Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Indoor Projects: Bake!

Andrew is the cook and I am the baker. He loves to try a recipe from one of his favorite Food Network personalities and can really but in the time and energy to make some really delicious meals. Dinner is too high pressure for me. Too many things to watch and chop. Plus, what if it doesn't taste good, then dinner is ruined! I get a raging sweet tooth from the Perdue side of the family and have always eaten dinner looking forward to dessert. I love trying out new recipes. Baking is generally a winter pursuit for me, but with so many great internet sites out there, I'm trying to take advantage of the super hot days and rainy days to be more focused indoors. I'll start with my proudest baking try, my first cake from scratch! I can't remember if I reserved this book or just saw it on the shelf, it's hard for me to keep track of what I just find and what I order. But I can't wait to try more recipes in this book. And the cute vintage bundt cake pan was a bonus find. Man look at that color! It comes more from the 8 (yup, 8) egg yolks I had to whisk in before adding to the mix. The yolks are courtesy of the Scordato flock of course. It didn't require that much lemon juice, but I needed a lot of juice to make the complementary lemon sorbet from this book. I got to try out another great vintage find, this one from my favorite antique shop, Old Glory Antiques, only a stone's throw away from our house. I love how the bottom part helps measure the juice as you go. I'll be doing another post about Old Glory later, as a lot of our great pieces in the house are from this lovely Mom and Pop shop! While I ws working on desserts, Andrew was working behind our house to make our seating area by the deck. Once it is all done I'll post it up here. The deck was last years project, and the seating area is one of this years. Here is the cake cooling on the rack! While the cake was cooling, I made a simple syrup for the sorbet, and heated up some strawberries to make a topping. The pot with the discarded lemon halves is an idea from Country Living magazine. I simmered them on the stovetop for about an hour and a half in water for a lemony air freshener. Andrew said he could smell the lemon when he walked in. My sinuses, alas, did not let me note the difference. Here is the finished product, voila! And with the sorbet and a little honey drizzled over it, because you know, honey makes everything better! Stay tuned for further adventures in cake making. I think I'm going to stick with this simple cake bundt book. Even though it is slim, there are lots of possibilities. And speaking of lemons, I've been searching for the perfect lemonade recipe. A few weeks ago I tried a recipe from Even though I love the fragrance, look and used of lavender, I've discovered that I am not a big fan of the culinary flavor. I'm aiming to try it again without the lavender, because the vanilla layer really mellowed out the lemon. "Where did I get all these books?" You ask? At the library of course! Last but not least. I tried the Giant Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies from Baking Bites and I made peanut butter fudge using my lactaid milk from a recipe from rcakewalk. See sidebar for blogs)It had been ages since I'd had fudge and it wasn't bad at all. So many recipes for fudge called for condensed milk, and it's hard to substitute. Both were very good! Until next time!

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