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Caked & Baked

Cooking & Baking

Since getting my all-powerful stand mixer, I’ve been a baking crazy person. (I went with a Cuisinart rather than KitchenAid – I love it!) I thought it might be the initial rush of a new toy, but a month later the baking has not stopped.

I’ve been on a bit of a binge. Luckily, I’m not a heavy eater otherwise! Thus far, I’ve made the following recipes, and a few of these two or three times. The big hits are marked with an asterisk. =)

  • Gingerbread Spice Cake with Buttercream*
  • Cornbread Focaccia with Tomatoes*
  • German Pumpernickel
  • Puffy Eggy White Bread
  • Peanut Butter Cookies
  • Snickerdoodles
  • Spiced Banana Cake with Cherries* (my recipe)
  • Simple Banana Bread
  • Zucchini Bread
  • Blueberry Muffins
  • Herb Parmesan Biscuits* (my recipe)
  • and a few things I’m sure I’m forgetting

It got to a point at which I was really liking some recipes (or had created them) and really wanted to save them. I started putting together my own cookbook to keep in the kitchen. (Including woodcuts of medieval baking and cooking, of course!) The upcoming list I’ve at least managed to center mostly around Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

  • Choux Pastry & Confectioner’s Custard
  • Puff Pastry for Turnovers
  • German Bierocks
  • Steamed Golden Christmas Pudding (my recipe)
  • Pan de Muerto
  • Sugar Cookies & Royal Icing
  • Yellow Cake & Marshmallow Fondant
  • Molasses Cookies
  • Homemade Pasta

Happy eating season, Friends!

O

The Lost Weasley

Home and Renovation

Know anyone who keeps a box of antique reproduction iron hardware around just in case he needs it? I have a box of salvaged mid-19th century iron nails too.

98% sure it’s going to be the big hinge.

O

The pantry is nearing completion; enough that I’m getting ready to build the doors. My drying rack arrived from the UK today!

I’m mulling over whether I want to go buy lumber right now. I’m tired, but if I do it now, I won’t have to go out tomorrow. Also, it’s raining. On the upside, the store would be slow. On the downside, I’d have to load lumber into the SUV in the rain. Plus I want to make some crème pastissiere and choux pastry. We’ll see. My tired back and cold toes will let me know soon.

Of course, like most things in this house, the pantry has taken much longer than anticipated. I’m used to it and fond of it. I’ve been known to build things purposely crooked so they can live in harmony with our slanting floors, crooked doorways, and cobwebs. So, everything takes a while. It’s a small price to pay for having the privilege of owning a 180+ year-old, super crooked Weasley cottage. =)

Out of curiosity, I just looked up a photo of Molly Weasley’s kitchen. I hadn’t realized it specifically, but that kitchen clearly sunk in and stuck in the back of my brain — it looks very much like what I am building right now. She even has my plate rack.

The Weasley’s kitchen

O

I’ll have pictures soon.

Herbs de Provence

Cooking & Baking, Garden

Irritating Gatekeeping Mention — Due to the number of “marketers” liking posts (thereby connecting and leaving their site address), I’ve turned off post “likes.” Comments are still open.

The leaves begin to tumble, the moon rises in the very early evening, and a chill wind blows past creaking wooden shutters and underneath ill-fitting doors.

It’s time to put up the herbs.

Nothing terribly surprising — just basil, thyme, oregano, and sage — but I have a nifty way of saving fresh herbs for the entire year. (At least I think I do. For all I know, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.)

Sage & Basil ready for their bath

O

I set the herbs in piles and pick through everything. (I have indeed taken caterpillars out.) I drop the stems and rejects in a pile on the counter, and I drop the good stuff into a colander in the sink.

After everything is rinsed, it’s food processor time — the basil, thyme, and oregano are wozzed up together nice and small as an herbs de Provence mix.

I tuck the washed-chopped herbs into ice cube trays, cover with water, and freeze. After they’re frozen, I plop ’em in a labeled Ziploc bag and I have ready-to-go chopped fresh herbs all year long — just drop an herb cube into whatever I’m cooking. =)

The scraps and stems can be put into a bottle with warmed olive oil and placed in the sun. Strain the herbs out after a week or two, and you’ll have herb-infused olive oil.

The sage is frozen separately (not chopped) in Ziploc bags by the bunch — filled with water and frozen to wait for Thanksgiving.

Happy Autumn!

Sandwiches in the Dungeon

Fiascos, Home and Renovation, Uncategorized

I have a thing about underground buildings and rooms.

Our (very) small backyard is on a hill, sloping down 30′ to the house. Something occurred to me today when I saw the below photo.

“Well, that looks like it could be in our backyard. It sure would be easy to pay someone to dig out the space. Then, I’d be very comfortable laying the masonry myself.”

O

(Yes, this is exactly the type of thing I get myself into.)

These underground root cellars (and garages) built into hills are ubiquitous here in the Hudson Valley. No worries, though. I have forsworn longterm unnecessary house projects.

It seems like the sort of thing that could be done in less than a week, but we know how I am … it would take two years to decide, a year to plan, another year to actually start, and six months to finish.

I don’t need to pass into my retirement-age years with a half finished root cellar.

Well, That Was Expensive

Home and Renovation

Every so often during this (very slow) kitchen renovation, I run across something that (to me) seems very common; then I realize upon then trying to purchase it, it’s not.

Evidently these iron-and-slats kitchen drying racks on pulleys are one of those things. They’re easily bought in Great Britain, but not so much here. I guess we prefer the standing XWing kind.

Ninety bucks. Forty of that was shipping from the UK and having to import the wooden rails as well because the standard sizes of lumber are not the same in both countries.

Ah, well. I’m happy I found one.

(not my photo)

O

All this aside, I don’t feel quite well today, and it’s a bit chilly. It’s not even cold yet, and the notification emails I receive alerting me to homes for sale in Saint Augustine are already tempting — even if the house is really not that great, needs some work, and is way too small.