Speaking of baking (who was speaking of baking?), check out this cutiecute new baking pan that Tim surprised me with! Squeee! I love it so much :) A long time ago, middle son and his wife bought me a similar pan and I loved that one too. And somehow it got lost in a move (along with an assortment of other things) and, at the time, even though I missed it terribly, I opted to not replace it. Not because it wasn't useful or wasn't loved, but because sometimes I try to edit my life. Which primarily means my belongings. But now I have one again and it's very exciting! So exciting in fact that the day after this came in the mail (surprise!) I used it. Of course I did. Do you know me at all? Have we met? The entire reason that Tim ordered this pan for me was that a few weeks back, I was craving cake. It's all I could think about. You ever have those sorts of food cravings? Nothing else is going to satisfy you except that thing you crave? Where it totally dominates your thoughts? It kind of goes like this: him: "What do you want for dinner?" me: "cake" him: "so & so just bought a new house so what should we get as a house warming gift?" me: "cake" him: "think it's going to rain?" me: "cake" Yeah, like that. I try to not give in to those sorts of yearnings because it's always bad for me foods that I desire. Always. I never crave broccoli. I like broccoli, I like it a lot. But I never hard core crave it. Same with salad. I eat salad nearly every day. It is a staple of my daily diet. But I never dream about it. I do, however, occasionally dream about cake. Or pie. Or ice cream. Or home made bread. Or....well you get what I'm saying here. So days went by. Days became weeks. And still the most important thing in my head every moment of the day, from my first waking thought to my last, was cake. And specifically I wanted chocolate cake with white icing. Rich, dense, moist chocolatey cake with thick creamy real vanilla frosting. Yeah, that's the stuff. Nothing else tasted good to me. Nothing else mattered. I just wanted a piece of cake damnit. So last Friday evening we finally went out in search of cake. And honestly around here it is hard to find. There are ice cream places aplenty, but cake is harder to come by. There are bakeries of course, but they close early. There are restaurants that offer cake, but never with white icing. Have you ever noticed that? It's always chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Which isn't a bad thing, but not what I wanted. My craves are very specific. Google and I searched far and wide and were very disappointed in the results;( Ultimately, we stopped at Publix and checked out the bakery department. They did have chocolate cake with white icing, which was a surprise but hurrah! So we snapped that baby up and took it home. I was so eager to eat it! Finally, satisfaction! Except, it wasn't satisfying at all. It was blah. Too light, too airy, too practically non existent! The chocolate taste was very meek and the rather thin icing had no vanilla flavour. It just tasted sweet, very very sweet. I had a few bites and threw it away. Not wasting calories on something I'm not enjoying. Tim asked what I was thinking and I responded that, I suspect that what I was actually craving was my own chocolate cake. Because I make a damned good chocolate cake. BUT I'm not going to make an entire cake just because I'm craving one slice! I know how it works. If I make a cake, we eat a cake. And we don't need to eat an entire cake. Nobody does. And I sighed and figured that was the end of that. And then this pan showed up! What a great idea! I can make a lot of small cakes and freeze them. When I want to use them, I'll thaw them and frost them and give them away, share or just grab a fork and go to town! Brilliant Idea Tim! So yesterday I hauled out my old recipes and for the first time in over a year whipped up my oh so very good Chocolate Cake (Thank you Sandy!) It's a lot of batter so I ended up making the six mini bundts and had a lot of batter left over. What to do, what to do? I didn't want the batter to dry out and I absolutely did not want to throw it away (what a waste that would be!) so I had the smarty pants idea to make cupcakes with the rest. (don't know why I didn't think of cupcakes before?) Aren't those the cutest little mini-bundts you ever saw? They will be even cuter, frosted and decorated ;)
I did taste test a cupcake. Of course I did. Quality Control is essential. Surely you figured that out already. And so did Tim. YES! Finally my cake cravings was satisfied. The rest are in the freezer, just waiting patiently. And now I am thinking about all sorts of other wonderful things I can make in this pan. Mini gingerbread cakes, pumpkin bread, banana nut bread, Blueberry cake, fancy cornbread! Why not? Oh I have ideas aplenty! I predict that this pan is going to be used A LOT!
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AuthorYup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog". "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is. Archives
February 2025
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