salt were all for the crumble topping that I was making for the cobbler. The sugar and corn starch were for the fruit! Lauren cut up the nectarines and mixed the fruit with the sugar (to sweeten the fruit) and corn starch (to thicken up any of the fruit juices so it wouldn't be a puddle when baking).

My sous-baker. Not camera shy, just a goof! :)

The fruit, sugared and mixed to perfection

I took care of the dry ingredients. I'd say the biggest pain about the dry ingredients was not having a food processor. I'm really on the verge of buying one, but nevertheless I incorporated this butter by hand (well, two hands and two knives). I diced the butter into tiny squares, but as butter does they look like they're all clumped together. Then, I took the knives and crossed them together (actually together, so they have to make that metal clinking sound!) until all of the butter was peppercorn-sized. That was about 15 minutes of cutting and all the patience I had.

Lauren and I were nervous about the size of the vessel we were putting our cobbler into. It was a 13" by 7" dish and the nectarines were quite spread out. I think we were both envisioning a little more fruit depth. There were even places where the topping was touching the bottom of the pan! However, we had committed to our vessel so we trucked forward.

Nervous pouring. Does this look right??

You be the judge!

We popped the cobbler in for 45 minutes. You know the cobbler is ready for the topping is brown and fruit is bubbling!

Yummmm

And let me tell you- it was AMAZING. It may have looked weird at first. Maybe you think it looks weird present, but it tasted fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that I renamed it Gobbler: cobbler so good I gobbled it right up! I'm a sucker for crumble topping and this crumble was delicious and sweet and buttery. The fruit was perfectly sweetened- definitely not a sugar bomb. The blackberries were a little sour, adding a nice foil to the tangy yellow nectarines and sweet crumble. This disappeared at my house the night of. When the summer comes and it's fruit season, it's safe to say there will be a lot of cobbler in our future!

Thanks for reading! I've got a baking adventure planned this weekend, and it will be a very special one, so stay tuned!

11/100: Chocolate on chocolate cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Sun, 10 Feb 2019 03:07:00 +0000

This Wednesday I had the joy of baking with my bestie Laura. She's the birthday baker for her lab and a labmate's birthday was coming up, so she decided to make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I was recruited to help with the baking process (also I got the added bonus of spending time with her!), and I happily said yes. I felt a little conflicted about adding this to my baking goals, but I think it still counts. 1) I definitely learned new baking secrets, 2) I contributed to the baking and decision making, 3) I spent time baking. Plus, I also think an added bonus of this baking goal is the ability to bring and develop friendships. If I can only bake alone or for my own things, that feels a little exclusive. So, in all, I feel good about adding this to my bake count, and I look forward to supporting other friends in their bakes while having my new year's resolution simultaneously supported!

We chose chocolate cupcakes from Fiona's blog Just So Tasty. Vy had baked these cupcakes before, so they had already passed the "baked and edible" test. My first thought when reading the recipe was: "there's a lot of ingredients!" So far, I've found that a lot of my best baked goods have been incredibly simple, which has made me almost wary of having too many ingredients. However, because this recipe was vetted by Vy we plowed ahead. First, we made the cupcakes!

Ingredient shot!

The sour cream and corn starch were a weird touch. However, the absence of butter and presence of oil was a trend I recognized: the chocolate crinkle cookies used vegetable oil instead of butter as well. I wonder why vegetable oil is often used to compliment chocolate. A quick google search says that perhaps using oil allows for a cake-y, fluffier texture, so I will cross reference this logic the next time I make a cake. The baking directions also requested that we warm the eggs to room temperature. Curious at this logic, Laura and I googled it and found the answer: apparently adding cold eggs to certain mixtures can cause curdling. Just as adding too-hot browned butter can cook eggs, perhaps adding too-cold eggs can curdle to oil? That's my best guess at what the warm eggs are protecting us from in this recipe, but in any case I was happy to oblige. Wait and warm we did, before adding together all of the ingredients. Much like muffins, this is another two bowl wonder. Mix the wet ingredients together, mix the dry ingredients separately, slowly add the dry ingredients in and voila! You have cupcake batter. And delicious cupcake batter in the case of this recipe!

Doling out the cupcake batter

We waited for the allotted time and caught up with Vy. Additionally, I had just gotten my wisdom teeth out on Monday (I'm no longer wise!) and Vy and Laura introduced me to my ultimate life saver: instant mashed potatoes. Let me tell you- I have been incredibly paranoid about not making a full recovery from my wisdom tooth extraction. Perhaps because the procedure was so quick and painless (I was in and out of the dental chair in 35 minutes! even my roommate picking me up wasn't ready!) I was thinking perhaps the recovery could be the real challenge. I therefore took all precautions and refused to eat solid food for three days. In fact, I was planning to break my fast with these chocolate cupcakes! However, after two straights days of only pudding, soup, and yogurt, my salty tooth was hurting BADLY. Enter: instant mashed potatoes. They are tasty, impossible to differentiate from real mashed potatoes, and even better: salty. I was a happy woman!

I even took a picture of this wonder! Thank you Vy and Laura!

Next up, we made the frosting. I enjoyed this process because I sifted powdered sugar for the first time. Turns out there's a bit of a technique to it and you have to push the powdered sugar through the sifter with the back of a spoon. Thanks for the tip Vy!

Frosting ingredients!

Go Vy go!

I'd say the most fun (and funny!) part was definitely icing the cupcakes. Turns out Laura has some strong opinions about piping. She prefers smooth piping rather than ridged. I definitely agree with her, but I think ridged may have an advantage when it's chocolate frosting... you be the judge ;)

Laura, my super happy froster and baking buddy <3

Frosting with all my might!

All done!

How did the cupcakes turn out? Well, even with my tepid chewing and wisdom tooth nervousness, they were good enough to make me forget my worries. I had that last naked cupcake in the back, and the cupcake was tasty, but a little salty, which makes me think that they were probably perfect when paired with the frosting. Often I find cupcakes too sweet (I told you that salty tooth reigns supreme), so I only eat the cake and skip the frosting, but I think these cupcakes hit a balance! I was unable to taste the combination because I wanted to save all of the good ones for Laura's lab. Her labmates loved the cupcakes, so I think it's safe to say the cupcakes struck the balance beautifully.

My favorite part of this bake was baking with Laura and learning all of her baking customs. For example: she doesn't like to mix the dry ingredients separately. We did a separate bowl for this recipe to incorporate the chocolate powder properly (and possibly because of my influence ;P). Up next: baking with my childhood friend Lauren. We made nectarine blackberry cobbler and it's my favorite thing I've baked yet!

10/100: The perfect peanut butter cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:26:00 +0000

Hello friends! Peanut butter cookies are my ultimate favorite cookie flavor. I think there are many reasons for this:

1) I used to not eat chocolate as a kid because I was told I was allergic to it
2) It is the perfect sweet and salty balance
3) I LOVE peanut butter- I basically eat a PB&J every day

However, as much as I love peanut butter cookies, the perfect peanut butter cookie recipe has continually evaded me. Hoping to break this streak, I hopped onto the New York Times cooking website and found a peanut butter cookie recipe. I realize that I'm really beginning to trust and turn to the New York Times cooking recipes. My free trial is ending quite shortly and I am actually considering subscribing to the website so I can support the service. I basically subscribe to nothing, so this is earth shattering news, but I think the cause is good!

When reading through the comments people had made many adjustments, anywhere from adding more or less salt to the type of peanut butter they used. Condensing these suggestions I made a few adjustments to the recipe by taking out the roasted peanuts and choosing this type of peanut butter- 365 organic crunchy SPREAD! I chose not to include the peanuts because I find super crunchy peanut butter cookies remins me of eating peanuts rather than a cookie. I chose an organic peanut butter because I feel natural peanut butter reigns supreme over normal peanut butter, however I did choose the spread version because I have learned in the past that fully natural, separating peanut butter does not make great cookies. Sorry Eric, still on the hunt for that perfect natural peanut butter recipe!

Moving along, making these cookies was super easy. First I creamed the butter and sugar, then I added in the peanut butter and made sure it was fully incorporated. Then, I added the rest of the ingredients as normal! By the end, my mixer basically just looked like it contained a giant ball of peanut butter.

So much peanut butter!

I was nervous. Again, because I highly esteem peanut butter cookies I really wanted these to be good. In the cookie dough test, these just tasted like peanut butter, so I wasn't entirely sure how the cookies would turn out and if my adjustments had potentially catastrophically ruined the cookies. However I pushed forward and, with the help of my mom cross-hatching, made some beautiful peanut butter cookies!

Before

After! Beware the cookie spread. Like manspreading, but doughy :P

The recipe called for ~11 minutes of baking. The cue for the cookies being done was: "golden on the side, but definitely not on the top." Much like chocolate cookies, peanut butter cookies already start out "golden" so looking for a golden brown was challenging. I checked at 11 minutes and they still looked pale and uncooked and malleable, so I put them in for another 3 minutes, and another 3, and another 3. Finally at 21 minutes I took them out because they were definitely "golden." However, these cookies were not twice as large as the recipe called for, so going in for twice the amount of time was probably not the right call.

I made these cookies on Superbowl Sunday ;)

The cookies were gooey in the center, but definitely crunchy on the outside. I wish I had taken them out around the 16 minute mark to see if I could preserve some chew for the sides. However, everyone that tried the cookies really liked them and said that crunchy on the outside chewy on the inside was the norm for peanut butter cookies. They were eaten up quite quickly my friends and roomies, so I suppose I'll have to take them on their word that they were yummy! However, I'm still in search for the perfect peanut butter cookie recipe- chewy all the way through :)

This post marks being 10% done with my journey! I've made it into the double digits! Another thing I have enjoyed about this journey is how much togetherness I have experienced from it. I've (shamelessly) shared my blog with so many friends who in response said they too loved to bake and absolutely wanted to bake with me. It is lovely to have a hobby that I enjoy so much and that my friends want to nurture. You know who you are, and thank you so much!

Speaking of which, I had the opportunity to bake some chocolate cupcakes with Laura, and I will be updating you on bake 11 shortly!

9/100: Happy birthday Sam!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 23:39:00 +0000

Today's bake was brought to you by Sam's birthday, which was 1/31! That was also my cousin Katherine's birthday (and you should check out her blog here!) Looks like a lot of awesome people were born on that day, of which I'm quite thankful!

I asked Sam about a month ago what his ultimate favorite baked good was and he said chocolate chip cookies. My roommate Kiley makes raved-about brown butter chocolate chip cookies, so I thought that recipe was the clear choice. Apparently, her friend is a baker at a bake shop (coffee shop??) called Flatline. I should have guessed because the recipe called for 4 cups of flour and 4 cups of butter! I was about to make a lot of cookies Side note: I'm starting to recognize a 1:1:1 ratio between butter and flour and eggs for cookies. Anyway, I don't know if the recipe is proprietary, so I won't share it online, but if you can bake cookies with browned butter I highly recommend!

The classic ingredient pic

The bake started off pretty normally needing the classic ingredients: vanilla, sugar, flour, butter, rising agent. However, the exciting thing about this recipe was going to be browning butter! I've never browned butter before and I decided not to watch any youtube videos about it, so I was browning butter blind! My roommate Dan has browned butter before, so I was consulting with him constantly asking "is it brown yet?" I shall share my learned secrets with you in picture form:

Butter melting, pretty classic yellow color

The yellow butter will start bubbling everywhere, but it will still be yellow

The butter becomes VERY fragrant and looks brown!

My one secret to browning butter is: when it gets all bubbly hold out until you see the brown. When you see the brown, hold out until it becomes very fragrant. If you can't smell, then hold out for ~30 seconds to one minute to allow all of the butter to brown. After I browned the butter I transferred it to a bowl and put the bowl in the fridge so the butter could cool.

I mixed together all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then I started the mixer. I creamed the remaining butter and sugar and added in all the wet ingredients. When the browned butter was cool (it was actually warm, but I got impatient and Kirsten and I agreed it was "cooler" haha) I drizzled it into the batter. I combined all the flour (in 4 separate bolus') and folded in the chocolate chips and what did I have? A whole ton of cookie dough!

This cookie dough definitely passed the cookie dough test. In fact, my roommates can attest to it:

They requested individuals spoons so they could eat the batter straight

I rolled the cookies into tablespoon-sized balls (well, if the tablespoon were to be extended to a round shape, so maybe two tablespoons?) and cooked them for 13 minutes. The temperature and time were actually totally up to me. Kiley asked her baking friend for the temperature and she said: 375?? And the time I simply played by eye. However, these cookies came out PERFECT.

Looks at that perfectly cooked center. Ooey-gooey and delicious!

The cookies were the perfect soft and chewy cookie. Additionally, because I used salted butter the cookies were the perfect sweet and salty balance. They were incredibly easy to eat many of. My friend Vy asked if they were better than the tahini cookies (which she recommended) and I thought they eked out ahead. When she tried them I think she agreed ;)!

The cookie army!

I packed and shipped the cookies to Sam today, so hopefully in two day's time he'll get to taste the genius himself and be the ultimate decider on their deliciousness. This was a super fun recipe to bake and I would absolutely make these cookies again (although is there a half recipe version??). The bake took ~3 hours and I had the excellent company of 5 of my roommates. In the downtime we played "guess that 2000s song" in which Dan would play a song for as long as it took us to name the title. Kylie took down the rap/hip hop songs. Kirsten took down general. I took down the more acoustic/feelings-y/OG Rihanna. As always, it was a blast to have my roommates around baking and taste testing and laughing and sharing with, so thanks roomies! Look forward to hearing whether you like the cookies, Sam! Hope they got to you safely and in cookie-form :) Happy birthday again and share some with Michaela!

Up next: the perfect peanut butter cookie!

8/100: Brownies in cookie form

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 05:20:00 +0000

This Sunday I made chocolate crinkle cookies! What are they, you ask? They are essentially brownies in cookie form, hence the title. They are incredibly easy to make, quite fun to bake, and an absolute dream to eat. I highly recommend them, and I highly recommend using this recipe! This recipe is near and dear to me for many reasons. The first is that, about a year ago, my brother sent these cookies to me in care-package form. It was honestly one of the sweetest things I've ever received (har har), but it was a touching memory that I'll never forget. So big bro- thank you! Another reason this recipe is important to me is because it is from the website What's Gaby cooking. This is my sister-in-law's absolute favorite cooking website/instagram/book/chef hands down. Because Tristan's love for this chef is so real I also follow the chef and now covet Gaby's cookbook as well. After baking these cookies and seeing how awesome they turned out, I now covet the cookbook even more. Now, on to the bake!

I had the pleasure of baking with my cousin Sarah. I went to her place in Fremont and we went food shopping together so we could gather all of the ingredients. This has turned a bit into our tradition: decide what to bake before we see each other, food shop, drink boba, and bake when we're together. I really enjoy this tradition!

Another bake, another house

One thing I quite enjoyed about baking with Sarah was her support of the blog! She kept reminding me to take photos and staging everything perfectly. The photo above was the last photo I was allowed to take before she realized these were going on the blog, so every photo had to be perfect ;).

The recipe is actually quite easy- it uses vegetable oil, so there's no creaming butter and sugar step. The step that took the longest was that you need to bring the eggs to room temperature. After an hour of gossip and rolling eggs in my hands they were finally room temperature and we got the mixer mixing!

The liquids

After adding in the flour

Action shot! Look! I actually bake!

After combining all of the ingredients together, we then let the dough rest in the refrigerator for 3 hours. This is an important step because the batter is pretty liquidy, so you definitely need to get it cold so that it firms up. Our 3 hour wait was made quite quick by the new Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix. Let me tell you- the first two episodes were normal serial killer fare. But the second half of the third episode? Makes my hair stand up just thinking about it! It reminds me of a quote that Dave Matthews said in one of his live sets: "There's evil out there people." He was talking about war, I'm talking about Ted Bundy.

Anyway, after 3 quick hours it was time to make some cookie dough balls! First things first: grease up the hands with vegetable oil. It's going to feel totally gross and weird, but it's absolutely essential. Basically, this dough is so sticky that if you don't oil up you will end up with all of the chocolate dough on your hands and none in the ball you were trying so desperately to form. I learned this when all of the vegetable oil eventually transferred off of my hands and my hands instead looked like they were wearing chocolate gloves. Lesson learned: oil up! After you make the cookie dough balls, you roll them in powdered sugar, much like snickerdoodles! Then, you pop them into the oven. Our dough balls were a little bigger, so we went for 16 minutes.

Before. Excellent rolling work, Sarah!

After! Yummmm

I will say that Sarah and I had a very difficult time telling if these cookies were done. In fact, we even threw the first batch back into the oven for an extra minute. Turns out brown cookies don't turn a "golden brown." What is the metric you use to tell when chocolate cookies are done? I am thankful for any secrets. Nevertheless, I think we found the perfect baking time, because these cookies were GOOD. They were incredibly fluffy, had a soft hard crunch of the crust, and sooo chocolatey and delicious. If you like brownies, you will love these cookies. So make them!

Finished product- insta style

I had a super great time baking these cookies. I loved the sentiment, I loved the company (thank you so much Sarah!), I loved the end result, and I loved baking in general! I am a little behind with my baking, but tomorrow I am determined to bake (and blog??) to make sure this train stays on the rails!

7/100: Gluten free brownies(?!)

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 16:18:00 +0000

Hello friends!

This week I had the pleasure of participating in a bake-off with my friends Kevin and Dani! Kevin made scones, and I made brownies! I also had the pleasure of my friend, Rin, moving back into town. I invited her over to bake and she asked "can we make something gluten free?!" Killing two birds with one stone I decided, yes, we absolutely can, and they will be brownies! It was a risk, but efficiency is my strength ;)

We used a New York Times Cooking recipe (get used to these) and made these brownies. Looking at the recipe picture, they looked a little flat, but I went with it. Let me tell you: I thought making muffins was easy. Making brownies was WAY easier! Brownies are essentially chocolate and butter with a pinch of sugar, salt, flour, and vanilla. The one tweak was that we used Gluten Free mix that had baking soda/powder that would create some rise in the brownies. This recipe called for absolutely no baking soda/flour/rising agent so I was unsure of what the end result would be, but I promised Rin something gluten free and Dani and Kevin brownies, so forward we marched!

I took to melting the chocolate and butter on a saucepan while Rin carefully buttered the parchment paper. I've never seen the "buttering parchment paper" trick, but it seemed to work! As I stirred and stirred and caught up with Rin about life and stirred the butter some more she said something that proved to be true: butter and chocolate melt very slowly and then all at once. It seemed like forever for this baking to get started, but once the chocolate melted, everything moved quite fast! You put in the eggs, put in the sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour and then pour it into the pan.

Before.. how will it turn out??

Because we used a different type of flour and a different type of pan, we knew we would have to play the baking time by ear (eye?). We set the timer for the lower amount (20 minutes), and I believe I pulled them out at 30 minutes. The end result??

After! Brownies!

Brownies! These looked incredibly expanded and fluffy. We figured it was because of the gluten free dough, but we continued on. We let them cool and tried the brownies

My baking partner in crime!! Thanks Rin!

Brownie!

They were GOOD! Incredibly crumbly, which I think was in part because the brownies hadn't cooled fully and maybe because of the gluten free flour, but seriously so delicious. I had literally just sprinkled salt in (the recipe didn't call for an amount), but I could definitely taste the salt foil and it was incredible.

I was a little nervous what Kevin would think. he specifically requested "not cakey" which I really had no handle on the meaning of. But, last night we met at the climbing wall and had a baking exchange! I gave them the single brownie left (bless my roommates and Rin for loving my baking!) and Kevin said: "this is perfect." Honestly, I don't really remember what he said, but I think he may have used a more emphatic word than perfect. What a relief! I was only disappointed that I couldn't give them more. I suppose we'll just have to have more bake-offs in the future! Especially because that cinnamon scone you made I put away in a minute flat. Yum!!

Cinnamon scone from bake-off. Thanks Dani and Kevin!

I had a really great time baking with Rin! She was an amazing baking partner and we definitely had that silent "I know what to do next and how to help you" thing going on that I shared with Vy and Laura. Turns out she loves baking, so I look forward to many bakes with her in the future!

Up next are chocolate crinkle cookies. They hold a place near and dear to my heart and I'll tell you why in the next post :)!

6/100: (extra)snicker doodles!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 22:57:00 +0000

Greetings from Seattle! This weekend I had the opportunity to visit my older brother and his wife and new baby boy! This is my second time seeing the baby, and honestly I'll never have enough time. Even in three weeks he's changed a lot! His hair is longer, his eyes are open more, he writhes around a lot and makes so much more noise (he's going through a chirping phase). Everyone tells me I'll miss the baby times because one day he won't always want me to hold him! There's nothing like cuddling that little nugget, so I suppose I'll hold him as often as I can (although everyone else is trying to top off on their Winston holding, too!)

I wanted to bake something for Tristan (Win's mom) and I asked her what her ultimate favorite baked good was. Her answer? Snickerdoodles! An easy request, and I was happy to oblige. We decided to use another New York Times Cooking recipe, so my brother and I went out to provision.

Another baked good, another kitchen

One bit of trepidation I had about cooking at their house was the lack of electronic mixer- stand or hand! My brother Ben was adamant that mixing by hand was SO easy. So I trusted my most favorite butter mixer and let him go to town:

This butter mixer is a special edition!

Looking good bro!

I covered the dry ingredients and started mixing and mixing and mixing. But, in going over the ingredients, I realized something quite disastrous. In our zeal to try hand mixing butter we had added both sticks instead of 1 and 1/4 sticks! Yikes- we were going to have some very buttery cookies. Honestly, we couldn't stop laughing. The texture was definitely off- there was batter all over my hands when I was trying to roll them for the cinnamon + sugar coating. However, we put them into oven to just see how they turned out. Well... now I know what it looks like when cookies have too much butter!

Before

After

Well, that was a baking fail! I actually think the placement of the cookies helped to give them structure- the cookie probably would have continued expanding without any resistance! My brother and I cheers'd on a cookie and tried them and... they were okay! They were tasty, but you could definitely taste the heaviness of the butter. Not my proudest bake, but I certainly wouldn't fault the recipe on this one. I suppose lessons for next time are: even if you are nervous about not having the right equipment, always make sure to add the right amount of ingredients! I can't tell you how many times I've almost added the wrong amount of butter, so it was about time this happened.

One crazy thing that occurred this morning is that the first text I woke up to was from my friend Laura about baking fails. And the primary picture was of cookies that looked just like mine (a little worse, but not by much!). I was curious how in the world someone failed like that and, well, now I know! Be careful what knowledge you wish to attain (:

Me with the bake requester!

The best part of this bake was definitely getting to bake with my brother in his lovely home. We probably laughed for 10 minutes straight, so we certainly added a lot of years to our life! Thanks for having me during this trip, Ben and Tristan!

Up next... brownies in my own kitchen!

5/100: Tahini chocolate chip cookies!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 07:18:00 +0000

Why no creative title? I think because the tahini speaks for itself! Everyone that I mentioned the title of this recipe took a pause (myself included). Tahini? In cookies? But why? My friend who suggested the recipe, Vy, said: "but you don't taste the tahini! It just makes the cookie... better." I was skeptical, but I was also excited to bake something for Vy, so I undertook the mission! Vy suggested this recipe to me because it is another New York Times Cooking recipe and goodness am I glad that she did (uh-oh, spoiler alert!).

Not only did Vy suggest the recipe, but she supplied with the special ingredients it required: tahini for the beginning and Maldon salt flakes for the end (thanks Vy!). So, as per usual, I gathered all of the ingredients and got mixing!

You add in the tahini with the butter and sugar, so it's a part of the creaming process. Did it replace butter? Not to my knowledge. I actually think it replaced the flour. There was only 1 cup of flour and 1 and 3/4 cup chocolate chips! Side note: I opted for semi-sweet chocolate chips and they were fantastic.

That's a lot of chocolate chips!

After folding in the chocolate chips with the cookie batter I had to let the batter cool for at least 12 hours. So, I called it a night on Monday and resumed baking on Tuesday. To be honest, it was fun breaking it apart into pieces like this! Often in experiments we have steps that are breakpoints- so if we don't want to do one really really long day we can split it into two days. This was the same concept and, just as I like it in lab, I like it in baking! For those curious: the cookie batter test was a solid medium and a soft pass (if a pass at all). I was pretty nervous going into baking these, because you could definitely taste the tahini and it was a little weird!

Nevertheless, the cookies were made and they were going to be baked! I started baking the moment I got home the next day so I could bring them over to Vy that night (3 day turnaround request, people, I'm taking recs!). After three batches of baking I took these cookies out of the oven and they looked MAGICAL!

Look at how beautiful and puffy those cookies are! Maldon salt sprinkled on top!

My roommates dug into them immediately and everyone agreed: no tahini taste, just the perfect chocolate chip cookie texture. Yes, I did say perfect. Go find the recipe and bake them!! I ran these puppies over to Vy's so we could try them together.

Look at that middle! Soft, chewy, great chocolate distribution!

These cookies were GOOD. Great, perfect, there's simply no debating. I haven't yet cooked something and seen it eaten by my roommates so quickly. I brought a small fraction over to Vy's and left the rest with my roommates. By the next evening the cookies were all gone! My roommate Dan says he doesn't have a sweet tooth, but my devoured baked goods beg to differ. I actually love that my roommates eat my baked goods- it feels great to bake for people and it feels super supportive of them, so thank you roomies!

Making this recipe was a total blast. As you can see by the shorter post: it went off without a hitch. One aspect of the recipe I really appreciated was the length of time I should mix for. It's great to throw ingredients and set a timer for mixing rather than saying "oh, does that look light and fluffy or should I let it go longer? But not too long so I don't overmix!" Rinse and repeat until I undoubtedly under or over mix my baked good. It was fun to bake a direct request and rush it over to Vy. One of my next bakes (probably not this weekend, but the next during the week), I'll be doing a bake exchange with my two friends Dani and Kevin! I challenged him to make scones and he challenged me to make brownies (not cakey or fluffy!)

4/100: Sunday (muf)Funday!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 06:25:00 +0000

Hey everyone!

This past Sunday I decided my goal was to, again, make the perfect muffin. So, I did what I do any time I want to bake something: 1) google "blueberry muffin" 2) click on the first link. This recipe's first link? A New York Times Cooking recipe! I can't tell you how many times New York Times Cooking recipes have been suggested to me, so when the first link I clicked was a New York Times Cooking recipe (you'd think I was getting paid royalties for this) no questions were asked: I knew this was the recipe. Yesterday I made Jordan Marsh's Blueberry Muffins.

I went over to my dad's because I hadn't seen him since before Christmas. New Year, same dad! I always enjoy spending time with my dad. Very often we try on each others' hobbies when we get together (really, my whole family is like this and I appreciate it so much!). I'll suggest hitting golf balls, my dad will suggest whatever hobby or feat I've taken to at the time: string art, board games, tennis. It's a great way to support each other doing what we love and this weekend was no different. My dad invited me over and, with knowledge about the advent of my new resolution, suggested baking. It was an offer I couldn't refuse, especially because my dad and I have baked many an incredible thing together when I was in high school when my baking was in full swell.

I put together all of the ingredients and we noticed that we didn't have any vanilla. Well, my dad had "imitation vanilla" (who knew vanilla was so fancy it had its own mimics!), but once he heard this picture was going on the blog, he insisted we get the right thing. So, we made a little stop at Lucky's and then I had all of the right ingredients:

Honestly, this recipe was really really easy. You basically cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs one at a time, add the vanilla, add the dry ingredients and you're basically done. These were blueberry muffins, and adding the blueberries was definitely the most exciting and technical part. First off, I will have you know that I taste tested the blueberries at trader joes to find the most perfect one: firm and tart, however these were ginormous. I was a little hesitant about the size (NYTimes did not specify blueberry size), but I decided flavor trumped size and moved forward. You eventually use two cups of blueberries. Of the two cups, half a cup will go into a bowl and you'll use a fork and crush them up. You'll add the crushed blueberries to the batter and mix it in with the mixer and paddle.

Crushed blueberries going into the batter!

I actually think this is a genius idea because a delicate blueberry swirl will be laced throughout the entire batter. So you'll taste blueberry even without hitting a blueberry! Perfect. You'll add the rest of the blueberries and fold them in to avoid crushing the remaining blueberries. Honestly, these muffins looked SO good that I forgot to take pictures of them. I simply aliquoted them into the muffin tin, sprinkled sugar on the top of the unbaked muffin batter, and slotted them into the oven!

They DEFINITELY passed the batter test

The result? Well, pictures speak louder than words!

Perfect, brown, crispy muffin tops. Hardened with a sugar shell... YUM!

My insta shot. Follow me there if you don't, yet! @casavantium

These blueberry muffins were SO good and SO blueberry-y that after my dad and I taste-tested one (we split it and cheers-ed on the muffin, it was fantastic) we took pictures and neither of us even noticed that I had blueberry on my lip. Heads up next time, maybe, dad? Haha

Caught blueberry-lipped. Yes, I am guilty of eating the yummiest blueberry muffin in history

These blueberry muffins went like hot cakes. The moment I got home my roommates gobbled them up. You know something is good when the moment you finish one muffin, you want a second. Or as Kiley, my roommate, says it: you lose all self-control. These muffins absolutely inspired complete lack of will power. That said, I highly recommend making this recipe. It's ridiculously easy and a total crowd pleaser. If I had to make one suggestion, it'd be to double the recipe!

This blog is totally working. On Saturday I could tell that I was getting the baking itch: I wanted to bake something, and now! I held out until Sunday to bake with my dad, but I can see that baking is something I am really turning to for joy. It's a great feeling to set out and make something new twice a week. I can plan it, talk about it with my friends and you, anticipate the bake, and enjoy the fruits of my labor by sharing it with everyone. Taking out all of the ingredients no longer feels like a chore, and I'm even starting to recognize teaspoon/tablespoon and all of the intermediate measures on sight! It's a great feeling to become more adept at something and I am excited for how many more bakes I have to grow and perfect this skill!

I've already started on the next bake: Chocolate Chip Tahini Cookies! They're currently cooling in the fridge overnight, and I'll bake them and write a blog post tomorrow night! The recipe was a suggestion by my friend Vy. Speaking of which, I've been loving all of these recipe suggestions people have been whispering into my ear in real life- definitely keep them coming!

3/100: Happy half half birthday to me and Laura!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:11:00 +0000

My birthday is July 9, my Stanford bestie (Laura)'s birthday is July 7. We both used to celebrate our half birthdays solo, however since last year we've celebrated our half half birthday together on January 8! We decided to bake this lemon coffee cake at Laura's house yesterday evening. With a plan underway- it was time to execute!

When I arrived it was clear the both of us were feeling tired, but determined. We got to her house and I started finding and organizing all of the ingredients.

One reason I love Laura's baking is because she always puts her own interesting twist into every recipe. This time, the twist was to use this minced lemon peel instead of lemon zest. You rehydrate every TBSP of minced lemon peel you use with 3 TBSP of water. In less than 2 minutes you have hydrated lemon peel that smells incredibly lemony and, as we found out later, packs quite a punch. Great idea, Laura!

When Vy got home, it was time to start baking and I have to say: it was a baking experience like no other. As I mentioned, we were all tired, but we were all determined to bake something for the half half birthday celebration. We are all incredibly close friends, so what does this entire combination yield? 3 girls, 1 silent, well-oiled, streamlined baking machine.

Vy took the dry ingredients, I took the wet ingredients and butter/sugar creaming, and Laura took the lemon crumble topping. Like the silent powerhouse we were, we combined all of the ingredients, popped the cake into the oven, and cleaned everything up almost wordlessly. In some respects, it totally freaked me out- we were moving around each other and giving necessary tools to each other so we were definitely aware of each other and what we needed, but it was all silent! In other regards, however, it shows that we have a solid friendship that can transcend talking, and that's pretty cool!

"Guys! I have to document us working together!" Look at those smiles ;)

There were no big things to note during this baking progress. The one mistake I made was to fold in the sour cream, rather than mix it in with the handheld beater I was using. Apparently, when you cream butter and sugar together you are creating air pockets that will eventually create rise during the baking process. When you fold in the next ingredients, it helps to save this air and promote rise. Citation here, and also Laura who did break our silence to say: save the air!

We started a new puzzle as we waited for the cake to bake and 45 quick minutes later the cake was ready to be tested!

Patiently waiting

Cake + puzzle = great half birthday

How'd the cake turn out? A solid medium, I'd say. It was pretty salty, definitely on the "coffee cake" side of a baked good. The crumble turned out fantastic and there was a strong lemon flavor, but a sweet element is definitely needed in this recipe. Perhaps a lemon drizzle could have saved it? It was still good, but if I were to make it again I'd tweak the recipe to showcase some more sweetness!

Nevertheless, I had a fantastic time baking with my half half birthday buddy Laura and Vy and I'm glad this tradition is standing strong!

January 8, 2018!

January 8, 2019!

What's next?? I haven't quite decided yet! One thing's certain, though: I'll learn a lot and I'll have fun doing it. See you shortly!

2/100: Croissants- it's all in the fold!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 23:52:00 +0000

Hey everyone!

This past Saturday I made croissants! Why, you ask, did I attempt such a crazy feat, only two bakes in? Well, one thing I have come to learn and love about my family is that they are incredibly competitive and put their 110% into everything. When I told them about my baking challenge there were few comments of "wow, that's so cool!" and a lot more: let me hurl the hardest possible thing I've ever heard of that Ellen can make for her challenge. Amongst the baked alaska and croquembouche recommendations there was a croissant recommendation. My first reaction: nope! But when my family member said "well, they're really easy, even though it takes 15 hours in total it only takes 1 active hour," my interest was piqued. That did sound easy! I couldn't say no to a challenge like that.

Looks like I'm cut from a similar cloth to my crew after all!

So, Saturday morning begins and I started with this recipe from Laura's Kitchen. In fact, even before I started, I watched Laura's entire video and it did look easy. Her dough was beautiful and sticky and completely do-able. I gathered all of the ingredients together and started.

I feel like eventually this is going to be a game- guess what Ellen's cooking from all of the ingredients she first lays out

I have to say- two minutes into mixing I knew something was terribly wrong. It looked like I had made pebbles and the dough wasn't coming together and it wasn't sticky, beautiful, or malleable like it had turned out on the video. How bad was it, 2 minutes in? I'll show you.

Yikes

Because it looked nothing like it had in Laura's video, I continued on mixing. And mixing. And mixing. It took 10 minutes for my roommate to come out of her room and ask what I was doing. It took another 5 minutes for my other roommate to come out of his room and say that a cement mixer would be needed to make my dough soft. The red flags were blaring- I knew I couldn't proceed with the next steps that were all about rolling out a malleable dough, so after enough cajoling I finally threw the dough away. Hooray! I finally listened to some red flags!

However, instead of giving up- I tried again! This time, I pivoted recipes and used a recipe that my roommate provided (thanks Brenna!). Turns out she had taken a croissant making class around a year ago with her dad. Fortuitous, to say the least.

It worked like a charm. The recipe was incredibly detailed with how much time to mix and chill the dough, and absolutely saved the day when it came to making my croissants. Second attempt, the best!

Now, due to my utter nerves from failing the first time, I didn't take many pictures. However, the number one trick about croissants is to keep everything cold! Dough, butter, everything! So, roll out fast (thaaaaat's why I didn't take pictures, haha), fold, refrigerate for an hour. Repeat this around five times and you'll have a beautiful piece of dough that looks almost bursting with butter.

See that yellow speckled in there?

From here, I cut the dough in half (on the short end, so the length was maintained), created triangles, and folded up the triangles to make beautiful baby croissants. One thing I have learned about myself as a baker is that I am absolute perfectionist. What that really means is that I'm the slowest baker (and especially dough roller-outer) you've ever met. For instance: I actually measured out the size of the dough with a tape measure (the heavy hardware kind, thanks Dan!). Thankfully, I had the moral support of my friend Tricia whom I gave instructions to tell me "move on!" if I ever started getting fixated on a tiny detail I absolutely had to adjust. This was needed more times than I'd like to admit (thanks Tricia!).

All the little triangles rolled up and egg washed!

Once you have croissant shapes you now have to "proof" the dough. This means letting the baby croissants rise for at least 1-2 hours in which they become adult, marsh-mellow-consistency croissants. It's the dead of winter and freezing, so I went with twos. After two hours (and two episodes of the show You- it's addictive and amazing and creepy and so well done, watch it) I refrigerated the croissants (very important to make sure the butter is cold before baking!), warmed up the oven, did a final egg wash, and popped them in the oven! The results? Well, they always say pictures speak louder than words...

So stoked they look like croissants!

Look at those layers!

(Almost) All of my roommates were home when the croissants came out of the oven, so we dug in and the croissants were great! I won't say 100% restaurant quality, but they were definitely tasty, flaky, and hit that "croissant spot."And if the stomach is the true vote: I made around 28 croissants, and only 1 remained 24 hours later. Success!

I'm really excited about this croissant adventure. One part of me is totally excited that I made croissants. Another part of me feels closer to my heritage (I'm 1/2 French Canadian). And an even bigger part of me is starting to feel more familiar in the kitchen. I've always loved baking and baked a ton in high school. However, when college hit I noticed that I stopped baking as often. I believe this was in part because baking felt like a chore and its own stress amongst school stress. I'm hoping this great graduate bakeoff will allow me to become so happy and comfortable with baking that I can officially "stress bake" and turn to it for relaxation in times of desperation.

I appreciate all of the help, support, and suggestions I've been receiving from everyone! My roommate Brenna wants to make a lemon meringue pie (apparently they are very challenging), and another friend of mine wants to bake fancier cakes. As for my next bake, tomorrow is my combined half birthday with my Stanford bestie Laura! Her birthday is the 7th of July, mine is the 9th of July, so our half birthday is the 8th of January! We're making lemon crumble cake!

See you soon!

1/100: Cinny minis

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 00:30:00 +0000

Today's task: bake mini cinnamon muffins! I used this recipe from Genius kitchen. Everything I have tried from that site has been fantastic like these oatmeal raisin cookies and this balsamic vinaigrette reduction. Due to these past successes, I have come to trust Genius kitchen and seek it out over the plethora of cooking sites whenever I search for generic recipes like: cinnamon muffins.

Today's adventure, however, was a bit of a muffin identity crisis!

I knew that something was going to be up when I started browsing through the comments. People said the muffins were awful, turned out like rocks, or had to be severely doctored to save. Whenever people do their own substitutions in Genius kitchen I generally look for a substitution consensus. Red flag #1: this recipe had no such consensus. Nevertheless, the recipe received 4/5 stars, so I was (perhaps errantly) undeterred and pushed forward.

I wrote all of the ingredients up on the board, with my own decided substitutions: 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, half brown sugar and half white sugar, no allspice. Can we take a pause here: I highly suggest writing down all baking ingredients on a piece of paper or white board before starting. There's nothing like not having to unlock an electronic device to check how much and what to add next. Okay! Continuing forward, I mixed everything together and saw red flag #2: the batter looked like cookies. Instead of "pouring" the batter into the cups, it was a definite sticky wrestle off of the spoon. Behold, my cookies about to become muffins (because that's how it works, right??):

Thankfully, the muffins passed the "batter test." What is the batter test you ask? My own personal benchmark: if the batter tastes good, the baked item in question will taste good. I popped these puppies in the oven at 400 for 17 minutes and eagerly (with a tablespoon of worriedly) waited.

When they came out?? They rose, had marginal muffin tops, and were cooked through completely with that beautiful golden brown top. Much better than I expected! I quickly dusted them in some cinnamon coating and eagerly ran them over to my step dad to taste test my very first bake!

Our verdict was agreed upon almost instantly: yummy, but definitely not a muffin. They tasted more scone or biscuit than muffin, or caught somewhere in between the muffin and scone fold. Whatever the case, these muffins couldn't be pin-pointed to a specific entity, which dinged their overall taste.

All in all will I bake these again? Probably not. I don't have much experience baking muffins, but I imagine the batter is more cupcake-like than cookie-like, so I'd like to find a recipe that gives me more muffin! By the way, if you actually know what muffin batter is supposed to look like or why my batter looks so weird, please let me in on the secret!

In the end, I'm glad I made these muffins, but I probably should have walked away from this recipe at the first flag. Hindsight is 2020, though and it's only 2019! Har har ;)

I'm excited for my next bake already: croissants! See you shortly (:

P.S. Shoutout to my homegirl Alyse for fielding all of my blog questions. Check out her blog- she has ridiculously pretty pictures and a beautiful blog to boot!

0/100: Adventure is out there!

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen) — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 05:41:00 +0000

Hello!

My name is Ellen and I'm a very senior graduate student chomping at the bit to graduate. However, because bits are metal and gross and not delectable I decided late in 2018 that I needed a yummier goal in tandem. So, given the convenience of a new year, I figured a resolution would be the perfect time to start a soul-filling project. Enter: my 2019 New Year's resolution...

Bake 100 things!

That's 2 things a week! (Almost makes the year seem short, right?!) Now what are things, you may ask? Sweet, savory, unique, over-lapping. As long as it's yummy and as long as I'm learning and enjoying and perfecting my art of baking it counts toward my 100 things. I can't wait!

My hope for this blog is to share my creations, reflect on my baking and what I learned, and get back in touch with writing more often. Any cheers, recipes, or baking ideas are welcome and encouraged from you, my faithful reader!

Tomorrow my first creation will be mini cinnamon muffins! Turns out I bought cinnamon-flavored life cereal and cinnamon bread today, so I think I have cinnamon on the mind.

Here's to 100 things!

P.S. photos by me or Carlos (thank you!!) unless otherwise noted