sunday

Today involved much baking. Much baking. Mr. Bump and I made a batch of brownies, a batch of bar cookies, a miserable failure of a batch of chocolate chip cookies (my nemesis, I tell you!), and a whole lot of pumpkin bread. 

I made some of the pumpkin bread into muffins and glazed them with a cream cheese glaze. I baked a loaf of pumpkin bread and made a batch of them in my mini bundt pan too.

Proof of the barefoot baking

The mini-bundt pan ones came out really cute drizzled with glaze.  You would think all that baking would be enough to exhaust us, but we managed to make and can 6 pints of applesauce and 3 of apple butter. And roast a chicken and root vegetables. And make a trip to Costco.

And one other small detail.  We groomed the dog and cut her hair, which is such a long and arduous process that we all have to go to our separate corners afterwards and meditate for awhile. Actually, it wasn't that bad, but the hair gets everywhere.  And when we're done, we have enough hair leftover for a whole separate dog.

This actually wasn't from today, but I'd say there was probably more hair than that tonight.

 

And now it's the tail end of Sunday, and I must admit this weekend was satisfactory. We got a lot accomplished and we had a date and roasted a chicken. And canned some applesauce. We are Superheroes of Sunday, I tell you.

fun with vegans

(I posted this last night but there were edits so I'm re-posting it today. But it was posted yesterday.  No cheating. Swearsies.)

So my brother-in-law is getting married on Friday, which should be great fun, with a photo booth, a surf rock band, yummy food, and a kick-ass wedding cake. In this day and age, however, it isn't enough to have a kick-ass wedding cake. You also need to have Options. Options for the gluten-free folks. Options for the lactose intolerant folks. And options for the vegans.

I have been tasked with making some pumpkin cupcakes for the vegans who are coming to the wedding, which sounds like a great and fun baking adventure. I love a good baking adventure. Really I do. I'm pretty good at whipping up someone's dream dessert, be it baklava or boston cream pie.  You ask for it, I bake it.

But baking vegan is hard, yo. Not hard from a construction standpoint. Generally the recipes don't require a mixer, even. But hard from a flavor standpoint. A vegan cupcake, I have learned, is invariably somewhat gummy. It may also have an oddly chemical aftertaste. And don't get me started on the shortening frosting. It goes against everything in me to make frosting with shortening. I fall firmly in the "butter makes the batter better" camp.

I have a mini-vegan rant that goes along the lines of if you're giving up animal products and by-products, then why eat "fake" food? Why not just cut things that have eggs and butter and whatnot out of your diet?  I wouldn't want to live in a world without baked goods. But I think the substitutes aren't very good.  These cupcakes, while pretty, are not in the same zip code as the one's I'd make with eggs and butter.  Not in the same country.  Possibly different solar systems. Is it healthier to give up baked goods altogether if you can't have butter or eggs, or should you eat processed foods like shortening and "buttery sticks" and milk made out of things that aren't milk?  I don't know--I really don't.

the Charlie Brown Effect

You know how some weeks you can just sail through, executing perfect pirouettes and smiling like a beauty queen?  Weeks where everything works the way you'd like it to, and each small success you achieve gets wrapped in a pretty ribbon and thrown on the Yay Me! pile?

Yeah, this isn't one of those.  I'm struggling this week, just to get through every day with some shred of sanity.  I have a Charlie Brown raincloud over my head and I just can't seem to shake it.  And yeah, I am aware it is only Tuesday night.

All I can say is I'm working on it.  And now that I've eaten the rest of the chocolate cake left over from this weekend, maybe working on it will get a bit easier.  It just wouldn't stop tempting me.  Now maybe we'll all get some sleep around here.  That chocolate cake was like the telltale heart, I'm telling you!

I will leave you with a lovely image of the baklava I made tonight, which is one thing that I can wrap a pretty ribbon around and check off my list.  I'll take what I can get.  This is not for me (see above re: chocolate cake--I've learned my lesson on that), but the fulfillment of an order for a co-worker.  I can't let you smell it or taste it, but it looks pretty good, right?

file this under: Oh Really?

So I'm into making my own granola bars lately.  That's kind of another story but since it has bearing on this I'll just say that they taste better if they're freshly made and I get to put in what I want, and leave out all the crap and especially all the raisins (again, crap) that are often in commercial granola bars.

So I'm looking for ingredients for my granola last night, and I have some dried blueberries, but not enough, but I think I have some down in our Millennium Rapture Food Stores (otherwise known as offsite storage) in our basement.  I end up having two different containers of them, and some feel softer, and therefore I assume newer, so I rip into the bag.  But they look, well, beat up.  Which doesn't make much sense for dried fruit, particularly when none of the other dried blueberries look bad.

I show them to Mr. Bump, who reviews the package and its contents and comes up with this

The blueberries must look nasty because they are "bursting with natural flavor" and must have just overflowed..."just like Mother Nature intended!"  Um, ok?

Then he turns the package over, just to see exactly what Mother Nature did, in fact, intend.  Mostly by checking the ingredients:

Apparently Mother Nature intends for the blueberries to include HFCS, Corn Syrup, and Sucrose.  Because Mother Nature intends for your dried fruit to be dried fruit plus some other added sweeteners, including some that are processed (and repeat after me kids) "Just Like Mother Nature Intended!"

Goodnight, and good luck with your dried fruit!  I'll hit you with that granola recipe later.

in other news

So I'm tired.  I've tried to write this post twice only to publish it without any content but a title.  I'm not exactly sure why I'm so tired but I biked last night and then worked out at the gym at work today.  Maybe it's that, maybe it's Friday, maybe it's attempting some calorie restriction.  But I'm glad the work week is over.  I honestly don't know why I'm complaining.  I have had a full work week since the middle September, before we left on our trip. 

I've filled a couple of bakery orders this week too, which went really well, actually.  Weeks like this I think website, I think domain name, I think quitting my job and opening a bakeshop on the corner.  But then I have weeks and weeks where I have no time to try and drum up business, let alone bake.  I'm feeling my way along slowly, coming up with a concept.  What I would love to do is something I haven't seen, but only probably mostly because I haven't done much research.  The idea is "homemade to order," where you tell me what you want or need and I make it.  Whether it's a birthday cake or a batch of cookies for the bake sale or something for a work potluck.  I'm even ok with you taking the credit for it, if you want.  Basically, the idea is that no one has time or energy to bake from scratch anymore, but everyone loves a homemade chocolate chip cookie now and then.  I'm even thinking about a freezer dough kind of thing, where the cookies can be individually pulled out of the freezer and thrown in the oven (or the waffle iron) for a sweet dessert treat that's hot and melty and dee-licious.  Who wouldn't want that? 

My hang-ups are this 40 hour a week government job and the fact that I have absolutely no business acumen to speak of.  But this current pace works for me, orders is dribs and drabs, getting my bearings and my footing just on costs, without worrying about mark-up and delivery and yadda and yadda.  One of my orders this week was baklava, which is something I would never have made on my own in a million years.  But it came out good (fabu, according to the client), which really makes me happy.  I love the challenge of making what you want.  Now I know that this can be less than cost-effective when I have to try each recipe out before I make it for someone, but I think eventually I'll get a repertoire and the whole thing won't be so hard or crazy each time I get an order.  Right now not even my whole feet are wet, just my toes.  And I'm not ready to wade any further into the water at the moment. 

That said, if you live in the Front Range area and would like a batch of baked goods fresh from my oven for the cost of the materials, email me, leave a comment, send up a flare.  If I'm willing to take on baklava, I think I'm willing to give whatever you're craving a try.