Thursday, August 10, 2017

My last cake is baked and in the fridge. Besides a bit of running around it took all morning. I hadn’t really planned to do anything else though so that was fine.

After lunch a friend picked me up and we headed off for our stitching afternoon. I had all my card stock pieces cut, as well as my fabric (those bits of time between oven checks were useful). Neither Gail nor Sandra had prepped their pieces so I was ahead of the game. We sewed and chatted the afternoon away; it was so enjoyable that we are going to do it again next week.

After a bit more running around and supper out I’m back in the kitchen tonight – a double batch of Cranberry Almond cookies. With four pans rather than two the baking is going very quickly, but with only seven minutes between pan shifts (bottom to top and top to bottom) I’m not going to get much else done.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

I got four cakes done today – well the fourth one is still in the oven – but I’ll only net three and a half! No, we weren’t sampling. The second cake of the day was baked in my new bundt cake pan and it didn’t come out of the pan very well. I managed to save half of it; if there is time left before Sunday, and after the rest of my baking is done, I may make another one. The cakes this afternoon were all done in my old pan and the first one, at least, came out just fine.

It’s amazing what you can get done while the cake is baking. I would wash all my dishes, prep all the ingredients for the second cake and then do a little work. I managed a very little bit of cleaning, and I got ready for a sewing session tomorrow afternoon. After the morning cakes were done and before I started the afternoon session I went shopping – I needed more flour so picked up a few of the things that were on my list for Saturday.

About tomorrow’s sewing – I was asked to join a couple of Guild ladies who are working on a hexi project. Sandra and Gail sew together often but they’ve never included anyone else before. Perhaps I’m on their good side because they both volunteered quilts for the celebration and I accepted them both. I cut out the card stock pieces while waiting for the first cake to bake and cut my fabric pieces when the second cake was in the oven. I must be crazy taking on another project but after all the baking an afternoon of stitching seems very relaxing. We’ll see tomorrow I guess. While the afternoon cakes baked I was less energetic; I did the dishes but then put my feet up with a puzzle on my iPad.

I’ll make a trip down to the Hall tonight and store my cakes in the fridge there. I planned to take a couple of boxes of items but there are groups in the Hall tomorrow so I’ll just take what needs to go in the fridge (Cranberry Juice, cakes and ginger ale).

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

I was up early but I had lots to do today. I had several packages that needed to be sent in the mail and I had a lot of errands to run. The parcels didn’t take long to get ready and then I had to sit and wait until the shops opened.

I stopped at the Post Office and then made a Cranberry Hall deposit. I should have known better than to attempt the Credit Union on the Tuesday after a long weekend; the line up was long but I think I’ll be able to get a card that will allow me to use the ATM for most of my deposits. From there it was a short trip across the street to Dollarama where I got plate covers for the weekend (with the doors open there are bound to be flies) and a frame for our City’s Proclamation.

Then I made a stop at one of the Thrift Shops and picked up eight vases/containers of various shapes and sizes that I’ll use on the tables as donation jars. I also picked up more than a dozen glasses; we don’t have a lot of drinking glasses at the Hall and since I’m serving up Cranberry Coolers I thought we’d need extras. Even with the ones of my own that I will add I think we’ll be doing a lot of dishes to keep up.

I made it to the bee a little after eleven. I didn’t plan to sew but I took my knitting along in case I finished with the Library early. I managed to finish sorting all the books and getting them arranged but once that was done I took a few photos for the blog and I left. I stopped at Walmart hoping to find another bundt cake pan but I didn’t have any luck. From there I picked up a few things I needed for my Cranberry Tarts and a few gluten-free snacks. I was surprised that I was able to find a bundt pan at Safeway; I’m not even going to look at what it cost me though!

My latest test for Cranberry Tarts has been approved so all my recipes are good-to-go. I have the first (of six) bundt cakes in the oven. Pat will plug in the fridge at the Hall tonight and I’ll store as much of my baking as possible there rather than in my own already-overcrowded fridge. I’ll do the cakes first, then the cookies, and then the tarts, although the tart filling can be made ahead of time.

I can smell my cake so I’d better go check on it.

Monday, August 7, 2017

I’ve been in the kitchen almost all day testing my recipes. First up were my Cranberry Almond cookies. They were quick to make and I got almost three dozen from the batter. I played around a bit with the cooking time and temperature. The recipe called for the cookies to bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes. Since I know I always have to cook things a bit longer in our oven I baked them for the full 12 minutes. They were good but seemed a bit undone in the centre. For the next sheet I added a couple more minutes to the baking time, and for the third sheet I upped the temperature to 375° and baked them for 14 minutes. The batch at 350° for 14 minutes were the winner. My cookie sheets are relatively large so I can only fit one in the oven at a time; with the quantity I’m making it would take forever so Pat went out this afternoon and bought a couple more sheets. I’ll be able to fit three sheets in the oven at a time now so that will speed things up, although I’ll still have to stop in between batches to fill the sheets.

When the cookies were done I headed out to do a bit of shopping. There were still a few things that we needed for the celebration that didn’t involve the concession but that I said I would pick up. After that was done I headed to the grocery store for my baking supplies.

Next on the test board were my Cranberry Tarts. The frozen cranberries were to be cooked, put through a colander and then cooked again. This was a lot of work for about 15 tarts; the colour wasn’t that great (it reminded me of play dough as it was cooking) but they taste quite good. But I thought there should be an easier way. Pat didn’t think putting the cranberries through the blender would work so I tried changing the lemon juice in my lemon curd  recipe to cranberry juice – the rest of the ingredients and quantities were the same as the recipe I was using. The colour is even worse (brownish, and not even a golden brown) and I don’t think it is going set the way the lemon curd did; I guess the cranberry juice doesn’t have as much pectin as the lemon juice does.

I refuse to give up though as the tarts have gone into some of the promotional material, so I’ve found another recipe that uses canned cranberry sauce and marshmallows – that sounds like my kind of recipe. So I’ll go out to the store and buy a can of cranberry sauce (hopefully I can find some) and give it another go.