OK you guys, I'm kinda excited  - everyone knows the baker around here is Floyd, and with him doing all the breads, I haven't had to venture into the kitchen to deal with my mageirocophobia. I don't know what it is about baking but I have always tended to shy away from anything baked beyond the occasional cookie and cake.

For all that I'm on here every day for the last 6+ years, I still had never actually baked any sort of yeasted bread myself - I've only made simple quickbreads  -  one anyway: banana bread.

Well, Floyd and I have been working on a project for the last couple of weeks, which I'll let him talk about probably in the next week, but it required me to get over my fear of baking and get in there and bake my first loaf, all by myself.

And here is what I made :)

Well, it's nothing as pretty as Floyd's breads, and I know my shaping and scoring are ehehehe...leaving a lot to be desired,

but HEY! It's my first loaf! I am actually pretty psyched about it.

My dough was just a bit more sticky than I expected it to be - I had to be reassured that this was, in fact, OK...

Here's me kinda freaking out about the mess hahaha. And yes, I took the photo using the handle of my wooden spoon to click the shutter button on my camera which was sitting on the counter. :D

Also, what is it some kind of Murphy's Law or something, that the stupid phone will be silent all day right up until you've got your hands plunged into a big pile of sticky dough?

I think the lady on the other end thought my not-so-happy reaction about her call was because she was reminding me about a dentist appointment (which she'd forgotten that she'd already reminded me about anyway!), when in fact, it was just that I was not sure now how to actually hang up the phone and put the receiver down without getting myself stuck to the buttons.

How many of you pace when you put your loaves into the oven? I certainly did... like a new father-to-be at the hospital waiting for news from the doctor :)

But the news came out great, all things considered! Here's what you expert guys like to call "the crumb shot":

Obviously I have lots to learn, but not too shabby for a first time in the kitchen, eh?

And the kids were giving it thumbs up, and since they were raised on Floyd's breads, I consider that a pretty awesome compliment.

They polished off the entire loaf before Floyd even got home to taste it - good thing I'd made a second loaf!

I ran across this today and had to come over and post about it here!

The Breadou® Loaf baguette is designed to look like a loaf of bread but is, in fact, made from flexible polyurethane foam and meant to be used as a computer keyboard wrist rest. The site also says they smell like the real thing too.

How many folks are thinking that the person who came up with this idea was having some tough times getting their doughs to work out right? XD

Also, I'm intrigued by the idea of a baguette "custard caterpillar" - kinda would like to see a recipe for the non-foam version!

Those loaf thingies can be found over here, by the way.

Our kids are huge fan of the appropriately named "Annoying Orange" guy. His latest adventure involves bread dough.

So, it's time for my bi-annual decorated birthday-cake post! Our son turned 9 last weekend and as is our tradition, I made his birthday cake in the theme he selected.

This year, he was super into Greek gods and mythology after having just finished a 5-book series called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He wanted his cake to have a labyrinth, water and a Trident (because the main character in the series is supposed to be the son of the sea-god Poseidon), the Greek god Pan, a black pegasus, a cyclops, Percy's sword, and a "blue triangle that glows and opens the secret doorway to the labyrinth when pressed by a half-bloods hand. 

Well, that's a tall order! Here then, is the cake that he got:

I used marzepan for the sculptures, some gel icing which I dyed blue for the water, and the rest was the cream cheese icing which we've all become so fond of. The cake was two layer - Devils Food chocolate for the bottom layer, and the top layer was the delicious white cake recipe I used for his sister's rainbow cake with swirls of blue in it because there's stuff in the book series about blue food.

The labyrinth walls were made of fudge icing, and the rocks were chocolate rocks that I found at a cake decorating shop.

The boy was particularly pleased with the detail of skulls and bones scattered in the labyrinth. ;)

I learned that making a horse shape out of Marzepan is really super hard. The flower thingies were there to add stability.

ahahahah... OK I know, I know... Looks like Pan has really been letting himself go lately.

I had no idea how to make a Pan - but doesn't he look pleased with himself?

There ya go - glowing triangle. Age 9 gave us the perfect number of candles to make it happen too.

And there's the birthday boy, with sticky hair, blowing out his candles. (His hair is all funny like that because this year's party was a pie-fight in the back yard. Yes, that's right, a pie fight! Floyd bought 14 pounds of pudding and four super-sized cans of non-dairy whipped cream at the Cash and Carry and the kids made "pies" with the pudding which they ladeled onto kid-hand sized paper plates, adding some whipped cream and sprinkles on top. Then they had fun lobbing them at each other. I think the parents had as much fun watching as the kids did throwing the pies, and then we were blessed with several days of rain afterwards which helped clean up the mess on our lawn - it was a ton of fun!)

not your ordinary "Ciabatta".

(image not mine - found online via reddit - shared for your amusement)

Found this over on the bitsandpieces site - thought his "caption contest" idea was one you guys might find amusing :)

One I though I'd share with you guys: Bread maker  Vincent Talleu’s 10-minute pastry-making tutorial is quite entertaining. Loved watching all those shapes being made, and am a bit wowed by the "magic croissant cutter" tool.

This week has been the week of baking lots of Christmas cookies - this year I've been doing the cookie baking (Floyd's still in charge of supplying our dinner breads ;) Im nowhere near making those pretty sourdoughs myself!)

Yesterday I made a big batch of Sour Cream Sugar Cookies. I didn't have any lemons on hand to add the rind so I substituted some lemon juice (and only after dropping it in did it occur to me that with the baking soda in there I might have been producing a volcano, but luckily nothing of the sort occurred and the cookies turned out delicious) and I separated the icing into different bowls and added some color and let the kids paint the cookies with little paintbrushes so they were nice and festive. I'd forgotten that the cookies grew a little bit, so they held their shape but did spread out a little.

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The exciting new thing I tried this year came about after an accidental purchase of too much Nutella. I'd not seen the double-jars I had hidden in the back of the pantry and had purchased yet another jar - well with all that Nutella something has to be done!

Someone sent me a link to this recipe and I decided to try it. The recipe there was a bit more uptight than my patience allows, so here is the slightly simplified version of what I made:

Start with roasting the hazelnuts: I got a bag of shelled hazelnuts in the bulk section and spread them on a pan and broiled them until they were toasted. I used about 1 1/2 cups. Next, put them in a little food processor to chop them into little crumbs. (As it turns out, I'm hearing that most folks peel the skin off the nuts when they roast them - I didnt do this and think they taste fine, particularly with such a sweet cookie. I'm also finding that the skins are actually better for you - does anyone know why the norm is to peel them?)

Next, the dough:

Into the bowl of a mixer, beat until creamy a stick of butter and ½ cup sugar until it starts to get fluffy (I skipped the step of waiting to bring it to room temperature, but it didn't seem to matter - this helped too with not having to wait to chill the dough later)

Separate out 2 egg yolks, saving the whites in a smaller bowl for later use, and add the yolks in.

Add 1 tsp. vanilla

Then add 1¼ cups all-purpose flour,

1/8 tsp. coarse salt

and ¼ tsp. baking soda slowly until combined

Preheat oven to 325° F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a shallow bowl, mix the chopped hazelnuts with about 2-3 Tablespoons of sugar (to taste)

Roll the dough into small balls and then dip in the whites and then roll them in the nut mixture before placing them on the parchment with about an inch of space between them.

Squish a little hole in the center of each dough-ball to make a depression with a finger or little spoon, then bake for 10 minutes at 325° F

Remove and using a small spoon, squish the hole again, as it will grow a little bit puffy, before returning to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Allow them to cool a few minutes then move them to a rack, fill with a spoonful of Nutella. (Microwave at 30 seconds to get the chocolate stuff melty and runny)

Throw them in the fridge for a bit to let them set a bit, but these are going to be goopy even cooled.

Stumbled across this link today and thought you guys might enjoy it:

Let It Dough! <-- Creation according to Dough

Admit it...you're all going to be playing a bit the next time you're in the kitchen, aren't you ;)

This year our daughter turned 6 and she wanted a "cake with rainbows...and also roller skates" because her birthday party was going to be at a skating rink with her friends.

I have seen various pictures of rainbow cakes on the internet for a while now and have been wanting for ages to have an excuse to try it, so I was happy to finally get a chance!

The "recipe" is really simple...it was just a matter of some extra time and lots of cleanup in the kitchen after. But so cool, and there were lots of ooohs and aaaahs from the kids when that first slice came out looking so unexpectedly beautiful!

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First, I wanted to start with a simple white cake. All the recipes I was finding in the books we have at home looked a little bit complicated, or they were more yellow cakes rrather than white, but I found a recipe online which I tripled to fit my big tube-pan that was super simple (and turned out to be really really yummy too) The original recipe was for a 9 inch pan but 3 of those worked out to be just perfect for my pan, even allowing for some batter-loss in this process when pouring this stuff into my cake pan.

Super Simple White Cake:

cream together:

• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups)

then add:

• 6 eggs
• 4-6 teaspoons vanilla extract (honestly I got distracted at this part so it could have been as little as or as much as)

mix the dry ingredients and add to the batter mix:

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 5 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

And the original recipe said to mix this in last, but Floyd told me that I was going to burn the gears on his stand mixer if I didn't add the liquid in so I mixed the milk in right away after adding the dry stuff and it worked out just fine.

• 1 and 1/2 cup milk

OK so now we have the batter - next comes the fun part!

Divide into a bunch of different bowls and color with food coloring. I happened to have a stash of "neon and pastel" color gets on hand as well, from previous decorating projects, so this cake got the entire color spectrum from the rainbow!

Next we start pouring our batter, one color at a time, into the well greased tube cake pan - one on top of the next.

I wasn't perfect with it - just tried to have some of each color as even as I could get it across the top of the last layer.

When I was done pouring all the different colors, it looked like this:

Next it went into the over at 350 degrees (F). The original recipe had something like 30-40 minutes for a 9 inch cake pan, but since this was tall and more it took more like a little over an hour. I just kept checking it to see when a toothpick came out clean.

The cake came out looking like this: (By the way I have never figured out how to make a cake not crack like this, but *shrug* it's also a great excuse for extra frosting, and we are big fans of the creamcheese frosting so....)

Now the cake needed to cool and I wasn't going to frost it until the morning of the party, so this gave me time to make the roller skates out of marzipan, using some of those color dye gels while I had them out. I learned my lesson from the Lego cake from last years birthday cake for my son so and made sure that there were enough roller skates to give one to each kid:

I made some flowers with the stuff I had left-over too.

Now the next morning I made a big batch of the super delicious cream cheese frosting and instantly took care of any cake-crack blemishes and then piped the rest on for decoration.

(Frosting:

2 packages of 8 oz cream cheese + 2 cups confectioners' powdered sugar

2 packages of 8 oz. cream cheese + 2 cups powdered/confectioner's sugar - whipped with an electric beater until smooth.
Then add 1 cup heavy whipping cream and beat again until you have a spreadable consistency - DO NOT OVERBEAT! (I made butter one time letting that mixer go too long! haha)

Now look at this! Is this not the neatest thing?: