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Thursday, June 30, 2011

An Introduction to My Epic Baking Weekend+ Sleeping Tips

First of all, I apologize for such a late post. There are no good excuses but the reason was because, as I posted on my twitter, I planned a weekend of epic baking. Not only was I making 8 recipes for 5 items, I had a weekend filled with outings with friends and the dearest. I had just taken on more than I could bake. I didn't even have enough time to update my twitter (which may as well be a good thing as apparently I have a tweeting problem)


Here was what my weekend looked like, preparation for which I did over the 2 days before:

It all started Thursday (day one of my flood of expression for baking freedom): After work, I picked up the last few items I needed to complete my weekend and then went home to prepare my Manly Meat Pie dough and the tart dough for my Blueberry Track Tarts. I chilled them in the fridge and proceeded to go out for coffee with my girls, a commitment that could not be put off. I came back at 11pm to roll out my doughs and place them in their pie/tart dishes and into the freezer. 2 recipes down, 6 to go, items completed: 0. I slept at 2 -.-; (BTW have you ever found it that it's super hard to sleep that late, no matter how tired you are?

Nerdism warning:It's because your body has a circadian rhythm (duh!) for your body heat (betcha didn't know that!). As you fall asleep, your body temperature drops and you get sleepy. It stays low while you sleep. Right before you wake up, your body temperature will rise and you will awaken. So when you go to bed in the middle of the night, your body temperature has already dropped and at a steady low temp. You don't have that dropping temperature to help you fall asleep. Try wrapping yourself up nice and warm so your body will try to cool itself down, helping you fall asleep. That's right kids, this is more than just a baking blog!


 Friday:  After work, I came home and started on my Guinness Beef Stew, It's a Jamie Oliver recipe, I chose the stew part for this recipe because he used his in a pie as well AND I've done a couple of his recipes which all turned out well. I wanted to experiment with lard in a pie dough because research tells me that it yields the flakiest tastiest pie crust. This required lots of prep, so I chopped all my veggies on Wednesday haha! It also needed a lot of stewing time. 2.5 hours. By the time it was done, dearest and I were HONGRY! So we had it without putting it in the pie, which would've required chilling the stew and filling the pie, then baking it for another 45 min. No Thanks! It was indeed good, it needed a little more seasoning but it was good. It was perfect for 2 plus some extra was left over for me to make pies with.


While the stew was cooking though, I made my 2 cookie doughs, Chocolate Chip and White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut and left those to chill as well. I used the same dough as in my post before, I just added white chocolate chips and the nuts to get a different kind of cookie. They turned out great! I tried changing the recipe to make it cakier and they just spread too much so I kept the recipe the same for both cookies. Why change was is already so good! 5 recipes down, 3 to go. Items completed: 0.

Saturday: This morning was hectic, as I had Rock climbing planned for the afternoon and a barbeque right after for the evening. So I only had the morning to clean up the mess I made from previous nights, pick up stuff for rock climbing and bake some cookies for the barbeque. Oh custard for the tarts was made then too.  After coming home from the days activities I put the chilled stew into the pie shells and put dough on top to cover them. They were put the freezer so dearest could have them for lunch/ dinner some time. I also baked The Challenging Vegan Cupcakes so the could cool over night and I could frost them in the morning. 7 Recipes down, 1 to go. Items completed: 3.

Sunday: Track Day! Again I had the morning to assemble my Blueberry Tarts, bake a few more cookies, and make the vegan frosting for the vegan cupcakes. Then of course clean everything up before I headed off to meet up with my friends for a day out in the sun with fast cars. Result: 8 Completed Recipes and 5 different baked items.

The posts for each of the items I made last weekend will be coming soon I promise. Note to self: don't ever subject yourself to that again.

By the way, a Google search of today's blog title yields this as the most relevant result. A fellow blogger! Hello fellow blogspot blogger.

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