A Lovely Bridal Shower (and Cake!)

My cousin's bridal shower was last weekend and I was one of the hostesses. I was not really relishing the idea of watching everyone else have dessert when I could not partake, so I talked with my mom and sister about baking the cake myself and making it GF. I also wanted to be sure that everyone would be happy with the result, so I did a test run earlier in the week for them to taste test. I had baked a wonderful lemon sour cream pound cake from the Four Chickens blog I follow, and I figured that would be a winner. (Actually, I had a couple of other ideas from that blog that were various chocolate cake options, but mom and Michelle voted lemon for the shower.)

Anyway, the test run was a hit -- it even resulted in my 12-year-old asking for this lemon cake for his next birthday, so you know it had to be pretty good! So I baked it again on Friday night for the Saturday shower. Mom had requested that I make the glaze a little more yellow so it was obvious it was going to be lemon flavored before you bit into it, so I used a tiny bit of a Wilton lemon yellow dye to adjust that. Michelle brought raspberries to add a splash of contrasting color to the cake and this was the result (no flash so the yellow of the glaze is not obvious in this picture, but rest assured, it's a beautiful shade of lemon yellow):


I think it turned out very pretty and very tasty, and the bride-to-be was happy as well! Everyone seemed to enjoy it so I'll count that as a success. The only other thing I'd like to figure out is how to make the glaze stay shiny after it dries. It was a much more vibrant yellow while it was pouring on wet than it was when it dried. Guess I'll have to Google info on that!

(Now, if only I had remembered to grab the gift for the bride from my dining room before I left town to drive to Houston for the shower, everything would have been perfect! But let's dwell on the positive, shall we?)

King Arthur Flour Muffins

King Arthur Flour company is my hero! I just had a TO-DIE-FOR blueberry muffin made from their GF muffin mix (my own frozen/thawed blueberries added). They are moist, beautiful, and delicious! This adds to the already long list of wonderful product mixes they make -- brownies, cookies, and pancakes (and the bread mix was good, just not better than others I've tried that are slightly cheaper). I am highly impressed by and appreciative of their work to make a wonderful GF product for this market niche!

Thank you Land O' Lakes!

The Land O' Lakes website has an awesome recipe for GF chocolate chip cookies! It's no more complicated than the Nestle Tollhouse recipe and makes totally delicious and normal looking chocolate chip cookies! Yea them and yea me!

I've tasted them warm and cool and they're good both ways. I've frozen a couple of cooked cookies to see if they reheat from frozen well and I'm going to try to take some of the batter and form it into balls and freeze that to see if they can be good break-and-bake (from freezer) cookies too. The trouble with GF baked goods is that they don't really keep for long (they're best consumed within the first 24 hours) so finding ways I can make it easy to make just a few cookies when I want some is key.

I'll keep you posted!

Update 1: They reheat from frozen cooked cookies quite well. Microwave doesn't heat them perfectly evenly, so it's better if you get them warmed and then let them sit for a bit so the hot spots cool and the cold spots warm to room temperature. Then they taste the same as when first cooled. Will try another couple after they've been frozen for a few days.

Update 2: The frozen dough can be cooked and makes good cookies but takes freakin' forever to cook. I think the frozen and thawed cooked cookies are both more efficient and tastier, so I guess next time I'll just make up the whole batch and freeze what I don't think we'll eat.