The Baking Medic

Wow. 2011 gone already. I once heard that time seems to more quickly as you age. Each year that passes by is a smaller fraction of your life. When you’re four years old, a year is a quarter of your existence! By now, as I edge further into my twenties, I find myself thinking ‘Really? Today is Dec 31? It’s that time of year already?’.

This past year was a busy year for me. I continue to live up to my title ‘The Baking Medic’, trying to bake every week if I can. Despite my best efforts, not everything that I bake is shared on this blog. Sometimes there is just no time to take a good photograph before it is all gobbled up!

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I first saw this recipe last summer, whilst perusing my favourite baking blogs for other summery treats.  This ice cream recipe immediately caught my eye. It’s only uses two ingredients and requires NO ice cream maker! ‘How is this possible?’ I hear you cry (well maybe you didn’t, but that’s certainly what I shouted). The answer is that it uses two of the best ingredients in the world: condensed milk and whipped cream.

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This cake is a victory cake. Victory in the sense that I have triumphed over my MSA and I am enjoying a few days of well earned freedom (relatively speaking…). This cake is very special to me. I have wanted to make it for a very long time, ever since I saw it on I Am Baker, a simply breathtaking blog that mostly is dedicated to cakes.  It’s so simple, yet eye catching.  I can see it being perfect for a summer celebration or wedding anniversary, yet the snowy white of the roses also remind me of Christmas. However, it has just never been the right time to bake this magnificent cake – until now.

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Canada's best Carrot Cake... dressed as a pumpking!

Well, hello there! It’s been a wee while, but fear not. The baking medic as still been hard at work! So while today I will be only posting about one recipe, I’ll give you a sneak peak at a few of the things I’ve made in the fast few months.

The recipe today is “Canada’s Best” Carrot Cake. Now, that seems like a pretty extravagant claim to make, seeing as Canada is freaking HUGE (geographically speaking…did you know almost 41 UKs would fit that vast country of mine?). However the recipe came from one my much loved magazines, Canadian Living.  This magazine has a lot of memories for me; my mum was always subscribed to it and I remember flicking through the pages at the back, marveling at the beautiful pictures of… food. Even as a kid I had a bit of a one track mind.

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Cupcakes appeal to me for a variety of reasons — they are petite individual desserts, don’t require a plate and fork to eat, have a high icing to cake ratio and there is almost an infinite number of ways to decorate the wee things.  From a simple smear of buttercream, to elegantly piped designs, to cupcakes that look like Cookie Monster to these darling Hamburger cupcakes.  With such scope for innovation and creativity, it’s no wonder that cupcakes are so popular.

I wish I could say I thought up the idea to make these ingenious cupcakes — but alas, I did not.  I saw them on Bakerella and I knew immediately that I had to try them myself.  They’re the perfect edible trompe l’oeil — the round of brownie sandwiched between the two halves of cupcake and covered with the brightly coloured icing makes for a very convincing burger! If you want, you can also serve these “burgers” with sugar cookie “fries” (seriously… check out the Bakerella link.  She is incredible).

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First of the summer baking...

YES. EXAMS ARE OVER. Or at least they are for 2nd year medics.  My condolences to those of you who still are jailed at home or in the library. It’s strange that after nigh on a fortnight of revising 10 hours a day I’m almost at a loss of what to do with myself.  I feel guilty for not revising when there isn’t anything to revise anymore!
Yesterday, after celebrating with a plate of well deserved Whey Pat Nachos (if you’re from St Andrews you will understand the epic tastiness of the Whey Pat Nachos) and a pint, I decided to make Cranberry White Chocolate Tiffin. I’d had the idea to try and make a White Chocolate Tiffin for a few weeks.  However, the last 2 weeks have seen me locked in my room with no hope of baking.

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My favourite way to eat oatmeal cookies is studded with chocolate covered raisins. I love the sweet fruitiness of the raisins, but I’m also a hardened chocoholic. Basically, if you want the best of both worlds then you’ll certainly find them in this Oatmeal Chocolate Covered Raisin Cookies recipe.

They have a deliciously chewy texture and buttery taste.  They’re also packed full of oats and chocolate covered raisins. The recipe originally called for 1 cup/2oog of raisins, but me being me, I decided to double the amount. :)  The result is some cookies that are more chocolate covered raisins than cookie! To me, that is perfect, but you may want to reduce the amount a wee bit if that’s not to your liking.

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These muffins are the first variation on the muffin recipe that I posted earlier this week, the Pear & White Chocolate Chip Muffins.  The recipe once again uses oil instead of butter, comes together so quickly and gives you delicious muffins with generous muffintop (the best part!).

These muffins are Jaffa Muffins! If you don’t know what Jaffa cakes are, you’re missing out.  They’re a UK cookie/cake covered with a layer of orange jelly and topped off by a coating of chocolate.  Whether or not they’re a cake or a biscuit is a source of great debate, but these are without a doubt muffins. :)

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Pear + White Chocolate = Delicious Muffins

It’s the Easter break here in St Andrews and most students are off cavorting away somewhere on the Continent. Alas, for medics, the 2 week break finds us at home or still in the Bubble looking longingly outside as we get our first days of spring.  Such is the lot of people who have midterms the first day back from the “break”.

But I still found some time to make these muffins.  A few months back, I made a Glazed Pear & White Chocolate Bundt cake.  I loved the combination of pear and white chocolate, two soft sweet complementary flavours.  So this past weekend, I was running low on a few ingredients and was looking for a recipe to use up a couple of pears that I had sitting around.  See I was butter-less, which pretty much rules out 75% of cake and cookie recipes.  So I decided to go looking for a muffin recipe and I found a great basic buttermilk muffin recipe.  The recipe originally called for berries, but I substituted the same volume of chopped up pear and white chocolate chips.

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macaroons!

People sometimes get confused when I talk about macaroons.  They come in all different shapes and sizes, some chocolate coated others pure coconut.  It’s even easy to confuse macaroons, the sweet soft coconut confection, with macarons, the French confection made with eggwhite, icing sugar, and ground almonds.  Macarons come in a rainbow of colours and flavours, vs macaroons are mostly coconut with a hint of almond extract. Wikipedia tells me that the Australians like to hide a dab of jam in the centre of their macaroons prior to cooking.  What a delicious surprise!

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