Baking

Baking #8: King’s Cake Pancakes

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***Originally posted 2/17/15. Only one more repeat post after this one if you are signed up for updates and were signed up before as well, just bare with me for one last post after this 🙂 ***

HAPPY FAT TUESDAY!

You may or may not know that one of the items on my bucket list is to celebrate Mardis Gras in New Orleans. It’s funny because most events with crowds that big don’t appeal to me, but the music, the atmosphere, the colors, I think I would love it!

Although I also think the smells of gumbo and other spicy, delicious NOLA meals would make me wish I wasn’t pescetarian. However, one of the non-meat filled traditional meals would be a King Cake- which would be way too big for my family to try and eat on our own so I had to scale that idea down.

Luckily, I also grew up with the tradition of Shrove Tuesday- it’s basically another way to celebrate Fat Tuesday centering around pancakes. Pancakes are the perfect pre-lent meal because they are made with sugar, butter, syrup- all sorts of sweet and fattening things you are supposed to abstain from during Lent. Pancakes were a great way to get those ingredients out of the house to avoid temptation. Shrove Tuesday also holds a special place in my heart because as an early modern scholar I get extra joy out of ringing the pancake bell.

  

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Baking #7: 42 projects in 52 weeks

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***Originally posted 2/16/15***

So this post has been delayed.. a few times. First because i thought I was going to write it on making homemade pizza with my family on Friday, but my mom was super prepared and pre-made the dough so I felt like that was cheating. We make this often enough so i will post about it when I can really do it from scratch. Consider these pictures a sneak peek:

 

Then it was delayed again due to Valentines day and while I finally wrote it yesterday, I didn’t get around to importing pictures and publishing until today because we had such a busy Sunday, so just pretend like you are reading this then, because I don’t want to go back and change all the tenses. Here you go:

Definitely an AZ girl!

Yesterday was Valentine’s day, but it was also something even closer to my heart than candy and cards- it was Arizona’s birthday. My state… is crazy town sometimes, but I love it. I love the mountains and the sunsets and I especially love that you can’t shovel sunshine and that we can use the BBQ on Christmas Day. Continue reading →

Baking #6: 42 projects in 52 weeks

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***Originally Posted 2/8/15***

OK, remember when I said that technically some of my projects wouldn’t be baked persay? This week’s is one of those.  I made Oreo Truffles today so I could bring something sweet to the How I Learned To Drive cast party and I thought I’d share this very easy treat with you.

There are several variations of this recipe all over the internet, but I have always just guestimated after making them for the first time at a holiday treat party in 2010.

Here are you basic ingredients: Continue reading →

Baking #5: 42 projects in 52 weeks- Cookies for the Cast

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***Originally Posted 1/27/15***

Yesterday’s baking project was an oldie but a goodie- chocolate chip cookies!

I wanted this week’s recipe to be something I could easily share because today is the designer’s run for How I Learned to Drive. Our rehearsal process has been short, intense, and has just flown by! After the designers run we have only a few more rehearsals before we open a week from Thursday! WHOAH!

(Seriously… Get. Your. Tickets!)

I am so proud of this cast and so thankful to have a full production team (still seems strange after 3 years of grad school where the cast WAS the production crew!) So I thought cookies would be a good way to offer a gesture of appreciation. Plus, things are really busy around here so it seemed a good time for a tried and true recipe. That’s also why today’s post is fairly short. Hopefully back to your regularly scheduled blogging after getting through tech and opening!

There are hundreds of cookie recipes online. I won’t tell you my exact recipe, but I will tell you a little cookie baking hint: If your oven heats unevenly (and I think most household ovens do at least a bit), make sure you switch the trays between the top and bottom rack halfway through cooking. This will keep them soft instead of half soft and half crunchy from the extra heat!

Another tip? Don’t skip on the chocolate chips! MMMMMMMM….

Also, always have a glass of milk handy for taste testing…

Baking #4: 42 projects in 52 weeks- Hobbit Cake

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***Originally Published on 1/16/15***

I started today with a major case of the Mondays. Baby and I are both fighting off a cold so the weekend wasn’t much of a restful time and there just seems to be an extraordinarily overwhelming number of things  to do this week and to be honest, I was just in a bad mood from being sick.

Pretty much sums it up…

A shot of 1 of our 4 bookshelves. We love our nerdy book collection!

Then, I thought about my sweet husband who must be suffering an even worse case of the Mondays. Even though it’s a holiday, he volunteered to work because we have some big dental bills from this month, AND he woke up with the baby a few times last night to help me get some sleep since I’m sick AND I kept him up even more with tossing and turning and sniffling and blowing my nose at all hours because I’m sick. He is one of the hardest working, caring, thoughtful people I know. So today’s baking project is a recipe that I saw and immediately thought of him. The reason? A friend pinned it on pinterest and described it as “the sort of cake a hobbit would have at home for breakfast”  (in actuality, the cake is called Black Milk Tea and Honey cake and you can find the recipe over on this blog).

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Baking #3- 42 projects in 52 weeks: The Hunger Games

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***This was originally posted on 1/12/15***

So… the last few days have been insane. Very busy with lots of good things, but very exhausting- mostly because we lost my son’s favorite pacifier and every other pacifier in the world seems inadequate to get him to sleep in a timely manner…

That little bear with the pacifier is called a Wubanub and the last we saw this one was Friday.. which was also the last time we saw very good sleep… We bought a new Wubs but to no avail, it’s just not blue bear…

but I figured it’s a new week and I feel good starting it with some baking.  I tried to be optimistic. I took the baby for a walk to calm him down as soon as it stopped raining, then I got us ready to go for a really nice coffee date, then he looked EXHAUSTED by the end of it and i thought YES! nap time is around the bend! let’s get him home! but of course he fell asleep in the five minute drive home and then woke up when the car stopped and would not go back to sleep again so I had a CRANKY baby the rest of the day.

Still determined to at least accomplish this one thing- I put the baby on my back- hoping he would fall asleep there and started looking for my recipe of the week. I knew I wanted it to come from this cookbook:

Awesome, right? I’ve had this book since 2011, but have never even tried a single recipe. It was more of a nerdy impulse by to be honest but I figured the time had come. They have a whole chapter on bread so I thought I’d try that and when I found one recipe called “Katniss’s CravedCheese Buns” I thought that has to be the one. Continue reading →

Baking #2: 42 projects in 52 weeks- “Easy Peasy French Bread”

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***This was originally posted on 1/5/15***

OK, so those of you who know me from school at some level or another will know that I like to front load my work whenever possible. I’d rather work really hard and get some extra time to rest and recover at the end of the week/month/semester/etc. than get stressed from the pressure of letting things build up. So unless things really fall apart, I try to be extra productive and positive on Mondays. I have a lot on my to-do list today, and this baking project didn’t derail that to do list at all! (though the painful teething times of my little guy did…)

When I first started thinking about this project/ New Year’s Resolution, I figured where better to get ideas of what to bake than good ol’ Pinterest?! I spent some time searching and I have about 20 recipes pinned or liked that I’m keeping my eye on and hope to try at some point. The recipe for this week’s loaf was on my list. It seems to be the darling of the Pinterest bread baking world and came up several times in my searches. Seriously, it was everywhere, you may recognize it by this image:

It wasn’t until a friend messaged me, however, that I decided I needed to bump it up the list and try it ASAP. This is what her message said: “Literally the easiest bread I’ve made and one of the easiest things I’ve ever baked. I make it at least once a week!”

Well, that recommendation was good enough for me. And she was right. It was SO EASY! It took a lot less time than the last bread batch (Only 15 minutes for it to rise?! That’s perfect timing for me to feed my son and start him on some independent playtime and get 30 minutes to myself while it bakes!) You can find the recipe for yourself here but I will post the ingredients to give you an idea of just how easy it is:

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Baking #1: 42 projects in 52 weeks- “Everyday Bread”

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***This was originally posted on 1/2/15***

So… yesterday was the first day of 2015. I had planned to start the new year with a hike or a picnic in the park or something outdoorsy and embracing all things beginning again. Then this happened:

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As one of my best friends put it when she texted me this picture: “What the f is this?”

For those of you who aren’t Phoenicians… this is basically ungodly cold for us. Any weather that does not allow the semi-comfortable wearing of flip flops, no matter what month it is, is not OK.

So… instead of trying to bundle my kid up and take him outside (how do you Midwestern families do it?! I mean baby snowsuits are cut and all but I can barely get my son into a single layer of clothes with all the wiggling.) I put him in his high chair, put on our favorite youtube videos to dance to, and decided that the best way to warm up was to turn on the oven and to try my hand at baking bread. This also meant it was time to bust open the giant brick of yeast I had purchased for my 2015 goal:

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It was pretty fun to watch the yeast explode out when I cut the vacuum seal…

I figure now that I’ve invested in this much yeast, I HAVE to bake bread/pretzels/bagels/etc, right?

For my first batch of bread I decided to try the first recipe in this book:

image3It claimed it was easy,  and the 2-3 hours the bread needed to rise was a good opportunity to get some new year’s cleaning done. AHAHAHHAHA just kidding. My baby is teething and getting over an ear infection so he’s still on the fussy side of life which meant most of that time was spent trying to get him to nap, putting him in the baby carrier so I could put away some Christmas stuff (we STILL haven’t put away Christmas gifts. I guess today is the day), and listening to Amy Poehler’s audiobook pretending she and I are best friends.  When I left the bread to rise it did not look very pretty and I thought for sure I had messed it up and straight away I would have my first utter failure to blog about… but I patiently waited. And it seemed to rise just fine.

yup, our oven is a hot mess… literally… but doesn't the bread look good?!

yup, our oven is a hot mess… literally… but doesn’t the bread look good?!

And after it had time to bake,  it came out looking pretty good:

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It tasted alright too! At first I thought it was just ok… then I melted some butter on a slice and it  becaome something I definitely will eat again and my husband said it was the best bread he’d tasted in a long time. There’s a pretty thick crust on it but the inside is really soft, and the crust was actually baby’s favorite part because he could gnaw on it like a teething toy!

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For round one of baking, I am going to call it a win. But hopefully the next loaf will be even better.