NBM, Day 6: Classic Birthday Cake

For day six of National Baking Month, I decided to try King Arthur Flour's 2019 recipe of the year, Classic Birthday Cake. Really a nice cake, all in all. I like that this cake is adaptable to both 8-inch and 9-inch pans (if I'd used the 8-inch pans, I'd have been tempted to halve the layers and fill them with a complementary flavor, maybe something peanut butter or raspberry). The cake is made with a combination of butter and oil, which gives it a great spongy texture. The frosting is a chocolate American buttercream made with cocoa powder. I added a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream to lighten the frosting; without the additional cream, I sensed that the frosting would be difficult to spread.

NBM, Day 5: Peanut Butter-Nutella Coffee Cake

While turning the pages of the One-Layer Cakes special issue of Bake from Scratch, I was drawn to this Peanut Butter-Nutella Coffee Cake for its winning combo of flavors. PB? Yes. Nutella? Oh yes. Peanut streusel topping? Bring it. Total keeper. I tweaked one thing: I put most of the batter in the pan before baking rather than half so that the Nutella wouldn’t sink as much as in the magazine photo. I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out.

NBM, Day 4: Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

For Day Four of National Baking Month, I went with a classic, certainly my most-baked chocolate cupcake: Magnolia’s Chocolate Cupcakes with their lovely Chocolate Buttercream. These beauties will be going to a kind of sad event, so I hope they put the sweet in the bittersweet for everyone there.

NBM, Day 3: Heirloom Vanilla Sugar Cookies

For day three of National Baking Month, I baked off some cookie dough I’d made and frozen a couple of weeks ago. I love a simple, flavorful sugar cookie, and these Heirloom Vanilla Sugar Cookies, from Shauna Sever’s Pure Vanilla, are top notch. Making these cookies reminded me that I love the big, soft frosted sugar cookie recipe in this book, not to mention the amazing Vanilla Cloud Cake. Fortunately, I have 28 more days of National Baking Month.

NBM, Day 2: Peanut Butter Fingers with Salty Milk Chocolate Glaze

For day 2 of National Baking Month, I plucked a recipe from the fun and inspirational Vintage Baker, which Jessie Sheehan published last year. I’d tried her Chocolate Molasses Crinkles during the holidays and had really wanted to try these chocolate-glazed peanut butter treats because, of course, you can never go wrong with a chocolate-peanut butter combo. The recipe directs to trim the edges off the cookie before cutting it into bars. Not sure if maybe I trimmed off too much, but no worries because the trimmings make for good snacking. The bars are delicate and delicious, and are especially nice with a sprinkling of flaky sea salt on the glaze.

NBM, Day 1: Nutella Fudge Brownies

For National Baking Month 2019, I’m challenging myself to bake something every day. It’s a goofy enough challenge for me, and it also will assist me in attending to my holiday-baking ingredient overage. I’m planning to mix things up, so my intention isn’t necessarily to make just cookies or cakes or breads. I’m aiming for variety.

To get things started, I went with a straight-up simple and delicious favorite from Desserts 4 Today by Abigail Johnson Dodge. These brownies contain only four ingredients: Nutella, an egg, flour, and hazelnuts, but you’d never guess they were that simple. Since I had some leftover ganache in the fridge, I decided to glaze them and then sprinkle the tops with chopped hazelnuts rather than sprinkle the batter with the chopped nuts before baking.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars

While I'm in arrears for two TWD projects (the grapefruit tart and the lemon madeleines -- hooray for the upcoming rewind week!), I did manage to make the Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars.

The recipe is pretty straightforward. To start, I made the crispy topping. Since I had an open box of Cocoa Krispies, I used those instead of regular Rice Krispies (seriously, who's going to argue over an extra bit of chocolate?). No problems at all with that portion of the recipe. In fact, they were a lot of fun to make. And sample.

All in all, I had no problems with the sticky dough, but I was alarmed when I checked the oven after the base had been baking for about 18 minutes. There was the dough, bubbling away almost like caramel. Since the base was golden brown, I pulled it out of the oven a little early and let it cool down for a couple of minutes. I'd melted some bittersweet chocolate rather than try to have it melt on the warm cookie base, so having a hot-from-the-oven cookie base wasn't as much of a necessity for me. The thin layer of chocolate went on, then the caramelized Cocoa Krispies. All looked good.

I figured that I'd need to be careful slicing these bars, which I suspected might be pretty brittle. For as crisp as they turned out to be, they sliced relatively cleanly.

The downside to these bars? They are insanely good and can be consumed at an alarming rate. Even worse, I now know they are ridiculously easy to make. How will I save me from myself?