elanya

A Kids' and YA Book Fic Exchange

A friend of mine is running a fanfic exchange based on children's book and YA books. For more details head over to fic_corner on DW or fic_corner on LJ - I believe there is also a tumblr :)

I'm poking skjaere particularly here, but I'm sure there are other interested parties :)

Any children's books and YA books are eligible, including large fandoms such as Harry Potter, but go read the FAQ for details :)

I am house sitting again this summer, which I believe I have mentioned in a previous post.

The house where I'm staying has a lot of baking things, which I am encouraged to take advantage of. They also have a really nifty "toaster" oven, which is really just... a mini oven. To go with it, they have a ton of mini baking pans! Anyway, today I was inspired to bake a mini cake. I made a little photo essay of the process over here at imgur. A few notes to go with:

I halved my original cake recipe, and since there is no shortening here that I can find, used butter instead, and added a splash of oil as well to help compensate. I also used powdered eggs, which I am dubious about because I am low on real eggs (one left!). But they seem to work out fine, at least in baking. I dunno if I'd want to make an omelet with 'em, but apparently you can.

The cake took a lot longer to bake than I was expecting - about 25-30 min per round. I didn't really have enough icing sugar, so my icing was running and didn't really cover as much as I'd wanted. I also had to make extra cherries for the filling, so in those shots of cherries cooking down if there are obvious discrepancies it is because they are from different batches ;) The first round stuck to the pan a bit (sadface!) but I think that si because I didn't let it cool long enough before getting it out. The second one was fine. There was some discrepancy between the round sizes as well - since I only had the one pan, I did them sequentially, and underestimated what half the batter was the first time around.

I wound up making cream cheese frosting because I had cream cheese, and want to save the rest of my butter for other baking endeavours. Plus I didn't really see how chocolate + cherry + cream cheese could be bad. I haven't actually cracked in to it yet - I am trying to be good, and I figured I'd have dinner first...

I'll add a pic to the photo album once I do :)

Oh yes - I also made a delicious beer bread the other that that turned out *really* well and didn't need any kneading. It is a yeast bread, so needs a while to rise, but honestly the kneading is the part of bread that kills me. I wish the kitchen-aid here had a dough hook!