Have flour, will travel

Gillian and I were looking for something fun to do on Sunday afternoon while Jamie and Brianna went to the Tennis Center.  We started off at the park for a bit, but it was still a little too damp after some overnight thunderstorms.  I remembered that some folks from King Arthur Flour were going to be in town for a baking demonstration on yeast breads.  G had been to another cooking/baking demo with me a couple months ago, and was game to try out this one.  It turned out not to be the best for her--it was a much larger group, so it was hard for her to see, and she spent most of the time playing games on my iPad.  We only stayed for about an hour before her attention span hit its limit.  But I enjoyed the part of the presentation that I did get to hear, including some entertaining stories.  With my level of experience, I didn't learn a lot of new stuff, but I'm intrigued by some of the classes that KAF offers at their Baking Education Center in Vermont.  I'm going to add a trip to Norwich to my Mondo Beyondo list.  It would be a great opportunity to meet my blogging friend Rebecca, too.  Maybe I can convince some of my other baking/blogging friends to meet up with me there and we can all take a class together.  Anyone interested? =)
 

When we got to the demo, we each got a booklet of recipes.  G immediately pointed out the recipe for Double Fudge Brownies.  When we got home, J & B still weren't back, so I suggested that we could bake something together.  G quickly suggested the brownies.  I knew it wouldn't be a problem to get my employees to eat some of them, so we made the full 13"x9" pan.  The recipe calls for brown sugar, which I think helps keep the brownies moist.  I used natural cocoa powder rather than the Dutch-processed that was called for (I prefer the way it tastes) but did keep the espresso powder to boost the chocolate flavor.  The somewhat sneaky ingredient is white whole wheat flour.  Granted, these are brownies, so there isn't a whole lot of flour, but a little extra whole grain is always a good idea, right?

The verdict?  You would never guess that there was whole grain flour in these brownies.  They are fudgy and a bit chewy, and altogether yummy.  The change in cocoa worked out fine.  We added a mix of chocolate chips and m&ms to our batter, but next time, I'll put the m&ms on top instead.  The candy shells sort of melted into the brownies when we let them rest overnight.

If you'd like to try these for yourself, you can find the recipe in the KAF Whole Grain Baking cookbook.  And if you think you'd like to join me on a trip to New England, let me know!

p.s. We got this nice KAF bowl scraper to take home with us--you can never have too many of those!

Bringing things into focus

I didn't mean to take a couple weeks between posts, especially since I seemed to be doing so much better with blogging more consistently. =)  I've been struggling with figuring out how to wrap up 2012, as well as with figuring out what to bake and cook lately.  I had some ideas on what to write, but couldn't come up with food pictures to put with it.  It finally occurred to me to just borrow the ones I used at the beginning of the year.  The picture above is one of my favorites from the year, though there have been many that I liked.

My one little word for last year was focus.  I've been reading what I wrote at this time last year, something I didn't really revisit during the year.  And I'm pleasantly surprised at how much progress I've made toward what I wanted to accomplish.  It took most of the year, but I'm finally doing a better job with saying no to things I don't want to do or that aren't important to me.  I'm letting other people do some things, and focusing more on the things that only I can do.  I took a chance and moved to a different location at work, which allows me to work with people who appreciate and support me.  I've also been exploring some personal dreams to see where they may lead.  You don't know if you don't try!

One of the things that I did last year to help bring things into focus was to do some things just for me.  That included participating in some online courses that I really enjoyed and would highly recommend.  I have to thank my friend Anandi for sharing her experiences with Mondo Beyondo, which were intriguing.  Unfortunately, by the time I actually looked into taking the course, there wasn't another one scheduled until September.  But there was something called Dream Lab that started in late June, so I started with that.  With themes of play, rest, and kindness to yourself, it turned out to be a good way to start focusing on myself more.  I don't feel like I did as much with it as I would have liked, so will probably sign up for the course again the next time it's available.

Then in the fall I did get a change to experience Mondo Beyondo.  I read something today that said that "Inspiration is an essential part of the creative process."  That's kind of what Mondo was for me.  It helped me figure out what sort of things I want to do.  Not things that other people want me to do, or that I think I should do.  But things that I want for myself.  It got me started on figuring out how to make my dreams happen.  Heck, it got me started on simply believing that the dreams were okay to have.  But then along came another piece of the puzzle that really got the ball rolling.

While I was taking the Mondo Beyondo course, I found out that Andrea was about to start a brand-new course, called Cultivating Courage.  Unlike the other courses that were 6 or 8 weeks long, this one was just 30 days.  But it was every day, weekends included.  And the premise was simple.  Do one brave thing every single day for 30 days.  Some might seem small, others huge.  But the idea was to build a habit of pushing your boundaries, just a little bit at a time.   It was exactly what I needed in conjunction with Mondo Beyondo, the action to go with the inspiration.  It's amazing how powerful you feel when you do something that you were afraid to and survive, even especially when it's kind of uncomfortable.

There will be more to come, since I'm starting on another round of Cultivating Courage today.  Some of my Mondo Beyondo dreams are coming true, and I want to write more about that as well.  And I also have a new word for 2013 that I'll share very soon.  In the meantime, I'm not going to forget about last year's word, since I'm sure I'll still need some focus for this year.

Some assembly required

I've decided that I like this whole wrap-around vacation thing that I did this time.  I was off starting on the 4th, and went back to work yesterday.  It was long enough for a good rest, and I got to have two short work weeks!  I can definitely see myself doing this again, especially since we don't usually go anywhere when I'm off--I'm just making sure that I use my vacation time so I don't lose it.  

It's amazing how getting somewhat caught up on sleep can improve your whole outlook on life.  As I mentioned in my last post, I was totally stressed out by everything that was going on in my life.  I was having a great Twitter conversation with my friends Rebecca & Abby on Tuesday (before I went back to work) about the fact that I was mostly in need of an attitude adjustment.  Work is what it is, and I need to pay the bills.  Heck, I actually mostly like what I do, and I'm darn good at it.  But I need to learn to leave work at work.  I don't mean that I actually bring stuff home, since my job isn't the sort where I can really do that.  I mean that I need to do a better job of shifting gears mentally so that I don't bring the stress home with me.  Easier said than done, I'm sure, but I have to start somewhere.  

One of the things that I've been doing this summer is participating in an online course that focuses on bringing more play, rest and kindness into our lives on a daily basis.  I realized that my worrying about work so much was interfering with my rest for sure, and meant that I was seldom in the mood for any play.  And I need to be kinder to myself.  One of the messages from earlier this week was, "You are enough. (it's true)"  Too often, I feel like I'm not at all close to being enough.  But if I keep telling myself that I am, maybe I'll start to believe it.

So what does the dessert pictured here have to do with all this?  Well, it was part of my attempt to "play" more.  I bake for a couple of reasons.  For one, I really enjoy making things for others--I like seeing them happy, and enjoy the compliments I receive, too. =)  But I also bake because I like to "play around," as Dorie Greenspan says.  I like to see what will happen if I change things up a bit with a recipe, or take components from different places and put them together in new ways.  

I have to admit, the mini parfait idea was inspired by a show on (I think) Cooking Channel.  They profiled a bakery called Vanilla Bakeshop that does these in a variety of flavors.  My first thought was that it was a cool idea.  My second was, "I can do that!"  I treated myself to a visit to Crate & Barrel while I was on vacation, and among other things, I came home with several 3-oz shot glasses.  So then I just had to figure out what to put in them.  I could have used crumbled cookies or bits of cake, but then I remembered these Cocoa Crumbs that Dorie posted about recently.  Naturally, I had to experiment--I did two half-batches, one with Valrhona dutch-processed cocoa, and one with Scharffen Berger natural cocoa.  For the pudding-y part, I turned to Dorie again, this time pulling out my copy of Baking, which has a recipe for creamy chocolate pastry cream in the back of the book.  I whipped up some cream, and started layering.  (A pastry bag & piping tip make it much easier to get the pastry cream and whipped cream neatly into the tall, skinny containers.)  At the last minute, I also drizzled in some raspberry sauce, since I love the combination of raspberry with chocolate.  

The verdict?  Mmm, we really enjoyed these delightful desserts.  The small size is just enough to get a good taste of everything without feeling like you're overindulging.  The crumbs made with the Dutch-processed cocoa are very reminiscent of Oreos, which isn't a bad thing, but I really enjoyed the ones with natural cocoa, too.  They had a more interesting character.  I hope you'll experiment for yourself to see which you like better.  I'll be making more of these soon--I can't wait to try different flavor combinations.