Meringue

In tiffany blue

Granita

So simple and refreshing

Baked Alaska

Coffee ice cream, chocolate cake, browned meringue

Crème brûlée and New York Style Cheesecake with raspberry drizzle

Panna Cotta and Soufflé

bread pudding

This time we also made Crème Anglaise to go with...

My people call it Flan

Scones and biscuits

Scones and biscuits are among my favorite bready items. A scone with a giant cup of coffee is such a special treat. I have yet to make them as wonderful (and dry) as the ones at Pannikin, but I will keep trying. These are dried cherry scones. The biscuits are rosemary and sage biscuits, best served with something hot and savory.

Quickbreads

Thank goodness for quickbreads. They are delish and quick! No need for proofing, resting, and all that other time consuming stuff. Just lightly mix and pop 'em in the oven.

Banana bread and pumpkin chocolate swirl muffins

Freedom Cake

Last year I saw a photo of a flag cake that I could not get out of my head. It appealed to me as a baker and a graphic designer (and an American darnit!). I patiently waited until Independence Day to give it a try. The results were pretty good. Visually, I could not have been more pleased. But if I make it again, I will be sure to make a cake I really like, with frosting that compliments it perfectly. The white cake I made was pretty good, thanks to the addition of almond extract. But the confectioner's sugar vanilla frosting was wayyyyy too sweet for anyone but a child.

Notes for the future: I might want to make red velvet for the red layers, and try and figure out what other flavor would go well with that.
I wanted to make buttercream frosting but could not find cream of tartar in time. I now have it in the pantry, I must make a batch to see if it would work. Another idea is cream cheese frosting.
Freezing the cake layers; I made the cake 10 days in advance, wrapped them individually in plastic, then tin foil and froze them. I moved them from freezer to refrigerator the night before assembly. Night of assembly, I set them on the counter for a little bit, made frosting, cut all the layers and assembled and frosted the cake. I kept the finished cake in the refrigerator overnight. The cake itself was very moist, and quite dense.
One more thing - I need to be sure that the cake pan fits into the cooler or vehicle that I will use to get the cake to its final destination. In this case, the goal was to bring it along on our annual camping trip to Bishop, a 4.5 hour drive away and 20 degrees warmer. Near snaffu when I attempted to shove the cake box into one of the coolers to find it was about one-half of an inch too long. Thankfully, I had a soft cooler I was able to strong-arm the cake into. Just lucky we had enough room in the car for the additional cooler!