Gluten Free Desserts, Sightseeing, and my Dissertation

I stayed with my cousins for the last couple weeks of dissertation writing. I can't thank them enough for putting me up and putting up with me during such a stressful time. In an attempt to thank them, I baked quite a bit for them. Below follows a stream of consciousness post including some gluten free baking and some miscellaneous non-food photos.

 

Circus Cakes

I clearly have a mental block about posting these, seeing as I made them just about 2 years ago. They were for a Diabetes UK fundraiser. Yes, I know, cake for an event about diabetes... The event was for children with Type I diabetes and their families. And what kid, diabetic or not, doesn't want cake?

The challenge was twofold. First, I had to make at least some of the cake gluten free since type I diabetics are more likely to be ceoliac than the rest of the population (also the carbs in flour aren't great for the blood sugar.) Second, the cake had to be circus themed.

Happy Bastille Day!

Yes, I know Bastille Day is in July. I completely forgot to post this...whoops.

I'm not French and, while I like France and speak a bit of French, I'm by no means a Francophile. But I really can't pass up celebrating a holiday that screams for French food (plus in London's Borough Market they have snail races and a full size guillotine slicing watermelons...how can you not get into the holiday?)

Chocolate, Blackberry, Coconut Cake

Every year, my mom asks for a chocolate birthday cake. Past that, I get to do what I want. So I decided to try an idea I'd seen on the food network: using jam to flavor buttercream. In this case I used a high quality blackberry jam. For the filling I made a coconut buttercream by adding creamed coconut to the buttercream. Two delicious, flavored buttercreams with minimal effort.

Flower Arranging

I make bouquets now. Bouquets are cool. Actually, I've been making bouquets for years. The first 'grown-up' craft I got into was flower arranging. I bought books on it. I watched florists working. I stocked up on florists wire and tape (which comes in very useful when I make sugarpaste flowers, but that's beside the point.) I even befriended a local florist (a very nice woman) who gave me left over flowers to practice with and showed me how to use chicken wire instead of florist foam as a base for non-posy arrangements.