Baking Post

Hello! Can you believe it's March already? Wow. I'm back after so many days of not blogging. It has been so long since I typed in this window. Not particularly proud of that.

1st Assessment Tests just ended today. So far, I've only gotten one paper back. It was... meh. Could've done better. :/ But on the bright side, I'm not moping around or anything like that. It didn't destroy my weekend.

I actually planned to bake this afternoon. Yes, after a week of baking depravity, my hands were just itching to grab my hand mixer and whip up some cookie dough. But, I didn't because I had to be somewhere.

Then, I thought that I would bake tomorrow. But instead I'm gonna be at Rizqun, supporting Jasmine in the Fiddle Fest (Musical Genes in Jeans, yo!) and eating cakes with Jos and Sandra. :) Can't wait!

So I have to wait until Friday when I have some free time to bake something. Up to just a few weeks ago, I thought chocolate chip cookie dough was supposed to be firm and can be cut with cookie cutters, sort of like shortbread cookie dough.

Shortbread cookie dough

Because every time I bake chocolate chip cookies, I have to add additional flour to the recipe because it was wet. So I asked Josephine about it and she told me that CCC dough isn't supposed to be dough-like, CCC dough is supposed to be kind of moist. The taste of the CCC that I made before wasn't bad but I wanted to give a go at making CCC the way it's supposed to be made. So I went online and watched so many baking instructional videos and found a lot of recipes pertaining to chocolate chip cookies.

This is how chocolate chip cookie dough is supposed to look like.

It has been my goal since I started baking to make the perfect CCCs; because I, myself, am an chocolate chip cookie aficionado. I still have yet to test out to 5 recipes that I got. If they don't measure up, then I will find more recipes. Yes, that's how enthusiastic I am about this. Never give up!!!!

Also, I have been scouring the internet, finding frosting recipes, because no cupcake is complete without frosting . Now, I have an issue with the only frosting that I use, whipped cream frosting (The frosting I used to ice Pat's cupcakes): it melts. Very fast too, so you can't leave it out at room temperature.

So I looked around and found a lot of recipes for butter cream frosting, a very common frosting that holds up pretty well at room temperature.

Butter cream frosting

I made the frosting and tasted it. It was like I was biting into sugar. It was too sweet, one bite into the frosting will have your teeth withering in pain. The average amount of sugar in butter cream frosting is about 2 and a half cups. 1 cup is very, very sweet already. Imagine two. There are also some recipes with four. D: The reason this frosting has to be very sweet is because the icing sugar is the backbone of this frosting, it is used to stabilize it and make it pipe-able and not soupy.

So after that, I found swiss meringue butter cream. It only has 1 and a quarter cups of sugar, so that's not too bad, considering that frosting is supposed to have that sweet taste. So I'm gonna try that one out and hope that it goes well. I will post pictures if it does go well. If not, then... I will keep looking for a frosting recipe that will satisfy my needs. :)

I'm really into baking right now, in case you can't tell from the paragraphs above. I can spend a whole day looking at pictures of beautiful cakes and cookies and searching for recipes and how-to videos. It give me a sense of hope when I look at the pretty deserts because if I were to master that particular technique, maybe one day my cakes and cupcakes can be that pretty too. :D The one thing that I would strive my hardest to bake is probably a mango cheesecake. I love mango cheesecakes (the one from Fleur-de-lys) and it would just be such an achievement for myself if I can successfully bake one of those. :D

Will post some pics of food that I actually baked by the end of this week. :)

Love, Audrey
(11.16 AM)

P.S. I miss my brothers. Haven't talked to them in so long. It is so quiet in the house. :(

P.P.S. I took all the pictures in this post from Google.