Recent Bakes

Despite the fact that I may have already watched all the Great British Bake Off episodes available on Netflix, my passion for baking has not yet diminished. I have had so much fun exploring all the recipes I can find on Pinterest and attempting to make them!

Here I present to you my 2018 bakes!

My interpretation of lemon meringue pie! With colored meringue.

The next day I bought a blow torch and so decided to make lemon meringue pie AGAIN, just so I could test it out on toasting the meringue. A nice look I think :)

Since the purchase of the blow torch I've pretty much been looking for all sorts of excuses to use it, so here we have a smores tart with toasted marshmallow topping. The chocolate graham crust is filled with chocolate custard.

Tagalong pie (yes, based off of the girl scout cookie).

I made a very unsuccessful attempt at mirror glaze back in like December I think and so I had to attempt it again, and this time I felt pretty successful! You've probably seen those 'galaxy' mirror glaze cakes if you're ever on Pinterest and it is rather trendy at the moment. You use gelatin and sweetened condensed milk to help it stick to the dessert and shine.

When my best friend Shelby was in town visiting we decided to try our skills at making macarons and I was quite pleased with the result! The recipe Shelby found is amazing and seems to make full proof macarons every single time I've attempted it. I've used other macaron recipes and none of the others seemed to work out quite as well as this one.

That of course sparked a bit of a macaron obsession and I made three batches of three different flavors in one week after that. These were my favorites, raspberry lemon :)

Back in jr. high I had quite the passion for baking, I remember I used to pull out my dad's Betty Crocker cookbook and try out all the different 'fancy' recipes like biscotti and chocolate souffle. Then once I hit high school I became immersed in other hobbies and sort of forgot about it. Then of course Great British Bake Off appeared and the rest is history.

I find baking to be such a stress reliever, and it's also a fun way to challenge yourself and learn new skills and techniques. It's also a bonus for family and friends because of course they get to be the taste testers.

My goals for this year are to improve my bread baking abilities. It is always something I've felt quite intimidated by and I would love to learn to be more confident at it. Hopefully I can practice enough that by the end of 2018 Paul Hollywood will be proud.