Cupcakes and Arlettes!

For me, kindness can come in the the form of baking for others. I love to bake and try out new recipes. I am sad that I am not working at camp this summer, but at least I am feeding my peeps! I made some cupcakes on Sunday and they seemed to be a hit. I used a sponge cake batter to make the mini cupcakes and made lemon buttercream and raspberry buttercream. Delish!

So today, I decided to dig a little deeper and start working on one of the technical challenges from the Great British Baking Show recipes! I decided to try my hand at arlettes, a cinnamon and sugar pastry.

First I had to start with the dough, which needed to be shaped into a square and chilled - not that the recipe tells you how big or small the square needs to be. Then comes the butter, which has to be a rectangle, twice as long as the square. My first attempt at the butter was way too thin! Once it chilled in the fridge, I knew why it was too thin. Not only did it chill for too long, it broke into pieces! No worries - just tried again. More butter, thicker rectangle, and chilled just enough for it to be folded over the dough. I wish I took a photo of the cracked butter though!

So I practiced the "book turn". It may have been smarter to start with a pastry where the dough is folded over the butter, but why make it easy?! Instead I chose a recipe where the butter is folded over the dough. Not such an easy task, but it was fun to try! It was also 99 degrees today!

I was not thrilled with the lamination, but all in all, I would say that it was pretty flaky. I would make them flatter next time, and I would certainly be more patient with the folding and chilling and folding and chilling.

With each mistake while making these, I remained positive and was kind to myself.

Looking forward to trying out another technical soon! I hope you enjoy the photos of the process!