In one fell swoop I managed to squeak in 2 more 30 before 30 goals before 2012 was over! Last Friday I had a baking day with my lovely cousin Candace and Aunt Chris and we made soufflés and a layer cake to boot! That means that #8 – Make a cake with more than one layer from scratch, and #17 – Bake a successful soufflé are DONE! Not only that, they were both gluten and dairy free.
Yes, we’ve been told that we look like sisters and yes, we ham it up for the camera on a regular basis! We had a delightful Friday with dessert for both lunch and dinner. We baked in Candace’s kitchen but I brought my mixer along to make things easier. Aunt Chris tried stealing my mixer since she coincidentally has a few other Kitchenaid appliances in black and my mixer looked REALLY good on her counter…nice try Auntie, better luck next time!
We started with the Pumpkin Gingerbread layer cake using this recipe from Oh She Glows. We doubled the recipe to ensure enough batter for 2 layers and used fresh sweet potato puree instead of canned pumpkin. The batter was quite thick considering its original intended form was a loaf and the result when baked as a cake was quite crumbly near the edges but still so tasty, and moist in the center!
Oh the FLAVOR that was in this cake! A perfect combination of pumpkin and gingerbread. This is definitely a delicious seasonal cake perfect for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Next up we tackled the soufflés using this recipe from Yummly, which I was REALLY nervous about considering how finicky I’ve heard they can be. So we started out by putting on our mad scientist faces thinking we could science them into submission.
Contrary to the above picture, you actually have to be quite gentle when baking soufflés. There’s lots of frothing and folding involved, rather than beating and mixing. So we put down our mad scientist silly faces and used our gentlest of voices and hands instead. We even tip toed around the kitchen once they were in the oven and banned their pup Riley (whom I affectionately call Prince Saheeb) from running through the house barking – you can’t be too cautious when it comes to soufflé!
Watching soufflés rise in the oven is nothing short of amazing. Just don’t breath too heavy and deflate them!
All in all, I was very happy with my first attempt at both of these and I consider them both a success! Thanks to the lovely Chris and Candace for a wonderful day in the kitchen making treats from scratch!
//all photos taken by my Aunt Chris
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