Category — baking

Darwin bday/valentine cake

So later this week its Darwin’s birthday and tomorrow the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is having a little shindig to celebrate complete with cake baking decorating contest (I’m excited to meet some science nerds who are into cake decorating).

Anyway, here’s a sneak peak at the cake I decorated. His mouth and eyes are a bit creepy, but hey – I’m not a professional cake decorator, and Darwin’s dead so he probably won’t notice! Hopefully I’ll be able to go over to the event but It all depends on meetings. If I can’t make it I’m going to send the cake with a coworker who will be there.

The cake is a delicious orange almond flavour, and although I over baked it slightly, the bits I cut off the ends tasted marvelous. I’ll post about it probably on the upcoming weekend when I have some time.

crispy and delicious vegan bread

An inherited bread maker has been sitting gathering dust in  our storage area for longer than I’d like to admit. I tried once about a year ago to make bread but it was not as successful as I’d like to report. The first batch, although I followed the recipe exactly ended up expanding so much that it forced the top right off the bread machine. I salvaged the dough (which was actually excellent) and made some killer buns with it, but it wasn’t the overall bread experience I was looking for.

This time around I tried a french bread, cut down on the yeast and used the bread maker to help mix the dough, but baked it in the oven (only half cheating). The loaves were beautiful and tasty. I changed the recipe slightly from the book and excluded the egg wash to make vegan loaves so I could share it with my coworkers at the office. I’ll post up the receipe for anyone who has a bread maker soon.