Tag Archives: baking

Chocolate loaf cake, calzone, and pizza

I spent most of the last two nights baking. I had Amish Friendship Bread, so I decided to make a couple things. Tuesday night I made a chocolate loaf cake. When I had a piece that night, it wasn’t as chocolaty as I expected. However, my piece Wednesday morning had a much richer taste. I think the first piece wasn’t as rich because it was the end piece and had cooked more. I’m pretty happy with it. I also made dough that I left rising for a day.

Wednesday night my dough was ready. I started with a calzone packed with sauce, cheese, turkey sausage, turkey pepperoni, mushroom, red onion, and red bell pepper.

It was kind of huge.

While the crust tasted fantastic, I probably should have made it a bit thinner. Also, I might have filled it a bit too much.

I also made two pizzas with the same ingredients except I also added jalapeño and pineapple. I didn’t actually try the pizzas yet; the purpose was to have food in the fridge so I wouldn’t have to cook nightly.

When I was all done, I was exhausted and sleepy. I suspect a lot of that had to do with eating most of that calzone. It was so tasty!

Apple cinnamon raisin Amish Friendship Bread

Recently, gem gave me a starter kit for Amish Friendship Bread. It’s a bag filled with some goop along with instructions that basically boil down to “mash the bag most days, add some stuff on day 6, and add more and bake on day 10.” On day 10, however, you add some ingredients, mix, create four new starter kits, and then finish preparing your bread. In this way, you keep passing it forward.

She also included a slice of her bread – blueberry bread! It was delicious.

Here I had everything I needed sitting on the table while I prepared the bread.

I decided to make apple cinnamon raisin bread. You can see the raisins pretty clearly, and the light colored chunks were diced apple.

I almost forgot to take a picture before it went in the oven.

An hour later, I had what certainly looked like bread.

I was anxious to try some because it was getting late, I was very hungry, and I had more things to do that night.

Because I was going out of town the next day, I needed to deliver the starter kits to my friends even though it was almost midnight.

I brought a starter to kit and slice of my bread to Anela first. She was nice enough to not mind me disturbing her so late. Next I drove to my mom’s. They were sleeping, so I left it hanging on their door. One kit went back to gem. My last kit I dropped off the next day at lunch at Purple Yoga for Sean, an instructor there!

Nom, nom nom.

It was super tasty!

Stand-up paddleboarding, the beach, yoga, and more

On Sunday I went stand-up paddleboarding with Kaylin, gem, and Anela. I’d been wanting to do so for a while, and I’m glad I had the chance. It was a lot of fun and not very difficult at all really. However, my toes really wanted to grip the board! I managed to avoid falling in the water not that there’s anything wrong with that… I didn’t even hit the water when attempting L-sit practice on the board.

One house near the beach kept a bowl and dog treats outside near their gate! It was a pretty cool idea. They must be dog lovers!

After we finished stand-up paddleboarding, Kaylin had to leave, but gem, Anela, and I had lunch at Bear Flag Fish Co. Delicious as usual! Afterwards we headed down to the beach. It was a great day.

These two got scared by a ghost (or possibly thought it was bright). Who can know for sure?

Afterwards we did hot yoga at Purple Yoga because gem’s been raving about that instructor. She was right; he’s pretty great.

When I got home, I wanted to collapse, but I also wanted to eat, so I ate/collapsed.

And then gem showed up to drop off some blueberry bread she baked. It was thick, so she told me that it was basically two slices. I had already brushed, flossed, etc., but it was warm so I had to try some. And then I ate the whole thing. It’s a good thing bread doesn’t make you fat (otherwise Scott Pilgrim would be fat).

BONUS!

I did a couple other things over the weekend too. On Friday I went to ImprovCity with Jessica, and we saw Alex host. Woo! He’s a great host. On Saturday I went to the Dub with Collin and Niki and met Mimi there to watch the World Cup. Jamie tried to get by with just shaking my hand, but I wouldn’t allow it. He’s a good hugger, too!

Now I need another weekend.

Blueberry brownies

Did I ever mention that I baked blueberry brownies a couple weeks ago? Nope, I forgot about them. I always like blueberries with my chocolate yogurt at Yogurtland, so it seemed like a natural progression. They’re ugly, but I swear they were good.

I also gave some to gem to ship along with her cookies to some friends for their birthdays. Sharing is caring.

Turtle cake for gem’s birthday

gem mentioned to me that she’d like me to bake a cake for her birthday a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if she was expecting me to really do it or not, but I’d been wanting to bake a cake so I went for it. She likes turtle cookies, so I decided to make her a turtle cake, which is chocolate with caramel and pecans. I based it off the recipe Turtle Cake II from AllRecipes.com. I took the recommendations from the comments and used 1/4 cup butter and 2/3 cup evaporated milk instead of 3/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup evaporated milk. I also used a German chocolate cake mix that included pudding rather than one without as specified for the recipe. I don’t really even know the difference, but I couldn’t find one without. However, I actually felt bad about using a mix anyways. It seems like cheating. Oh well.

Here’s a shot of the middle layer of caramel, toasted pecans, and caramel. It’s spread atop the first layer of cake. Thanks to my friend, Hal, for recommending I toast the pecans first! It smelled great as they toasted.