HCB: Caramelized Pineapple Pudding Cakes

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The first weekend of the months are the hardest for me when it comes to baking.  My commitment to three baking groups makes it a bit hard, since I technically have 3 dessert to bake during the first weekend.  So usually during this time one tends to fall of the to bake list.  Since I had passed last weeks choice on HCB, I could not bring myself to pass on a second week.  One of the other baking club is going to take a hit - the jury still out as to which.

I decided to start with HCB choice, because it was the hardest of the 3.  The pudding portion had 3 pages of instructions, add 4 more if you decided to do the Brioche and you got, once more, 7 pages of instructions ahead of you.  Which mean one thing - hold on to your whisk, its going to be a bumpy bake.  After reading, I realized that after putting into account the waiting time between the steps, I was looking at well over 12+ hours of work for six baby cakes.

God, I thought the Apple Charlotte was hard.
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HCB: Apple Caramel Charlotte

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Disclaimer: this post is long and there is a bit of a rant.  Just as long as making this cake was and reading about it.

A few months ago, I was emailing with Jenn from Knitty Baker and we were discussing those cakes that were still left to do in our HCB list and this one in particular came about in conversation.  We both were totally dreading it.

With 7 pages of instructions and 7 different steps, we knew it was going to take A LOT of resilience and baking savvy to do this one.  Jenn was hoping that Marie would give us this one on a long weekend so we would have more time to plan for it.  I was hoping that Marie would have a total Opps-y moment and would forget about this one.

We totally jinx ourselves.  Because not even a week after this whole discussion took place - there is was in the baking list, and NOT on a long weekend.

This cake, even from the start was a total Prima Donna, and not in a good way.  Did you know that the word “diva” means evil in some parts of the world?
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TWD: Peanut Butter Crisscrosses

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After all the cakes in the past week, this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie choice, which was made by Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine, was a welcome change around these parts.

No cake, no buckle, no upside down fruit tart.  Just a simple, straight forward cookie recipe.

Cookies!

My cookie jar has been empty for a while now.  So when I started to make these Tom and the little man were ecstatic to say the least.  Asking if they were ready about a trillion times during the 20 minutes it took me to put them together.

And in times like this you realized that you really never fully know your other half.  Because after two years together, it was news to me that peanut butter cookies is Tom’s Holy Grail.  His words, not mine folks.  He has some serious Peanut Butter cookie love going there.

But, back to the cookies.  

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