Anniversaries, birthdays and a sweet tooth

I've been naughty.

I fell off the gluten free and vegan wagon and I've been indulging in far too many prepackaged sweets. The size 8s in my closet are continuing to taunt me.

I have two things that I need to do:

Make some family cookies for anniversary and birthday parties this weekend and find some healthy, gluten free and sugar free ways to indulge my sweet tooth.

Crepes, gingerbread and comfort food

I've been out of sorts this summer. Big stressors with vague timelines aren't my style. I've found myself reaching for comfort in all kinds of places, including the pantry.

I've thought from the beginning if this blog that a cake is a celebration... I'm starting to believe that a cookie is a tissue or a band aid.

I've needed lots of those lately, but luckily the scale is still creeping down.
Band aids come in both sweet and savory for me:

Crepes with carmelized onions and zucchini, ratatouille and dal mahkani for savory

Snickerdoodles, gingerbread, and crepes with raspberry jam for sweet.

The crepes in Babycakes were delicious. The only issue was over mixing leading to batter too thick and smaller thicker crepes, but they were so tasty I didn't even mind. The squash from my garden and some fried onions were just absolute perfection. I also sautéed squash up with sundried tomatoes and served it with root noodles... Tasty.

The snicker doodles out of the oven almost didn't make it to the plate. I over baked them and they were tough once they cooled, but in a glass of hemp milk, the sugar and cinnamon reminded me of every great rainy day when I was a little kid and baking for holidays.

The gingerbread got even better reviews from the family. They didn't keep their shape in the oven, so one tray wound up cut out after they cooled a bit. I fed two of my students the scraps from the cut outs and they gobbled them up. The family said that they weren't too spicy- I kicked up the ginger and the cardamom, but they were mellow... I enjoyed.

In other news, I took a quick jaunt down south to visit a little doll. It was heavenly: we played animals, watched gabba, colored and built and destroyed a lot of block buildings.

Donuts, sticky buns and gardening

Mid July is a tricky time for me. I still have a ton of work to do despite being on vacation and all I really want to do is head up to the beach and spend an afternoon with the sun on my skin. I find a nice compromise in the garden, with my hands in the dirt and plants (and weeds thriving about me)... I probably spend an equal time shouting expletives at the rabbits and deer feasting the fruits of my labors.

Another thing that I adore (mostly for breakfast) and that I'd given up is donuts. I'm a sucker for the crumb of a good plain, chocolate glazed or even blueberry donut. The cover and stories about the luscious babycakes baked goods were what drew me to the cookbook to begin with and Erin's open and approachable prose and scrumptious recipes are what keep me coming back.

While I didn't get fancy with fruit, I did try out the agave donut, the plain cake donut and the chocolate donut. The agave donut was honestly nothing special. It was a good donut and if there weren't other donut recipes in the book it would suffice. The birds ate most. The plain cake donut, while continuing the trend of a lot of baked goods in this book needing much longer in the oven, was one of the best donuts I've ever had. Regardless of their classification. I could have one of these with a glass of hemp or almond milk for a month straight and savor every morsel...

And then, I made the chocolate donut. The chocolate donut is a nice marriage of sweet and chocolate- neither overpowers and the little crunch to it makes it the ultimate snack. I ate mine with peanut butter for breakfast and loved it!

On the buns front, I did wonder buns and honey buns.
The wonder buns were a fiasco. That dough and I just don't get along, but I have plans some rainy Sunday to experiment and see where it is I'm going wrong. For now, I'm content with the honey bun recipe. They had chewy, sweet and tasty down. They looked right, they smelled right and even my mother raved about them.

I'm finding the usually only needing one bowl and no electrical apparatus to be so enjoyable in this new baking venture. It seems to take me half the time to make things as opposed to the cakes. I'm thoroughly enjoying this process!

Irish soda bread, chocolate cake and company

The end of June is always insane. Father's Day, finals, grades, graduation and mom's birthday all sort of roll into one party after another that leave me overtired, worn out on politeness and needing a vacation from the start of summer vacation. It's hard getting company while trying to tie up the end of the year and this year we had some really important things to celebrate: mom had a big birthday and my brother got a big promotion.

Since Laura and I couldn't eat mom's fabulous cake and I was cooking dinner for a date the night before, I decided to half the recipe for the six layer chocolate raspberry cake and make a yummy three layered version. I wound up making this cake three times and each time it was great. The first time was for father's day. I changed up the recipe a little using a tried and true chocolate ganache sauce for the frosting and a chocolate and hazelnut filling between the bottom two layers. It was amazing. I made the same for work friends, but went a little overboard on the bottom layer and it came out soggy. The date and party version were spot on. Definitely a decent chocolate cake, well balance to prevent dryness.

The Irish soda bread was a fiasco the first time around. I couldn't find oat flour, so I tried to ground oats into flour. It wasn't pretty, but it tasted amazing. The second was much better, but I noticed both recipes required far more liquid than called for... Hmmm.

I will be making both of these recipes again!

Let them eat cookies

I'm back! For real this time. I miss Sunday baking days. While I love soy free, gluten free, vegan living and what it's doing to the waist line, I need some baked goods back in my life. I just received BabyCakes Covers the Classics and my plan is to attempt it cover to cover.

I started ambitiously with two recipes this week (6/10/12): It's it (a mint chocolate chip cookie sandwich) and hamentashen (pastry dough filled with jam in sweet triangle packages.

The professional looking pic of the ice cream sandwiches below were how these could have ended up and I did pick up the coconut mint chocolate chip 'ice cream', but found I was a far bigger fan of the 'ice cream' helping me through a rough week and then making the cookies for my students. They liked the mint chocolate chip ones so well that they, 1, couldn't believe they were vegan or GF and 2, begged for them again.

They were incredible, crisp, excellent crumb and just minty enough. Will make them again and again.

The hamentashen were a different story. I've made the pastry dough twice now (you'll see me talk about it in my wonder buns blog) and I just don't have good luck with it/ don't like it. I thought the issue was a few extra hours in the fridge, but the second time I made the dough it just tasted too mealy. The center jam was something I improvised on- I had a bunch of peaches and unwisely followed the instructions verbatim, poppy seeds and all. It was a sweet peachy mess. The kids loved the jam and weren't big on the dough. Of course I now have a ball jar with three more cups of this sticky stuff.

Overall, an interesting start... And in addition to Brendan Braiser's pizzas, Sunday baking is back. :)