Work catering #53: Baked out~

Have you ever just felt burnt out? I'm sure you have, especially when it comes to studying or working... but have you ever feel burnt out when it's your.. hobby? your passion? I  didn't think that would happen but sometimes it does! Like with baking.. I do love it and I could do it everyday (I think).. but sometime I lose motivation or inspiration. For example this week for work, I wasn't really inspired by anything so just chose these 2 random recipes to bake. I wasn't really happy with either of the final products because I think I was just baking out of "having to bake" instead of "wanting to bake"~~~ I think it was because I baked so much for the wedding (yes i know... still need to blog about that)

anyways I hope you can try out these recipes and it turns out better for you ^___^ Hope I get my baking motivation back soon!!! :D

Butterscotch Apple Blondies
Recipe adapted from Crazy for Crust

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (150g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (113g) unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cups (300g) plain flour
2 cups apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 cup butterscotch chips

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line rectangle (20x30cm) baking pan.
2. Cream brown sugar and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Beat in vanilla essence.
3. Mix in baking powder, salt and flour. Fold in apples and butterscotch bites.
4. Pour/press batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Cool bars completely before cutting.

In the original recipe, there was an optional caramel sauce but I didn't make it (partly because I was lazy..). I'm sure it would have been great with it!

Greek Yoghurt Lemon Poppyseed Cake
Recipe adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients
2 cups  (300g) plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (200g) caster sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup (75g) butter, melted and cooled
2 tbs fresh lemon zest
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 cup (300g) greek style yoghurt
1 tbs poppyseeds

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line square (23cm) cake tin.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in medium bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs until well-combined. Whisk in melted butter, lemon zest and almond extract.
4. Whisk in one third of flour mixture, followed by half of yoghurt and poppyseeds. Whisk another third of flour mixture then remaining yoghurt and rest of the flour. Mix just until no streaks of flour remain. Pour into prepared pan.
5. Bake for 50-55minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center of loaf comes out clean.

baking disaster masked by the good old cream cheese frosting XD

Optional: Ice with cream cheese frosting - the reason I did this was because my cake turned out really dense :S I think I didn't whisk enough to get air in... so to mask my failure, I smothered it with frosting. muahhaha =p Baker's secret~