The land of inspiration.

I have long had a love affair with America and American culture and someday I plan to move here, but I'll settle at visiting friends for the time being.
I am overwhelmed by the amount of baked goods that are available here in the states and when I was in the Austin Flagship store of Wholefoods, my passion for alchemaic baking was fired up.
These images were taken with my iphone so maybe not the best quality but you get the gist.

1) These were vegan cookies and cream cupcakes, now my forays into the world of vegan baking have met quite a bit of success. When I was researching a recipes for a layered mousse cake I came across a vegan layered mousse cake and decided to make it in my bunt tin. It was moist and delicious and the inclusion of vinegar, whilst at first a disgusting idea, turned out to leave no trace of a taste. Vinegar is turning out to be a bit of a bakers best friend in fact, one tbsp in pastry can tenderise the gluten strands and break them down to make the pastry even shorter.

Back to these cakes, they seem like something I could adapt to include a range of British biscuits, maybe even an orange vegan cake, with chocolate frosting and a Jaffa Cake on top... or maybe a vanilla sponge with an orange cheesecake filling and then chocolate frosting on top, like a black bottomed cupcake. That would be the Jaffa Cake of kings!

2) These are fuzzy but they are brandy snap baskets filled with creme and topped with glazed fruit. 

 My journey into the bake-off led me to practice making ginger snaps, they were something I always feared as being very difficult to make, but I was mistaken. They were amazingly easy.

You just make the mixture, which if i remember rightly was mostly flour, butter and golden syrup, and then blob it on a baking sheet and then pop it into a hot oven. They only take a few minutes and they'll spread out into a disc shape, take on the typical ginger snap appearance and then when you let them cool for a moment they will be cool enough to manipulate into you desired shape, I rolled them over a rolling pin to form a tube shape.

I filled them with squirty cream, but I can see how, like at Wholefoods, you could make a basket by moulding them over a cup and then fill with some kind of vanilla creme patisserie, top with fruit and a clear glaze, or a coffee cream and then dust with chocolate covered coffee beans and cocoa, delicious!

I will add more photos of baked goods that I have found soon enough, along with some recipes when I have time to type them up.