De Baking Psychopath

These cookies have been a long time coming. I must have printed out the recipe months ago. They're a few of my favorite things wrapped up in one cookie: orange, pecans, oatmeal cookies...sounds great, right? I finally got a good opportunity to bake them for a school event last week, and they turned out delicious! Chewy oatmeal cookies with a good orange-flavor punch, crunchy and buttery pecans, and just a touch of creamy white chocolate with every bite. However, the process was less than delightful, and actually made for an interesting self-study in my character flaws. First, I wanted to use up these quick-cooking oats that my mom had left with me when she last visited, instead of the old-fashioned oats I usually use for baking. Despite Alton Brown's prattle about how the more quick-cooking and instant the oats are correlates to how much more broken down and pre-cooked they are echoing in my brain, I thought, ah, how much difference could it make? Despite my outward nonc...

I'd heard great things about zucchini bread, how it's so moist and etc etc. But zucchini bread and myself never had the opportunity to cross paths until about a week or two ago, when a co-worker of mine brought some in to share. Light, fluffy, yet moist, and fragrant with cinnamon. Basically, think back to my ravings about Pear Bread , and minus the grittiness of the pears (a subtle yet noticeable texture). Where has zucchini bread been all my life?!! Running away from me, I bet. 'Cuz now I'm on a zucchini bread rampage. I quickly asked for and procured the recipe, went out and got a bunch of zucchinis, and now I've made the recipe twice, with my little tweaks. If you've never had zucchini bread before, just think of the moistest cinnamon-flavored quickbread you can imagine and that is just an inkling of the deliciousness that awaits you. I'm thinking about using zucchini's power to hold moisture into a quickbread to make the bran muffins I made rec...

Moist yellow cake with a Nutella swirl. Frangelico (hazelnut-flavored liqueur) soaking syrup. Chocolate-Nutella ganache. To top things off, a sprinkle of chopped toasted hazelnuts. Drooling yet? I am. Remember that exam that I recently survived? Somewhere in the middle of it all, I promised myself that once it was all over, I would bake myself a big freaking cake to celebrate. And this week, that time had come. It had to be a Bundt cake, in honor of the upcoming National Bundt Day on November 15 and fellow baking blogger Mary the Librarian's quest to spread Bundt love to the world. She made a Nutella Bundt cake that looked absolutely awesome. She'd used a yellow cake recipe and swirled some Nutella-flavored batter in for striking visual appeal. Meanwhile, I've had my eye on Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Cake , so I figured that this would be the perfect time to test-run this yellow cake recipe. I followed the recipe verbatim for the yellow cake, which is enou...

(Image from http://www.photoxels.com/tag/canon-sx20/) So it's still pretty freakin' big, but Michael's assured me he will carry and protect the camera when we go out traveling. For home purposes it doesn't matter too much. Ain't it a beauty though? And less than half the price of entry level DSLRs. It's gonna come in the mail in a few days, and then we'll do a full-out image comparison with the old Sony....

You know you're obsessed with baking/food when you wake up in the morning and spend a couple hours looking at blogs and other topics online before going to work...and then go into work and blab about such topics to everyone you think may be interested...and then come home and wake up at 7:30 AM on a Saturday to start blogging about such topics... So now it's your turn to be blabbed to: THESE ARE THE MOST AWESOME THINGS EVER! (for now) On No-Knead Bread Mix up a really sticky wet bread dough in 5 minutes, let sit on the countertop overnight (12-18 hours) or at least 1-4 days in the fridge to let the yeast rise slowly and the gluten soak up all that extra water, and when you're ready to bake, flip the dough around a bit into a ball, let it proof for half an hour, and then bake! And you're supposed to get this wonderful crisp/chewy-crusted, soft, Euro-bakery style artisan bread (if you bake it in a loaf in a heavy pan like a dutch oven). But you can adapt it to any type...

Mary the Food Librarian is baking bundt cakes galore! She is over halfway on her journey to bake 30 bundts in the 30 days leading up to National Bundt Day, November 15. Her dedication, obsession, and passion has inspired many a food blogger to take a turn at making these fun-shaped cakes. I tried the Cardamom Vanilla Pound Cake for the Halloween party in my department this week. It was delicious! The cardamom was a strong, sweet flavor that really made this moist pound cake unique. Based on my personal preferences, I think the cardamom could have been toned down just a wee bit, and the vanilla flavor ramped up a wee bit, but it was great nevertheless! I served it with a quick strawberry sauce (described in an earlier post) and whipped cream. I think the strawberry sauce really complemented the cake well, although I'm sure ice cream would have been even better!! No cake was left at the end of the day to bring home to Michael, so I'd say other people found it delicious as ...