Pizza anyone?

I feel like I haven't blogged in years when in actuality it's only being two weeks!!

Life has been busy, but that hasn't stopped me from baking and trying my very best to fight the ever growing battle with my good old friend "yeast".

Hubby and I have decided to make Friday nights, Pizza Nights.  We had a very good friend that made the first batch of yeast dough for us.  We've enjoyed eating homemade pizza so far, even though I have yet to make a yeast dough on my own.

Enjoy the pictures below of the delicious pizzas we've had. I hope to make a yeast dough soon.

Cornmeal dough

Spianch with feta cheese on cornmeal dough



Pepperoni on regular yeast dough




Half Chicken/half cheese on regular yeast dough

Enjoy!!!





Quinoa Whole-Wheat Muffins

About a year ago, I was introduced to quinoa by a friends' of my husband.   Quinoa has a light, fluffy texture when cooked, and its mild, slightly nutty flavor makes it an alternative to white rice or couscous. It's high in iron which is why I decided to try it.

I've cooked it as a rice and also as oatmeal.  The texture is more like oatmeal.

After having a rough day at work, I knew that I had to bake something.  Since I had quinoa at home, I decided to bake something with it and found this great recipe in "The Bread Bible".  Cool book by the way!!!

Rating:
Ease of instructions - 10
Ease of baking - 10
Outcome - 8
Taste - 7 (I will add more sugar next time)

No eggs you say!!

I've been under the weather lately baking was not part of the recuperating strategy.  However, by weeks end of no muffins for breakfast, I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms.   I finally decided I'll bake something, but then PROBLEM.  I was out of eggs and going to the store was not an option.

Sooooo, I put it off and had oatmeal instead.  That didn't cure my longing to bake though.

The next day, I decided to bake eggless. Big undertaking since I had never looked at an eggless recipe before. Did I have the right ingredients or was I stepping myself up for the STOP sign again. 

Off to the cloud I went.  I found a really easy blue berry muffin recipe and I had everything except for lemon (I substituted with cardamon).  I'm getting permission from the site's owner and I'll include the link later.

I was very surprise at the ease of mixing and baking. What was more surprising was the taste. It was DELICIOUS!!!  I never thought that I would like items baked without eggs and butter (oh yeah there was no butter included. I did use vegetable oil).

You be the judge, visually anyway.

yum

Pound Cake with Kahlua Icing

I wanted to bake a cake for my chocolate loving brother-in-law but didn't have all the ingredients I needed.  I couldn't search online for easy recipes because the Internet was out, so I turned to the good old "Better Homes New Cook Book 10th Edition" for cake recipes.

I decided to try my hand at the traditional pound cake.  Did you know that the reason it's called pound cake is because it was originally made with a pound each of eggs, sugar, butter and flour?  Thank God that is not the recipe they had posted because that would not be very healthy in this "car seating" era (my terminology of always being in the car).

Doing the mixture was pretty easy and it came out looking exactly as I pictured.

Before icing

I left it slightly covered while going to church and when I got back, it felt a bit hard.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, if anything, but I would have liked it a bit softer.

I also decided to ice it using one of the "fast" recipes from the same book.  I decided on the powdered sugar icing but with a twist. I added Kahlua to the mix to give the sugar a bit more flavor.



Rating:
Ease of instructions - 10
Ease of baking - 10
Outcome - 9
Taste - 7

This is going to be my rating system going forward when following printed recipes. If the rating system isn't at the end of the post, then it means that I altered the original recipe.