Baking Recipes Today

  

    I have a new baking toy today! It is a stainless steel turntable you put your cakes on top of it and it makes it easier to ice and decorate. Fun as can be and the bearings in it are soooo smooooth! Now this doesn't mean I will do a professional job on my decorating and icing but it will for sure improve some aspects of it for me. If nothing else it is fun!

     I was talking to a friend on the phone the other day about the holidays being all messed up. I told him I am still going to bake though! He laughed because he knows how I love to bake. He said he wasn't surprised at all about that!
     I have been having my kind of fun today. It is a dreary cloudy day acting like it wants to rain. I am so happy to finally get my kitchen put back together enough I can bake again. It isn't perfect and I don't know if it will ever be. I decided I just can't stand it anymore! I have to bake something!
   I had a Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake by Paula Deen I wanted to try. Just a plain vanilla but I'm still looking for a good recipe I can work with. A home made cake isn't the same flavor and texture as a store bought box cake. This cake was good enough but I wish it was a little more lighter and moister. Seems like I had one recently I tried as a muffin I need to go look at again and see if that is a good cake when baked that was good.
https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/basic-1-2-3-4-cake/

There was also a 7-Minute Frosting By Paula
https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/7-minute-frosting/

   I had to do this one different. I didn't have a hand mixer so I just whipped the egg whites in my big stand mixer and heated all the other stuff up enough to dissolve sugar ( Which I didn't do enough just buy a little bit) then slowly poured it over the whipped egg whites in the mixer as I mixed it. Hubby likes everything to turn to candy and although this is really sticky I told him it isn't going to dry out anytime soon! I did scoop out some of the left over an placed gobs on parchment paper on the  cookie sheet to let the oven light dry them out. I really need to get my fluffy icing swirling down better than what I did today. It was fun to play with though. LOL

Pastry Cream for Boston Cream Pie
https://thebakingpan.com/recipes/cakes/boston-cream-pie/

     Now the other recipe I wanted to make was a Boston cream pie today. I had the vanilla cake recipe I wanted to try that made 3 layers baked. So I made one single layer with 7 minute vanilla frosting for hubby and the other 2 layers I turned into a Boston cream pie.

  

    I had 3 different recipes I got to try all in one shot. The cream in the Boston cream is called a pastry cream which to me is just a really thick box pudding but this is all from scratch. The pastry cream is cooled in the fridge. The cake was done. I just had to make the chocolate ganache and put it all together when the cream cooled off.  
   There were several different recipes for the Pastry Cream but I picked this one because I could use ingredients my Alpha gal could deal with. The others had all kinds of cream and butters in it which I am sure is good but I do like to breathe so I skipped those. LOL The cream was thick enough but weird almost like a gelatin to me when I put it on the cake.
    I messed up on the chocolate ganache. It was lumpy instead of smooth when I poured it. I used coconut milk instead of cream. I was wondering if the water in the coconut milk would mess it up and it did enough to not be pretty. Next time I will just stick with margarine or butter crisco and see if that works good enough. I can still breathe if I used them.
   I just don't get it about a Boston Cream Pie! It is just a plain vanilla cake with vanilla pudding in the middle and a chocolate drippy icing on top. Every one I have ever tried the only thing that saves it is the chocolate on top! The cream is just a plain no nothing cream in general even if you use all the butter and half and half or heavy cream in the world in it! Now if it was a chocolate cake with a caramel or peanut butter flavored cream and chocolate or carmel on top I could see that would taste good! Would that still be considered a Boston Cream Pie? Well another day and another kitchen mess to clean up ! LOL

Love
Ranchmama
( Oh Yes, ... hubby liked his plain cake and loved the almost marshmallow like frosting and even went back for seconds that he doesn't normally do!)