A Bit Of This And A Bit Of That.

I have an aversion to going to the grocery store. I don't know why. I have no problems getting up on Saturday morning to go to the farmer's market. I have no problem planting peas in the rain because I want to eat peas. But going to the grocery store is like pulling teeth. Thankfully my husband took that job and on top of that he takes the toddler with him EVERY TIME which is just lovely. However, sometimes he is not there and I HAVE TO bake just this minute or I need eggs and it's January and the hens are not laying and the supermarket's eggs are gross anyway.
I don't have a lot of substitutions that I have actually tried but these I use all the time:

Eggs: replace with 1/2 cup of pear or apple sauce for every egg. I make The Simple Cake without eggs now:          it makes it moist and slightly dense but light at the same time. In short it's good. I replace some of the              eggs in a lot of recipes now and it works great every time.

Almond Meal: sliced almonds in the food processor with a bit of flour (otherwise you get glue)

Buttermilk: if you want it right now mix 2 1/2 cups milk and the juice of 1 lemon. Microwave in 30 seconds                      increments until thickened.
                 If you have 24 hours and want to make more buttermilk than what you have: put 1 cup buttermilk                    in a quart jar, fill with milk, screw on the lid and shake to mix . Let rest for 24 hours in a warm                        spot. It will keep for weeks in the fridge.

Self-rising flour: mix 1 tsp baking powder for every cup of flour.

Also, while I think that whole milk, cream, butter and animal fat are important for good health, sugar and grains are less so. I have gradually reduced the amount of sugar in what I bake. You can easily remove 1/4 cup sugar and nobody will notice (I remove more than that) and you can replace one cup of regular flour with a cup of whole wheat flour without problems ( if there are several cups of flour in the recipe).

For a very complete list of substitutions try the Joy of Baking page.

                                                              Halloween 2010. Good thing I have a witch/fairy/pirate.

Now you can go mix some magic potions. For my part, I'm going to attempt a new kind of potion today: a face cream.

Strawberries, Apples and Menus.

                                                                                                                                Birthday Cake.

 There have been a lot of cakes made around these parts lately. Two birthdays, lots of rainy days and well, you know, it's winter. What could possibly be better for the soul on a cold day than coffee or hot chocolate than cake.
I know: whipped cream.
But I digress.
Although whipped cream would go very nicely with cakes AND a hot chocolate so everybody wins.
Ok, ok. So, the birthday cake was very very simple: a sponge cake, a syrup so that the cake was moist, whipped cream and strawberries.

                                                               Sponge Cake

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract or vanilla extract or orange flower water or anise extract... you get the drift...

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 9 inch cake pan with parchment  paper. Butter and flour the paper and sides of pan.

Sift the flour (I almost  never sift  flour but in the case of a sponge cake I do it because there is no baking powder in this cake and the air in the flour will help keep the cake light ).
Whisk together the egg yolks and 1/2 cup of sugar until they are light in color and thick. Mix the extract of your choosing.
Whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks then add the sugar and keep whisking until the whites are stiff and glossy. Fold a third of the egg whites  into the sugar-egg yolks mixture, fold half of the flour, fold another third of egg whites then the rest of the flour. Then what is left of the egg whites until the batter is smooth but don't overdo it.

Bake for 20-30 mns until a toothpick comes out clean. As soon as you get the cake out of the oven run a knife around the edges inside the pan. Put a wire rack on top of the pan, invert and peel off the parchment paper.
Let cool completely and cut in half. With a brush soak both halves of the cake with a syrup:

1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
Juice of 1/2 a lemon 
1 tsp of almond extract or whichever extract you choose

Over high heat bring water and sugar to a boil. When sugar is dissolved remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and extract. Let cool.

Make whipped cream with a bit of sugar. Put some in the middle with pieces of strawberries mixed in. Decorate the cake with whipped cream and strawberries.

By the way it looks a lot more lengthy on paper than it was to actually make. I think it took 30-45 mns of putting together the ingredients and decorating the cake at the most.

And now, another very very old cake recipe from France. It's always easy to spot an old-fashioned recipe: there is absolutely no restraint in the amount of butter and sugar used. I love to bake and I have made an extraordinarily high number of cakes in my life and I'm a  chocoholic.... and yet, I think this cake is my favorite. It has a thin crust of butter and sugar on top and the inside is moist, the apples melt away in your mouth and there are little pockets of gooyness on the sides. 



                                                                                                                                Apple Cake.


   With old recipes the proportions are not very exact  on top of me translating from old French but I did my best. 
                                                                                                
                                                                              Apple Cake  


1st part:
   10 heaping tbsps of flour (I'm talking about the regular soup spoons used for eating. And Frenh soup                                                      spoons are bigger than american ones so really go for plenty of heaping. I'm not                                              sure this sentence is gramatically correct.)
   8 tbsps of sugar, not level but not heaping either ( I did warn you about about this recipe right?) 
   6 tbsps of milk
   4 tbsps of oil
   2 eggs
   3 tsp of baking powder ( mostly level... yes I know)
   3 or 4 apples

2nd part:
    1 stick of butter
    1 cup of sugar
    1 tsp vanilla extract
    2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375F and butter and flour a round cake pan. 
Whisk together the flour, sugar, milk oil and eggs until smooth. Pour in the pan and put apple slices all over the surface. Cook in the oven for 20 mns, it should just be starting to color.

In the meantime melt the butter and sugar in a saucepan. When everything is well melted remove from heat and let cool a few minutes. Whisk in the eggs. Pour on the cake after the 20 mns have passed and cook for another 20 to 25 mns until nicely golden.

All right, that was a long post. I'm going to make a separate post today on how to substitute eggs, buttermilk etc...when baking. I think it would be easier to find later that way. 
 

Ooops.

I think we forgot to wish you a happy March!

I know, I'm shamelessly giving you pictures of flowers and a toddler instead of the post I promised on cakes and ingredients substitution when baking. But you see, only 20 mns into the nap there was a diaper leak and a very cranky toddler. So we spent the entire day outside. Surely she should take a big nap tomorrow. You know, to catch up?
Right. Tomorrow then.

Cakes Are On My Mind.

Bad weather and a toddler can make for a very long day especially when you are a one car household and... today you don't have the car. On most of those days we bake. It's always fun and nobody is going to complain about the end result! I was going to post the recipes for 2 more cakes and tricks on how to replace some ingredients when baking today but time is running away from me so that will be for tomorrow.
Back to today's cake.
This is a very easy old French recipe. It's actually at least a century old and I bet a lot more than that. Since my entire family still makes it that should say something. It has been the first birthday cake for all my children, even for my third who was sensitive to dairy and soy. I modify the recipe depending on what I have at home.  You do not use measuring cups or spoons for it. Just use a regular glass ( mine holds 1 1/4 cup ). You can use a smaller or bigger glass, the only thing that will change is the cooking time. Be careful, if you go too big the edges and top of your cake will brown too quickly and the inside won't be cooked. Split it into 2 baking dishes instead.

Here is the original recipe:
                                                      
                                                   The Simple Cake

Preheat the oven to 375 F

Mix 2 and a half glasses of flour
1 and a half glasses of sugar
3 tsp of baking powder
a pinch of salt
   Make a well and pour in the center:
1/4 glass of oil (I use olive oil ) and 3/4 glass of milk
2 eggs
2 tbsps of vanilla sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla extract or 1 tbsp of orange flower water (my favorite)

Here are some of the variations I have done:

Replace 1 glass of flour with 1 glass of almond meal
Replace the milk with hazelnut or oat milk
Replace the orange flower water with anise or almond extract
Add berries or fruit to the dough
Add a large handful of sliced almonds
Add 2 large handfuls of chocolate chips


Bake in the oven for 40 mns or until a knife in the middle comes out clean.

                                                                                                               The Simple Cake.

Join Rhonda at Down to Earth and post what is on your mind too.

Storms, Woodchips and Blossoms.

Our bad weather continued: hail, high winds and sheets of water. Very exciting. And even more exciting a forecast of snow for last Friday night. Sadly, by then, the storms had passed and we had a hard freeze but no snow. I had very disappointed children on my hands. Snow in sacramento... what is the world coming to?

                                                                                                                  The View From My Office.

The hard freeze though... we have those regularly and it is a big threat to farmers in the valley. Almond trees are very sensitive to frost and so are plum trees. Unfortunately, our plum tree was in full bloom when the cold weather hit. Hopefully we will still get a few plums. Usually we harvest more than 40 lbs of plums so it would be a great loss.

                                                                                                                           Plum Blossoms.

 

                                                                                         Plum Blossoms

Luckily most of the apricot blossoms were still shut tight. Last year was not good for apricots, maybe this year I can make apricot jam again.

                                                                                                                                Apricot Blossoms.

It was most definitely not hammock weather.

                                                                                                              The Hammock Over The Swamp.

And the yard was a swamp so nothing got done in the garden.
Well, almost nothing... Mark put wheelbarrows full of wood chips on the new-future-vegetable garden and the chickens went to work: in 2 days they had spread all the wood chips around.

I love team work.

Clean, Clean, Clean.

Do you like cleaning? I don't but that's an improvement over hating it which I did before I made my own cleaning products. Commercial cleaning products made me feel ill and I was not too impressed with their effectiveness and their cost. Especially since i didn't want to use anything harsh or bad for the earth if I could avoid it.
I tried many different formulas over 2 years and these are the one I have chosen and used for over a year now. I'm thrilled with them: they don't smell bad, have no fumes that make me fell sick, cost very little to make and best of all they work extremely well.

Laundry Powder:
Grate one bar of soap (any soap will work, it truly doesn't matter in my experience)
Add one cup of Washing Soda ( if you can't find it, ask your store to order it for you)
And one cup of Borax (in the laundry aisle).
Mix well.

I use 1 1/2 tbsp for a big load, if it is a very dirty load I use 2 tbsp. It works better than any laundry detergent I've tried before and honestly I think I've tried most of them.

Glass Cleaner:
Fill a spray bottle with Club Soda. Mmmm, that's about it. Spray, wipe. It works so much better than the stuff from the store, you have to see it to believe it.

All-purpose Cleaner: 
In a 16oz spray bottle put 2 tbsp white distilled vinegar with 1 tsp borax fill most of the bottle with very hot water. Shake until the borax is dissolved. Add 1/4 cup liquid soap and 15 drops of essential oil ( I use Lavender which is a bactericide but tea tree oil is also good by preventing mold and mildew). Shake a bit. Spray and wipe.
This recipe comes from this book:
I love the recipes. Everything I've tried worked out beautifully and it is full of tips.


And you, do you have favorite recipes you use for cleaning?










I know the picture has nothing to do with the post but the flowers remind me of fresh and clean laundry.

                                                                                     Chinese Cabbage Flowers After The Rain.

Tires, Birds and Batteries.

On Sunday was The Great Backyard Birdcount so we decided to go to The Cosumnes River Preserve like we did last year. It is an area of marshlands and you are garanteed to see thousands of birds of hundreds of different species. We saw a Golden Eagle once but at this time of the year the area is famous for the gathering of the beautiful and graceful Sandhill Cranes.
And so we left. Later that was intended but we left. As we were driving I was getting quite excited. We had had a lot of stormy weather in the past week and the skies were spectacular especially since we were getting close to sunset. We were 5 miles away when we got a flat tire. Fun, I tell you. Thankfully, my husband knows how to change a tire in 15 mns flat and it gave me time to take this:

                                                                                                                 Flat Tire.

So, after that little interlude, we continued on and arrived to the river just in time for all of this.

And it was at that point that my camera's batteries died. Yes they died. Just as the skies were turning orange and red, just as dozens after dozens of the beautiful big cranes passed over us to land gracefully in the water perfectly silhouetted in the orange skies.
And I won't even talk of the bunnies by the pier that the sunset illuminated just so that their ears were glowing softly.
Nope, I won't mention it.