Crackly, crunchy French bread

MAN.  This bread.  Seriously.  I made it flawlessly 3 times, making it a little more my own each time.

Then, I bought a French bread pan, so I could stop making rigged French bread pans with tin foil.  THEN, I accidentally filled my white rice flour container with sweet rice flour.  Then it was fail after gooey French bread fail.

I wasn’t sure if it was the pan, making the baking needs different, the starchier sweet rice flour, too much xanthan gum or the devil making it gummy, but gummy it was.  So I decided to tweak all of it.  Including kicking the devil out of my oven.

And I think I got it now.

Garam Masala and Ginger Cupcakes

I had such high hopes for these little cupcakes. But a few things happened:

1. There wasn’t enough ginger
2. I tried making them with canola oil for lightness instead of butter
3. The cream cheese icing elicited a gluten-like reaction… All Kraft products seem to do that here. 

So until these are all worked out, I must remain happy that at least I got pictures on my fancy new plates!

Summertime means blueberry pie

Oh my.  Oh my my.  Now I have to find a way to say this is blueberry pie without rhyming.  That mostly worked.

I love making blueberry pies.  Although I think they’re delicious, they’re not my favorite of the bunch (that would be lemon meringue, but all things considered? I’m more of a cake girl than a pie girl*).  Although I do love them and they say summer to me.  This summer has been odd, however. Not nearly as hot and humid as summers usually are, and very rainy. Although I have a difficult time complaining about lack of humidity and heat. Especially since it’s SO much easier to make a pie crust in this kind of weather.

Bandwagon Buttermilk Blackberry Cake

Between gourmet magazine having a buttermilk raspberry cake, Smitten Kitchen having a version of the cake, Yahaira making the cake, it seems everyone and their mama is making this cake.

So I decided to hop on the bandwagon too.  I was going to do a post about an awesome lemon cake made with rosemary-infused olive oil (seriously! It was good!), but my camera battery was dead and I didn’t have any pictures of the cake before I brought it to the barbeque.  So I’ll do that bad boy later when I can make it and take pictures.