I do love a good homemade buttercream.

As all two of our readers know, I gave up gluten for Passover (just run with me here) and have done my best to continue since then.  I used to bake something about once per week, but now that I've given up conventional flour, baking is hard. We had an unsuccessful attempt at making homemade pasta--mostly because the gluten free flour I bought tasted positively terrible. I still had a couple cups left, so last night (Friday, yeah, I know) I tried out a recipe for sugar cookie bars from my current favorite food blog.

The flour, I am happy to say, was not as bad in the cookies as it was in the pasta. I took my chances by not adding xanthan gum (since...I don't have any), but everything turned out well. The generous helping of buttercream on top covers up any lingering weird flavors from the flour.

They're not beautiful, but they're the tastiest* gluten free cookie bars I've ever made!

*and only

:)

Secret Ingredient Bake-off

I skipped out on the middle of my public health class, but have to go back for the end. I’m currently sitting on the floor outside the classroom waiting for a break in the lecture so I can sneak back in. While I wait, a story!

Senior year of college, fall semester. The residence hall NW and I lived in hosted a secret-ingredient competition that involved baking. We entered, and drew the ingredient…cream cheese. Both of us hate cream cheese in our desserts, so we were disappointed, to say the least. We only had two hours to come up with the final product, so we quickly scoured the web for something to pull together with our unfavorable ingredient. We came across a recipe for pate a choux, passed over it, and tried to find something else. I mean, French pastry? For the first time, in a competition? It couldn’t turn out well. We almost decided on cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing, but at the last minute decided to go all out with the pate a choux.

We sifted, we mixed, we piped, we flattened out the peaks in the dough with our fingers, we baked…and the dough rose beautifully. There was a gorgeous cavern in the middle of the dough for us to fill with cream cheese pudding that we made. We put the pudding in a Ziploc bag and squeezed it into the dough. We melted chocolate and cream to make a ganache. We threw together a raspberry coulis. We added fresh berries to the plate. And voila!

In the end, we got second place (and never received the Shaws gift card we were promised!) due to having boring plating. The winners made some delicious apple cupcakes with really cute decorations made of caramel pieces, but we still think ours tasted better and took more skill to make. Hopefully we’ll have more competitions like that in the future. Maybe…a throwdown?!

Cupcakes, Cupcakes and Last Day of Labor and Delivery

Last day of Labor and Delivery, yes?
Yes, it's true. Last day of pushing, C-sections, and second old infants. It's sad and exciting, all at the same time. In honor of this momentous moment.....CUPCAKES, in baby colours (and yes, that colours with a u because it's correct), or more like pastel colours because I never know how much gel food colouring to put in. Devil's food, buttercream, and an array of the rainbow. I would like to thank my lovely roommate white bread for the artistic contribution and photography. Let's hope those nurses enjoy my hard work, or the work I did to avoid school work. Let's just say that baking provides a solstice from real life. For those few moments that I get to whisk, pour and decorate, my mind is blank and I think of nothing. I really enjoy that these days. Let's hope more of those times will come soon.
Baby Green, Baby Blue, Baby Pink and Baby Yellow, come into the world and eat a cupcake....it's delicious.
Nomad Wannabe

You got me.

Alright, I've been roped in. Nomad Wannabe was stretching the truth a little when she said she convinced her roommates to blog with her. When I arrived home after 10 hours at the SON, I was informed the blog had already been started and that I would be writing. So, let me fill you in on the story.

NW (can I call you that? Too late.) and I went to college together. For the first three years, we only really saw each other on the weekends--but that never stopped us from baking. I just rifled through the 13,457 photos on my computer and found a ton of us cooking, eating, or playing with our food. We're terribly amateur, as you will see by our cake decorating skills and lumpy creations. However, we love to experiment and hope to put our nursing degrees to good use one day by opening a bakery. NW is going to be the recipe inventor and I am the designated taste tester. While we wait for investors, we will continue fill our friends' homes with delicious baked goodies and sauteed deliciousness.

And here his a gratuitous picture of a cake shaped like a UPS airplane whale circa 2007.

Dreams of Fruitful Learning

First Blog Entry!
I am sitting in my living room, awaiting my roommates' return home while watching Ina bake some muffins. We decided to start a food blog, and by we, I mean I convinced my roommates that it would be a wonderful idea. As if our nursing school schedules aren't hectic enough, we now are going to add on blog homework. This blog is going to be our side project, and hopefully a step-stone to our passion in baking and cooking. Let's move on from home thrown potlucks to the e-world. Let's publicize our flour covered counters, chocolate covered carbohydrates, and lack of baking ware to the rest of the world. We can show you that where there is true love (and I consider my love of chocolate oh so true), there is a way. Get excited. It's getting done.
The nursing students
Picture: an impromptu king cake, complete with finger painting bright colors (aka food coloring)