Believe it or not, I’ve been baking away since my last post. They’ve just all failed miserably. Most I haven’t even attempted to photograph, so they won’t see the light of day here on Semisweetie. Two I wanted to warn you all about.
This beautiful thing is a Harvest Cake. Ever since I saw the original recipe I knew it was something I wanted to photograph. The original author’s husband was diagnosed with Crohn’s, and she baked this cake especially for him and his unique diet. Interestingly, Crohn’s is so different for each person, that this cake is practically the opposite of what I can eat. I can’t have much fruit or veggies, and the carrot, zucchini and apple are all anti-Lara. But the beautiful photos convinced me to at least try to make this cake. And try I did!
There are two things about this recipe that I think may be mistakes. The first is the amount of baking soda. When we tasted the cake batter, all we could taste was baking soda. I added sugar to the batter to try to combat the taste (and aftertaste that just hangs in your mouth) of baking soda. We baked the cake, and tasted it and… still all we could taste was baking soda.
The second thing was the type of pan to use. The original author notes that you can use a regular pan OR a fluted pan. We used a regular pan, and it failed. Though I tested the cake before removing it from the oven, the entire center was still mush. Totally inedible. But – it’s gorgeous! I mean, look at that rustic cake. I could photograph it all day.
And now for my second failed baked good! We had our close friends Kelly and Natalie over last weekend, and wanted to make a bunch of gluten-free meals from scratch. This was our attempt at breakfast. Thank goodness we had some cereal and fruit on standby.
These gluten free cinnamon roll muffins were very dense. I don’t think there was enough liquid in the recipe to balance them out. The flavor of the Bob’s Red Mill garbanzo-bean based flour overwhelmed everything – maybe we just picked the wrong Bob’s Red Mill?
But thankfully, I’ve had at least one success to help break this run of failed baking attempts. I’ll post it soon!
At least for baking “failures”, they both do photograh well :)
Thanks Jenn :)