Back to baking

Wow, I can't believe I spent the whole Summer season not blogging! That's not to say I didn't bake at all; I baked like crazy this summer. Chocolate chip cookies, almond cake, many, many loafs of banana bread, and a successful experiment in transforming my Pumkpin Ginger Bundt into a bread loaf.

But, now that we have come to Fall (and the start of my favorite three months of the year), I feel like it is time to get back on the blog. It is my goal this Fall to experiment as much as I can with one ingredient (Almost Iron Chef style but not as intense). The ingredient of choice for this season: Pumpkin! Ah, I am so excited!

To introduce our home to the start of Fall I made what I think is my absolute favorite thing I have ever baked: Pumpkin Ginger Bundt. The desire to bake came to me late in the evening a weekend ago and so I followed my whim and whipped this up. The only issue this time was that I was still in search of a great vanilla glaze. My secondary goal this Fall was to find a vanilla glaze recipe worthy to be paired with my favorite cake and I think Martha Stewart once again came through with a winning recipe (see it here). The trick: sifting the powdered sugar. Whodda thunk?! The texture was ten times better than any other glaze recipe I have tried.

This brings me to my second trick: let the cake cool completely before adding any glaze or icing! I figure that this is a standard Baking 101 tip but I could hardly resist taking a slice once the cake was out of the oven (and I challenge anyone to resist this cake once you smell it). The glaze was not pretty but the whole thing tasted oh-so-good! I can't wait to make this again when I have time to let it completely cool.

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of Fall. Stayed tuned for my adventures with pumpkin!

Happy Baking!

Pumpkin Ginger Cupcakes... No, Bundt.

About a year ago I found a recipe on allrecipes.com for Pumpkin Ginger Cupcakes. I made the attempt at cupcakes in late 2011 but I decided to try my luck at transferring the recipe to a bundt form instead. My little adventure was a success! It has become one of my favorite things to bake. It is great for the whole fall and winter baking season. The smell is amazing and my husband is always excited when I bake this.

I have played around with different amounts of the spices and different types of glazes. Currently I use rounded measurements for all the spices and I use about half of the amount of crystalized ginger that the recipe calls for. I also love the recipe I found for the glaze. Again, it was something I found online but I of course tweaked it a little. I can't wait to try other glazes and spices to make this a really unique recipe!

I was blessed to share this week's treat with our Bible study group. In sharing my excitement for learning all things baking the conversation quickly turned to the difference between baking soda and baking powder and of course cookbooks! I now have two great cookbooks on loan and I can't wait to go through them.