tartness!

yay for harvest thanksgiving! gave me reason to bake :)

i had leftover cranberries... so i decided to make cranberry almond tartlets! i could not find a 9-inch tart pan so i bought 6 4-inch tart pans. they're very cute! having a food processor makes things so much easier. i made this over the course of 3 days since there wasn't enough time. i made the crust first and supposedly it makes 12 4-inch but i only got 6. i must've done something wrong but it turned out alright...

blind baking is scary and the crust slightly shrunk, but it was fine. then i made the filling. caramel is not really my friend. the caramel seized when i added the butter and cream mixture and i heated it, but it was stuck...but most of it was still fine. i mixed it with the frozen cranberries and almonds.

then fill it in the pre-baked shells and bake! as you can see, i overfilled the filling cause there was extra...but its okay...



so overall, i think it turned out right. i liked the tartness of the cranberries against the caramel and the nice crunch from the almonds and the flakiness of the crust. a little complicated and time consuming but good!

cranberry almond tart, recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen

i love tarts. no fear of tarts anymore :)

- n

happiness in the form of cakes

i first heard pchung was going to propose to jen on wednesday and i was super super excited and super super happy and every positive feeling you can possibly feel. in my happy state i decided i just had to bake something for them. dude serious dilemma. but i finally settled on double chocolate cake from smitten kitchen. i've wanted to bake a cake for a long long time, but was always way too lazy. but since this was super super special, i had to do it.

i spent three days on this cake because i didn't have 5 + hours to spare in a single day. friday afternoon i did the raspberry filling. my bad at not documenting each step but again i was lazy. it was really easy. food processors=easier life. straining out the seeds was kinda a hassle but it was fine. i fridged it until i needed it which wasn't until two days later. i would suggest not making this first. when i took it out of the fridge to spread on the cake, it became solidified in a almost gelly consistency. i had to bring it to room temperature and mix it like crazy but it turned out fine. make this the day of, it'll probably be better.

the next day i made the cake. it was easy, except my pans were different sizes and i had SO MUCH batter that i used three cake pans. and it finished baking in like 40 minutes. good thing i checked cause it smelled done. its good to make this the day before since you need to wait for it to cool down.

sunday morning, i made the frosting and halved the recipe. it was surprisingly easy. i cooled it in an ice bath and assembled the cake. i had to shave off the volcano like dome to make t it looked really really ugly so i decorated it was raspberries. the frosting got hard so the raspberries wouldn't stick so i used a dab of icing as glue.

yay! i actually didn't get to see it eaten but i did eat the scrapes and it tasted pretty good. :) it wasn't as hard as i expected! its very do-able and a good recipe!
happily engaged :) and no, not cause of the cake (stolen picture from jen)

okayy, so there was another cake i made for melody and jr's birthday! i was super excited for their birthday too cause they're super cool and awesome! i decided to bake cranberry vanilla coffeecake since i found fresh cranberries! it was cranberry season! i love surprises :)

the ugliness because i ran out of powdered sugar. it looks diseased...

ahh, much better!

the recipe calls for vanilla bean which is i did not have because i am cheap. so i added vanilla extract to the cranberry mixture and the cake itself. i'm sure it would taste much more delicious with the vanilla sugar. a very do-able recipe!

recipe courtesy of epicurious

- n