2020 Baking Challenge

It is no secret that I love to cook but growing up baking was never my thing. However I married a man who does have a sweet tooth and over our years together I‘ve been working on my baking skills.

Over Christmas break I came across an article in Southern Living about twelve cakes to cook this coming year. I thought that this would be a good challenge for me. So I have decided to bake each cake they recommend for each month of the year. So far I have completed January and February.

Back in January I had my momma and sister and my second mom and sister by friendship in for the MLK weekend. Now my sister also has a sweet tooth and the first cake of the year was not only a win with my husband but it was for my sister as well. It was a chocolate fudge cake with a chocolate ganache and caramel buttercream icing. It was delicious but my presentation needs a bit of work.

There were a couple of challenges for me with this cake. The first was the caramel for the icing. I have never made caramel from scratch and let’s just say when the recipe says sauce pan it means it. I initially used a deeper pan and ended up making the equivalent of rock candy. Second attempt was much better and it ended up being so good, when added to the buttercream. Second problem is the size of the cake didn’t quite fit my cake plate so I had to trim. Good thing you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, or you would have missed out on this cake.

February‘s cake is red velvet cake pops. Abbie loves cake pops so I thought this would be a fun activity to do with her. But this was not for the faint of heart. This recipe involves a little trial and error. I didn’t roll my balls small enough so I had to split them up and re-roll. Also the candy I used to decorate was a bit messy. Fortunately though the girls really listen and we didn’t make too much of a mess.

February is also a month full of celebrations for us. The first is my mother-in-laws birthday. I asked my husband what kind of dessert she liked and he said pie. So I started looking and found some chocolate pie recipes that looked good. He picked out the one he liked and so I made my first ever chocolate pie. Ken and my mother in law loved it. I’m not a big pie person so I will take their word for it. Here is the recipe if you are looking for a good chocolate pie.

Another fun celebration in our family is Mardi Gras. I did a post last year detailing my homemade Jambalaya so if you are looking for something to make this year look it up. One of the staples to Mardi Gras is King Cake. Most grocery stores in the south carry them this time of year and we have traditionally bought ours. This year Abbie and I wanted to make our own. So we found this recipe for homemade King Cake. It was also nice that this year Mardi Gras fell around my dad’s birthday so we could take our cake and share it with our family when we got together to celebrate him.

The recipe I found for the cake is from Pinterest. It was adapted from an article in the Times-Picayune Newspaper. The recipe was really easy to follow. The hardest part about this one was waiting on the dough to rise. We were excited to make it. But we didn’t like waiting. It was super yummy and would go great with a nice cup of coffee. The recipe was posted on Girl Raised In The South. Here is the link to a super easy King Cake.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about some of my baking adventures thus far. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the year.