De Baking Psychopath

Welp, I'm back! The defense was March 6, and this past Thursday I finally turned in all my final documents and fees, so I am officially getting my PhD!! Woo! I did some baking in the last few weeks, recipes to follow shortly. Thank you for all your support and encouragement, and I am looking forward to my next phase of training and the resuming of baking/blogging here! Onward to doctor #2!

One of my great loves in dessert is tiramisu. I've made it a few times over the years, and this recipe has always been my go-to because it is one of the most straightforward recipes out there and it is so classical in taste. No fancy egg foam ( zabaglione), so it's just a matter of mixing the cream layer and assembling. Now I actually have never used ladyfingers to make tiramisu, mostly because it's out of my way to get the stuff, and it's usually kinda pricey and I don't know what I'd do with the leftovers. So I use pound cake. I always can find a use for extra pound cake! When I have the time, I'll make my own, but I am heartily in favor of using whatever pound cake you can get your hands on. In fact, on this occasion it had been my intent to buy pound cake; however I was foiled by Costco's assorted seasonal pound cakes (e.g. pumpkin streusel) replacing their normal plain pound cake 3-packs. So I came home and baked a pound cake from Dor...

This is the queen of boozy cakes. Three-fourths of a cup of limoncello baked into the cake, then another 1/2 cup in a soaking syrup AFTER baking...eyebrows will raise at the rapidity of limoncello consumption in your household. I am a big fan of alcohol-spiked box mix concoctions. The alcohol masks/ameliorates the box cake mix aftertaste and the texture of the box mix is just so plush and moist that it's just useless to deny that such a texture is hard to replicate with from-scratch recipes. And with the myriad of liqueurs at one's disposal, the combinations are endless. Limoncello Cake (adapted from Blog Well Done and about.com ) Ingredients : 1 box yellow cake mix (probably white or lemon cake mix will work fine too) 1 small box instant vanilla pudding mix (the four-serving size, could also use lemon flavored) 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup water 3/4 cup limoncello 4 eggs 3/4 cup brown sugar 3/4 cup butter 1/2 cup limoncello 3 tbsp lemon juice 3 tbsp lemon zes...

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...

I have no pretenses--this is a very ugly pie. I had a lot of difficulty rolling out the dough, which wouldn't stay together in one piece enough for me to do any sort of crimping. And there's the issue of the top crust collapsing a bit in the middle. But the marriage of a crazy amount of bourbon (1 cup!) and apples was downright amazing. The alcohol from the bourbon had cooked out, but the full-bodied flavor remained and gave the pie a whole extra dimension. I'd used a combination of Golden Delicious and Fuji apples, and they still maintained some structural integrity despite some cooking and an hour in the oven--excellent news for me, since I am not a fan of mushy apples in pie. It was easily the hit of the evening, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I still have a whole lot of bourbon left over from the bottle a friend left over at my house, and apple season's only just beginning...I'm thinking this pie will show up a few more times this Fall. Bourbon A...

So I have this open bottle of limoncello that's been sitting in my fridge for awhile. It's too strong to drink straight, so of course the only other way to use it up is to bake with it. Of course. I went around looking on the Internet for recipes that used the most amount of limoncello at one time, and this recipe stood out among the rest. The creator of this lovely cheesecake is a guy named Dr. Robert Jantzen (or "Dr. Bob"), a math whiz whose side passion is cooking and creating recipes that he has very comprehensively posted on an online cookbook of sorts. The cheesecake itself was creamy and smooth and tasted distinctly of lemon. I added lemon curd on top rather than the sour cream topping originally in the recipe, but that was mostly because I didn't have sour cream. The hazelnuts in the crust added toasty crunchiness that stood out and complemented the lemon flavor very well. All in all, we really enjoyed the cheesecake, especially with a little fruit s...

I'm back with a doozy! Although the circumstances for which this cake was made was unfortunate--the leaving of one of my co-workers--we more than adequately celebrated her moving on to bigger-and-better things with a meal out to a favorite lab lunch destination and this chocolate-y liqueur-soaked cake with some vanilla bean ice cream. This, my friends, is the Kahlua Cake. The moistest cake-mix-doctoring you will ever lay a fork on. Soaked with a liquored-up glaze while the cake is still warm from the oven. Then covered with a boozy dark chocolate "ganache" icing that just floods over and puddles the cake. (You might have to card guests before serving this cake. My co-workers gave me grief over serving this to a summer student in our lab because you can really taste the alcohol in the icing.) Serve with ice cream (especially vanilla bean ice cream, yum). There really is not that much more to say. Make it soon. Kahlua Cake (adapted from David W.) Ingredients : CAKE: 1 packa...

We tend to put more emphasis on our dating anniversary. To me, it's a better landmark of when our lives and destinies became bound together and seems somewhat more significant than the day we signed a piece of paper to make legal what was by then already a reality. Of course it's also that we've grown accustomed to celebrating this day, and to not do so would seem almost a denial of how significant this day is in our relationship. We're almost to double digits here (next year will be the big 10), and we went all out at home with the food to celebrate. Two gigantic ribeye steaks, a healthy portion of buttery boiled potatoes, and our favorite salad (inspired by one of our favorite local restaurants, Girasole ). The cooking can largely be attributed to Michael. The steaks were a beautiful medium-rare to medium, tender, juicy, and well-seasoned. The salad is composed of baby greens, chickpeas (canned), cherry tomatoes, sunflower seeds, Gorgonzola crumbles (not enough t...

This cake was made for a multi-purpose party: two birthdays and one graduation. There is nothing new about this cake recipe-wise. The yellow cake is taken from the spectacular Pecan Praline Bourbon Cake , and the frosting is none other than my mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting . But the combination of the two elements, along with a generous dousing of Kahlua, can only be described as synergistic: a level of deliciousness that exceeds the sum of the individual components. Layers of Kahlua-soaked cake. Cake being swaddled in a thick layer of creamy frosting. At this point I could have been finished...but it looked so plain . So I tried to do some piping, then some stencil work, both of which failed miserably and had to be wiped off. I ended up coating the top with a sprinkling of black cocoa for contrast. The taste of the cake is reminiscent of a chocolate tiramisu, so the cocoa was very appropriate as well as classy. Ready to eat! As the birthday boy would say, "N...

Pecans. Bourbon. Soft yellow cake. Light and creamy cream cheese frosting. I don't know what else to say in introduction to this cake. Other than that it was "so f***ing good!!" as commented by more than one person who ate this cake at a party for which the theme was a celebration of the American Southern culture. The only thing I could have done to make this MORE Southern was to add some peach jam or liqueur, but I had neither on hand, but in any case, the cake certainly was more than sufficiently yummy without it. The cake layers were soft and moist but sturdy enough to allow for easy manipulation when I was building the cake. The frosting I lightened up from the original recipe in two ways: 1) less powdered sugar than was called for in ratio to the cream cheese, and 2) folding in a container of Cool Whip, a tip borrowed from my mom's chocolate cream cheese frosting recipe . Although this made the frosting more prone to get oozy at room temperature, it sets up a...

We attended the 4th annual Farm to Table Conference Friday Night Food Tasting event this weekend. Set against the pretty backdrop of the city skyline, it was a festive and delicious sampling of local (mostly PA) wineries, specialty stores, farms, and personal chefs/caterers. Here's a photojournal of some of the things we tasted and saw: Little communion-sized cups for the wine sampling. I found that I tolerated and liked the dessert wines much better than regular wines, of which I have a hard time finishing even a small glass because they're too strong for me. I drank much more wine in one go than I have in years at this event. I bought a bottle of "Sweet Sensation" ( A sweet sparkling red wine. Jammy aromas with hints of dark berries entice you to taste its velvety full body and mouthwatering finish. Best served chilled.) from the Thistlethwaite Vineyards. Bonus: I must have been wearing adult-looking clothing because I did not get carded once, while a friend ...

This may be one of the ugliest Bundt cakes with icing I've seen or made, but at the same time, it is one of the tastiest-looking cakes I've seen as well. Cursed fast-drying icing!! *shakes fist at imaginary pot of icing* GRR!! You will not defeat me next time!! Happily, this cake will grace many more events in my lifetime because of how delicious it was, and so I will have more chances to make the appearance look presentable! Mid-November is a time for whiskey. Not because of some arcane cultural tradition, but because one of my classmates, who is particularly fond of the stuff, has his birthday in mid-November (celebrated belatedly in early December this year). For the last couple of years I have tried to find cake recipes in honor of the occasion, and this recipe outdid my offering for last year, I think. I started out with the Chocolate Whiskey Cake as found on My Baking Adventures and pretty much made the cake as according to the recipe verbatim. Half a cup of whisk...