2 Weeks of Baking
I don't know about the rest of you out there, but I have had the busiest couple of weeks at work! I have barely had a chance to breathe! I worked late three out of five nights last week, and I had a huge project to work on all week long. I'm finally slowing down enough to post here.

Despite my busy-ness, I have continued my once a week baking adventures! Last week, I made banana bread on Valentine's Day. I got the recipe from the Creating Comfort Cookbook again. I realize that it looks pretty similar to my zucchini bread! Here is the inside--yum!

For this week, I made Baby Carrot Bars on Monday night. I had the day off for President's Day, which gave plenty of time to piddle--I went shopping for books in the morning, and cooked in the afternoon. These carrot cake bars are very delicious! If you follow the link, you'll see that you use 2 small jars of baby food in the dough to keep it moist. When I went grocery shopping, I didn't even know where the baby food was! You'll also notice that the recipe called for raisins and walnuts. I didn't put these in because Mike doesn't like walnuts for some reason, and raisins just sounded weird to me.

But the most fun part of the carrot cake bars was making the cream cheese icing. I LOVE cream cheese icing! My mouth is watering just thinking about it. I'd rather have cream cheese icing than chocolate or buttercream or anything else. It's fairly simple really, you just mix the cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla with a mixer.

Stay tuned for more baking ...I now own a springform pan, so there should be some cheesecake soon. And my mom gave me this baking cookbook with over 350 recipes in it, so I should be set for a while!

Zucchini Bread
I may not be very quick in posting, but I have continued my baking adventures! Last Monday, I made a wonderful zucchini bread as my weekly baked good. The recipe was in my Creating Comfort cookbook, which I bought to benefit Genesis Women's Shelter here in Dallas. (You can get one here.)

This version of zucchini bread is pretty sweet, with lots of brown sugar and maple extract in it. These ingredients gave it a rich, dark brown color, and a slightly crunchy texture around the outside. Oooh, it was yummy!


There were 2 full zucchinis in the bread, grated with my cheese grater. I couldn't really taste the zucchini though, with all of the sugar and maple flavoring. I guess the zucchini is just there so you could feel good about eating it!

The recipe made quite a bit of dough--even to fill 2 loaf pans. Mike and I were eating it all last week!


Next baking adventure on the menu is.....


Banana bread!

Adventures in Baking

The proverbial "they" say that your tastes change every 7 years. I don't know if the number is right, but I have noticed that now I like cantaloupe and beans when I hated them for years. Do you think the same is true for the rest of your life? That every few years you like some activity that you used to hate?

I have found this true for me. Any of you that have known for a while know that I used to HATE to cook. I avoided it whenever possible. During college, everything I consumed was pretty much previously frozen, out of a box, or from a restaurant. The kitchen was then a foreign place for me. Chopping vegetables (or anything related to using a knife) was a cruel and esoteric task that I didn't understand or have time for. Baking something was even more foreign to me, as far away from my daily life as could be.

I wonder now why I had this aversion to cooking during this time. Maybe it was a fear of the unknown. I had no idea, for instance, what ratio of ingredients would go into tomato sauce or how to properly hold a knife. Maybe it was a resistance to change. I had been heating up frozen dinners since my Mom had slowly decided that she had been cooking 3 meals a day for me and my sister for 15 years, and we could operate microwaves, so she was tired of cooking! I hadn't paid much attention to her cooking back then, and I didn't have much experience to draw on. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was the fact that Mike would just cook for me. I admit that I got a little bit of smug satisfaction when people exclaimed, "What! Mike cooks for you?! " Like it is so hard to fathom a man cooking.

Well, the 7 year mark passed, and with the influence of Mike, and my sister and my brother-in-law attending cooking school, I slowly began to see the art of cooking. Hey, it was sort of like crafting! I get to work with my hands. I could put the different parts of a recipe together, and come out with a finished product. And you instantly had feedback on how good or bad something tasted. It was rewarding!

I have also decided to try my hand at baking. Call it a New Year's resolution. Baking is quite a different prospect than cooking. You can be less exact with cooking, you can improvise. Baking requires exact measurement and timing. The recipes say, "Don't mix it too much!" or "Mix only to combine and no more!" It is quite frightening! But, what the hell--I'll never learn if I don't try.

So, on Martin Luther King Day I was off work, and I decided to make Irish Soda Bread from my Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook. I asked my brother-in-law, the culinary school graduate, to supervise me and make sure I didn't mess it up. He showed me how to incorporate the butter into the flour by using my hands instead of a mixer. Oh, and by "showed me how," I really mean, he completely took over! He likes to do things his way. I told him how was I ever going to learn if I couldn't do it myself? He reluctantly relinquished some of the control. I have to say, the bread was DELICIOUS! It has orange zest and buttermilk in it, and currants too--you can see the currants in these pictures. We had the bread with asiago-cheese crusted chicken (Mike's original recipe), Cheddar Corn Chowder also from Barefoot Contessa, and broccoli. Yum!

The following week, I made Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread from the Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook. I was extra proud of this one because I made it all by myself! I mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately, chopped and seeded jalapenos, shredded cheese, and mixed everything just to incorporate. It was quite an accomplishment! A delicious one too.

And this past Sunday, I made Easy Cheese Danishes from guess which cookbook. These were a daunting task in that they use puff pastry. Is there anything more intimidating to the beginner baker than the elusive, persnickety puff pastry? I have watched shows on Food Network about it, and the host invariably cautions you to be careful, don't screw it up, or it won't puff! But cheese danishes are irrestible to me, so I decided to go for it. I started making them while Mike was at the grocery store, and he came home in time for a minor freak-out. My puff pastry anxiety was taking over! I had decided to make smaller-sized danishes, which means I cut 6 out of a sheet of puff pastry instead of 4. When Mike was helping me assemble them, the filling was threatening to spill off the sides and they wouldn't fold over right. They looked pretty ugly, to tell you the truth. I told Mike we just needed to get the damn things in the oven! I just wanted it to be over! I waited nervously for the next 20 minutes, asking Mike every couple of minutes, "Do you think they'll be good? I know they are ugly, but will they tasted good?" Out of the oven they came, looking puffy (yes!) but ugly (oh well). They tasted so good, so creamy, with strong vanilla and lemon flavors. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as we scarfed them down. I completely forgot to take a picture of them in my hurry to gobble them up, so you will just have to use your imagination.

My plan is to bake something new at least once a week. Bread, muffins, cake--something in the oven from scratch every week. (Frozen puff pastry from a box still counts as from scratch, even my brother-in-law says so). I will post my creations here and keep you informed of my baking adventures!

More Handmade Gifts and Holiday Goodies

I realize that the holidays are but a distant memory now, but I still have more gifts and pictures to share. This is a scarf that I made for my cousin, who is living in Paris right now. She is there for six months teaching English, and as far as I know, this is the first time she hasn't been home for Christmas. I sent her a box of goodies, including the scarf. I thought the yarn was such an interesting combination of colors: gray, pink, orange, yellow, and blue.

This is a purse that I made for my sister-in-law. I used a linen fabric that I bought at Ikea for the outside, and cute frog fabric that I got on Superbuzzy. It is a linen/cotton mix of a similar color, with green frogs and brown numbers printed all over it.



















Can you see the little frogs?













Finally, here is another grocery bag dispenser that I made for my mother-in-law. (The free pattern is here, written by the Crochet Dude.) It ended up being quite a bit fatter than the other one I made--I think I added lots of extra stitches when I wasn't paying enough attention! I think this is a good thing though, because she will have more room for grocery bags.



















Right after Christmas, I made the Bisquick Applesauce Muffins recipe shared by Alicia from Posie Gets Cozy. I have to say, they were absolutely delicious! You dip the tops of the muffins in butter and cinnamon sugar once they get out of the oven--mmmm! Mike and I kept dipping them as we ate them too!


















I'll leave you with a picture of the Christmas tree at my mom's house--it was just beautiful!!