Enjablog

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.