The cooking weekend

I made some yummy carrot cupcakes on Friday for Father’s Day. The little carrots on top were fun to shape and roll in cinnamon “dirt”.

There were some left over to share at the Fort on Saturday!

The event was a big cooking competition. It was a cold dreary summer day, and there were very few volunteers and visitors. It was a slow day that I spent mostly chatting :)

It was painful torture to sit in front of the judges and watch them taste all of the delicious food that was prepared! There were about eight entries I think, and they all looked fabulous.

 

Hope you’re weekend was as tasty as mine :) Off to find a new recipe to try for a birthday tomorrow!

~Sophia

How can i be doing so little in so much time?

It seems like I've just been spinning in circles lately. I've been busy (my motto), yet I have nothing much to show, maybe a big pile of math, but not much.

(Sleepy squirrel, not a dead one. . .)

I was busy on the weekend, with reenacting all day Saturday (I'm still recovering) and cooking all day Sunday. I made a lovely little dark chocolate espresso cake with a rich, decadent flavor and a tight crumb. I covered it in a layer of chocolate ganache and topped it with some vanilla/espresso buttercream piping. I made the cake in the shape of a box and it was piped to look like a present, with a 'lil' bow :). I would've taken a picture, but I spaced it, and now the cake's gone.


The lilacs are out, I pick some every morning. The flowers are all out. It makes me feel so. . . for lack of a better word. . .wonderful. I love flowers.


My sister's bouquet :)




In my cd player is How To Save A Life by The Fray. I don't believe that any of my readers will enjoy it, but I'm mentioning it anyway. I think it's a lovely album. It's right up my alley, and it contains quite a few of my favorite songs. My sisters say that they've had enough of The Fray to last them a week, a day and a year, in order of age.


So this week in school, we're doing our standardized tests. I'll also be taking my placement test for next school year's college classes on Friday. It's weird to be ending my last year of regular high school. Hopefully by then my brother can drive me by then, so I can start driving to get the whole thing over with.

I hope y'all are having a good week so far. . . It'll be interesting to see how mine turns out!

~Sophia

Today's Culinary Arts Class

Today's assignments were: Make chocolate roses from couverture chocolate and make a perfect cake. My 14 yr old sister made the roses and I made the "perfect cake". I think it turned out great! It's a lemon flavored cake with a tight crumb; raspberry preserves; and light, creamy, fluffy, lemony buttercream frosting; and the cake is sprinkled with sweetened shredded coconut. It only needs strawberry preserves to be my perfect cake.
I was joking to Mama that if I ever got married and had children, my family would be rather fat because I like to bake so much. Hopefully we're almost through this culinary arts cycle; I'm feeling fat myself.

Take a look:Slicing,

Spreading,

Layering,

Ta-da! Finished product! I'm making a tutorial because Mama took so many pictures. Let me know if you want me to post it.

Here's my sister's project: couverture chocolate roses.

White chocolate mixture. Melted and molded,

Chilled and rolled out,

Colored, cut,

Shaped,

Voila! Aren't they gorgeous? We thought that she had brought in some roses for reference, but it's still winter! I love the one on the far left.

~Sophia

Recipes

The recipe for the cookies (below) are just your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe with specialty chips! Here's mine at RecipeZaar. *Yes* do all the mumbo-jumbo with the stirring! I promise you, it is well worth it; the best cookie you will ever eat.

The chocolate bars (also below) are in a lovely cookbook called Pure Chocolate by Fran Bigelow, on page 44. The recipe is called "White Chocolate Coconut Cream Bars". This is an amazing cookbook, I have it home from the library, but I may have to pay them for drool damage. I would post the recipe, but I don't know about copyright so here's an online recipe that's similar, if your library doesn't have Pure Chocolate. Another RecipeZaar.

Happy baking!

~Sophia

Shoes and Cookies

I got a new pair of shoes!

Aren't they cute? They're Roxy Tsunami's and they're really hard to find nowadays! I got the smallest size and they're a little too big yet. My henna tattos are all faded now except for the ones on my feet.

The other day my little sister had to go to a church event (AWANA), and she had to bring a treat to share with her class, so I made some chocolate chip cookies:

And they went over pretty well. I offered an extra one to my brother and he said, "Oh no, I couldn't." I looked at him questioningly and checked him for a fever, and he said, "I just couldn't steal from the church." Which made me crack up : )


In other culinary news, a groundbreaking new recipe has been made at my house.


Check it out. A chocolate filled shortbread layer under a white chocolate laced with coconut layer under a fudge-like chocolate layer. It is *so* good.


~ Sophia

Christmas-y stuff and Peanut Butter Cookies

Well I just wanted to say that I hope you're having a good December!
It may look like I've turned this blog into a holiday version, but I've decided to blame my lack of blogging on Christmas presents, so after Christmas I'll probably be updating more.

We've been doing Christmas-y stuff at our house. My little sister made some cookies (her first time!):

This are really special cookies. My little sisters are allergic to most foods. There was a point where the only thing they consumed was a medical drink. That was two years ago, they can eat a lot more now, and are adding on foods regularly. However, their diet has been lacking in sweets, and it's been hard for them living with a sister who loves to bake. Said sister has discovered and altered a peanut butter cookie recipe for them, so now they can eat cookies, and even bake them themselves. Here's the recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup Peanut Butter
1 cup Sugar
1 Egg
Sugar for rolling (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. Oil or parchment paper on baking sheets.
3. Combine ingredients.
4. Drop by tablespoon onto baking sheets. (They won't spread; what you see is what you get : ))
5. Bake for 10 minutes. The cookies should be cracked and pale.
6. Cool completely before serving.

The altered recipe to accommodate peanut and egg allergies:

Allergy Cookies

1 cup Sun butter (or other peanut butter substitute. Sun butter is made from sunflower seeds)
1 cup Sugar
1 egg substitute (1 1/2 T oil, 1 1/2 T water, 1 t baking powder)

The follow steps 1-6 on above recipe.


Recently I had an uncontrollable urge to make carrot cake with fresh garden carrots. My mama read that after a frost carrots get a lot sweeter, so this was a great time to harvest them. After bundling up in old (and odd) clothes, we went out to the carrot bed with trowels. It was raining, it was cold and the carrots were frozen into the ground! They were huge carrots too, like store bought carrots, but they were frozen deep into the ground. Luckily we have strong brother who can turn over hunks of earth in a blink of an eye, so he'd turn over chunks and we'd scurry over and grab the carrots and throw the dirty things into a bowl. We originally planned to harvest a few, but after all the trouble we were taking, we decided to take them all out. This little adventure definitely was a cause for cocoa and cake.


I also made some bread with our new baking stone! Baking stones are awesome, they are designed to imitate clay ovens and unless you line your oven with bricks (some people do) then this is the way to go for artisan type bread. Baking stones are the only product I've seen where the directions say: "WARNING: Handle with care. Do not drop. Product may disintegrate with explosive force. "

Anyway, Merry Christmas! Have a lovely Christmas and enjoy your family, enjoy your freedom and enjoy your life. What a wonderful God we have, that He would choose to give His son to us, to let Him die so He could be with us and give life to us forever.
My favorite Christmas song this year is "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" by Relient K. My favorite line is "I look towards the East and see a star/ Jesus Christ, it's blessed my life to know just who you are. You are my hope"

So, I still have a lot to do today before Christmas! I need to make gingerbread men, pies and presents. I also need to tidy up around the house and wash my hair.

Blessings to all,

Sophia

Culinary Arts class, Black an' Blue berry pie and how I ate maggots.

So you must know by now that I'm homeschooled, which means that I can learn stuff that public schoolers don't learn anymore/at all. So this year, squished into my schedule, is Culinary Arts: class me and me sis do/cool stuff to do with food/learning new stuff/goofing around in the kitchen.

So Friday's assignment was to walk down the street (about ten blocks) and pick blackberries for blackberry pie. I like blackberry pie, and I like walks. Great assignment, teacher.

So Sis and I set out, cup measures in hand, brother at side. As we walked past the first bush, we saw that the neighbors opposite were in their yard. So we headed further down the street block by block till we wearily found a tiny bush on the side of the road.

We picked and picked. Lots of the berries were squishy, spiders dropped on our head, ants followed them, and the bushes scratched us. I got blackberry juice on my favorite hoodie.

So we repeated this for a while, maybe an hour. On the walk back, we still didn't have enough; we needed another cup. We were hot, tired and cranky. We passed this old man in a truck, and I stepped quickly to the side of the road. Sis followed, but tripped and dropped a handful of berries on the ground. The old man then turned and said, "Went to all the trouble of picking 'em, just to waste 'em on the ground!" He chuckled like it was a joke. Funny.

We met another lady on the way back who called, "School not in yet?" I think she thought it was funny.

Luckily we found more berries right near home, so we finished picking there. Another lady jogged passed and said, "Are you guys making pie? Ooh yum, my favorite!" By that time, I was ready for pie myself.

We went home and made dinner, pizza. This took a couple of hours; we made four and still had some dough left (glad we made a triple batch of dough).

So after dinner I began to process the berries; we decided to make cobbler instead of pie. I washed a lot of berries and ate a few. I looked deep into the bowl and came face to face with maggots. A lot of them. I won't go into details. "Went to all the trouble of picking 'em..."

We decided to make blueberry crisp. We had lots of blueberries, and I don't like blackberries anymore.




It was really good.


Previously in this class, we've made ratatouille:



Tomato Basil French bread:

And just for fun, I made some falafel!



Anyway, that's all in my recent cooking escapades. In fact, it's not over yet. I need to make another menu!

See ya later,

Sophia

Goal!

Okay!

I cleaned out one pool, made carrot cake, bread and finished the neckline on my dress! I feel satisfied.

: D

Summer Busy

This week of mine has been busy busy busy. Some of it's been lazy busy and some of it's been busy busy, if that makes any sense.

Today will be busy as well.
1. I need to clean out two wading pools in the front with my sis, because they have algae and mosquito larvae in them. You know how to kill mosquito larvae? We tried bleach and then oil. The bleach was supposed to poison them, but it just turned their skin paler. The oil worked though because it suffocated them. So now we can dump and scrub.

2. I need to finish the neckline on my dress. Then I only have to attach the waist piping then attach the skirt.

3. I need to make french bread, rolls, cake and bread for slicing.

4. I want, but probably won't get to finish an art project I had going.

5. I need to do more Algebra today as well.

Here's a random picture of cake I made a few weeks ago when I went on a baking craze. I want to make another carrot cake today.


Anyway, I'll be signing out now, I need to get cracking.

Ah, summer!