Whip it...whip it real good

So I've started baking more. Occasionally MarleySpoon will have a dessert you can add to bake from scratch and I'll add it to the box. I've mentioned before baking isn't my thing. It requires being exact and its like chemistry. Scratch that, it is chemistry. So this past box there were allllll sorts of extras I wanted. There was a cream pie recipe that had cranberry walnut cookies that I wanted for me. There was a pumpkin French toast bake that I wanted for Hunter (I swear he loves a pumpkin spice latte more than a white girl in Starbucks in Fall, yes I know I'm a white girl who goes to Starbucks in the fall). There was a S'more cake that I thought the Natives might go nuts over (it did not contain nuts). I started with the cream pies. I can bake cookies, sorta. I almost burnt some of the cookies, even though I did exactly as the recipe said and baked them on the bottom rack. The next batch did not ended up better because I used my brain and just baked in the center of the oven like I do with damn near everything else. The cookies were a little more crunchy than I typically like, but they weren't super sweet. Everyone enjoyed them. Definitely solid 4 sweet teas (hey look that rating system might come back around y'all)

Next came the pumpkin French toast. It was an oven bake. I have an over-night French toast that I make every Christmas Eve so I can throw it in the oven Christmas morning for a hot delicious breakfast that is totally hands off. It is a Betty Crocker recipe I am happy to share with anyone because that shit be good yo. I tried to apply the same concept to Martha's pumpkin French toast. It didn't go great. I mean it was edible but the bread they sent was wrong for an over-night and it was just really squishy even though my thermometer told me the egg temp on the inside was fine. I would do it again just with French bread maybe instead of brioche rolls. The cool thing was that I did learn how to make a meringue because the topping was candied pecans which was done with a cinnamon meringue. I was pretty proud of that part to be honest. As sent it was maybe a 3 sweet teas but I think its possible to be a 4 sweet teas if made as written (prep and bake immediately) or with modifications (heartier/crusty bread).

Now this cake y'all. I was sus on this cake because I'm not a big chocolate fan. I like super dark chocolate with cherries/strawberries and/or wine and I like white chocolate truffles but I'm never going to jump for a chocolate dessert. This was totally for the boys. I start the baking process, all is going well. I bake the cake, I cool the cake, everything looks like it should. I make the icing. I learned how to make chocolate buttercream icing from scratch. I may never buy store icing again, just sayin...obviously I liked this part and I think it would be really easy to make a buttercream icing of any flavor. Put icing on cake, was good about waiting until it cooled so I didn't melt the icing, but that seems overkill because the next step was to put marshmallows on the top of the cake and broil. This was a cake that lives in the pan so I made it in a ceramic coated iron skillet I own. Looked very quaint super cute. Gatherer may have been on the phone with her mother, I popped the cake in with the marshmallows on top and set the timer for half what it said because I felt like the time seemed long and my broiler is fairly hot. Now the directions do say something like watch closely. I did not. I burned the ever loving doo out them marshmallows. As is in poked it a bit to see if there was any melty marshmallow of if I had just made charcoal. Around this time Hunter gets home. Mom is laughing, Hunter is probably trying not to laugh.

Now if the cake had been godawful, I would have thrown it out. If it had been pretty good but the marshmallows had been horrendous, I would have picked them off and just had the cake. Here's the surprising part. Everyone, myself included, has been eating this cake burnt marshmallows and all. I rolled my eyes at Native2 because the damn fool was licking the plate. Native1 confessed that the cake was the best I'd made so far, but it might be better with the marshmallows "a little less, you know, like, not so burnt". He also talks with his hands and it was definitely said with a waiving hand motion like someone saying et cetera. He looks like a tiny old man when he does it. I'd say it was a baking fail, but if we all like it...is it a fail? Definitely have no desire to make it with burnt marshmallows again but this is a solid 4 sweet teas even WITH burnt(burned? wtf knows) marshmallows. Sometimes even failures are successes.

This week I'll be attempting choux pastry because I watched too much of The Great British Bake Off