Why hello there! I’ve spent the last few days baking. No, I haven’t been out baking in the sunshine; although it is a balmy 40 degrees Fahrenheit in Colorado. Instead, I’ve been taking advantage of my home’s superior kitchen to concoct all the baked goods I wanted to make (but couldn’t) while I was abroad.
And it all started (as it usually does) with fruitcake. This was actually the same fruitcake I made last year on Caltech campus, only with a few special twists this year for our family’s annual holiday brunch. Every year my godparents (yes, the same ones that were in Ireland with me!!!) and my family go out for brunch. This year, however, my grandmother is staying with my family, so we decided to have brunch at our house instead. My brother was preparing the main, and I the dessert.
The adventure of the day was candying my own fruit for the fruitcake. Funny enough, there isn’t a store that sells candied orange/lemon peel at this time of year. And I candied my own Yuzu lemon to go along with it! (it was a substitute for citron). Beyond that, the fruitcake was pretty straightforward. I messed around a bit and made a caramel sauce as well as some caramel art to class it up a bit, and there ya go! Instant dessert!
Next up was a red velvet cake. I’m not going to speak about this one too much. It was red. It was velvety. It contained 3 cans of beets. Yes. Beets. I know. I didn’t choose the recipe... It had a nice cream cheese/mascarpone/whipped cream frosting though!
Finally, I baked cupcakes. A now annual tradition, my brother issued me a challenge. This year the theme was to make cupcakes that were lighter than air. My design: an angel food cake cupcake with a lychee-strawberry filling, and a dragon fruit buttercream. The buttercream gave me some issues – I started out by making an Italian meringue buttercream, which relies on double boiling some eggs and whipping it all together, but when I added the dragon fruit my buttercream curdled! A sad time, I know. Luckily though, I had just enough time and ingredients to whip up a traditional buttercream. Traditional buttercream is heavier, but still delicious, so no complaints from me or my family. Plus, it looked beautiful too, a nice end to my baking adventures. Maybe there’ll be some Asian cooking in store for next week.
Bake it till you make it,
--Chandrew
