Well hello, stranger! Long time no see! Admittedly, that’s entirely my fault since I’m the one who stopped writing blogs for a while. But I had a good reason, I promise! Or, well… many reasons.
For starters, one of the last orders I took over the summer was for a wedding cake and macarons. They turned out nicely, but that’s only because of my incredible neighbor. You see, to make macarons you have to have control over the humidity in the room where they are piped, rested, and baked. (Otherwise, there's hell to pay.) To do that, simply turn on your air conditioner. Easy peasy, right?
Right! Except… my air conditioner broke over the summer. In fact, it broke right before I started making this macaron order.
Now before you go pitying me about the lack of a/c in the middle of summer, please remember that I live in an eternal winter hellscape called “San Francisco” and it is cold here. All the time. (Except for about two weeks in October which is “spooky season” AKA my favorite time of year, and the summer weather really kills the spooky vibe.)
Unfortunately with the cold, SF also enjoys a weather phenomenon called Karl. He’s the fog. They named him. It’s weird, but get on board because I’m going to talk about Karl for a minute. He’s the reason I couldn’t make my macarons without my air conditioner. You see, with all of Karl’s eerie sun blocking, temperature dropping powers, he also brings along a certain unmanageable level of humidity (well, unmanageable if you’re trying to bake) to the atmosphere.
Fortunately I have an incredible neighbor who not only allowed me to haul all of my baking equipment and ingredients into her kitchen for a few hours, but she also agreed to let me freeze her out of her own home since her a/c was working (although she never uses it because it’s perpetually cold here) so I could complete this order.
Thank God for awesome neighbors!!
The next reason I stopped baking is that I got COVID. Yep. I foolishly went to a wedding where people traveled in from all over the world, and against my better judgment, I didn’t wear a mask. You win some, you lose some I guess
In all actuality, now that it's said and done, I'm glad I got that out of the way (and that I got it so late in the game that it wasn’t a life threatening illness), but MAN was I tired!! I felt like it was all I could do to move from my bed to the couch each day.
So I definitely wasn’t baking during that time period.
And the last reason that I stopped baking was (drumroll please, because it’s a doozy…)
MY FREAKING OVEN BROKE!!!
I have never been so angry in my entire life!!! And you know how it goes: it took over a week to get the repairman to come to my apartment to look at it. And even though I gave him a thorough description of the problem and what make/model my oven is, he didn’t have the part (seriously it was the igniter on a gas oven. You should bring at least some of the parts with you if you want to be effective at this job. But apparently repairmen get paid by the hour, soooo....). He left after 20 minutes of destroying my kitchen, not putting anything back where it belonged, and accomplishing nothing. Then it took him another week or so to get the part delivered, and it took another week after that for him to have time in his schedule to come back out to my apartment again to fix the problem in less than 10 minutes.
So that my friends is why I haven’t been baking, posting, or taking orders for a few months.
But now I’m back! And ready to feed you the most delicious treats. Just in time for spooky season, too!
Likely what I’ll do is bake and post every week for October (I have some really cool ideas for
this year), and then get back into the every-other-week rhythm I’ve been maintaining for the rest of the year.
But before I close out this blog, let’s appreciate something else that I made over the summer (in between all of the terrible things that happened): my birthday cake!
I decided to make myself a delicious cheesecake with a sprinkled Oreo crust, mini chocolate chips, festive sprinkles, Oreo halves, and freshly made whipped cream decorations to celebrate myself this year.
I didn’t do anything super crazy for my birthday so I had a lot of leftovers from this cheesecake. I wrapped the rest in plastic wrap and froze it, and I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised at how well the fresh whipped cream held its shape and flavor! So my tip of the week is that if you do decide to make a cheesecake and or use fresh whipped cream as a decoration, it can certainly freeze for at least a month so you can continue to enjoy your cakes long after you make them.
Happy eating, y’all!
If you tried this dessert, or any other desserts in my blog, please share my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram posts about them and let people know what you think! Mahalo!
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