Baking Bucket List – Update #1

About a month ago, I decided to create a Baking Bucket List – a list of baked goods to attempt over the next year or so. There are 25 delicacies on the list, so my goal is to cross off a few every 3-4 months. So far, I’m making steady progress.

#5 Scones: The first item I baked was scones. King Arthur Flour has a terrific recipe for a basic scone. It’s the perfect base for all sorts of add-ins. Since I’m particularly partial to chocolate, I threw in 1 1/2 cups of mini chocolate chips. The recipe only took about twenty minutes to prepare. Freezing and baking time added another hour. Overall, not much effort for a delicious result. You might notice in the picture below I had trouble with the whole “cut into 6 scones” step. I started making cuts for 8 scones…then had to patch them back together haha. 

The final product has a slight crunch on the top and bottom crust with a light and fluffy interior. They’re not overly sweet, but I drizzled on a quick glaze of just powdered sugar and milk. They say they’re best when warm, so I went ahead and ate both of those in the picture below right away!

 

#14 Bundt Cake – The number of bundt cake recipes that exist on the Internet is astonishing. I assumed it had gone out of style since I associate it more with the 50’s/60’s decades. There’s a fascinating history of the bundt pan here if you’re interested! Eventually, I narrowed down the options and settled on a chocolate bundt cake with a cheesecake swirl.

One Saturday evening I began the process with high hopes of digging in as soon as it was out of the oven. Sadly, this baby needs four hours of rest before it’s ready to eat!! 2 hours in the pan and 2 hours in the fridge. This resulted in me eating cake at 8am Sunday morning…which is completely justified, right??

Maybe not, but this dessert is too delicious to resist. The recipe isn’t complicated: a chocolate cake base and a simple cream cheese layer. All the ingredients are common kitchen staples (I even substituted regular almond milk for the buttermilk and it still turned out great). If you don’t mind all the waiting, definitely give this one a try. 

#19 Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies: These had to happen right away since my butterscotch chips were well past their Best Buy date (we’re talking October 2015). Surely I’m not the only person with a pantry that hides ingredients? I probably picked them up on sale at one point anticipating using them in a wide variety of recipes. Wrong. So, I went with the recipe right there on the Toll House package.

These cookies started out immensely promising. The chips still tasted fine and the batter was delicious. Wow, did things go downhill from there! When I attempted to bake them, each cookie spread out wafer thin! Sometimes this happens when the butter is too warm, so I stuck the remaining batter in the fridge overnight. Next day – same result! Some were salvageable and honestly still tasted decent, but overall I’m chalking this up as a loss. 

What should I bake next?