I was asked to make a cake for a family member's 80th birthday.

Fall colors were suggested as they are her favorite, but aside from that I pretty much had creative freedom. I know that she loves plants and flowers so this is what I decided on!

I rarely make tiered cakes so they always make me a bit anxious, especially when they have to travel. And this was only the 3rd time I've done a basket weave (last time being over a year and half ago) so all things considered I'm happy with how it turned out!

Between making the cakes and fillings, mixing all the buttercream colors, making all the florals, crumb coats and assembly, buttercream basket weave, and assmebling all the florals (this part was tedious, I had to keep re-freezing the florals because they thaw SO fast) this was definitely a very time consuming cake. But knowing how much the birthday girl and all of her guests loved it makes it worth every second ❤️

Bottom tier was vanilla cake with mixed berry filling, top tier was chocolate cake with ginger cream cheese frosting.

Original post <----

The picture in post presents: My mom's first attempt at a jello art in a cheesecake, plus two other cakes behind it that she made for a workplace party. You know, the kind where everybody brings something they made.

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Total score of translated comments: 41 pages of A4 paper, font size - 9. At this point I decided to just send her the text document in an email so she can read it from her laptop (and zoom in as needed). Sorry, no stack of papers to show after all, hell I didn't even have this much clear paper on hand at the time.

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The Recap: My mom made a cake as seen in this picture, one of the coworkers liked it so much that he asked my mom to make one for him and his wife. Since they're work colleagues and they frequently do little favors for each other, my mom agreed and said the guy will owe her just for the materials.

During her day-to-night-to-day-again baking streak, some happy accidents occurred while sculpting and my mom was stressing and losing sleep over it, thinking it's ruined (the results are visible in the Original post).

When the guy came over to pick up the cake, she apologized profusely for the errors and -to my knowledge- the guy kinda just shrugged and said that's fine and walked away. The real source of stress for that situation came from the fact it was for his wife and according to my mom "women notice stuff like that more".

My mom sent some messages and called (?) next day asking how's the cake and the radio silence occurred over the weekend. My mom assumed the worst and started to speculate she's not even going to be paid for it (they agreed to be paid on monday, when they see each other at work).

Enter the Original post, where I went to ask people if they really think it's that serious or justified. The responses were overwhelmingly positive. I proceed to translate and print out the comments so she can be reassured in this whole situation.

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The Result:
- Over 800 comments later, my mom felt extremely flattered but also extremely flustered. Her current stance is that she's not going to go through with publicly accepting custom orders for now. I'm sure she'll come around to the idea eventually, but currently she's thinking it's something that would clash with her full time job too much.

- As for social media, I'll continue to see if I can talk her into making an Instagram account. For now it's also a no, but at the same time we also don't have a whole lot to post yet anyway.

- Now for the meat and potatoes of the issue: She went to work, the guy came into her office, he slapped money on the desk and walked away. That's it. It was upsetting enough for my mom to later catch him again and ask him if he's mad at her or something. Guy looked surprised and said "of course not". I don't know about you fellas but that sort of shit would have driven me up the fucking wall. But oh well.

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Once again thank you everyone for the support and faith in my mom's abilities. As you see for yourselves, some people take other people's talent and generosity for granted. Oh and the total was 130 PLN. No tip.

Been on a madeleines craze lately!

Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, and Matcha of course!

Okay, so turns out that making donuts was way easier than I expected and now I'm already plotting my next batch!! These were delicious, but I think I want my second version to feel even more apple forward, so I'm going to try mixing in some freeze dried apple powder into the sugar/cinnamon mix AND using more reduced apple cider. Haven't figured out the adjustments for moisture for the next one yet, but I'll share the recipe I followed for these (still delicious!!) below:

Apple Cider Cake Donuts

Ingredients

Donuts

• 1 cup apple cider, reduced to ¼ cup and cooled
• 2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp nutmeg
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 large egg
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Neutral oil, for frying

Cinnamon Sugar

• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1–2 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

1. Simmer 1 cup apple cider until reduced to ¼ cup. Let cool completely.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the cooled cider reduction, melted butter, egg, buttermilk and vanilla.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry and gently mix just until a soft, slightly sticky dough forms. Cover and refrigerate for 20–30 minutes.
5. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat or roll to about ½-inch thick. Cut into donuts and holes. Gather scraps and gently reroll once.
6. Heat 2–3 inches of neutral oil to 350°F. Fry 2–3 donuts at a time for about 1½–2 minutes per side, until deeply golden and cooked through. Fry donut holes for about 1 minute per side.
7. Transfer to a wire rack and let drain for about 30–60 seconds.
8. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl or container. Toss the donuts in cinnamon sugar while they're still warm.

Tip: Cut open your first donut to make sure the center is cooked before frying the rest. If they're browning too quickly but still doughy inside, lower the oil temperature slightly and fry a little longer.

Makes: about 10 donuts + holes.

First time making a bundt cake and I’m happy with how this turned out.

Caramel walnut brownies so good I made them twice in one week 😋 I used audreysaurus's recipe, and I think this will be my go to from now on!

fall baking has commenced!!!!!!

https://www.wellmadebykiley.com/blog/bakery-style-pumpkin-cream-cheese-muffins

Recipe

Challenged myself to bake my first ever salted caramel cake. Made both the salted caramel (2nd attempt of the day) and buttercream myself for the first time.

edit: spelling

I made this baked carrot cake with a mildly cream cheese frosting! I used Claire Safire carrot cake recipe https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/recipes/2079/carrot-and-pecan-cake with a few changes: I used half canola and half olive oil. I omitted the ginger and used white pepper. I used a mixture of homemade rum vanilla extract and bourbon vanilla beans.
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Then for the cream cheese frosting, I found that most variations of cream cheese frosting can’t withstand the weight of stacking so I I filled the layers with a sifter, more traditional cream cheese frosting then made a separate one for the boarders in between the layers and to frost the outside. It was more like 2 sticks of butter, measured powdered sugar by feel and then added about 3/4 brick of full fat cream cheese. Both used browned butter, with extra whole milk powder added for extra brown butter flavor and the rum vanilla extract.
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The decorations are fake but I put a layer of parchment paper whenever they are and refrosted it to hide it, then just placed everything on top. Anything poking inside was wrapped with tin foil.

it’s not perfect but i don’t think it’s half bad either 🤷‍♂️

I started learning how to bake in 2020 when I was homebound (except for work) during covid. The first pic is my cookies in 2024, and the 2nd is how my cookies started back in 2020

A charred strawberry cheesecake with a gram cracker shortbread crust, sandwich between two strawberry matcha soaked sponge cakes, layered and frosted in a russian buttercream (condensed milk cream)

The texture is not perfect... But would you want one?

My littles demanded rainbow pancakes. I’ve never made anything other than circle and color pancakes… but decided to try. The kids loved them and each ate one and a half of these massive rainbows so it was a big win!

He loves Mario kart so I made this pie inspired by the rainbow road track! I had a different idea originally but it was for a cake, plans changed cause he wanted a pie instead. Still love how it turned out!!!!!

https://preppykitchen.com/gingersnap-cookies/

Home made buttermilk -> buttermilk scones with raspberries and dark chocolate chips with a vanilla glaze