Loving holidays

I spent the morning in the kitchen. I forgot how much fun it is as recently I have had a lot of other pressures and the kitchen isn’t much fun in summer.

I made pumpkin soup and the start of my daring baker’s challenge (yes I will actually complete this one)

I then went to watch the planes fly overhead and had an interesting conversation with a neighbour. Both her son’s are in the aviation industry and her father was an airforce pilot.

Puli Party time

So the weekend’s plan was to spend Saturday cleaning & cooking to entertain my parents and uncle in law on the Sunday. We chucked the plan out the window to allow the newest member of the family some time to settle into his new home. So lunch turned into a BBQ and Birthday dessert turned into cupcakes and I gained a few free hours to catch up on some work. An extra benefit was a chance to catch up with our nieces who came to visit the puppy too.

Now time for the awwww pictures…

Click the button with the arrows to go to a full screen slideshow

And my cupcakes…

Coming soon

well maybe :s

I’ve been very bad with my Daring Bakers challenges over the last 2 months. In my defence, it isn’t a lot of fun baking in this heat and the humidity messes with a lot of recipes. Today is posting day and I haven’t completed this month’s challenge either (along with the other long list of outstanding ‘todos’) … however I am getting there.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

These are my lady fingers. My wrist complained about the piping but the results were tasty – yes I did steal one :)
I made some long ones and a few circular ones to make a mini Tiramisu.

And this is my Marscapone. Like others, I had a lot of trouble getting the cream up to temperature required, but after about 45min and by boiling the water on high, I got it there eventually.

Muffins and a wake up call

We are off to the park this afternoon and I figured muffins might be a nice addition to our trip. I asked my husband if he wanted blueberry and raspberry or just blueberry. His reply was “just blueberry, with chocolate chips and no blueberries” (cheeky!)

So I split the batter and made some blueberry and some choc chips. I made mini ones because a full muffin is often too filling.

I used this raspberry and blueberry muffin recipe with the addition cup of flour, extra egg and 1/4 cup less sugar suggested in the comments. The final product is nice and moist but not dense, just like a muffin should be.

I’m not sure if the choc chip ones will last until this afternoon as my husband seemed very pleased with them.

In other news, my baking mojo has been interrupted recently with my doctor’s bombshell announcement that I had to go get tested for insulin resistance. I’ve been recenly diagnosed with another condition and the two are often linked. At 27 it really scared me and was one of those moments that you realise your not invincible – especially when I found out a few family members have it. I’m not overweight, have never smoked, don’t drink, eat reasonably healthy and exercise but there is still a lot of room for improvement. So after finding time to do the 2 hour test at the blood collection center and waiting impatiently for the results, I’m not insulin resistant at the moment (phew) but I still will be taking a lot more thought with my eating and excercise.