Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving! 

(updates coming soon)

-B

Bread!

School has been in full swing for the last two and a half weeks and I've been crazy busy. We have made so much bread in the last two weeks that I may permanently be off bread for a good few months when we're done.
Some of the breads that I've made:
Cuban
Soft Rolls
Hard Rolls
Rosemary Semolina
Amish Pretzels
Foccacia
Challah
Baguettes
and plenty others that I cannot think of off the top of my head!

Olive Foccacia on the left and right sides. Challah in the middle (circle) and two braided in the background. Amish Pretzel is the little guy in the front

Same as above but a better view of the pretzel. He wasn't exactly pretzel looking.....!

Rosemary Semolina (made with Durum flour which is typically used to make pasta, very dense bread) bread in all different shapes! 

It's been an amazing experience so far and I can't wait to keep learning and hopefully be able to capture more pictures! :)

-B

Birthday Cake

My daughter's 5th birthday was last month and instead of buying a cake, like I've done previously, I decided to make one!
So between the two of us, we decided on a rainbow cake! We had so much fun making the cake!
I found a bunch of different variations of the recipe online and I took them all and combined them.
To make the rainbow aspect of the cake, I used GEL food coloring. The gel food coloring made the colors of the cake especially vibrant and honestly, beautiful!

I started with Duncan Hines WHITE cake mix. I only use Duncan Hines when baking cakes, unless I'm making my own batter. However, Duncan makes THE BEST pre-made cake mix. THE.BEST. Little one modeled a little and helped a little!

I split the batter into four bowls because I used four colors. If you use more colors, split the batter more. 

 We started with teal and Little one mixed it in. All of the colors came out incredibly vibrant and beautiful!

Teal! :)

                                                                                     we also had pink! 

\A little bit of purple!!!! 

And a healthy dose of orange!

After mixing up all of the batters with the different colors, I split each bowl and put half into each cake pan. I did one color on top of the other. I DID NOT mix them. If you mix them, it will come out ...well, not attractive looking. They will cook on top of each other and not blend together. 

(obviously this was a double layer cake) so, two cake pans ready to go into the oven. I followed the package directions (always a good thing) and popped those bad boys into the oven. We couldn't wait for them to come out of the oven! 

These bad boys came out of the oven and looked quite delicious and colorful! 

I frosted the cake with a whipped topping that Trader Joes makes. It's a little blue box that you stick in the fridge to get cold and then whip it up. We added a little pure vanilla extract and confectioner's sugar to it to give it some more flavor. It's not super sweet which is good because we don't like super sweet. 

To make the "5" I cut out a five from wax paper and placed it on top of the cake. Little one put the sprinkles all around the cutout and ta-da! This is how it looked when I took the "5" off!

The inside of the cake was the best part! I could not wait to cut into it and see how the rainbow worked out. 

And it was beautiful! I couldn't believe how great it came out. I was quite surprised and ridiculously happy that it came out so amazingly.

YUM! :) 

I would definitely make this cake again. It was easy to make and came out beautifully. 

On a side note, Term 1 is down, Term 2 starts in two weeks. I am done with Math and Accounting, got A's in both of them!!!! (surprised myself there). I start a baking class when Term 2 starts up and I'm excited to get started on baking. I cannot wait to see what we're going to bake this term! Hopefully I'll be able to take pictures of what all we bake and put them up here! 

Until next time,

-B

Bake!!

I started classes a month or so ago. Sadly, I'm only taking math classes for this first term. The pastry classes don't start until August and I would definitely rather get my math out of the way.

In the meantime, I've been baking a few things here and there.
I made grilled peaches today and drizzled a little bit of honey on top of them, super yummy! 

Grilled Peaches!!!!

They were quite yummy, even babygirl enjoyed them! :)

Honestly, most of my recipes come from Pinterest. I have found some amazing desserts and dinners on Pinterest! 

Like the next few:

I made a peach upside down cake a few weeks back! It was....AH-MAZ-ING. 

                                                           Beautiful!
If you want the recipe, I found it here (thank you Pinterest). It was really simple to make. The hardest part was peeling and cutting the peaches! :/ 

I made a Jello Poke cake. Momma LOVES it. I used black cherry jello and vanilla pudding, but it would be super fun to change up both the jello and the pudding flavors.  This cake is a great summer party cake, it is so light and fluffy and almost melts in your mouth! Yum. 

Jello Poke Cake! 

This blog is all about baking but I like to cook sometimes too. Baking interests me more because of the precision of it. Cooking to me can be willy-nilly sometimes with a little bit of this and a little more of that, and I'm not too great at doing all of that. Baking is easy. It's all there in front of you and I like that. 

But I did grill some sweet potatoes with a cilantro lime "rub." I didn't use three sweet potatoes, that was way too many. But I would recommend making more of the salt and lime zest "rub," I felt like there wasn't enough even for the two sweet potatoes that I used. But they sure did taste good! 

Hanging out on the grill pan.

I can't wait to bake more and start my pastry classes in August! :)

P&D

The reason behind me starting a blog called Knead For Sweets is because I found purpose and direction (P&D) in my life. 

About a month ago, I made the decision to return to school. Not to get a master's though. I decided to go back to school to be a pastry chef. I love baking! I have always wanted to open my own bakery one day and I figured that this was a good step in the right direction. 

The program is less than 18 months and once I'm done I'll be a full-fledged pastry chef! I am ridiculously excited and super ready to start the program in May!

So basically, Knead For Sweets is my way of sharing my journey with everyone. Hopefully, I'll be able to share pictures of the delicious foods I get to make while pursuing the next chapter of my life! 

Thanks for reading & I hope you guys enjoy! :)

-B