Kindergarten Snack Week Part 2

Day 4: Snow Day!

Day 5: Blueberry Muffins with Struesel Topping

Kindergarten Snack Week

Day One: Chocolate Chip Bread

Day Three: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

What was Day Two? Goldfish crackers and apple juice. Even I can't bake every day.

Our Day

We picked these this morning -- a yellow squash and two kinds of cucumbers. Malin had some sort of plan for the mint she harvested, but I'm not sure what that was. We need to teach her to make us mojitos.



In between swim lessons and picking up from summer camp, we baked bread. It's my standard recipe for white sandwich bread: 1 tablespoon yeast, 2.5 cups water, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 tablespoon salt and 7 cups flour. Usually it's a lovely golden brown, but it's a bit paler today. I always add a half stick of softened butter to the dough after about 10 minutes of kneading, but we were completely out.

It's only July 7 and we have too much squash

Whoever said to only plant one zucchini plant in a home garden was a wise person indeed. We did heed that advice and only planted one zucchini, but for whatever reason, I planted two types of yellow squash. And now we have tons of it. Karl had zucchini and yellow squash for dinner a couple times while the kids and I were gone, we had it last night and there's still plenty more in the fridge. So, even though the temperature was in the triple digits, I turned the oven on for a half hour and made muffins. The kids have declared that they like this squash cooking method the best.

Father's Day Cherry Pie

On Friday morning, Aksel and I drove out to Rock Hill Orchard and picked sour cherries. It was a gorgeous day -- the cherries were beautiful against the clear, blue sky.



Aksel enjoyed being my trusty assistant.


And the sour cherries made a very good pie for Father's Day.

Birthday Cake

I guess I'm not the only one in the family who can bake a cake. Karl made a German chocolate cake the other day for my birthday. Delicious.

Hamburger Buns

We had pulled pork barbecue for dinner yesterday, but sadly, we had no homemade hamburger buns to eat with it. I had to remedy that problem today.

Before....



And 15 minutes later...

Is Baguette Dough Supposed to be this Sticky?

Because the dough that I made this morning seems to be stuck to everything.

I've made baguettes from this recipe (from The Professional Pastry Chef) a couple of times before -- once a full recipe and the second time a "small batch" version and I just don't remember. The full batch recipe makes an extraordinary amount of dough as it calls for nearly 5 pounds of flour and 6 cups of water. It's certainly too much to fit into my mixer, but for whatever crazy reason, I try to make it fit anyway. Flour flies everywhere, a watery yeast mixture sloshes across the counter. But, I got it mixed together, kneaded to a point where it looked like dough, and let it rest and rise for an hour and a half.

Dividing and pounding the dough into "torpedo shaped" loaves proves to be a challenge, however. The dough sticks everywhere -- on my hands, on the table, on the scale, in the bowl. A generous dose of flour thrown on the table doesn't seem to help. It only adds another fine layer of flour to the already dusted floor. I just can't clean up more sticky dough right now. So, I escaped the kitchen and my little 8-10 oz blobs of dough sitting in piles of flour on the table. Maybe (hopefully) when I return after their (and my) rest, they will be a more cooperative.

Blackberry-Sour Cream Pie

Malin declared this pie as her all time favorite. All that's left after one evening's dessert is one lonely piece. The recipe is from the cookbook, Pie. The blackberries and raspberries were picked last summer up at Butler's Orchard.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

With the last of the strawberries we picked, I baked a pie. Yum!