Spring 2011 Baking Contest

We had another baking contest at work this spring.  I have a long history with work baking contests.  To make a long story short, I came in 2nd the first time I entered, and 5th the second time.  

Now I'm not a professional baker by any means, but I am well known for making delicious treats from time to time.  And, if you know anything about me, you know that I'm uber competitive and don't lose very well. 

So, after the failure of the last baking contest still fresh in my mind, I set out to make something spectacular this year.  I was perusing the internets when I stumbled across a recipe for Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon Filling and Meringue Frosting.  They sounded delightful.  I had found my recipe!  I also ordered beautiful black and white damask cupcake papers from ebay, and was sure these mini bundles of joy would catapult me to at least the top three.

I was tired and grumpy the night I had to bake my entry.  I didn't want to even do it, but felt that I had made a commitment and was obligated to.  So I cleaned my kitchen and began to bake.  The batter was a cinch.  My ancient Mixmaster didn't even smell like burning (like it sometimes does) as I whipped the ingredients together.  

Next was the lemon filling.  That was a little more labor intensive.  I had to mix the ingredients in a metal bowl over a boiling pot of water.  I didn't have a metal bowl, so I thought a glass bowl would suffice.  Even with the substitute bowl, it came together quite nicely.

I then spooned a little batter into each cup.  I had to make sure there was enough batter to cover the bottom, but not so much that it would rise too high and overflow.  I then carefully and so lovingly spooned the filling into each one.  After the filling was in place, I topped off each cupcake with a little more batter and put the bad boys in the oven to bake.

Up next was the meringue frosting.  This seemed daunting, but I figured I was up for the challenge.  I had to do the same bowl-over-boiling-water deal, so I washed my trusty glass bowl that had been a champ so far, and set everything up.  I carefully divided the eggs, putting the whites into the bowl.  I added the other ingredients as per the recipe and began to whip it all together when CRACK!!.  The bowl split and my beautiful meringue fell into the boiling water.  By this point I had been working on these cupcakes for over an hour.  I was even more tired and more grumpy than when I had started.  I was also suffering from an unfortunate syndrome that seems to afflict me on a monthly basis.  Feeling like all my hopes and dreams of winning the contest fell into the boiling water with the meringue, I stood in the middle of the kitchen and just started crying.

My husband heard the kerfuffle and like a knight in shining armor ran to my rescue.  He cleaned up the mess and gave me a big hug.  We then checked on the cupcakes together, and in trying to make sure the lemon filling was fully covered, I had filled some of them too full and they had overflown.  By this point I was ready to throw the whole lot out the window.  

Once they had finished baking, I pulled them out and surveyed the damage.  Only 5 were in decent shape.  

Lowen and I ate the ugly ones for our snack, and they were actually really tasty.  Although I was disappointed to see that the filling didn't remain separate from the batter, but had baked in with the cupcakes making them normal, but lemony, cupcakes.  

I brought my 5 cupcakes to work, and my mom came to the rescue and brought a jar of vanilla icing.  I iced the cupcakes, put a few curls of lemon zest on each one, and arranged them on a fun plate.  I thought it would be enough to maybe get into the middle of the pack, or maybe even come in third!

Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon "Filling" and "Meringue" Icing.
(sorry for the poor quality picture - I took it with my phone)

Once the judges had done their judging, they announced the winners.  Thankfully the guy who came in first last year with his Moist cake ("Moist" is the worst word in the English language, in my opinion) only came in second this year.  But I didn't place at all.  I snagged the judges score sheet and looked at the results.  Fourth.... nope.  Fifth.... nope.  Sixth.... Seventh.... Eighth... yep.  Eighth.  Out of eight.  Dead last.  

That's it.  I quit.  

Here's where I filed the recipe:

Mmm, caramel popcorn!

I was ironing today when I had a sudden craving for caramel popcorn.  I checked trusty allrecipes.com and found one that I had done before and was pretty simple.  The recipe calls for the caramel sauce to be made in the microwave, but last time I did it everything overflowed and made a sticky mess of the inside of my microwave.  This time I made the caramel on the stove and it worked waaaay better.  The only thing was I accidentally added 1 tsp of salt instead of 1/2, so it was a little salty.  But still, very tasty, and it satisfied my craving!

Baking Contest - The Results are in!

Drum roll please!

3rd Place - Uche's Banana Bread.... 

2nd Place - Grace's Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake.... 

1st Place - Neals's Carrot Cake.  

WHAT?!?  I didn't even make the top 3!?  I got beat by CARROT CAKE?  Who in their right mind puts vegetables in their cake?  Seriously!  And besides, it says 'moist' on top.  Moist!  Moist...  moist...  moist...  No matter how  you say it, it is the English language's worst word.  It's my personal most hated word ever.

Here are my loser cookies:

I even had a pretty name tag and laid them out so nicely on my fancy plate!  When all the points were tallied, I ended up coming in 5th place.  Down 3 spots from last year!  I do think there's something fishy going on, though.  Neal has won the past 3 baking contests, and no matter what anyone does, we can't seem to dethrone him.  It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it!

Last year I was disappointed, but now I'm just mad.  I'm going to do everything in my power to knock Neal out of 1st place.  I've already started planning, and have even ordered some special supplies from Ebay.  They should be here any day now....

Neal had better watch out, because next year I'm coming full force with both barrels blazing!

Bake-a-thon!

Yesterday was Remembrance Day, and I had the day off.  When deciding what to do with my free day, I figured it should be something fun and frivolous.  So I decided to do some baking.  A few days ago Lowen bought me a Christmas Cookies magazine, and I picked my top 5 (hopefully soon-to-be) favorites to make.

#1 - Peppermint Sandwich Cremes

I was excited to make these because I love peppermint!  Both the cookie and the cream cheese filling had peppermint extract in them, and that combined with the crushed candy canes made these little sammies extra minty!  They were fairly easy to make, just time consuming and a bit labor intensive.  They will definitely go on my favorites list!

#2  Espresso Tarts

These ones were easy to make but very labor intensive.  First I had to make the dough and form it into little cups in mini muffin tins, then I had to make the filling on the stove and fill the cups.  After baking them, I made the ganache to top them off.  I haven't tried these ones yet, but they smell delightful!  Espresso, chocolate, and cinnamon!!

#3  Lavender - Vanilla Pillows

These were quick and easy!  The dough was a basic shortbread type dough with dried lavender added.  Once the dough was made, I smooshed little balls into the bottoms of mini muffin tins and baked them and then they were done!  Super simple!  The flavor is really subtle yet delightful!

#4 Linzer Pinwheels

These little monsters were a pain in the buttocks. First of all the dough was way to dry and crumby to roll out, so I added another egg which seemed to help.  Then I rolled out the dough and slathered the jam on it and started to roll, but the jam oozed out the edges, and the rolling action squeegeed most of the jam off the dough and I was left with a puddle of jam once everything else was in place.  The rolls of jam-y dough-y mess went into the freezer for a few hours until they were hard enough to cut.  Cutting them was another pain because the jam got everywhere and bits of dough kept breaking off.  But, after baking them I tried one, and it was soooo good.  Mind you I love raspberry, and you could probably slather raspberry jam on anything and I'd eat it.  Cleo even stole one of these cookies and dragged it onto the floor, and then Lowen stepped in it and got jam all over his sock.

#5  Easy White Citrus Fudge

I ran out of energy by the time I hit this one.  Maybe tomorrow?

Baking Contest Ideas

I entered the Statoil Baking Contest last year, and was confident that I would win.  If you know anything about me, you know that I tend to throw myself into whatever I'm doing and give it my all.  I also don't lose... at least not very well.  

My plan was to make mini triple chocolate bundt cakes with chocolate ganache icing.  For the occasion, I went out and bought a mini bundt pan similar to the one on the left.  I baked the cakes a few days in advance, since they tend to taste better and are richer and more moist and dense after sitting for a few days.  Just a few minutes before the competition was to start, I drizzled them with the ganache, sprinkled them with a light dusting of icing sugar, and garnished them with Ovation sticks.  

Unfortunately I didn't think to take a good picture of them, but a coworker took one with her phone:

When I arrived at the contest location, I eyed up my competition and felt confident that mine would taste the best and look the nicest.  The judges did their judging based on presentation and taste, and then announced the results.  I was shocked when they announced that I had placed second.  Second?!?  WHAT?!?  I went in to the contest fully expecting to easily receive first and I got second.  I'm a very competitive person and I wear my emotions on my sleeve, so it took all I had to pretend be happy for the winner and not let it show how disappointed I was.  The fellow who organized the contest was the one who ended up winning, and I figure he must have bribed the judges or something.  At least that's the story I'm sticking to....

So, needless to say, my immense failure last year has made me even more intent on winning this year.  I need to go above and beyond what I did last year and make something truly spectacular.  I've already started to develop some ideas in my head and have done a bit of looking around for supplies and inspiration.

Without giving too much away, I was thinking along the lines of something like this:



What do you think?

Butterscotch Gingerbread Cookies

I wanted to bake some cookies for a party tomorrow, and thought it would be fun to make some cookies suitable to the season.  Typing in 'fall cookies' into allrecipes.com's seach field brought up over 200 cookies.  After weeding through all the different biscotti, squares, and cookies, I came up with a short list of 13, and from there picked the winner - Butterscotch Gingerbread Cookies!  I love butterscotch, and I love gingerbread, so I thought they would be the perfect mix.

The recipe was easy to follow, and I had all the ingredients in my cupboards.  The only disappointing thing was that the dough was a little crumbly.  Instead of dropping the dough by spoonful onto the cookie sheet, I balled up handfuls of the dough to make it stick together and just set the balls on the cookie sheet.

Here's how they turned out:

I will admit they are very tasty!  They're quite sweet and butterscotch-y with subtle hints of the gingerbread.  I will definitely save this recipe to my recipe box and make them again!