Esculent

In the past while I've dabbled in a bit of baking, mostly as a way to kill time. None of them are really all that impressive, but for things I just made for the first time they turned out pretty good. Luckily, they were all at least edible, some were even delicious! Most of them came from the same dessert cookbook so there are a lot of 'chocolate' recipes, not too much variety.

Chocolate Almond Cheesecake
The first cake I ever baked, it was actually pretty simple to make. Unfortunately since I didn't know the nuances of cheesecake-making, the cake came out of the oven looking wonderful but as it cooled it developed a humongous gaping hole across the middle. My sister then decorated over said crack using the almond whipped cream. It tasted good, in the end.

Neapolitan Cheesecake
This one was a bit of a failure. Although it tasted ok in the end, it was supposed to have three distinct layers on top of the crust. The bottom pink strawberry layer failed because I didn't drain enough water from the strawberries and the puree was too watery. This caused some of the layer to leak out of the pan when it was baking. The crust was also much too hard due to the recipe calling for the use of cocoa. If I ever attempt this again I'll use a crust from another cheesecake recipe.

Chocolate Amaretto Cheesecake
This one is my favourite of the cheesecakes I've made. It tasted the best and was probably the most easy to make due to the fact that it doesn't involve baking. It uses gelatin so after you blend everything together you simply let it set in the fridge. I hijacked the almond whipped cream from the Chocolate Almond Cheesecake recipe. Since I didn't have a pastry bag of any sort, I just dabbed the cream over the cake. It might've looked a bit neater if I had piped it instead.

Choco-Almond Fluff
The recipe for this one was really short, but strangely involved a lot more effort and surveilance than I expected. Admittedly it was supposed to be a Choco-Orange Fluff, but I couldn't be pressed to spend $5 on a tiny bottle of orange extract which I would probably never use again. I just used the almond extract we already had from making the previous cheesecakes. Not much variety to be had, but again it tasted ok, and was indeed fluffy.

Collector's Cocoa Cake
I decided to move on to a cake that was not a cheesecake! And luckily it still turned out ok, none of the sticking-to-the-pan problems I've heard of. There were two choices of frosting you could make in the recipe, this one being a 'buttercream frosting'. I was afraid the frosting would be too sweet but it was fine, and the cake ended up being pretty tasty. The cake didn't seem as fluffy as other cakes, but it might have been because the recipe called for baking soda instead of baking powder.

And here's a close-up on the frosting. Yum...

The cake slice reveals how the cake layers weren't very flat, but it definitely turned out better than I was expecting.

Cupcake Bouquet
My sister did most of the work for this one, as a Mother's Day gift. I just assisted with making the cupcakes. She then arranged it into a bouquet and hand-painted the pot. Turned out looking really charming. The cupcake frosting was actually pumped out via a Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner, again citing the lack of a pastry bag.

Ham and Spinach Quiche
This is not a dessert, but a quiche. Again, rather simple to make, with all the work coming from the prep where you have to cut up the ingredients. The recipe originally called for celery and onion only, but I found the celery didn't flow with the texture of the quiche so the next time I replaced it with mushrooms, and added ham and bacon too. If I ever feel particularly adventurous, maybe a homemade pie crust next time...?

Other undertakings included a pasta pie, chili con carne, and gazpacho.