It’s been a challenge identifying forty of my favorite things. Not that I don’t have forty favorite things, just that I need to identify forty that can be enjoyed relatively close to home, many during the work week. One that was not hard at all to identify was to spend an afternoon baking with Deanne. I love our Bake Dates!
While I don’t mind having folks in my kitchen, sitting around the table while I bake, and I enjoy teaching others how to cook and bake, I am not challenged by other people baking in my kitchen. They tend to be under foot, stand exactly where I need to go and generally make me feel uncomfortable. This is not the case with Deanne. We chat and laugh and somehow manage to get some baking done.
Deanne came over, willing to dive into whatever baking project I had ready. I had five or so ideas. She was willing to try them all, even though one of them involved some sort of cake pop or cake ball, the one baking project that has eluded us on every attempt we’ve made in my gluten-free kitchen.
First we made push-up cake pops. Have y’all seen this book from Courtney Dial Whitmore? It’s amazing! I’ll tell you more about it soon at 52 Sweets, it’s very gluten-free-friendly. We de-glutened a recipe from the book and it turned out well. I’m not really sure how to gracefully eat the cake/frosting/fruit combo we layered into the push pops, but I tried a few times. Surely there’s some technique to doing this so you don’t eat a mouthful of frosting, then a mouthful of cake?
Then we decided to try my new cake pop maker. We tried to make strawberry donut holes and they turned out rubber-y enough to bounce. Not kidding. The recipe we modified called for a boxed cake mix. I used one I got for free at a Celiac conference. It was worth every penny I paid for it. 🙂 I’m excited to bake more things in the cake pop maker, just not using the cake mix I had on hand.
From our push-up cake pop project, there were cake parts and pieces plus leftover buttercream frosting. I knew the rest of our Bake Date was going to be interesting when Deanne asked, “Do you have any liquor?” She didn’t ask for a glass of wine or a cold beer, she wanted LIQUOR!
Turns out it wasn’t for drinking, she was mixing it with cake and frosting to create the best cake truffles I’ve had. Some were rolled in sugar, some dipped in chocolate and some dipped in chocolate and then rolled in pecans. Somehow our baking projects always end up involving cake balls, probably so we can giggle like twelve year olds when we say “cake balls!” I really enjoyed the ones rolled in sugar and now have a new project for leftover cake.
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