I don’t know if the title scared you.

It’s scaring me a little.

No sugar AND no dairy for a week? This is going to be tough…or really easy and I’m exaggerating…but I think it’ll be tough.

Since starting this blog I’ve been baking A LOT and it is great. I’ve been learning a ton about baking, different kinds of foods, techniques, and much more, however..I’ve also gotten a bit of a sugar dependency.

I have these really intense sugar cravings. They need to stop. I need to go cold turkey on sugar for a little bit so I can get myself back to normal.

I was inspired by Joy The Baker’s juice cleanse. Sadly, I can’t afford to do a juice cleanse, so I’m just cutting out sugar and dairy.

I consume a lot of dairy, I always have, and yes…dairy is healthy..but I drink too much milk and not enough water, I need to balance out better.

I need your help though. I still need to bake! For my sanity and for you guys. I just don’t have any sugar and dairy free recipes. Please leave suggestions in the comments below (if it’s a link, it might not show up right away but I will get it) or email me at ryansbakingblog@gmail.com

Any kind of recipes are great, from cakes to candy and beyond!

Please include the recipe source or if it’s your recipe, please tell me how you would like to be credited!

I’ll probably only use two recipes (since I’ve been doing three posts a week, and I have another post planned for next week!) but I’ll keep the rest saved and probably use them over time!!

Thank you guys so much!! Let’s hope I don’t break down and end up chugging a red velvet cake shake by day two.

As a kid, I loved brown bread. It’s prominent in New England, which is where my dad is from, and he would order a few cans a couple times a year and when we would go up to visit his side of the family we would buy some to bring home.

It’s a dark bread made with whole wheat flour and molasses, it tastes great spread with cream cheese or butter or it can be turned into a sandwich. It comes in a can pre-baked and can be eaten right away or warmed up or toasted. I prefer it slightly warm.
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For Valentine’s Day I thought I’d spread some cupcake love to tons of people. I baked up two batches of mini cupcakes, one chocolate and one red velvet, and topped them with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

I just wanted to make a quick post to show off the cupcakes and also give quick links to the recipes again. For the chocolate, it was originally a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, and it was super moist (a little too moist to be a cupcake I think, it makes a PERFECT cake but I’ll stick to this recipe for cupcakes).

The red velvets were just miniature versions of this these, which are my favorite red velvets, I refuse to even try any other recipe because I’m convinced they do not get better than this.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Hope you have a good one!

A lot of recipes call for ingredients to be room temperature, this helps them blend together better, it helps the eggs not become curdled, it helps butter blend better, and it keeps everything from seizing or cooking early.

Unfortunately, the urge to bake can strike quickly and you may not want to wait around an hour for your butter or eggs to reach room temperature, so there are some things you can do to speed up the process.
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Welcome to my 2010 round up post!

This blog hasn’t actually been around for a year, just a little over 6 months, but I wanted to do a roundup of my 10 favorite recipes anyway, and since this is my blog, I’m going to do it real quick.
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This is my KitchenAid, isn’t he beautiful?

I got him last December as a Christmas gift to myself and I’ve been smitten ever since. If you don’t have one, you deserve to get yourself a holiday gift.

KitchenAid mixers come with three heads, a beater, a whisk, and a bread hook, but you can buy a lot of attachments, one of them being the “Beater Blade” by New Metro Design, which is just like the beater but has rubber wings on the side to scrape down your bowl for you (which means you don’t have to stop and dig around with a rubber scraper). It’s also dishwasher safe and durable, I’ve had mine for almost as long as I’ve had my kitchenaid (a year) and it is still working perfectly.

Interested in winning one?
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The holiday baking season will be here any minute and that means you are going to need brown sugar.

Whether you are making chocolate gingerbread bars or brown sugar fudge or even brown sugar cupcakes, you will be using a LOT of brown sugar in the coming month.

Lucky for you, when you run out you can just make your own instead of running to the store.

You only need two things: sugar and molasses.

Print Recipe
Homemade Brown Sugar

Makes a little over 1 cup

1 cup granulated sugar
1-2 tablespoons unsulphured molasses

Use 1 tablespoon molasses for light brown sugar and 2 tablespoons for dark brown sugar.

Combine both ingredients and mix together with a fork or electric mixer and blend until completely combined. The molasses may stick together but keep beating and it will break up and latch onto the sugar and you’ll have flavorful brown sugar in less than 5 minutes.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers here in the US.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some pumpkin bread to bake.

Not everyone has Pumpkin Pie Spice on hand and with Thanksgiving and other holidays quickly approaching, more and more recipes are asking for it.

Pumpkin Pie Spice is actually a mix of other ground spices: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves. These are all great spices for someone who bakes to have, so you may already have them and be able to mix up your own Pumpkin Pie Spice.

Print Recipe
Pumpkin Pie Spice
Idea from Martha Stewart’s Holiday Cookies Magazine

Makes 1 tablespoon

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Combine all spices and blend together well. Store in a small airtight container if not using it all at once.

That’s me, the tall, awkward guy in the background, looking just a bit pale with a weird smile.

I mostly took pictures with my phone and tweeted them, none of them are particularly special or great quality so this is going to be very text heavy.

It was an amazing experience. Like I mentioned, I was invited to the Martha Stewart show on November 1st to tweet from the audience about all the cookies and things that would be featured. If you check out my twitter, you’ll see all the updates, but I’ll give you the scoop here too.
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