[Inez] Shelving

My house had a problem. Colin got serious about baking bread and I can't stop buying cookbooks, and our baking stuff was scattered across four different storage areas. Only one solution to this problem, in the eyes of Mr. Fix-it.

Make a new set of shelves.

I really had no part in this endeavor, so this will be purely photo-documentation.

Kirby was really concerned about the situation and stood about three feet away from Colin the entire time. Out of range of the circular saw, but close enough to be nearby should he need her assistance.

Oh, I did help! I picked out the fabric to use for backing.

Ta-da!

I can't buy anymore cookbooks because they just exactly fit.

[Inez] Honey Almond Butter Chocolate Tart

Joy the Baker has yet to fail me on a recipe. Her Honey Almond Butter Chocolate Tart is divinely decadent. It is a bit time consuming (tart shell, almond mousse filling, chocolate ganache), but if you're craving a labor of love with a rewarding finish, then try this. The recipe can be found on her website.

[Inez] Birthday cake

Okay, so this is a month late, but I made myself a pretty birthday cake and I wanted to share it with you. I seem to be going through a hot pink thing right now (you should see my nails), and I like to have fun with my cake decorating, so I made the whole thing hot pink. I used this very cool, very time-consuming frosting method I learned about from the internet on the coconut cake I've told you about before. it starts like this:

This has basically a thick crumb coat/thin base coat. Then you squeeze on little drops of frosting with a pastry bag and smooth it out with a spoon or a narrow spatula. Like so:

I only did the top so that I could still coat the sides in toasted coconut (omg so delish), but I think it turned out quite nicely.

[Inez] Quilting (Part 1)

I decided to make a quilt for my bed.

I blame Pinterest. I saw this quilt on Pinterest that doesn't require matching up corners, and I said "Sign me up!" It doesn't really have a pattern per se, and I couldn't narrow down my fabrics so I ended up getting a whole bunch of them.

They're mostly in the blue/yellow/grey range, with a  few highlights for pop.

I spent Hurricane Sandy cutting hundreds of pieces of fabric from approximately 9 yards of fabric. My hand and wrist muscles ached by the end of it.

But then, ta da! ready to start sewing.

So far I have sewed each of the individual rows (19 of them) and the next step is to stitch the rows together. Then batting, backing, edging, and quilting. No bigs.

I've learned a lot already, and would do several things differently if I were to start anew right now... but I'm not starting anew right now, so I'm just going to roll with it. It will be busy and imperfect, but it will bring a lot of light and color to the room during the winter. And who knows, maybe it will start something. Maybe I'll be buying self healing boards and roller cutters next. We'll see.

[Inez] Sourdough bread

When Colin brought up the idea of making sourdough from scratch, I encouraged him wholeheartedly. Conveniently it coincided with the purchase of my new camera, so I was able to get some good pictures even though most of the action happened in the evenings.

The recipe he used comes from Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman. 

I didn't really know how sourdough happened, so the process was fascinating to me. The culture is started with rye flour mixed with water. That's it.

Here's what it looks like on Day One. It's very thick and very dark (from the rye flour):

When starting a new sourdough culture, you have to "feed" it twice a day for a week. What this means is that twice a day you remove half of the culture (it grows a LOT every day!) and add more flour (all purpose flour after Day One) and water.

It bubbles and grows and becomes paler and thinner. It also smells really bad for the first few days. It doesn't start to smell like bread until Day 5 or so.

After you've spent a week creating your culture, you can finally make bread. This is a much longer process than we anticipated. First you have to "build" your culture. That's where you take a little bit of the culture (1 oz for two loaves of bread) and make into a bigger amount by adding flour and water. Then you have to let it sit for 12 hours to make sure you have enough active yeast to leaven the whole batch. I just want to reemphasize here, because it took a little while for this to sink in for me: what we're doing here is making bread out of flour, water, and at the very end, a bit of salt. That's it. All of the yeast comes naturally from the interaction between the flour and air. It's really incredible.

So after you've built your culture, you add more flour and water until it starts to resemble bread dough. Knead, rise, etc. I wish I had taken a picture of the loaves before they went into the oven, because they kind of looked like oversized pancakes. They were about 6 or 7 inches in diameter and only about 2 1/2 inches tall. Halfway through their time in the oven something completely magic happened and they just exploded in height! We were all a bit nervous about what would happen, but it was really cool to watch. And then they came out of the oven and just looked beautiful:

Delicious, too. A success all-around.

The only catch to this story is that once you've got the culture you have to keep feeding it. Twice a day. From now until forever. So... we'll see how long that lasts.

[Inez] German Apple Pancake

This is one of my favorite breakfast foods to make when I can wait the 25 minutes for it to bake. My mama Jamie taught me how to make it. The magic number for the ingredients is 3:

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 apple, peeled and sliced

You also need a cast iron pan (preferably a ~12 inch pan -- mine is smaller and my pancake comes out very thick and not as crispy as I would like).

First of all, preheat your oven to 425. Right before you mix your ingredients, put your cast iron pan into the oven to get hot. Then mix your milk, flour, and eggs. You could put it through a sieve to avoid any lumps in the batter (you'll see what I mean in the last picture -- I did not put the batter through a sieve).

Now put 1-2 tablespoons of butter in your cast iron pan to melt (leave the pan in the oven). Slice your apple if you haven't done that yet and mix it into the batter. 

Pour your batter into the cast iron pan:

10 minutes at 425 Fahrenheit.

25 minutes at 350 Fahrenheit.

Eat immediately with maple syrup and peanut butter or yogurt (or whatever you fancy).

[Inez] Baby Blanket #2

The first baby blanket I ever made was about a year ago, for my nephew Kaleb. My neighbors and friends Sarah and James had their first baby about two weeks ago, so I made them a blanket when I was in Minneapolis recently. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out!

The underside.

Here is it finished except for the yarn on the corners of the squares to hold the sides together.