Lately I’m too lazy to take any real pictures. It’s so much easier to use my phone when the picture it takes are half decent. I just have to decide on my favorite filter now and stick with it.
We had a good weekend. I cleaned like a crazy person yesterday before having people over. I barely made a dent but it’s what I needed to do. Today I worked upstairs and felt light as a feather not worrying about what I didn’t get to downstairs. One of these days I’ll develop a system so that I can feel like that all the time.
It was too cold to spend time outside today so we did a little baking. Trader Joe’s has 2lb packages of nice strawberries from somewhere in South America. I usually like to buy local seasonal produce but this baby dictates that I eat. more. fruit. now. That I eat more of everything… generally. This is THE recipe for strawberry shortcake. The biscuits were so so good. I can’t wait to eat this with summer berries.
The recipe is originally from Cook’s Illustrated. You can see it here. I of course, being incapable of following precise instructions, made it a little differently. Also, I only had a pound of strawberries leftover after serving the other half of them last night with cheesecake. I halved the amount of sugar and used the berries I had. I made the biscuits adding an extra egg white to the dough and using the yolk mixed with a little bit of water as the egg wash.
I managed to get everything else right. The dough came together really easily and… oh wait, except for the cutting part. I patted it out into a rectangle, cut it into six squares and just used my hands to shape them a little rather than cutting them out into circles. It just seemed easier in the moment. We made the whipped cream using good old fashioned elbow grease. That did not seem easier in the moment but it was fun. We all had to take turns to get it done.
I have to Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook out from the library. Anything else in here that I shouldn’t miss trying? Do any good baking this weekend?
I did! I never bake but was inspired. Dark chocolate brownies with a goat cheese and raspberry swirl. To die for!
Such a great weekend…*sigh*
O…M…G… that sounds GOOD. Recipe?
Skyler and I tried making heart shaped butter cookies with a smaller heart cut out of the middle, and then a jolly rancher melted in the heart-shaped void to create a candy stained glass effect. The candy bubbled up and made a mess all over most of the cookies and I was not happy with the result. On some of them, when the candy cooled and got hard again it did flatten out and had a stained glass (sort-of) effect. Maybe I could have put the candy in half-way through the baking time. Too bad we can’t give them away now, and my kids will end up eating all of them!
Oh, I’ve seen those. Glad to know they’re not as easy as they look! Too bad, it’s a really cute idea but I’m betting your kids aren’t taking it so hard. :)
recipe! I raved about it on my blog over the weekend too…
http://www.thekitchn.com/sweet-recipe-raspberry-goat-cheese-brownies-165612