baking joys

my hubby was on tv today! around 7:40 and 8:40 this morning channel 3 (good morning arizona) was talking about his dodgeball team and showed them practicing for the world championships coming up. it was so fun to get to see him this morning on there.

on another topic, i'm beginning to discover that i love to bake. i'm not crazy about cooking so much, but i'm enjoying baking quite a bit. last night i made snickerdoodles for family home evening with our neighbors. then today i took some bananas that were QUITE overripe and instead of making banana bread, i made a banana cake with a cream cheese frosting. i just had a slice and it was DELICIOUS!

tricks and interesting details i learned baking my cake today:
A. it took an hour+ in the oven (at 275 degrees which i thought was surprisingly low, but it is cooked so delicately. it was only slightly browned, but cooked all the way through since you cook it for so long but on such a low temp. not a bad idea.)
B. then the recipe said to take it from the oven and stick it straight into the freezer for 45 min in order to make it extra moist - and it worked, i was surprised because i'd never have thought to stick a hot cake into a cold freezer... but it worked.
C. whenever i make cream cheese frosting, i always put in some lemon juice. i think it adds a little zing and brings out the flavors even more. but then again i love citrus, and cream cheese frosting is my favorite, so the two together is just perfection.
D. use a MIXER whenever you are making cream cheese frosting. i can whip regular icing (ex: powdered sugar + milk, etc) with a whisk easy, but this frosting is just too thick to make it completely smooth when you try to do this one by hand. still tastes incredibly delicious though :)
E. i only had 3 bananas, which turned out to be slightly over a cup of mashed banana. i needed 1 & 1/2 cups of mashed banana. my solution? i blended in a half cup of applesauce with the cup of mashed banana. - it had similar texture, and would give another good flavor. apples & bananas together = yummy cake!