De Baking Psychopath

It's official: birthday cakes on this blog have gone 3D. I'm starting to go into unexplored waters with this inaugural cake, the suitably epic Death Star Cake. A friend's new bride threw a party in honor of his birthday, and in the early stages of planning for the party, I proposed a collaboration on the making of the cake. She proposed a Star Wars-themed cake since he loves Star Wars (like any respectable nerdy young man of our generation), and after a couple of weeks of research, we put our plan into action. The day before the party, we got together to bake two cake recipes: a yummy yellow cake in regular 9 inch round cake pans, and a chocolate whiskey cake in Wilton's Sports Ball Pan Set . The day of, we stacked and frosted the cakes with Creamy Vanilla Frosting (note: I made this frosting the night before using it and would discourage everyone from doing the same. It tends to curdle up when you defrost it, even if you whip it with a mixer again. It keeps the te...

Woo! Congrats to Mary the Librarian for surviving another pre-National Bundt Day marathon of bundts ! This is quickly becoming a tradition of epic proportions! With just seven minutes left of National Bundt Day, here is my Bundt-a-licious contribution this year! I decided to make the Pumpkin Apple Bundt Cake as featured by the blog StreamingGourmet for a department Fall luncheon tomorrow. Perfect timing. This cake seriously made my house smell amazing. Cinnamon, pumpkin, apples! I can't wait to try some tomorrow! Find the recipe here . I used Stayman Winesap apples, but any good baking apple would be good here, I suspect. More updates tomorrow on the taste! Update: This cake was SO moist and soft, I highly recommend it! The apples were soft but not mushy, and the pumpkin cake was lightly spiced and moist and just the right level of pumpkin-ness. Super yum.

The Mütter Museum. One of the most famous collections of medical artifacts, tools, oddities, and pathological specimens in the world. This was probably THE most important destination of our trip, and probably the highlight of the entire Philly trip for all of us. Jess had been waiting a year for me to get to Philly so we could together explore the horrifyingly awesome bowels of this museum. The unassuming front entrance. Unfortunately, out of respect to the human remains housed in the museum for educational purposes, photography in the museum is not allowed. We could only take pictures in the austere lobby area. Let it suffice for me to say that we saw our fair share of skulls (with all sorts of skull deformities and injuries), messed up babies preserved in formalin, conjoined twins of all sorts of orientations, tumors of all sorts, pictures of skin rashes and lesions, and endless examples of how syphilis can infect every single organ you can think of (bone, brain, liver, skin...). To ...

One of our main objectives for this trip was to eat our way through Philly. We arrived late Friday evening and had juicy, buttery burgers topped with onions and bacon and BBQ sauce at a comfortable neighborhood pub. Early the next morning we made our way to grab coffee and pastries at the famed Metropolitan Bakery. Roasted vegetable focaccia, almond croissant, chocolate croissant, vanilla bean rice pudding, and coffee from the Metropolitan Bakery. Of course we had to go say hi to the Amish at Reading Terminal Market! Fresh apple dumplings! We did not partake, but they sure looked yummy. We did go visit the sticky bun (and multiple other baked goods) stand and get some cinnamon buns: some sticky and topped with nuts and dried fruit, and some SLATHERED with cream cheese frosting! This was our Sunday morning breakfast. Our main food stop in the Reading Terminal Market was for a roast pork sandwich at DiNic's. Look at all that glorious meat! We peeked over piles of roast pork legs at t...

When we weren't playing with Cordie, we went out to explore the City of Brotherly Love. It was a crisp, gorgeous Fall weekend. Perfect for a walk-tour of the city. My friend has the awesome fortune to live and work in Center City, and we hung around Rittenhouse Square quite a bit. On Saturdays, a small but bountiful farmer's market appears along one side of the little park/gardens of Rittenhouse Square. The bakery stand looked especially yummy. We walked north and said hi to William Penn, perched on top of City Hall. We also did the touristy thing and made a trip out to the Philadelphia Museum of Art--not for the art, but for Rocky! My beloved has the same size feet as the fictional prizefighter...fortunately he is not going to subject himself to years of traumatic brain injury and get Parkinson's. (Actually, that would be an interesting final sequel to Rocky...Rocky: PD) From the Museum, you can get a really nice view of the skyline and city hall. And George Washington...

We spent last weekend with this pretty one. Her name is Cordie, short for Cordelia. Her human is one of my best friends and 3-year college roomie, who rescued her from a massive adoption drive near her home this past Fourth of July. She spends most of her time sitting on or sprawled over this little area rug. It's her safe zone and/or throne. It is pretty much the focal point of the living room. She's still pretty young and has quite a lot of energy to chase after her toys...particularly if the toy has treats hidden in them, like the hollow egg she is chasing above. She is a little bit unsure of newcomers. It took her a little bit of time to warm up to us, probably because I half-chased her around the whole weekend, trying to pick her up and flip her into a position she couldn't roll out of. It works with my Kimchi, who is equally against being picked up. But she quickly let us stroke her and brush her. By the end of the weekend I think she was quite used to the triple...

I have discovered bread pudding! For whatever reason, I always thought it would be heavy and dense and like a rock in your stomach. Then I thought about it. It's basically bread soaked in custard and baked. Sounds like baked French toast. How bad could that be? I asked an American co-worker, has he ever eaten bread pudding? What is it like? His answer ("It's moist and custardy, like French toast!") gave me the encouragement I needed to try this recipe. The source of this recipe is the same as the Jewish Honey Cake featured a few posts ago: Kathleen King (of Tate's Bake Shop) via her monthly recipe newsletter. I usually just tuck these recipes away in my "Recipes" e-mail folder, but the recipes from these past two months' e-mails demanded to be made immediately. The chilly weather recently heralded the beginning of pumpkin massacre by baking throughout kitchens all over the US. This recipe gave me a great opportunity to participate in the bloodshed an...