This week, in baking. . . part 1

Hello, The Internet!

I said that I'd be posting some more this weekend, and here's one of them. Let's see if I can get all of the posts I wanted up by the end of the weekend - but I'm pretty sure that I'll only get two of the four done by the end of this weekend. I'm working this weekend, and for some reason that takes up a lot of time that I could be spending blogging. Ah well. You'll get them when you get them.

Let's look at the making of. . . Thick, chewy granola bars!! I, of course made a few alterations, as well as two - that's right, two - different flavours. One used dried cherries and blueberries, maple syrup, white chocolate chips, and apple butter. And the other used the same dried fruit, buckwheat honey, hazelnut butter, and semi-sweet chocolate chips.

mmmmm apple butter. . .

mmmmmm hazlenut butter. . .

My only excuse is that I had to try apple butter but I wasn't sure it would work out using that instead of a nut butter. The irony being that the apple butter granola bars ended up working out better than the hazelnut butter ones - though that might have been also due to not cooking them quite long enough to set fully (see note below) . . . Live and learn. I'll just have to make several more batches of granola bars to see how different flavours and ingredients work. It's a hard knock life, isn't it?

Now, a string of photos of creating the bars!

gathering ingredients and preparing the tins

mixing dry ingredients

 Just a quick note - I used a bit less than half a cup of dark brown sugar, instead of the 1/2-3/4 of a cup of white sugar. I dislike overly sweet anythings, and dark brown sugar has so much more character than white that I thought I could get away with less than the required amount of sugar. And the bars were still a little bit too sweet. Though, if I made the bars without chocolate, the amount of sweetness probably would have been perfect.

measuring out the tasties

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon?? Hah! That's a
heaping teaspoon for you

mixing the yumbly stuffs together

pouring out some buckwheat honey

action shot! whisking the wet ingredients

adding the hazelnut butter

squooshing it all into the pan

ready to bake (über-blurry. . . wheee)

I tried something arty. Didn't work

Baked!

A second note - notice the closer square is less evenly golden-brown? The tin I used was slightly smaller than the other, and so the squares were a bit thicker than the first batch. My inner-expert-baker was having a nap and this didn't occur to me as an issue until I was starting to cut the squares. . .

listen to the original recipe - use a
serrated, not sharp, knife

They weren't the prettiest bars - I should have waited to cut them until after they were thoroughly cooled. But they were certainly tasty. After giving some to my friend, and some to the boyfriend, we have very little left today, only a few days after they were made.

Yup. Two left. Oh wait, I ate one. . . So just one left now.

And I have lists of ideas for other flavour combinations. I can't wait! Two more baking projects to share with you, Dear Internet, coming up in the near future. I hope you're having a phenomenal weekend!

I've been remiss

Oh, Dear Internet, where does the time go?

I was going to post yesterday, I had it all planned, but then I decided to take a quick nap first. And woke up at midnight.

In addition to having missed my intended blogging, I also missed a friend's band that was playing in town. Sucksorious. Bad friend alert. . .

On a completely random note, I did get around to doing my fingernails, a couple of nights ago.

not so awesome . . .

Toes are easy - you make a big mess, and then fix it in the shower the next day. Fingernails are stupidly difficult. Especially if you suddenly have to go to the washroom while the polish is drying. . . Wheee. In a few minutes, I will be (for the third time) attempting to fix this mess. At least it's only three nails this time. I think it's due to the fact that you never don't need to be using your hands for something. I'm a genius, right? 

<crickets chirp> 

Sigh.

And now, for something completely different! Random fact about me, your humble blogger: I eat my apples kinda funny. I always, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, end up with a kind of sine wave in my apple. Look!

wheee! though, it might
be a cosine wave. . .

I never said I wasn't an enormous nerd :)

And now for the more interesting part of this post - I have two (count them, two!) new bakings to share with you in the very near future. I need to go to bed now (because obviously something needs to be fixed in my circadian rhythm), but I'll leave you with a little taste of what's to come.

awwww :(  sad not-quite-strawberries

That's right - one of these recipes will include strawberries. Though, luckily, the companions of these guys were rather less pathetic.

Quarter teaspoon?? Hah!

And the second recipe uses rather more cinnamon than the original required. Cause I loves me some cinnamon (seriously - I have eaten some straight from the jar, and chewed a stick left over from hot cider. The boyfriend thinks this is crazy, but I don't see why). In addition to the baked goods, I still need to upload my hike photos to share with you, so that's three whole new posts coming your way, sometime in the near future! Awesome!!

If you're paying attention (and what are the odds?), you'll notice that the quality of the photos still isn't so stellar. Partly from the fact that it's hard to take pictures of things your doing while you're doing them, and partly because camera phones aren't too amazing. I might have my actual camera back, but with no cable, I can't share any photos I took. So I opted for convenience over quality. Not that my photos will be much better when I start using the real camera. . .

I have a crazy-busy weekend lined up (yay long weekend!!), so I can't guarantee exactly when these new posts will be emerging, but I hope to have them all up by the end of the weekend - especially once I've found my camera cable in the mire that is the boyfriend's cave of an apartment. I hope you have a marvelous July long weekend, Dear Internet! I'm certainly looking forward to sleeping in (that is, getting up at 8 instead of 5:30. . . AM. . .), and maybe even having a nice nap in my hammock. If the weather co-operates.