Hi bakebakebakers! happy new year! <3

I want your help! I'm looking for a chocolate muffin recipe! well.. I mean, three recipes: chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate chips muffins!

I need your very best recipes! please! ;D

Does anyone have a good recipe for a fat free (or very low fat) lower calorie basic sandwich yeast bread recipe? Thanks!

Hello all! I'm a long time reader, first time question asker, hopefully soon to be poster. My mom's birthday is coming up this weekend and would like me to make inside-out coffee cake muffins like my grandma used to make. Unfortunately, my grandma did not write the recipe down and is not around to ask anymore. So, after some internet searching and library combing I have not really come up with anything and thought this might be a good place to ask if anyone has a recipe or has a better "baker's-mind" to go about making this!

Thank you(s) in advance!

Hehe. I'm a little late in posting this because Christmas was a little while back. But...gingerbread!



( Enjoy (: )

If you're interested in the gingerbread recipe I used, just ask ^^

After christmas we had a TON of leftover turkey and I used the last of it up recently while making this awesome pot pie. I think it's the perfect comfort food.

( Pictures under the cut )

I did this last year and the year before that here at blackcigarette, so why not this year aswell?
This is what I've been up to in 2009.


( so many pictures you can't even believe it. )

hello, you wealth of helpful and resourceful bakers, you.
i just started a job (i really mean like just a few days ago) as a baker for an all natural cafe. the owner is a nutritionist so her part of the job is to tell me what she wants and i'm to figure out how to do it. we're going to be baking to accommodate some food allergies, vegans, diabetics, and i'm starting out with gluten free muffins and using spelt flour. i have never ever baked with any gluten free flour! and though it's a lovely environment where they understand that and let me experiment, i could use a little help. are there any tips or crucial knowledge that i should have about making gluten free baked goods?
a little more importantly, and separately, does anyone have any tips on baking with spelt flour? in addition to the gf baking, we're also making muffins with spelt flour instead of regular wheat flour. i am not trying to make gluten free food with spelt, to clear up some confusion (sorry). in my experience so far (which is three batches of unsatisfactory muffins), spelt hates to be baked with! i know it has an imbalance of gliadine and glutanine, and the lack of glutanine means the muffins do not hold their shape. i've never baked with spelt either, and my attempts to alter the recipes i've been given haven't been super productive. all my muffins have looked like this:



they spread on the sides, cave in the center, and become crust-like on the tops. the recipes i'm using have a lot of oil in them (which i'm working on tweaking) and that makes me think it might be part of the problem, but i do know the spreading and caving is the work of little glutanine. but i don't know how to fix it yet. i'm not sure my boss' stance of mixing spelt with whole wheat flour but i've read that helps. does anybody have any other suggestions?

thanks so much, bakebakebakers! honestly any knowledge thrown my way is super helpful and super appreciated.
<3


EDIT: dudes and ladies! i understand your concern about the environment i am producing goods i'm calling "gluten free" in, and that's justified. it may not look particularly great on me to say i'm not fully aware of the kitchen i'm working in, but hey. i'm not fully aware of the kitchen i'm working in; i started this job at the beginning of this week. i don't want people thinking there should be alarm because i'm sure my boss has worked hard to create a safe food environment. that said! i'm not meaning to sound accusing and i respect and appreciate everything that's been said in the comments so far and actually i found out some stuff i didn't know. i will do my best to accommodate gluten allergies by being as thorough as i can, but all i can be responsible for is me. thanks. :)

Okay, I have two questions for all of you. The first is, what is/are your favorite cake(s) for layering?

My mom will be decorating my baby shower cake. She is an excellent cake decorator, but she usually makes the cakes using a box. I figured I'd make the cake (I very, very, very rarely used boxed mixes), but since I'm no decorator, I never really pay attention or care about what will hold up well to layering and/or decorating.

She'll probably use fondant. So... my question again, after that explanation, is what cakes hold up well to decorating?

My second question is about the actual decor of the cake. Do any of you have any suggestions for a baby shower cake? I'm having a girl. :)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

( :: cinnamon-lovers unite! :: )</em></em></div>

Why, yes, I did say Pumpkin Cheesecake Bread Pudding. Rethinking some resolutions?

If it's cold where you live, you neeeeed to make this delicious, simple bread pudding. It's a humble, gorgeous, comforting, easy dessert you'll love. My boyfriend is already asking when I'm going to make it again -- good sign!

This pudding isn't the only thing that's amazing; the cookbook it comes from is phenomenal as well. Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters is a collection of heirloom recipes from the Brass family, as well as from yard sales, used bookstores, antique cookbooks, and various family collections.




Normally I post the full recipe in my post here, but in order to only reprint the Brass Sisters' recipe once (with permission), I've only recorded it on my personal baking blog, linked below. You can also read a full review of their cookbook there.

( another photo )


To get the full recipe, see the full cookbook review, or to test your New Year's resolve with more delicious photos, please head over to my baking blog, Willow Bird Baking!

x posted to bakebakebake, food_porn, and cooking

Stop what you are doing right now and listen up: I HAVE PERFECTED MY SEEDY BREAD RECIPE. I know you all thought it was perfect before, but you didn't know that it could be made perfecter. Now you know!


The secret is buttermilk! This is officially my new favourite bread. It is just as soft as bought bread and sooo much tastier. And cheaper! And better for you! Buttermilk, contrary to what I thought until yesterday, is not fatty milk. It's milk with good bacteria in it! It tastes kind of like plain yoghurt. Who'd-a-thunk-it. Anyways, it makes a pretty delish loaf of bread. Apparently you can also use it in salad dressings.

( Recipe )

See more at The Cast-Iron Darling!

Hope this isn't TL;DR! I came across a really interesting post on Tumblr today and thought i would share/put its subject matter up for discussion. The post talks about a recent interview with Lady Gaga in the LA Times. Here's a couple of extracts from the story:

Her new songs address serious themes like women's shame about their bodies and the need for open communication in relationships; her often physically distorting costumes show that the pursuit of the feminine ideal is far from natural. Her commitment to confront the changing notion of what's "natural" puts Gaga on the same road traveled by artists she admires, such as the photographer Cindy Sherman. Her frank talk about how female artists aren't expected to write their own songs or about how young women are afraid to ask for what they need from their sexual partners inches her toward a new articulation of feminism.

..."The great thing about Gaga is she always want to push for the most extreme option," Card said. "She's brave enough to let herself be a canvas for a designer to go and really express themselves. Nothing is off limits! With Rihanna and Beyoncé there is an end result of desirability and unattainable sexiness, whereas Gaga is a really interesting bridge between the desirable and the grotesque. She's not at all worried about looking ridiculous or hideous; actually, I think she thrives off it."

And here's a couple of extracts from the brilliant post on Tumblr:

i feel like there are limits, maybe, to how “hideous” an extremely skinny blonde white girl can be considered...to put it another way: picture a fat woman, or a black woman, or a Latina woman, or a fat black Latina woman, doing ANYTHING that lady gaga has ever done, and tell me people would still be talking about her as some kind of subversive artiste...tell me 95% of the commentary about her outside maybe the feminist blogosphere wouldn’t be ridicule or disgust.

...or to put it another way: white skinny bodies are allowed to be art. you see this all the fucking time in the twee/hipster zones of the world/internet, soft-focus photos in sepia tones with size 2 AT MOST people standing in for melancholy, or wistfulness, or love, or whatever. you don’t see fat girls lying in a field of daisies wearing fishnets and reading haruki murakami next to a picnic spread under a parasol. because then the viewer, it’s assumed, would get distracted by their fatness. skinny bodies (& white bodies) are allowed to turn themselves into things because they are presumed to be blank slates. they’re neutral. fatness already symbolizes things in our culture - laziness, sloth, greed - so it’s not allowed to symbolize other things.

or another way: lady gaga is allowed to play at being grotesque because it’s understood that she is making a choice to be grotesque; fat, non-white, or otherwise atypical bodies already belong to the realm of the grotesque. the choice is made for them. whether it’s as unfuckable (fat women, women with visible disabilities) or inherently sexualized (black and Latina women) or some weird combination of fuckable but not sexual (asian women) or just grotesque and unworthy (trans women).

I think the critique on Tumblr brings up some really interesting and valid points with particular reference to the way we see things on the internet in terms of body types/ethnicities represented in the art and photography we post on our journals, or write about in our blogs, or favourite on Tumblr.

So discuss if you wish: Lady Gaga and her image, representations of 'controversial' women in pop culture, white/thin bodies v everyone else.