A beginner’s attempt at bread baking…

I’ve never baked bread before. Well, real bread anyway. You know, the kind you have to use yeast for, and let rise, and all that fun stuff. I’ve been intimidated by something that required so much…WORK.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to try and add some new things to my (not-so) culinary arsenal. When I got my Food Network magazine this week (via my Nook Color – that will be another posting in itself soon), Ellie Kreiger had a whole wheat cinnamon bread recipe that sounded interesting. But can I do all that work? Work with yeast? And all that rising? Hmm.

I have to say, I didn’t do half bad. I did learn the best place to allow bread dough to rise is our downstairs powder room. Since that room is tiny, it’s always about 5-10 degrees warmer than the kitchen.

I used more cinnamon, raisins, and brown sugar than the recipe called for….but YUM. Just for fun, I made up some vanilla icing (simple mix of powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk) to put on top.

Even though it was a long process, I will definitely baking more bread in my future! Any suggestions for recipes?

Happy New Year!

Let’s start this New Year off right…with some sweets!

I’ve been stalking Bakerella’s blog for about a year and a half since I was introduced to it by my college roommate. What attracted me to her blog first was her food photography (I love taking pics of food, much to the dismay of my Facebook friends). I never thought I’d actually try to MAKE something from her blog!

Fast forward to December 2010…my office was having a cookie party, and I wanted to make something OTHER than cookies. I mean, how many different variations of chocolate chip cookies does one office need? I had purchased Bakerella’s book a couple months prior (again, for the food porn photos!), and decided to be daring and actually MAKE something from it. Since it was my first try at anything Bakerella, I went with the basic cake ball recipe.

Lessons learned – FOLLOW the directions! I made some decisions on my own that did not enhance the final product. For one, I put waaaay too much frosting into the cake crumbs. I did use 3/4 of the container of frosting as Bakerella recommended, however, I didn’t take into account the inherent moistness of the cake. Oops! What I ended up with, I called Red Velvet Cake truffles. A fancy sounding name for “Oops, I messed this recipe up!” I also froze the cake balls before dipping them, which by the way is a big no no, since the coating was hardening near immediately, which made it crack and get lumpy. Oopsies!

Overall though I think they turned out fabulously, and everyone at work loved them and asked for the recipe. I pointed all of them over to Bakerella’s site and hopefully she got some book/blog business from them.

In the near future I’ll post about my second attempt – the Basic Cake Pops. Much more success the second time around! Stay tuned

An update…with a snack…

So, woe is me with Windows 7. Apparently there is no real fix to the network connection dropping everytime the computer sleeps or hibernates. Boo Microsoft! Until that evil empire gets on board, and pushes some real update to fix it, I’ve gone the “disable sleep and hibernate” route. Hey man, whatever works, right?

My little square foot garden is plugging right along though. I have some baby veggies growing up before my eyes! Nothing’s ready to harvest yet though.

Baby red bell pepper:

Cherry Tomatoes:

Jalapenos:

Now these zucchinis aren’t from my garden, seeing as how mine are barely over an inch long. These came from a friend, which I promptly turned into bread!

Monster Zucchini:

Lots and lots of zucchini bread to snack on!

mmm…..Cupcakes….

Happy Independence Day everyone!

Just a quick post today…wanted to leave you with some festive cupcakes! I made these for a party that I”m going to this afternoon. I used the super large Wilton star tip for the icing. The cake is just Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip, and the icing is Pillsbury Whipped Buttercream. I was going to use Paula Deen’s Red Velvet recipe to make cupcakes, but I think I’ll save that for another day. Nonetheless, I think these turned out beautifully!

Have a safe and Happy 4th!