Baking round-up

Last weekend was Christkindlmarkt at Nikita's school. For it, I made coconut macaroons, a chocolate cake, and waffle batter. I previously blogged about the cookies, so won't talk about them more. I used my friend's recipe for the chocolate cake, called Naomi's Chocolate Pound Cake. I love this cake: so moist and not too sweet. The waffle batter didn't get used at all (the parents of every preschooler was expected to make batter, so there was quite a lot!), so Igor and I made lots of pancakes and blinis the next day. I should look into buying a waffle iron, however.

Christkindlmarkt did not end my baking duties: I made a pecan pie and an apple pie for the students of one of my classes. Both recipes were from Cook's Illustrated, but I used Pillsbury pie crust (also recommended by CI). One day I will have to try making the CI pie crust recipe; it has vodka. Anyway, the pies were a hit, particularly the pecan pie. I really love the CI pecan pie recipe: only 3/4 cup corn syrup so not overwhelmingly sweet, and toasting the pecans really brings out their flavor.

Luckily, there was pie leftover for the family. When I was making the pies, Nikita complained why the pies weren't for him; I calmly pointed out the amount of baking I had done for his school. And Galina couldn't understand why I didn't make these pies for the family. It's because Igor doesn't like spices in his apple pie (other than lemon juice), although the amount of spices is not large. And no one seems to eat the pecan pie but me. Although I think Ivan would it eat. He'll eat anything with sugar; he can even point out the huge bag of sugar in our kitchen. Scary.