Mini Cakes



One day Emma had a friend over and we decided it would be fun to bake mini cakes!
The pictures above are the end result. Don't they look super cute?!
We didn't have a recipe. I like to experiment with ingredients and see how it turns out. I usually do a pretty good job. I know the basic ingredients for cakes and muffins. Sometimes they turn out a little flat, so I need to work on that a little. But most of the time, mom is very proud of me for how I am able to make a cake from scratch.

Emma and her friend, Drew, helped put the ingredients into the bowl. They looked so cute in their little aprons (or "baby chef" as Emma calls it). And they did a great job decorating their little cakes too.

Today, I am going to help my mom make a birthday cake for my Grandma. She is 75 today!
I will probably post pictures of that tomorrow.

What is your favorite thing to bake?

Baking bread

Today I made bread. It was easy and fun.

I even made some fun shapes out of cookie cutters like the spider below.

Here is the recipe:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

1 packet quick rise yeast
1 1/2 lbs flour
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp salt
2 tsp oil

Mix it up. Sprinkle counter with flour and start to knead the dough. Knead for about 10 minutes. Divide the dough into smaller pieces. Pull off chunks to shape into people or anything you want. Put on greased cookie sheet. Cover dough with plastic wrap and put in warm place for 30 minutes. Brush on beaten egg and decorate (if you want) with seeds or raisins. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Pancake roll

Keeping on the pancake theme, we tried a pancake roll. It didn't work very well, you can see from the cracks in the picture above.

But after slicing it, putting it on the plate with a few berries for garnish, it didn't look so bad. And it tasted really good.

Here's how I made it:

I made pancake batter and poured it into a jelly roll pan lined with parchment paper. Then, I baked it until it looked done (about 10 minutes at 350 degrees). I turned it out onto another sheet of parchment paper as soon as it was out of the oven. Spread a mixture of cream cheese, mascarpone cheese and powdered sugar over the top, and sprinkled on some walnuts. Next I rolled it up and sliced it.

I sprinkled more walnuts on top and added a few berries to make it look pretty. What do you think?