Santa was good to me this year!

Hello again, hello!  What has happened in the baking world since we last spoke?  Well, I made a chocolate ganache cake and funfetti cupcakes with orange cream frosting for my madre's birthday party...and they were a hit!  The cake was all gone, meaning people really liked it or were consuming tremendous amounts of calories to humor me.  Hmmm, you never know with the Charbonneau family...

For Christmas I received so many great presents!  I got a professional cook's jacket, a million GREAT cookbooks, more tips for cake decorating, various fondant tools, and many other great things.  Thanks to everyone for contributing to my passion!  

The first thing I made from my Baking with Julia cookbook is naan - and it turned out way too good.  

Here's a piece of the naan before it was baked.  I made the dough, let it rise for 2 hours and then after a few bread-making techniques, I formed them into rounds.  What you see here are a bunch of fork marks in the middle to make sure the naan doesn't puff up too much.  For this specific recipe, I added coarse salt, chopped green onions and a sprinkle of cumin seeds.  Here's what it looked like after baking:

Yummy!  I love Julia, because you're supposed to bake these on ceramic tiles, but she gave me an alternative: an inverted baking sheet - yipee!  I was afraid the oven was going to explode at 500 degrees, but luckily, I'm still alive.

What will be my next adventure???  I don't know, but I splurged and bought granulated Splenda yesterday - so maybe a healthy recipe to try out next?  We'll see...I'll keep you all posted!