Welcome back for week 4 of Genius Hour! This week I decided to tackle making a cheesecake, and it didn't necessarily go to plan. I really liked the original recipe without any modifications. The filling turned out really sweet, light and fluffy, and the crust stuck together really well. When putting the cake together in the pan the crust didn't stick to the filling and the filling spread really easily. The problems occurred when I went to actually bake it. The recipe says to bake it at 450 degrees for 45 minutes, and then let it sit for 3 hours. I followed these directions exactly and it left me with a burnt outside and uncooked inside. It didn't end up tasting good at all and the filling was not the right consistency. The only thing I changed was when I was making the crust. I used a cup of melted butter instead of just a half cup. I felt like the graham crackers weren't sticking together enough. Next time I make this cake I will bake it for longer on a lower temperature and let it sit outside the oven instead of inside it.
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Welcome back to another week of Genius Hour! This week I decided to make chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate cream cheese frosting from a recipe I found online. As I did with the pound cake, this first time I followed the recipe exactly to see how I felt about the original, so I could make changes from there. The recipe calls for unsweetened cocoa powder to be put in both the cakes themselves and in the frosting. In my opinion, this made them a little more bitter than I would like. Next time I'm going to try a sweetened cocoa powder and see if I like that better. The recipe also calls for sour cream, which personally I don't like the taste of. I feel like I can really taste it through the cakes and I don't like that, but if you like sour cream I would 100% recommend keeping it in. I however, will be substituting buttermilk in for the sour cream next time I try this recipe. Those are the only things I would change about the recipe, and it's not because they compromised the dish, it's just personal preference on how they taste! The cupcakes actually turned out really well! The cakes formed perfect muffin tops and cooked all the way through. They didn't stick to the pan or fall apart when I removed them. When making the frosting I put to much heavy cream and not enough powdered sugar causing it to be more thin than I would like. It also made way more frosting than I needed, so next time I will put in more sugar than heavy cream and use less of each ingredient. Overall I'm really pleased with how this week's baking experience went! I can't wait to give it another try and use all the changes I made to see how it will turn out. Welcome back for week 2! This week I decided to give the poundcake another go. I learned from my mistakes during week 1 and got a little advice from some baking experts, making this cake much better than expected. If you remember last time I decided to follow the recipe exactly, this time I decided to change it up. Instead of margarine I used butter and instead of 1 teaspoon of vanilla and buttermilk flavoring I used 1 1/2. I think by doing this it enhanced the cakes flavor and made the crust on top crispier. Another mistake I made last time was removing the cake from the pan before it was completely cooled. This time I made extra sure it was cool by leaving in the pan for 3 hours. This might have been a little extra, but the cake didn't fall apart at all when I turned it over. My only complaint about the cake is I don't think that it was cooked all the way through. In the center of the cake it was a little more moist than the rest. Next time I will plan on giving it more in the range of a hour and a half rather than a hour and fifteen minutes. Overall I was super pleased with this weeks baking experience and I'm so excited to make a different cake next week! Stay tuned to find out which one it will be! The first week of Genius Hour is in the books! I decided to start things off by making a pound cake. I got the recipe from a church cook book that my aunt recommended (see pictures below for the recipe). As I said before I will be changing the recipe and my techniques each time, but I decided to follow the recipe exactly this time. I did this so I would have a better idea of what I wanted to change next time. This week's baking experience went pretty well, and I really liked the recipe how it is. One thing I did notice is that the cake was a little dry and crumbly. The next time I go to make this cake I'm going to try different techniques and different ingredients to try to prevent this. Another thing I did wrong was remove the cake from the pan before it was completely cooled, causing it to break apart. Other than that the cake turned out really good. It taste good and cooked all the way through! Overall this weeks baking was a success! Super excited for next week! |
Welcome!I'm Margo Deal and this is my baking website for my Genius Hour project!! Archives
May 2020
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