Pumpkin, Flan, Tres Leches!

Sooo after months and months of procrastinating I'm FINALLY posting a response to my challenge of incorporating pumpkin into one of my baking recipes. But to make up for my lateness, I'll also through in a little blogging about two other baking tasks I took on over the winter break: Cheese Flan and Tres Leches!

For my pumpkin challenge I actually did two recipes: I made Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread (a choice inspired by my professor, who is a wonderful baker and makes the bread with extra large chocolate chunks) as well as Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream, I recipe I found on this website called My Kitchen Addiction. I sadly forgot to take pictures of the cupcakes but they were amazing, especially if you like the texture of the brown sugar in the icing. I made these for the girls in my classes and they were a hit! I'll include some pictures of the Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread, the recipe found on My Baking Addiction. I think the bread was especially great to make during the cold weather season because the combination of the pumpking and chocolate chips is divine, and it makes for an easy treat to heat up in the microwave with some coffee or milk. Best idea ever!

So as an added extra I'll share some pictures of two other treats that I made over winter break: The Cheese Flan that my boyfriend's mother showed us how to make while I was in college, and that is my go to dessert ever since, as well as my first attempt at making Tres Leches Cake.

Okay, so the Cheese Flan has become a pretty easy dessert for me to make after having made it so many times...but the Tres Leches was a very different story. I followed a recipe found at Sazon Boricua, which is a great resource for authentic Puerto Rican dishes. Tres Leches has always carried the reputation of begin a difficult cake to make, and I finally understand why. If you don't take the cake out of the oven, poke holes evenly in the cake and pour the milk mixture immediately while the cake is still warm, the cake won't soak up the liquid and will only be moist on the surface. This is exactly what happened to me! So remember that this cake is known for being super moist and thus you need to be prepared to add the milk mixture as soon as it's done baking. Another issue was with the icing; despite asking my boyfriend to use his superhuman strength to beat the egg whites into a creamy frosting, you could still taste too much of the sugar. The cake did taste pretty good, but this challenge isn't over yet! Now that I know what to be particularly watch out for I can't wait to try it again.

Rach, your next challenge is simply to make something green for St. Patrick's Day! I sent you some options, so let me know what you pick and I can't wait to see what you turn out!