eggnog buckwheat crumble cake

If your first thought was that this looks like a gooey mess, you're right. It is a gooey mess. It's still a gooey mess in my kitchen. Cake is another one of those things that I struggle to photograph well. When it looks like "an undercooked hamburger," that makes it more difficult. Lesson One: to minimize hamburgerness, don't make this cake in a round pan. Use the suggested 9x13 pan. In any case, I have a lot to learn about photographing things that don't look as appealing as they taste. Some people can make anything look good. I'm not one of those people. YET.

I was inspired to make this a week ago or so when I read Jessica's post at How Sweet It Is. That cake entered my brain and never left. So today, on the heels of the beet cake failure, I did something about it.

My intent was to make the recipe as written (with my usual sugar alterations - for someone with a penchant for desserts, I have a low tolerance for sugar). When I went to get my whole wheat flour from the cupboard, I saw my bag of buckwheat flour and, I swear to you, it looked up at me saying, 'pick me! pick me!'. So I did, with absolutely no knowledge as to whether using buckwheat flour requires any other special alterations. Luckily, it worked just as well (if not better!) and gave the cake this wonderful earthy, nutty flavour which complimented the eggnog and spices. It also rocked the texture of the crumble topping.

Buckwheat flour in your cake. Do it now. You know you want to.

nutmeg pot de crème

I made pot de crème twice yesterday. The joy of working from 1 PM to 9 PM two days in a row is that you can make a pot de crème in the morning, screw it up, get home in time to purchase more ingredients from the grocery store and try it out all over again.

Let me tell you something about how my brain works. Sometimes it just completely glosses over stuff. For example, the first time I made these yesterday, I followed the recipe as written and completely forgot to cut the brown sugar, even though my standard custard recipe uses half of that in regular sugar. The finished product was inedibly sweet and the nutmeg was totally overpowered by caramel flavour. I threw it down the toilet with a sad face, but vowed to try again in the evening.