Alpha Bakers: Pepparkakors

This is a very short post and my extremely feeble attempt to participate. Highlight the word feeble because I only have one photo. I made this earlier this year while testing high altitude cookie baking for Rose's Craftsy class. I had to make during the week to be able to bake everything in the short period of time so I did not take step by step photos.

Since it was so long ago and I've only written the post today I don't remember much about it, only that the dough was easy to put together but very sticky. It requires putting the dough into the tube of paper towel and freezing it so it can hold into shape and easier to cut into later without making a mess. I am usually not a person who keeps paper towel tube around (who does!?). But having baked the ice cream cookie from Rose's Heavenly Cakes, where the dough was shaped using the tube, I have been saving the paper towel tubes. I think I have about 5 of them in a cabinet in my kitchen LOL.

Unfortunately I do not like this cookie at all because it uses a lot of molasses. As you can see from the picture it is quite brown and the brown color is because of molasses. So the cookie baking experience is really to help Rose and to participate in this bake a long because I only ate 1/2 a cookie. I tried to give it away to a few friends but none of them liked it. They are also not a big fan of molasses. So I'm sad to report that most of the cookies got thrown away.

On the positive note, I think there are no more recipe from the book that uses a lot of molasses so phew... :)

Alpha Bakers: Molasses Crumb Cakelets

If there is one recipe I am least excited about in this book, this is it. The picture looks really cute and I love the crumb topping as decoration. But a cake that is mostly made of molasses? Eww.

I made 1/2 recipe of this. I was tempted to make 1/4 but 1/2 recipe portion seem small and I want to give the recipe a chance to surprise me.

I have an old bottle of molasses from when we baked through Rose's Heavenly Cakes. They still smell like molasses and still slow like molasses. After a brief consultation with my good friend, Google, I found that molasses doesn't really go bad. Unless of course if you see dangerous things like mold or if it crystallized. Mine has no sign of either so I used it.

This cake is really easy to put together. It was super quick. The longest time spent on this cakelet was weighing each muffin pans with 17 grams of batter. This took longer than putting the batter together.

Taste-wise, it turned out worse than I expected. I don't like it. At all. It tasted like straight up molasses, which is not really surprising considering that is the name of the cake and the main ingredient. I had a very small bite from one of the cakelets and quickly swallowed it and drank something afterwards.

I am sad to say that I threw out the rest. I thought of sending it to the office with hubby but the I can't bear the thought of serving something that I can't even eat to others.

Alpha Bakers: BlueRhu Pie

Rose is slowly converting me to be a lover of all pies now. Before we started this bake-a-long, the only pie I make is her apple pies from The Pie & Pastry Bible. Now I see all kinds of pies in my future repertoire, including this one.

This is a fantastic pie. I can't taste the rhubarb in it, only blueberries so it is a bit strange why we use rhubarb. I wonder why Rose add rhubarb in this pie. Is it maybe to cut the sweetness down? I can imagine if it's all 100% blueberries it will be too sweet and perhaps I'd have to cut the sugar if I don't use rhubarb. It doesn't really matter I think because it tasted really good. When I make it next time I will use rhubarb again if it's the season. I also love that I can use frozen blueberries, since I happen to have a stash of them in my freezer for some reason.

This is kinda a short post with a lot of photos and not a lot of words. But I don't have much to say about this pie. It's awesome. Enjoy the step by step photos :).