HCB: Caramelized Pineapple Pudding Cakes

October 04, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cookbooks, Desserts, Fruit, HCB, Sweets

The first weekend of the months are the hardest for me when it comes to baking. My commitment to three baking groups makes it a bit hard, since I technically have 3 dessert to bake during the first weekend. So usually during this time one tends to fall of the to bake list. Since I had passed last weeks choice on HCB, I could not bring myself to pass on a second week. One of the other baking club is going to take a hit - the jury still out as to which.

I decided to start with HCB choice, because it was the hardest of the 3. The pudding portion had 3 pages of instructions, add 4 more if you decided to do the Brioche and you got, once more, 7 pages of instructions ahead of you. Which mean one thing - hold on to your whisk, its going to be a bumpy bake. After reading, I realized that after putting into account the waiting time between the steps, I was looking at well over 12+ hours of work for six baby cakes.

God, I thought the Apple Charlotte was hard.

GCC: Menu 1 - Baked BBQ Wings and Potato Skins with Cheddar and Bacon

October 03, 2010 by Monica in Chicken, Cookbooks, Cooking Club, Entertaining, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses

And the inaugural post for Gutsy Cooks Club has finally arrived!

A couple of months back I decided that I needed a kick in the butt with my savory cooking. I was finding myself baking more and more, but my savory cooking was taking a back seat. I needed an incentive, and thus the Gutsy Cooks Club was born. As of today, we have a total of nine Gutsy Cooks and that talent pool is awesome, I can not wait to see what we cook up.

Some have been blogging for a bit, some started their blog when they joined us, but all of us have the same goal, to cook, learn and to share our experiences. You can too, by going here and seeing the roll call and visiting each of their blogs.

The month of October menu was decided by yours truly, and I got to come clean.With over 1,000 recipes in The Illustrated Kitchen Bible Cookbook to choose from, it was HARD, very, very hard to narrow them down. So I did the next best thing. I simply closed my eyes, open a random page and picked by placing my finger in the page. Where ever it landed, that was the recipe of the week.

HCB: Apple Caramel Charlotte

September 20, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Cookbooks, Desserts, Fruit, HCB, Sweets

Disclaimer: this post is long and there is a bit of a rant. Just as long as making this cake was and reading about it.

A few months ago, I was emailing with Jenn from Knitty Baker and we were discussing those cakes that were still left to do in our HCB list and this one in particular came about in conversation. We both were totally dreading it.

With 7 pages of instructions and 7 different steps, we knew it was going to take A LOT of resilience and baking savvy to do this one. Jenn was hoping that Marie would give us this one on a long weekend so we would have more time to plan for it. I was hoping that Marie would have a total Opps-y moment and would forget about this one.

We totally jinx ourselves. Because not even a week after this whole discussion took place - there is was in the baking list, and NOT on a long weekend.

This cake, even from the start was a total Prima Donna, and not in a good way. Did you know that the word “diva” means evil in some parts of the world?