Baking my way through Breadmakers Apprentice: Brioche

Moving along in the alphabet of breadmaking: brioche. Brioche is mainly one thing: butter. Lots and lots and lots of butter. It is like a croissant in a different shape. One of these little guys was enough to fill me up.

There are actually three types of brioche - rich, middle class, and poor mans. The only distinguishing factor is... butter. Rich folk get more butter. Duh. I was going to make the middle class one but... I accidentally added too much butter (thought a stick was a quarter cup instead of half a cup... whoops). So it turned rich. And boy was it rich.

I don't think I'll be making this guy again. It was delicious... but way too rich for me. I can't handle it. On the plus side it is fairly easy to make. I also made it in loaf form because I only had enough brioche pan space to fit about half of the lot.

I used the Breadmakers Apprentice cookbook recipe which you can see that people wrote up here or here.

I also really like my portrait of this Brioche. I like the colorful background instead of my normal black counter. It gives it a little something extra. I need to start making more creative photos of my baking projects and I think this is the starting point.

New camera, meet blog

This lovely Canon Rebel t2i joined my camera family last Wednesday. It was a long and turbulent joining. First there was the long debate of whether the family needed to expand. Then there was a lot of delay in delivery... something about tornadoes in Illinois making the poor Rebel get stuck there for a while? Oh the horrors of refreshing the tracking notifications with the words "delayed due to natural disaster". First world worries definitely.

But here it is! I've been thinking about getting a new body for a long time. My current body has been the Canon EOS 20d. It is a great camera, but it is getting old. Not responding very fast, images not crisp when I am trying to view them and horrid auto-focus. Not wanting to spend two grand on the high end Canon cameras (and being attached to Canon because between the lenses I inherited from my dad and the ones Ryan has, there is quite a Canon lens army in this apartment), I went for the Rebel line. True they are often considered flimsier and criticized for their sensor, but I think that this camera is a great improvement over my old regardless. Definitely worth the price.

I am very excited to take the Rebel out more - but I am protective of it. Don't want to get it all scratched up... and the camera 'purse' I ordered is not getting here until this Friday. The horror! It has so far only gone out on a hiking trip and a very careful trip in my current purse. Want to make the new addition feel welcome. :)

So yes - camera, meet my blog. :) We'll have lots more adventures to come together.

First time thinking about frosting

I've been eying the pumpkin cupcake with maple cream cheese frosting recipe on smittenkitchen for a while. I enjoy making pumpkin pie, and it seemed like the maple would go well with it.

But the main thing I was eying was the beautiful roses on the cupcakes. Why just make cupcakes and dab some frosting on them when you can make them beautiful. I should note that this was my second ever attempt at cupcakes - the first was the previous Sunday making hazelnut cupcakes, which I did not attempt to frost in any beautiful day (especially since they used whipped cream frosting which just doesn't style well).

So this was my big project. Line out the bag and all of the tips. Some parchment paper to practice on and bring it on!

I'd say my result was not too bad for a first. I started off trying for the roses, after a couple of practices. What I couldn't figure out was how to twist the cupcake, hold the bag and hold the tip all at the same time! I do not have three arms, and somehow everyone in the videos made it look so easy. Not so much. The rose cupcake is hidden in the back of this photo. I got better as I went along but decided to switch to some other tips instead of doing more roses.

My favorite frosting way is the lots of "dots" version that is in the front. It is super easy and looks super cute. I was not very good at the swirly thing because I have not mastered the art of not having any air bubbles in the bag and then accidentally having the line break. Whoops.

Anyways - this was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to trying more decorating. I doubt I'll be very good considering my complete lack of perfectionistic tendencies, but at least it will be fun. :)

Food not baked by me

I prefer pasting photos of either food I made, or food I bought. But I will make an exception for this beautiful lemon meringue pie made by Angel.

I love the focus on this shot - the crisp focus on the very front and fade out to the back. It really accentuates the perfect peaks coming off the pie. Love it. Oh and it was delicious. Perfect blend of sweet and sour.

Now I really want to make this pie myself. But since most of my food gets sent to work so I don't become a fat-ass eating it all at home. And since I walk to work... Pretty pies are out of the question. Carrying them there is too difficult. This will have to wait until either a definitive drive day (thanks Ryan!) or a potluck. Oh the joys of not owning a car.

Summer has started in Seattle

Maybe proclaiming that summer has started is going to make it dreary again, but that is fine. We have finally had a couple of absolutely beautiful days of summer. Everyone is outside, the mountains are super crisply seen and everything just seems happier.

This photo is from Friday, which was dubbed even on the radio as "the first day of summer". My team had lunch on the rooftop of one of my work buildings that has a magnificent view of Seattle. It turned out a little shaky and I should have tried taking more photos, but I love the reflection of the needle in the window of the building.

Summer here is so wonderful I wait for it all year and jump at it when it arrives. It is not too hot - it was around 75-80 high this weekend. Not humid unlike the horrid east coast. And the sun stays out LATE. Granted we have the solstice coming up, but summer mornings and nights are extremely long. The only problem with this for me is that I am awake, though not of any form of mental capacity, sometime around 5-7am. Way too early for me.



But the early awakening leaves more time to enjoying summer. :)

Bird caught in action

I was just coming up to this bird to take a photo of it sitting on the sidewalk when it started flying away - and I was still taking photos. Got to love continuous photo taking. The result - a view at some pretty amazing wings.  I am especially amazed that they stayed in focus from a distance (though this is fairly zoomed in). I am quite famous for very shaky photos.



Honestly I am a little confused about what the bird is doing in the second shot - its further wing appears to be on the other side of its body...? Very odd?

Weekend in Coastal Oregon

A little bit late posting about it, but my pre-Memorial Day weekend was exploring the northern shores of Oregon. The weather was not supposed to be spectacular that weekend so I opted for a trip to a place where it is beautiful no matter what the weather is like.

We drove down the coast stopping at Disappointment State Park while exiting out of Washington. Not disappointing at all! A beautiful cape and place to watch giant ships go by.

Then we slowly made our way down the coast to Cannon Beach, the lodging for the night. The photo above is on the beach right in front of the hotel. Beautiful boulders all around. Ryan took 99% of the photos for the day so I have little to show for my work... just a couple of shots I snapped while wandering the beach. Still waiting on him to process the rest of the beautiful photos from the trip.

I'd recommend Cannon Beach as a place to go to relax. I'd personally only survive a night there. Any more would be torture and boring, but that is me. There are lots of cute shops, walking trails and restaurants. I do regret not having a fire on the beach.

I'd recommend Crepe Neptune for food - super delicious crepes and super small and cozy. Perfect breakfast/lunch snack. For dinner we went to Wayfarer Restaurant. I thought that place was delicious - I had steak with shrimp on the side. Perfection. And some mushroom dip to start? Oh yes. We were there after dark but it is right on the water so at most times you get a beautiful view (and amazing sunset!). I would recommend that place very much to passerbys. :)


On the second day of the trip we drove south along the coast. Our first stop was Neahkahnie Mountain. There is a three mile loop to the top of the mountain which has the most amazing view down the Oregon Coast. You can get a similar view from the road, but being in solitude on top of the (small) mountain with a view from above is a lot more delightful.

After that we headed out to the Tillamook Cheese factory for some lunch. The factory has a 'tour yourself' area where you can watch the cheese being made and packed (though mostly packed... cheese making is a hands off process for the bulk of the time). It was quite fun to watch the production line.

The cheese itself was surprisingly good. Or more like I really enjoyed the cheese curds (the squeaky cheese!). Their normal cheese is a little bland but the garlic/spicy ones are wonderful. I'd recommend this is a stop if you're driving along the coast. :)

From there on it was a drive back up through Portland to Seattle. The Oregon coast is surprisingly (well sort of) far away. I miss the east coast, where states are smashed together so closely. I liked the trip to the coast, but I think I prefer weekend trips to the mountains, or at least more outdoorsy adventures when at the coast. :)