Saturday, November 30, 2019

Thanksgiving baking, decorating


I made the Bicardi rum cake, a chocolate fudge bundt cake,  and this pumpkin pie made with condensed milk and a homegrown pumpkin.

With a shelf added to that old picnic basket I tried to pay too much money for a pumpkin pie and 2 tiny bundt cakes all fit perfectly.


Child labor hard at work.

We had a great Thanksgiving at my in-laws on Thursday and are starting to decorate for Christmas today.  I should probably get the skulls off the porch that have been out there since Halloween.  We'll have to wait to get a tree until we can borrow my dads mini-van.  Today is the opening day of deer season and (hopefully) the van will have deer in it by the end of the day.  I did not get to go hunting again this year.  Maybe next year.  Tomorrow we are going to get together with my sister and her family.

Back to the baking.... it was so much nicer to make the small bundt cakes instead of using the full sized pan.  There were still leftovers but not so many that we'll be throwing cake out later.  I want to get some notes down on halving the full sized recipes.

For the rum cake:  
1/2 c walnuts
1 1/2 c yellow cake mix
scant 1/3 c vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs
1/4 c oil
1/4 c water
1/4 rum

35 minutes at 350

For the glaze:
1/4 c butter
1/8 c water
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c rum

It worked really well to pour about a 1/3 of the cooled glaze back into the pan, pop the cake back in, pour the rest of the glaze over and let it sit like that until it was absorbed.  MUCH easier than brushing the glaze on for hours.

For the chocolate cake:
1/2 c coffee
1/2 c butter
10 tbsp cocoa powder
(melt all these together)

1 c sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 c flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c sour cream
1 egg

350 for 35 minutes

For the really thick glaze:
1/3 c chocolate chips
1/8 c half & half

Pumpkin pie:
A small pie pumpkin roasted yielded almost exactly 2 cups pulp which is about 14 ounces. Is it called pulp? I have no idea. 2 cups pumpkin guts. There, that sounds better. 

I had a terrible time getting the crust done on the bottom and ended up baking it an extra 20 minutes.  But I'm not going to blame it on the ancient oven as the dishwasher is still broken and don't want to give the oven any ideas.




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