Baking

These past few weeks I have been baking a lot.  It all started with a new cookbook that I bought called “All Cakes Considered” a years worth of weekly recipes tested, tasted and approved by the staff of NPR’s All Things Considered. 

This cookbook goes through how to properly bake a cake.  Now, I’ve baked a lot of cakes and I have never done it quite like this book has you do it.  The first recipe, The Man Catcher – Sour Cream Pound Cake, goes through each step of the making and baking process and the recipe is 12 pages long.  I followed along and I must say that I have never had batter look as good as the one I made with this recipe.  It was worth the effort.  Here is the end result:

I also made two things for Father’s Day.  The first was pancakes, which really isn’t baking, but I was creative, so I just had to show you.

The next were these little cheesecake cups which were so easy to make.  All it took was chocolate chip cookie dough in the bottom, the cheesecake portion and then cherry pie filling on the top.  I do not like cheesecake, but I actually found these quite tasty. 

I also made these cute star sugar cookies with red white and blue frosting.  I made these to sell at a friend’s rummage sale to help cover the cost of shipping care packages to the troops.  The rummage is still going on, but so far I sold about 30 of them.  Whatever is left over I will ship to the troops with my package on July 1st.

 

Happy Father’s Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful Dads out there.  Have a great day!

When it rains it pours

On Monday night I decided to bake a cake.  I keep my stand mixer in the basement and when I went to grab it I noticed water in there.  I first assumed that it was from Jamie turning the water on and off while fixing the bathroom, but Jamie quickly realized that it was the hot water heater.  Damn!  I just told Jamie two days prior that the water heater is 15 years old and may go soon. 

So on Tuesday Jamie picked up a new unit and started installing it around 7pm.  He insisted that he would get it done that night, but around 10pm I started heating water up on the stove for a bath.  At 11:30pm I told Jamie to just stop and finish it the next day.  But he was determined to finish that night.  So finally at 12:45am the water heater was ready to go.  I wasn’t so sure that there wasn’t a leak somewhere, so I took the water I boiled on the stove up to my bathtub and took a bath.  I finally crawled into bed at 1:15am.  Jamie waited until morning and took a nice hot shower.

On Friday of this week Jake had to stay home from daycare because of a fever the day before.  Jamie stayed home and when I got home from work he informed me that the dishwasher is broken.  Damn Damn!  That is also 15 years old so I’m not surprised.  Jamie researched dishwashers and is convinced the Samsung is the best for our money, but it won’t be here until the 25th.  So back to washing dishes by hand for a few more days. 

I asked Jamie what might be next to go and he told me not to worry that we have at least 4 months before the furnace goes too!

Team Air Force

I just signed up on www.bakinggals.com to send cookies and other goodies to Team Air Force for the 4th of July.  Here is some information about the team:

We are baking for Lt Col Peter P.  He is the Mission Support Group Deputy Commander at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan and has many responsibilities including Logistics and Transportation.  They serve as the hub for a number of forward operating bases.  He has helicopters going to the guys in the trenches weekly, so this is a great opportunity to get our goodies to the guys and gals in Afghanistan that need them the most. 

Operation baking gals sends out shipments about once a month to several of the armed forces.  You can visit the site above and sign up or if you would like to include anything with my shipment just let me know before July 1st.  I would like to send it out that day if possible.

Leaky toilet

Some of you know that we had a leaky toilet a few months back.  The toilet was fixed but we didn’t realize the extent of the problem.  The water had soaked through the tile, through the subfloor, into the insulation and the drywall of the ceiling of the garage.  Jamie decided to start ripping the ceiling down one day and a ton of water came out.

Here is the ceiling of the garage:

So now, a few months later, Jamie removed the bathroom floor and on Saturday installed a new subfloor:

The little round hole is where the toilet goes, which you can see is for now in the tub.  We had to order a new vanity because the other one was black on the bottom and I suspect moldy. 

The next step is to remove the wallpaper and fix the drywall in the bathroom and in the garage ceiling.  We are adding an in-floor heating mat (awesome!) and some new tile.  I am going to paint the bathroom the same color as the master bathroom and put this really cute shower curtain up for Jake:

In the winter, we are going to take up the tile in the master bathroom and add the in-floor heating and the same new tile.