Enjablog

Hope everyone has a wonderful and happy day! :)

Ian bought us a stand mixer a couple weeks ago and we’ve been on somewhat of a baking rampage since then.

The first night, we baked a double batch of peanut butter oatmeal cookies. This may not have been the best idea, what with never having used this recipe or mixer before. Plus, Ian and my ridiculously bad volumetric estimation skillz. We started mixing around 11:30pm and finished baking close to 1am. Loads of delicious cookies, but also a little bit of a mess. ;)

Next up was a practice cake. I tried out the basic yellow cake recipe from one of the wedding cake books Anna loaned me. Very quick/easy recipe. And I got to practice torting (slicing the cake in half horizontally). The book said to use a ruler to go around the cake and mark off where you’ll cut with a toothpick. I took a chef’s knife and just sliced. For the size cake I made, that worked out ok.

Then, I got intimidated by the buttercream frosting recipe in the book and went with my old stand-by from the Joy of Cooking. Butter, powdered sugar, liquid/flavoring. Mix.

This worked out pretty well, but I added some cocoa and didn’t put enough liquid in. This made it really difficult to spread, so after I got through 2 layers, I decided to add more milk and it whipped up almost immediately! Oh yeah, and did I mention I got to use the whisk attachment for this? So cool.

Then I tried out the cake decorating kit I borrowed from my mom. Piping is way more difficult than I thought! I started over at least 4 times. And once I got halfway through and I started messing up because my hand was cramping, I just went with it. That’s why there are spots where the frosting is falling off. Oh well. It was my first try.

Lessons learned:
- Do not put all the frosting in the piping bag to start. Body heat will soften the frosting.
- Make sure the consistency of the frosting is perfect *before* you start.
- Making line-type patterns are way more difficult than repeated individual patterns. There are seams everywhere and no good place to stop and rest.

Yesterday was time to test out the hook attachment. So, Ian and I made some honey wheat bread.

I bought a huge bag of flour from CostCo this summer and have only used ~5 pounds of it, so I decided I shouldn’t buy all these different kinds of flour for these recipes. I mixed in some vital wheat gluten to make my all-purpose flour glutenier to substitute for bread flour. And I mixed up a container of cake flour mixing all-purpose with corn starch. (I also have some pancake mix pre-made, so I don’t need bisquick anymore!)

My mom shared her stash of CostCo yeast with me, so I made use of that to yeast up some dough and then let Ian punch it.

I hope he continues to find that as amusing as he did yesterday. That’ll save me a lot of work. ;)

We baked up 2 loaves, since I only have 2 loaf pans. And froze the remainder of the dough (after the first rise step) for another day. It was pretty fun to make, but a pain to clean up after. I could picture myself mixing up some dough once a month or so though. And with 3 loaves out of it, that should last us a while… or so I thought.

Got home from work today to find this:

Half a loaf was missing! Guess the recipe was a success! :)

I’ll paste in recipes soon and add in our modifications.

A couple of Ian and my friends finished making their baby a couple weeks ago and we got to visit her this weekend!

She came in a few weeks ahead of schedule, but everyone is healthy and doing well. She’s too tiny for all her clothes though (<5.5 lb!), so I made a couple hats for her:

Ian and I went over to TattooGirl [and Mr. TattooGirl]‘s place last night to hand out candy for Halloween! It was loads of fun!

Here is the candy bucket when we started the evening:

Had some trouble getting the dogs to sit still for their pictures, but got a couple blurry pictures. There was Buddy in an Elvis costume as a “Hound Dog.” And Charley was “Count Dogula.”

I didn’t get any pictures of the kids dressed up, but here are my top picks:

Best costume: ~5-year-old kid in full astronaut costume. It was probably a little unsafe because the helmet looked like it was a little too big and limited his visibility. But it was a fantastic costume.

Best costume on the cheap: Teenager wearing a clear garbage bag/poncho filled with purple balloons. He was a bunch of grapes.

Most common costume: princess.

Other notable costumes:

- Little girl in full Sponge Bob get-up, including shoes.
- Star Trek character in red uniform. Because, really, what is more scary than wearing a red uniform when you go out?
- Little kid in Yoda costume. About the same size that I would picture real life Yoda.
- Two girls dressed as nerds — suspenders, ties, and broken glasses taped together. They didn’t really seem pro-nerds, but they were good costumes.
- The numerous girls who dressed as prostitutes. I mean, I don’t know what they were actually supposed to be, but that’s what they looked like.
- Woman who looked like she was in her 50s, not with any kids or in costume… TattooGirl says she stops by every year. She might be homeless.

Oh, so TG’s sister-in-law lives with them. And she and a friend were going out to a party later in the evening. So TG’s sister-in-law’s friend came over a little early to get ready. None of the rest of us had met her before. And she was in a hippy costume with a big purse. She also showed up at the same time a mob of kids came to the door. So, I maybe dropped a handful of candy in her purse before she tried to get me to stop… And then I realized she was just a short adult… Whoops! ;)

Then there was the one kid whose parents saw us standing in the open doorway waiting for the next bunch of kids to walk up…. and called the kid back to skip this house. What? Just because a few of us were standing in the doorway with bottles of “juice” in our hands? I don’t understand.

After handing out candy for 3 hours and watching Hunt for Red October (you know, October… so it’s a Halloween movie…), we were a little punchy and running out of candy: