adventures in baking!
With summer in full swing, I love the luxury of taking as long as I like to eat breakfast. Breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the day. It’s important, good for you, and a special breakfast can make the whole day better. So I consider it completely worthwhile to spend an extra 20 minutes or so making something that I will thoroughly enjoy. This week, it’s been crêpes.
It all started when I found this remarkable crêpe recipe. It looked like it had all the right ingredients (but i didn’t add brandy.. i’m pretty sure we don’t even have it in the house; i also only used half as much sugar as was recommended) so I decided to give it a shot. It was nice and easy since you just throw everything into the blender, and once everything was stirred up it was all ready to go!
The hardest part about making crêpes is mastering the cooking process. The batter is thin, and once the pan is hot (medium-high heat) one hand needs to hold the pan while the other pours in about a half cup of batter. Then you quickly swirl the batter around in the pan until you have a nice, round, flat crêpe. After some bubbles have formed on the surface, flip it over! The back side is harder to judge, since you can’t judge its cooking time by looking at the top. But after a few, I got the timing down, and it was so worth it.
I tried a bunch of different things with my crêpes… the first few I just ate plain, which was still completely delicious. I experimented later, though, with the leftovers the next few days, and had a few with strawberry preserves and whipped cream, one with melted chocolate chips and peanut butter, and I even turned one into a dessert crêpe and put a scoop of ice cream on top with a sliced banana. They were some pretty awesome crêpes.
Of course, being the goober that I am, I got bored with simply swirling the batter into a circle after the first few. So I decided to try something a bit more creative and daring and came up with what you see on the right. If you guessed “whale”, you were right; it was an attempt. If you had no idea what it was or what it was supposed to be, that is entirely acceptable because it didn’t turn out like it was supposed to. And that was even my second try! But it still tasted great, and provided me with a bit of bonus amusement.
This week I’ve also mastered banana pancakes (i added a bit of oats to the batter and it was great!) and paninis. I should have my mom teach me how to cook some “real” food before I head off to Real Life, but so far, when I’m just teaching myself, I think I’m doing a fine job. And it’s all so delicious!
I’ve also made two new totes, so once I photograph them, they will be added to the shop. Hopefully there will be adequate sun tomorrow, but who knows… I also love thunderstorms. But I’m planning on having those in the shop on Friday. And expect lots of new whale-themed goodies; new pouches are in the works, and I have also been doing some fun experiments with screenprinting! Oh, how I love summer!
