Chinese Steamed Cake

Follow the recipe from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chinese-steamed-cake/.  Was really good except for the almond extract.  It can be strong in a sickly sweet kinda way and it was a little much.  Other than that texture was great, cant dry it out in the steam.  I think the lid would be much better as I cooked for 23 minutes and turned out the center was really not cooked.  But the outside half once cut away was great.

Peanut Blossoms

Made these last night, recipe from my mom, just used crunchy peanut butter and a chocolate bar (didnt have hershey kisses in the house).  Came out really well..

½ c. butter

½ c. peanut butter

½ c. sugar

½ c. brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1-3/4 c. flour

1 tsp soda

½ tsp salt

Cream butter, peanut butter and sugars well; add egg and vanilla. Sift together flour, soda and salt, add to liquid ingredients. Shape dough into balls using one tsp full for each. Roll balls in sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes (6 min on convection bake). Remove from oven and place solid milk chocolate candy kiss on top of each cookie, pressing down so that cookie cracks around edge.

Cupcakes...

Basic chocolate cupcake batter split into 4 different cupcakes.
Top left to Bottom right: Peanut butter cup with peanut frosting, thin mint with chocolate frosting, bacon chocolate with chocolate frosting, plain chocolate with peanut butter frosting.

 Not the biggest fan of the bacon chocolate, maybe need to try something different or cook the bacon until super crispy/crunchy.

The PB cupcake was super decadent, maybe a little much, but the thin mint and plain were quite good and could be eaten without feeling gluttonous.

Cheesecakes...

Lemon-Lime Cheesecake with Cherry Whipped Cream
One of the better cheesecakes that I have down.  It didnt work the way that I had in mind, but was still really good.  A basic lemon cheesecake with a lime jelly mixed through.  It was supposed to be split layers, but ended up mixing through.

Cherry whipped cream and cherries finish it off.

Vanilla Caramel

Strawberry variations...

with raspberry sauce

 Pumpkin (thanksgiving) Cheesecake

Angel Food Cake

Took a few tries, but with a little help, a couple youtube videos and some practice it now comes out perfect every time.

Chocolate Pomegranate Bark

• Found this on the NYtimes website and looked good, really easy to make.  I used a little less ginger than the recipe called for and a little more chocolate...Think it would go well as a garnish on something cake-like...
  
  
  ·                Chocolate Pomegranate Ginger Bark
  ·                140 grams dark (bittersweet) chocolate pieces (5 ounces)
  ·                20 grams minced crystallized ginger (2 tablespoons)
  ·                140 grams fresh pomegranate seeds (1 cup)
  ·                6 grams flaky sea salt (1 teaspoon)
  
  
  Melt Chocolate, stir in ginger and 2/3 pomegranate seeds.  
  Pour out on a parchment lined cooking sheet as thin as possible.  
  Sprinkle remaining seeds and sea salt.
  Cool...Eat.