Phila

snow, mountains, and shadows

Baking Gals Team

A few weeks ago, my friend received a letter from her nephew, Jonathan.  He was the lucky recipient of a Baking GALS Team effort that I led in December.  The letter was dated about a month earlier and I am a little late in posting this, but I did want to share it.

He wrote ". . . Thank you so much for your card and the many packages of homemade baked goods.  I was extremely confused when I first started receiving the packages; I thought I must have won some incredible confectionery sweepstakes.  It wasn't until maybe the fifth package of more than a dozen that I realized you guys had arranged this all.  Thank you so much!  I'm trying to write notes to each of the bakers but suffice it to say that the cookies were all delicious, and my marines loved them, and especially at this time of year, these sorts of gifts mean more than you can imagine. . ."

Thanks again to everyone that joined and baked with Team Caring and Sharing!

Gum Paste Flowers

Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Cake

What's baking?

February Round- Baking GALS

What's baking?
Shipped a box for Round 27 Team Baking 4 Troops today containing shortbread cookies, banana bread, cookie bark, rice krispie treats, ramen noodles, a bag of marshmallows for filler, and a couple of newspapers.

Chocolate cake with not much in it!

What's baking?
Chocolate cake - no dairy, no eggs.

Lambeth Method

Class at the Garden State Cake Show in Lambeth with Sheila Miller yesterday.  I love learning new techniques.  This one is a very old method of layering royal icing piped lines that is supposedly making a comeback!  It's quite time consuming and requires a steadier hand than I have, but I love the dimensional effect- not captured too well in the photos of my practice board.  Would like to try to translate the technique into some contemporary architectural design.

SNOW!

A few shots, taken through the window, from after last weeks storm - another on it's way.  Enough already! 

 

Muffins

What's baking? 
Banana crumb, apple, apricot almond muffins.  The Vermont Maple Apple Muffin recipe is from Susan Purdy's cookbook Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too.  They were good, but did the maple flavor is not noticeable.  Click on name for link to other recipes.  I used King Arthur cinnamon chips for topping on banana muffins instead of the crumbs in the recipe.  They taste good and are very convenient, much faster than measuring and mixing for crumbs.  The only change to the Apricot Muffins was to add a package of almond paste- yum!

Orange Almond Cake

What's baking?

I was planning to bake a cake to bring to a brunch.  First instinct is something with chocolate, but when I looked in the fridge I saw a large bag of almonds and a shelf full of these delicious, juicy Honey Bell oranges from Florida.  I found two very similar recipes.  One for an Orange and Almond Cake by Claudia Roden and one for Clementine Cake by Negella Lawson.  I was intrigued by the simplicity of the recipes and that they both called for boiling whole oranges, then grinding the whole cooked orange up and mixing in. I had to try it.  I made some orange curd and an orange glaze to go on top.  Friends said it was good (don't know if they'd tell me otherwise!)- moist and light.  I didn't tell them that the whole orange- peel and all- was in it!

Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Walnut Blondies

What's baking? 

I had butterscotch chips, mini chocolate chips and walnuts in the cabinet and wanted to bake something sweet.  I adapted Mark Bittman's Butterscotch Brownie recipe in his cookbook How to Cook Everything. This is one of my favorite cookbooks for straight-forward, adaptable, how-to-do-it recipes and this one is no exception. It's a simple one bowl recipe and came out great with what I had on hand. The mini chocolate chips just melted in and the walnuts added a little crunch to the otherwise fudgy consistency.

Cake Decorating Classes

Have you always wanted to learn how to ice a cake smooth, frost cupcakes or add some flowers? Classes start Tuesday, sign up at store, bring a friend! Go to Susan's Cake Decorating Class for schedule. 

Baking Gals Team

Last month Team Caring & Sharing baked and shipped 14 boxes to Jon, my friends nephew serving in Afghanistan. Another team member also heard from him "...My note was fairly similar to the one you posted. The battalion favorite from my bunch were

News from Afghanistan- cookies made it to Jon for the holidays!

Happy New Year! I wanted to thank everyone again who participated in Baking GALS this past year and am looking forward to more baking in 2011! We do not always hear from the troops after we ship cookies, but it is great when we do find out that boxes made it to them! What a nice way to start the new

Dessert Trays

What's baking? Lemon squares just dusted with powdered sugar.  Carrot cake rounds with sweet pecan cream and cream cheese frosting.  Mini cheesecakes - plain, strawberry and chocolate.  Walnut cups - plain or drizzled with chocolate.  Chocolate mocha and shortbread cookies.

One More Shipment from Team Caring & Sharing

Brooke, from East Greenbush, NY, mailed a box containing:

Chewy peanut butter cookies

Chocolate cookies with peanuts and M&Ms

Lemon and strawberry sugar cookies

Some Christmas candy

Kraft Easy Mac

 

Thank you for being part of Baking GALS Team Caring and Sharing!

3 Boxes Shipped

Thanks to some great friends in the area, I filled three boxes and brought them to the post office today (not the best day to do that-it was quite crowded!). They weighed a total of 27 pounds and were filled with banana and pumpkin breads, brownies, raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookie bars,

Cooling Rack

First time using new rack for cooling trays of cookies.  Worked great for this batch of mini choc chip shortbread cookies and it folds flat for storage!

A lot of Baking this Weekend!

As I was in the midst of baking, the heating element of my oven caught fire and burned out, but I heard good news from other team mates! 
Anu from Idaho shipped about 5 dozen M&M cookies, 1 card, 12 granola bars, 1 bag chex mix and Alicia from Washington state got 3 boxes in the mail full of cookies, candy, drink mixes, licorice, sunflower seeds, puzzle books, jerky, and a Christmas card. Team Caring and Sharing - you're doing a great job! Thank you.

More Cookies to Troops!

Andrea from Oregon emailed me to say, "We sent Jonathan sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cookies, rainbow cookies, blistex, batteries, tictacs, a puzzle book, and some candy.  We are from Oregon, so it was fun having a "local" soldier to ship to!"

Another Baking GALS Box Shipped

Thank you to Brenda from Berrien Springs, MI who shipped a package that included two dozen date cookies, two dozen molasses cookies and one dozen buckeyes...and a Christmas ornament.

2 More boxes to Troops in Afghanistan from Baking GALS Team Caring & Sharing

Yesterday, Linda , from Hershey, PA, shipped two boxes. Both contained about 8 to 10 dozen homemade cookies- a mix of M&M

Baking GALS - another box to be shipped

Thank you Cara in NJ - it sounds like a great package to receive! 
She baked and packed:

Marshmallow popcorn red and green balls

Triple Chocolate brownies cookies

Sugar cookies sandwiches filled with caramel and walnut

All white chocolate chip cookies

Regular choc chip cookies

Cocoa cookie with peanut butter and chocolate chips

along with a little letter

Cheesecake

What's baking?
Another fall theme cheesecake.  Base recipe is Never-Fail Cheesecake from Epicurious with chocolate sandwich cookie crust and chocolate ganache topping.  Leaves are hand-made from gum paste (I like the sheen from brushing with pearl dust!).

Baking GALS - notification of 1st package sent - yay!

Harmonie in Braintree, MA sent an email today saying she had shipped a package to Jon from Team Caring and Sharing! It contained

Baking GALS - Jon likes Cowboy and Carrot Cookies!

What's baking?

So for 'Team Caring and Sharing' Jon's family said that Cowboy Cookies and Carrot Cookies are two of his favorites. I had never heard of either! Carrot cake - yes, just made one last week, but to make it into a cookie? Ok, so I found a few recipes on-line, but most are sandwich

Baking GALS, round 26, ship dates

Baking GALS ship dates for this round is anytime between Dec 1-18. That starts tomorrow! Not to worry, if you haven't signed up for Team Caring and Sharing, yet. You still can sign up during the shipping period for this extended round.  Join us in baking for Jon and sending some holiday cheer and goodies to

Recent Cakes

What's baking?

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving with family, friends and good food! Here are a couple of cakes from the past week-carrot cake and chocolate covered cheesecake. It was a busy week and I didn't get to take pictures of everything and the couple of shots I did take are not too good, but you get the idea! Please let me know if you want any recipes.