Today Required Cupcakes

There was ice fog all day, I am exhausted after running 14 miles yesterday (!), and it was a Monday. So, I needed to bake something sweet, and then smear it with icing. I developed a crazy craving for carrot cake while walking the dog after work and couldn’t think of anything else. I’m not even sure if I like carrot cake, but today, I needed carrot cake. Luckily, I had a giant bag of carrots in the fridge just waiting to made into something less nutritious. I decided to try this carrot cake recipe - I seem to be obsessed with cooking and her photos always look so good. My cupcakes look slightly less orange, and are much smaller (since medium cupcake liners were on sale) but still tasted delicious. Anything covered in cream cheese icing can’t be that bad. Now that I’ve eaten a few of them the weather has cleared up, my legs ache a little less and Monday seems to have passed by nicely.

Frosty Days

Sunday morning everything was covered in frost. It was lovely, and is still hanging around today.

Every tree was covered

I really enjoyed the pine trees – they hold the frost better.

Little furry needles

More frost

Pine cone

Patches - 10 lbs slimmer!

Bread

I don’t think I’ve baked a loaf of bread since I moved to Calgary, but this weekend I dusted off my World of Bread and set about kneading. There is something about making your own bread that is so satisfying, and the concept of bread baking is very easy – mix yeast, flour and liquid together and let rise. World of Bread offers many variations on this, including my old standby called Cornell Bread. I find the description that accompanies the recipe in my book quite humorous, but the bread is truly delicious.

The dough, after the first kneading, hanging out in the sunshine before being set aside to rise

Bread recipes are always just suggestions, so while the bread I baked this weekend turned out (mostly) I’ll be modifying my recipes to work better in the dry climate of Calgary.  My Cornell bread dough worked as it was supposed to – smooth and not too sticky, but didn’t rise as much as I had hoped. I think a little more water will allow me to mix in the extra flour the recipe calls for. The dough did look good though.

Ready to be put into the pans

And even if the bread was a little stunted, it still tastes amazing. I had it as grilled cheese sandwiches today, and they were perfect. Jon also maintains that the bread has the same amount of nutrients, but since it’s smaller he’ll need to use less PB and J to cover it. This makes it practically a diet food.

Finished product.

 If you’re going to make 1 loaf of bread, you might as well make several since you need to commit fully to a day of being home with your dough anyways. I also tried a whole wheat bread recipe (from a book called Bread Winners) which was a disappointment. I should have realized it when I read the recipe (the flour to water ratio seemed all wrong) but I tried anyways and was rewarded with two very small, very hard loaves that will now be fed to the local rabbit/bird population. I have many, many other whole wheat recipes to try, including one that has been very successful for me in the past so I’m sure I can find something that works better.

I tried a third bread, a beer bread (also from Bread Winners) which turned out quite well. It’s a whole wheat loaf, but use milk, dark beer (I used WRB Stout) and molasses. The dough looked good, the loaves rose well, and the slice I ate yesterday tasted promising but strong. I think this will be toast, or soup bread since the beer flavour is noticable. Probably won’t be a bread staple, but I think I’d make it again.