Oh the Disappointment of an Unripe Avocado

Today I'm having my best friend over for lunch!! It's early September, we've had some rainy weather already but right now we're enjoying Summer's last fling! 

This friend is always doing for her husband, family, mother, neighbours, friends, & me. I know she'll be running around like crazy today so I wanted to have her stop by for a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup, one of our favourites! :D

Along with this yumminess, I wanted to give her a bit of a treat so I made the Looney Spoons Chocolate Pudding which is made from avocados. Now, this friend of mine is quite the home chef & not much of a baker so I always feel secure when I present her with treats for her & her husband or for her large family gatherings. But... She's an avocado aficionado so I know that this has to be perfect!

I sent hubby the following link on Pinterest: http://www.nwedible.com/never-buy-a-rotten-avocado-again/ because it was very important that he get me ripe ones for the recipe below. I told him I sent him the link. I trusted he looked at the link... Maybe that's where the plan fell down. 

:(

These are the two I got:

Looks almost like the example above, doesn't it? I lost quite a bit of the meat due to bad spots throughout just the one avocado. I could feel the bad/soft spots from the outside so I was fully deflated once I opened it up. 

I'm not an avocado fan, to say the least, but put it with some chocolate in a recipe and I'm all there! My friend & I made this pudding before at her place with perfect avocados and it was delish! I'm still holding my breath on how mine will turn out. 

This trick surely seems to have worked with the two that I had:

Can you see my tears pooling on the cutting board?

Nasty!

Unsure if I can avoid this happening again, but here's hoping my dessert wasn't too compromised by the lack of avocado. 

Here's a link to the recipe I used. I added more syrup as I could still identify the yucky avocado taste (I did mention I'm not a fan, right?).

http://janetandgreta.com/recipe/april-2013-newsletter-chocolate-avocado-pudding/

Enjoy!!

Another Trek Into the Gluten Free World - Carrot Cake

Experimenting today w/a gluten free carrot cake recipe. I took a promising recipe & followed some of the comments for reducing sugar (and I put in brown instead of white) & fat. I then adjusted the fat in the recipe from oil to browned butter (which I'd seen on Gretchen's Bakery when she made her carrot cake). Instead of 1C nuts, I put in a total of 1C combo of pecans, chopped Craisins, & unsweetened coconut. Whew! Is that all I changed??  ;)

Oh, and I also made some GF cake release (1T GF pizza crust flour, 1T coconut oil, & 1T Crisco shortening) which worked amazingly! The recipe was for 2x9" pans but I used the Wilton 6" 5-layer pans and was also able to make 3 cupcakes. 

I wanted to be able to test this out so made sure there were cupcakes involved!

Doesn't look too bad, right? Tasty too!

Here's the original recipe: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/381469030915723407/

Be sure to read the comments as well, I found them very helpful. 

Update: Here's how the cake turned out...

It was delicious!! I used a Swiss buttercream and added in a stick of room temp cream cheese. What an amazing recipe.  You could not tell it was GF. That pizza flour worked wonders. I now need to test out the flour in another cake recipe to see how it performs. 

Twinkling Glint in Your Eyes

I've seen some videos of people piping glints on eyes or putting them on the eyes w/their scribe so there I was poised over the eyes and knowing my ability to hold my hands steady and absolute precision with my piping... I decided I needed to find another method. 

I put some icing on my hand and swiped the scribe through the little blob & then added it to the eyes. 

This is one time I could've used an assistant holding my camera. You know how you can't do your best work when someone is breathing down your neck? Yup, that's how I felt. I'm amazed the cookie remained in view!

(Once I figure out how to insert a video... I will add my video.)

Whimsical Ones

My grandbaby is turning one in less than two weeks & I'm working on Birthday cookies, cakes, cake pops, & cupcakes! This party will be brought to you by the letter C, the number 1, and by owls! :) Looking forward to many sequels. 😉

So, in the midst of all this we make it through a power outage with power only to have my fridge start sparking & catching on fire. All cake & cupcake production has come to a grinding halt! 🚫 Ah well, it must then be time to start decorating the cookies!

I'm doing owl gift cookies, monkey cookies to eat, & some 1s for decoration.  The owls are starting nicely:

I started the practice 1 as a wet-on-wet whimsical, black & white thing & then realized I should've done a monogram. 

Today, I finished all the eyes & then did more 1s. 

These two are my faves:

As a grandmother I'm allowed favourites, right? 😜

Now it's time for a rest & a tea before I tackle any more!

Update: Here they are at the party...