Flotation and Levitation

The weekend began with Mark's lemon poppy-seed scones. He made them using a lemon we picked from a tree by our place. The lemons were pretty high up and Mark had to jump in order to reach them. It was quite a treat to see him do that!



Of course, they were yummy - soft and fluffy on the inside, crispy on the outside.

On Saturday I decided that I should bake something. Although the ensaimadas were on Mark's "to bake" list, I decided the recipe looks simple enough for me to give it a try. This is how the turned out:



Nice, ha? I must say, they look much better in the picture than they did in real life. And I really had trouble getting the dough to rise. The recipe said to keep it in a warm place for an hour or until double in bulk. I waited more than an hour, and it still looked as if it hadn't risen at all. But when Mark lifted the dough, we saw air bubbles, so I guess it did rise a little bit, only not noticeably. I thought that maybe in the second rise, after the shaping, I would have a bit more luck, but no. It stayed exactly as it was before. But then they did rise in the oven (well, some of them).
Now Mark has to make them again sometime, so I can see what they really should be like!
They tasted good despite all the trouble they gave me :)

Last night I made these heavenly clouds. They have nothing to do with baking, but they look so nice, floating in a sea of vanilla custard, I had to put it in. It's some kind of a French dessert, I guess, made out of eggs and milk, and since Mark never finishes his cow milk before the expiration date, I figured I can use it up this way. I made it according to this recipe, except I cooked the clouds in warm milk (actually it was leftover fat free half 'n half).



We had a lot more clouds that didn't fit in the dish, so we could refill the dishes as we watched "An Unreasonable Man". The custard was a bit too sweet for me - I think that next time I'll put less than what the recipe calls for - but Mark liked it as it was.

Belated Thanksgiving

Although we did celebrate thanksgiving this year - multiple times - we somehow ended up re-celebrating it this past weekend - with sweet potato bread and cranberry scones.
Mark tried this bread before, and although it was yummy the first time, it failed to cook all the way. This time it came out yummy-licious! Cooked all the way, but still moist and soft and melts in your mouth.
That's why I decided to call it Yammy Bread.



















Sure, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing, but I really don't know which one we actually used - the store said that these are sweet potatoes, but they often use the terms interchangeably. Do you have any way of telling which is which?
I don't really think it matters. I like "yammy" for describing delicious orange tuber/root foods.

The cranberries for the scones were indeed Thanksgiving leftovers. I have to say - at first I was suspicious of baking with cranberries, but that was before I made my first cranberry sauce!
The scones are the same kind as our favorites: with walnuts and orange. But here Mark substituted the figs with cranberries. That's why it came out familiar, yet different: the sweetness of the sprinkled sugar on top and the meltiness of the butter remained (though it must be noted - they have much less butter than your normal scones), but the figs' chewiness and sweetness was replaced with the tangy-sour juiciness of the cranberries.