Hello again friends to another baking blog. I have been trying to make each recipe a bit harder than the last or at least more out of my comfort zone. And this week I did just that. A little while ago I went to a restaurant and had a slice of Oreo cheesecake for dessert, and ever since that night I have been going cheesecake crazy. I have been constantly craving it so I thought I would just go ahead and try to make it. Before I set my mind on it, I researched how to actually make a cheesecake to check out the level of difficulty. I came across an Oreo cheesecake recipe that was rated pretty high by users and didn’t seem too complicated. This recipe had a total of 6 ingredients and 6 steps.

After reading the minimal amount of ingredients I asked myself why I never made a cheesecake before? What was I doing with my life? It seemed too good to be true. The first thing that I did was make the Oreo crust which was just crushed Oreo’s and melted butter. This took me about 5 minutes to make and prepare in the pan. Next was to mix the cream cheese with the sugar. This is also where I had a slight mental breakdown trying to figure out how a mixer works. After spilling and mixing half of my cheesecake batter all over the kitchen I used my one help line to call my mom to walk me through how to properly use a hand mixer. After having my pride crushed just a little I resumed with my recipe and added the rest of the ingredients then set it into the oven for about 35-40 minutes.

Aside from the mixer incident, the hardest part of this recipe for me was knowing when to take the cheesecake out of the oven. One recipe that I looked at said that it should be golden brown and semi firm throughout, another said that the middle ring of it should jiggle, so honestly I don’t know. After the 35 minutes it still seemed like it needed more time so I put it back into the oven for another 5, but when I came to check on it after the 5 minutes it didn’t seem like anything changed, so I just took it out. After removing it from the oven, I set it on the counter for 3 hours to cool and set.

Then the moment of truth came when I dipped my knife into the cake to cut a piece. Right when I cut down the center of the cheesecake it seemed to sink right in and reveal a gooey center. Now, I am no cheesecake expert but I am sure that cheesecakes do not ooze, so this meant that the cheesecake is either under-baked or still needs time to set or both (which would be a big bummer). I was almost tempted to fire up the oven again but I know baking doesn’t typically work that way. Reluctantly I continued to cut a slice to analyze the taste and overall flavor. It wasn’t too sweet which was nice and the Oreo crust offered a nice bitterness to it. It wasn’t bad! I would give it a solid 6.5/10.

I am hoping overnight it will set more and the center won’t stay gooey (i’ll update you next week). I was definitely disappointed in how this week’s baking went, but after reflecting on today’s events I came to a realization. Baking is like my experience with teaching in a classroom this year, no matter how prepared you feel, sometimes things won’t work out, and that’s okay because it is a part of learning. It is impossible to expect yourself to be amazing and an expert at something when you haven’t done it before. It is a learning curve, but with a little time and effort things will start to become easier.

Another week another treat. This weeks focus was on cinnamon buns and trying out a recipe that uses yeast. I want to continue to challenge myself as I learn how to bake for this inquiry, so the time has come for me to step it up a notch. As always, I started this week with research to find the best and easiest to understand cinnamon bun recipe. After looking through all the different variations of recipes that call for raisins, nuts, cream cheese and icing sugar I settled on the first recipe that popped up with five star ratings; Homemade Cinnamon Rolls.

The first step in this recipe was to make the dough. This was the only part where I could go wrong in this recipe because of the yeast, if my milk was too warm or if my eggs and butter were too cold it wouldn’t work. I started by heating my milk up and then I sprinkled the yeast packet in and gave it a stir before adding the rest of my ingredients. After mixing all my ingredients, I kneaded my dough for 5 minutes and set it in a warm place to rise. This is the part where I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After 30 minutes I checked under the towel that was draped over top of the bowl and was instantly disappointed. It didn’t even rise an inch, or centimeter. I was just hoping that maybe it needed some more time to rise so I left it for another 20 minutes and then returned to the dough still in the same form. Absolutely heartbreaking.

After putting so much time and effort into making this dough I thought I would still give it a shot so I rolled it out, spread my filling onto it then rolled it up and prepared it to bake. When it was all ready to go on my pan it looked really good honestly. The recipe recommended that it needed to be set aside to rise again before baking but we all know how that turned out the first time, so I just set it in the oven. After 17 minutes the cinnamon buns rose and were all yummy and golden brown. They looked really good and smelled amazing right out of the oven so I still had hope for them. After waiting for them to cool I topped them with my cream cheese frosting and called it a day.

I would say these cinnamon buns ended up being passable. Not the best thing I have made nor the worst. They had really good taste and the filling and cream cheese was amazing but the texture was so off. They weren’t fluffy nor soft which are all the best things of a good cinnamon bun. I honestly don’t know where I went wrong but it must have been something with the yeast, maybe not letting it proof in the milk before adding the rest of my ingredients or not kneading it enough but this recipe was definitely harder than I thought it would be. Sadly I would rate these cinnamon buns a 6/10 because of the texture. I think next time I might try a different recipe and do more research on how to use active dry yeast.

For this weeks inquiry blog I decided to make one of my all time favorite desserts, lemon bars. Now I have never made any kind of dessert bar in my entire life nor have I seen anyone make one, so couldn’t even tell you where you would begin. I first set out to do some research on how one actually makes a lemon bar and what the steps might be. After looking at a few options of recipes I decided on the one that would take the least amount of time and with the best title; Luscious Lemon Bars.

After choosing the recipe, I set out to buy all my ingredients and begin. The recipe was split up into two sections, the first being the crust and the second the filling. For the crust, the ingredients were fairly simple and just needed a good mix and to be flattened on the baking pan. For this I needed some extra help to really push it down on the pan and make sure it was flat. Once the crust was ready to go it needed to freeze for 10/15 minutes and then bake for 15-20 minutes. I still don’t really understand why it needed to freeze first but I followed the instructions and then threw the crust in the oven while I started on my filling.

The filling wasn’t hard to make either, the only thing that caused me grief was obtaining 2 tablespoons of lemon zest. I ended up giving this job to my friend so she spent a good 15 minutes grating 6 lemons while I put the rest of the ingredients together (thank god for her). Once the filling was ready to go I took the crust out of the oven and poured the filling on top of it, and set it back into the oven for 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes were up I set the tray on a cooling rack where it had to sit for a couple hours before serving.

I am really building up my baking confidence because let me tell you, these lemon bars were very luscious. They had the perfect balance of sweet and tart that a lemon bar should have, the crust was baked perfectly and the filling was so yummy. I couldn’t have been happier with how these turned out and I would strongly say that I would give these lemon bars a 9.5/10. The only thing I would change for the future would be to make the crust a little thinner but they still tasted amazing.

This week for my baking inquiry I decided to make cheese scones! I had a hard time deciding on what kind of scone to make and had my heart set on raspberry scones but because they are not in season, I didn’t want to take the risk of them not turning out, so I chose cheese instead; a classic. While researching recipes for cheese scones I found that they were honestly all very similar and had common techniques in order to obtain a nice flaky texture and a good rise. The trick is to have cold cubed butter and combine that with your flour mixture so that there are no large lumps and to knead the dough around 6 to 7 times, enough to combine all the ingredients and flour but not too much to make them hard and disc like. Another thing I learned from research is that cheese scones require a large amount of baking powder, I guess this is to help them rise but when I was adding the baking powder it felt like I was doing something wrong! Quite a few recipes called for cayenne pepper which I also thought was strange but I went with it anyway.

During the baking process of my cheese scones I actually felt fairly confident. The first thing the recipe called for was to combine all dry ingredients which was 95% of the ingredients so that was nice. Next was to cut in the cold butter and start to combine it with the flour, making sure there wasn’t any large lumps. After this, I added the cheese and buttermilk and they were pretty much done. From there all you need to do start to form a ball and knead the dough. When I came to the point where I was trying to form a ball I hard a hard time because there was so much flour still and I started to doubt myself just a little bit in my measuring capabilities. This step took some time to work with the dough until it was malleable enough to knead without cracking. After kneading way more then the recommended 6 to 7 times I rolled out the dough and started to cut out circles to make my scones.

After baking, the scones came out really well! I was very happy with how much they rose and with the overall color on the outside. When I cut them open they were very flaky and had a nice airiness to them which I think was caused by all the baking powder. They had a perfect flavor balance of sweet and salty  and everyone who tried them really enjoyed them, which definitely built up my baking confidence. Overall I think I would rate these scones a 9/10! They tasted really good and the only negative thing I would say about them is that they were small in size. The recipe said I could make 16, but even with cutting them a little larger and making 12, they were still pretty small. So next time I might double my recipe and make them a little larger.