:o(

I am very sad. :o( I hurt my back really bad in August and it has not healed yet. My back has really been acting up this week. I folded laundry tonight and am now in agony. So I called my mom much to my sadness and cancled the donunt making for tomorrow. Oh well maybe next week I will be up to it. Also I made 4 loafs of bread on Tuesday but was not able to make any more. I had dreams of making 9 loafs. Oh well some times life does not go as planed. Physio tomorrow. I pray that helps. Nothing else I have tried has. I want to get back to life. To baking again. Just to be able to do regular things. But do keep checking. I will post something again. Blessings!

Great Find

Hey I found a great conversion chart for baking conversitions. Check it out under my blogs I am following.

Dounut making? I thought I was making bread!

So thought today o.k. I need to get back to making more stuff. I thought I should make a pile of bread and stick it in my freezer. Well I went to mennonitegirlscancook site and found lots of great bread recipes. But they all called for quick rise yeast. Of which I don't have. Oh well I guess I won't make bread today. But I can make pizza dough. I have made that alot and found out a friend of mine makes her pizza dough in big batches and freezes them. So I figured since I can't make the other doughs I would at least be able to make something today. I then thought that I would look up quick breads in the same site and see what they had. Well as I was looking I found a recipe for pumpkin dounts. They sounded soo good. Before I knew it I had phoned my mom who is an excelent donut maker. I have never made donuts before just consumed them. Booked her to come over on Friday October 30th in the afternoon. I am excited about this. Except that my mom said since we will have the oil going already we may as well make yeast donuts as well as my cake donut recipe. That is a lot of donuts. I will need to have a donut eating party. Also I do want to make bread. So it willl be a week with lots of challenges going on. Hey Angela is a pumpkin donut challenging? I hope my blog inspires  you to try something new. Whether that would be with baking or something else in life you have been afraid to try. Know that anything is possible. You can accomplish great and mighty things! Blessings

Madelines Birthday Cake

So this is Madelines birthday cake. We saw this cookbook called Princess Spa Cookbook and Madeline fell in love with it. I thought that a spa party would be a great birthday party. So that is what we went with. We bought her the book for her birthday and of course everything we made had to come from the book. So on the cover was flip flop cakes. So that is what I made. I am really happy with how they turned out. I think Madeline will love them. Madeline loves lemons so I made a lemon pudding from scratch that I filled the inside with. Pudding was so easy to make really took no time at all. Then just made a buttercream frosting. In pink and purple just like the book. The cake was one I had not made before. It was a white cake. What was different was that it required me to beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Then fold that into the batter. I had never made this cake before because of the extra step of beating the egg whites. More just because I was intimidated by beating egg whites. There are different stages to beating egg whites and you have to know what each stage looks like. Thankfully I had a book that told me. But when the cake was all said and done I thought it just tasted o.k. But with the pudding and the icing it will  taste good. But I forget how long it takes to ice a cake. I had started at 9:30 pm and thought I would be done in no time. Well when I was finally finished it was 11:30 pm. So much for going to bed early. Oi! Ben hung out with me as I iced the cake for moral support. I always get a bit stressed when icing cakes also when cutting them into shapes. So Ben thanks! You are a real sweet heart. Well I am off to bed. 

Keepin ya posted

Hello All,

Just writing to keep you up to speed on what is going on with me. I have been doing lots of regular baking but nothing much to post on here. I will be making my daughters birthday cake this week so keep your eyes peeled for that. Also I have a friend who had put the challenge out to me to make something with pumpkin. So I will do that challenge next week if all goes well.

Blessings

Make a Smilebox recipe

Stir Whole Wheat Bread

 

So today we are celebrating my moms birthday with everyone. Brothers family is hosting and my sisters family was to be joining us as well. As siblings we decided on potluck. I was to bring dessert and my sister was to bring bread and salad. But as she got sick this weekend and is not able to come I decided to help out with her portion of potluck items. So I chose to bring bread. I thought hey I had found this great recipe in Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog that I would make that. It is the easiest bread imaginable. I had made it once before. So I have posted the link. If the posting of links works. If not just look on the side pannel and click on Mennonite girls can cook and click on yeast breads. Then look for the name I titled this blog. I will tell you what I do different. I like 100% whole grain breads. So I do all whole wheat flour no white and for the 5 or 7 grain cereal I use Red River Cereal. That is if  you live in Canada. I don't know if you can get that any where else in the world. But last night when I whiped up this bread. Which takes like no time at all. I forgot to add the Red river cereal and it turned out just fine. I also have not added the sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Parlty because I don't have them in my home and my husband  does not like crunchy things in his bread. I have also found that when you mix everything together it is very wet. So I add more flour. maybe about 1 cup more. Then I divide it in to 2 balls and pat it into my bread pans. Great bread. So easy. I will try to make a more challenging bread but hey it  tastes good and why do we always have to go to a lot of work when we bake? Some times it is necessary for sure. But some times not. Don't miss understand me. I am not an instant person. I always make my cake from scratch. As I do my whiping cream. I am not a mix person. Nothing wrong if you are. But I find homemade is better and does not take that much longer to make. Just my opinion. So if you love bread give this a try. Let me know if you do and what you think.

The Winner is..../The Joys of Baking

So for all those who voted thank you. :o) The winner is Banana Lemon Layer Cake. Turned out o.k. But not as well as I had hoped. In my opinion a person is most critical of there craft. What ever that is they make. It may look great to someone else but to the person who made it they see every flaw. So I want to share with you some cake baking tips. Things that I have learned along the way and some very recently learned. Picture #2 you can see a big crack in it. The reason for that is that I took the cake out of the pan too soon and did not let it cool long enough in the pan. Very important that your cake cool in the pan before taking out. I knew that but the recipe I had said to take it out at 5 minutes. My better judgement told me not to listen to the book. But I didn't and you can see what happened. No one will know that happened unless they read my blog. Cause icing covers a multitude of sins. Even if It broke in half it could still be salvaged. Once cake is cooled and you are ready to ice put cake in the freezer for 1 hour. What that does is freezes all the cake crumbs so when you ice your cake  you don't have to worry about getting cake crumbs all in your icing. That is a trick I learned recently. Wow is all I have to say. I think about when I will go to make my daughters bday cake and I cut out the shape it always creates crumbs. Now I don't have to worry about them.  Well I thought I had more tips but my brain has drawn a blank. So when it comes to baking cakes I feel pretty confident in the making of them. Well most kinds. But the icing of the cake that is where I need more experience. I felt that this cake today looked plain, blah, boring and like a beginner did it. The taste is good. As I had to trim the edges of the cake and oh there is always extra icing so I should make sure that they taste good. They do. The cake wasn't anything  special but the icing sure was good. Again I am probably too critical. Well that is this experience on to others yet to come. Hmm what next. Oh yeah hey I made some home made bread. Must tell you about that. Next blog entry.

Oi!

So I had wrote about being very busy. Well I still am. I have had a crazy week. I have double booked my self 3 times. I almost never do that. Then yesterday I was suppose to take someone out to coffee and I forgot. I can't believe it. What a crazy life right now. Then get this on Tuesday of this week I was to pick a cake to make for my moms birthday and write out the ingredients on our grocery list. Well as I am at the store shopping I realize I forgot. Oh great so now I am going to have too go back to the grocery to get my cake ingredients. Oh well her birthday party is not till Sunday Oct. 4th. So I am o.k. Not like I forgot all together. I still have time to redeem my self. Unless I forget yet. Yikes! The way this week is going I could see it happening. Also my daughters bday is coming up. So I need to get ready for that. But what about all the challenges I planned on doing? Oi! I had really wanted to make bagels last week but that never happened. Then I thought I would do it this week. But still has not happened. Ugh! Kids were all excited about that. We all really like them. Ben told me last week that he really likes cinnamon and raisin ones. Tried to convince me to buy some at Costco. But I told him that we should not get any. I had planned to suprise him with some. Oh well. I will eventually make them. But first my moms bday cake. She told me today that she really likes desserts with lemon and coconut. So I am debating between making Banana Lemon Layer Cake or Coconut Lime Layer Cake. So which to make? Any opinions? Ben would tell me to make the banana one, as he dislikes coconut. But as the cake is not for him and my mom then his opinion kind of doesn't matter. But it does still. I love him and I care what he thinks. But I did make a chocolate cake once with coconut frosting and Ben did eat it. I guess the chocolate out weighed the nasty coconut. Can't go to wrong with chocoalte can you? So put your vote in for which cake I should make. They both seem pretty easy to me. The only thing is that the coconut cake has a seven minute frosting and I hear that is a finiky frosting to make. So i have never made it. Another one of those why make if it might not turn out. When there are so many more icings that taste good and I know they will turn out. So mabye for that reason I should make the coconut. So cast your vote and I will decide tomorrow. Hey if this blog inspires you in any way let me know. I would love to hear about it.