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Lemon and Blueberry Bread with Lemon Glaze

One of my favorite cookbook authors is Beth Hensperger (is it weird that I have favorite cookbook authors?)  And last week when I thought I was getting sick, I bought an entire bag of lemons knowing that I would want extra so that I could make some lemon bread.  At first I looked in my new favorite baking book (Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook), but Martha's recipe requires cognac (?!?) and something else I didn't have and it made two (?!?) loaves. 

Enter Bread for Breakfast and Hensperger's recipe for Lemon and Blueberry Bread with Lemon Glaze.  Quick, easy and delicious.  It made one loaf and I had all the ingredients -- hurrah!  You can kinda see how the glaze sinks in to the bread in the slice:

Great stuff -- even Maddie likes it!

So ~ Many ~ Books

Books have been piling up and I thought I should share them with you.  .  .

52 Projects by Jeffrey Yamaguchi -- I've been seeing this book around many of my favorite blogs and I decided that I must have it.  It's subtitled "Random Acts of Everyday Creativity" and it's filled with 52 projects that you can use to kick start your creativity.  Paging through the book already has me excited!  I'm sure I'll be posting about the projects as I start to work my way through the book.

Super Crafty -- I think I mentioned that Pete bought this for me for Valentines Day.  Let me give you an idea of the projects that I plan to try from this book -- "Super Sock Monkeys" (can you believe I never made a sock monkey before?), "Magnets Galore + Inspiration Board", stuff from the section on shrink plastic (a whole section on shrinky dinks!) and the "Superstar Luggage Tag".  Of course I'm sure I'll give each of these projects my own twist.    I have to say that this book is packed with great jumping off points -- such as the section on vinyl, which is packed with tips.  In fact, there's info on everything from sewing to block printing.  Really a great resource to have around.

Complete Craft by Katherine Sorrell -- Great out of print book that I was lucky enough to find for a song on Alibris.  Really great book!  The crafts covered are unusual and while they produce beautiful sophisticated results, they are presented in a no nonsense way.  You get the feeling that you could do any of them!  Crafts covered include:  screen printing, silk painting, felt making, paper making, cyanotype, mosaic, acrylic molding, gilding and many more.

Betty Crocker's Cooky Book -- I just had to get this one.  I remember making cookies from my Mom's Betty Crocker Cookbook when I was little -- oooh!  found a picture of hers online:

So anyway, I'm loving the vintage pictures and old fashioned recipes in this cookbook.  And there is just about every cookie recipe imaginable included in this book too!

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion -- A birthday gift from Pete.  I love baking and I love books on baking.  This is a winner of the James Beard Award and it's truly a comprehensive baking reference.  Tips, advice and recipes -- my god, the recipes!  If it's not in this book, I don't know where you'll find it.  When I go to bake something, I love to have 3 or 4 recipes that I can look at as a jumping off point and that makes this a great addition to my cookbook library. 

So that's some of the books that have been coming my way.  And I haven't even started to tell you about the library book sale books.  I'm almost finished with Wicked, so I'll be talking more about those soon!

I distract you once again with chocolate. . .

The best laid plans. . .   I had planned to make the brownies from my new favorite cookbook -- Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook -- but when I went to the grocery, they didn't have any semisweet Scharffenberger baking chocolate.  They did however, have some bittersweet baking chocolate -- all the better in my opinion -- but I wasn't sure how it would translate in the recipe.  Baking is such a funny thing.

I grabbed the chocolate anyway, figuring that Scharffenberger was sure to have some recipes on their website and they didn't let me down!  I choose to make John's Favorite Brownies despite the fact that I didn't have a double boiler.  I just threw a pyrex bowl on top of a saucepan and it worked just fine.

These brownies are super rich and I would highly recommend them!

(You didn't want to see my progress on pseudo-melody anyway, did you?  It really does pretty much look like it did a couple days ago despite my furious knitting.)

Blueberry Crisp

Pete is beginning to wonder what's gotten in to me.  I've been cooking and baking -- something I rarely find time for.  Last night it was Pad Thai for dinner and for dessert, blueberry crisp.

Blueberries are coming into season and were super cheap at the grocery, so I bought a quart.  I couldn't find a blueberry crisp recipe that had all the elements that I wanted, so I made one up on the fly with ingredients I had on hand.  Here's the recipe:

Julie's Blueberry Crisp

1 Qt Blueberries
1 Tbsp Tapioca
2 Tbsp Orange Juice

1/2 C Whole Wheat Flour
3/4 C Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 C Butter
1 C Brown Sugar
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Salt

Preheat oven to 375.  Grease 8 X 8 pan.  Combine first 3 ingredients and put in pan.  Mix the remaining ingredients with a pastry blender until crumbly.  Pour on top of blueberry mixture.

Bake for 40 min or until top is golden brown.  Serve with vanilla icecream, if desired.

That's it!  Super quick and easy.  And the husband gave it a thumb's up.  It was so yummy that I'm planning to have it for lunch today.

Sunday Morning Scones

Yesterday Theresa & I had a great time visiting The Fold and ended the evening with a wonderful dinner with our husbands.  So it was a good morning for being lazy.  Instead of making Pete go out and forage for breakfast as he usually does on Sunday mornings, I decided to mix up some scones.  I got some great King Arthur Flour scone mixes from Elaine in trade a while back, and they are really easy and good!

But enough about baked goods, I really need to tell you about The Fold!  It was so much better than I ever expected.  Tons of fiber (even things like yak and bison?!?) in lots of colors.  A good selection of spindles, niddy noddies & lots of wheels.  And a whole bunch of nice yarns (which we didn't really have a chance to look at because we were so taken with the fiber!) 

I already started to spin up one of my purchases -- some blue merino/kid mohair.  I don't think I've ever spun Merino before, so it took a little getting used to, but I really like it.  It isn't a solid blue. . .

It's a little bit darker than it looks in the picture.  After I ply up some of it I'll post pictures.

And one last thing -- Deanna, from my knitting guild, wanted me to mention the Heartland Knitting Retreat that she is putting together.  Annie Modesitt is one of the featured teachers!  And Deanna taught the workshop on needle felting at our guild meeting in May which was a lot of fun.  The retreat is in December and there is more info at her website.

Tomorrow I will show off my latest Black Sheep Bags design -- the Carroll Bag -- named after my mom.

Sugar Cookies & Pizza

Yesterday I got the baking bug and decided that I needed to make sugar cookies and homemade pizza -- yum!  Maddie and I made the cookies -- she put the blue sugar on all the blue cookies.  While doing this she turned to me and said -- This is the best day of my whole life! -- The things she says!

Anyway, the cookies are from this book:

It's the Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies recipe from Mary Engelbreit'S Cookies, and I've made them so many times! 

Then it was time for pizza.  I used the basic pizza dough recipe from The Pizza & Pasta Cookbook(which appears to be out of print!)  I mixed up the dough before starting the cookies so that it would have time to rise.  The rising seemed to fascinate Maddie  :)

Here it is after a rise, punch down, short kneading and a little rest.  (You need to let it rest or you won't be able to flatten it out -- it will keep springing back on you.)

Then I let everyone top their own pizza.  I bought pizza sauce, cheese, pine nuts (my favorite!), pre-cooked chicken. . . you get the idea.  Here's Pete's in the oven --

I did use a pizza stone, which seemed to give the pizza a nice crust.  And here is Pete enjoying his.

No big plans for the weekend, so I hope to get some sewing and possibly some spinning done.  Stay tuned!

** Oh yeah, and the Opal Royal goes to Natalie who was the first person to email me.