Tag: cake

5 days of being deliberate

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to try and be more deliberate, or at least not so rudderless.

I’ll stop and think before I eat or drink anything.
I’ll focus on work at work and on home at home

I’ve been good with the big picture stuff this week: I may not always have eaten ‘well’ but when I did it was a conscious decision and not just mindless eating. And I’ve been far more productive at work this week, although it is a bit stressful right now.

Buy new LED lightbulbs and replace all the old outdoor light bulbs with the new LED ones; ✅
Send a note to someone;
One load of laundry – this is a never-ending chore but sometimes it gets away from me so I’m keeping it on the list for now; ✅
Practice piano every day;
Wednesday or Thursday I want to do some baking for work as a treat for a co-worker who is going on leave; ✅
Wednesday – take Q swimming! ✅

Thursday – after-work drinks with co-workers. I am almost never able to go thanks to a busy family schedule so I am not bailing out on the one that I can get to!
Also a bigger goal is to declutter so – post at least 2 items for sale on facebook or kijiji (or both). Does anyone ever do well selling stuff on ebay anymore?

Mortgage renewals and leaving the baking for my co-worker to the last minute meant I couldn’t go out for after-work drinks on Thursday, so that’s a bit sad.

Kugelhopf (will be another post about this soon)

And while I did get the new LED light bulbs, I haven’t yet replaced them all. I got rid of a giant bin of duplo and some knickknacks I’ve had since highschool – think about that for a second. I’ve had those things for roughly 25 years years. Why am I holding on to things for 25 years!?!

And yea, practising just hasn’t seemed to happen this week. I really gotta get on that!

What’s gonna happen on the weekend?

I think I can stop writing out the big picture goals until either (a) they change or (b) I’ve started to ignore them.

More practical / everyday things:

send a note to someone
replace the light bulbs & figure out how to properly dispose of the old ones
clean 2 random things
pick Robin up from the airport
spend time with family on Sunday 🙂 this is a little out of the ordinary as we all get together at my grandmother’s house for mother’s day. It’s not a holiday our little family of three make a big deal out of but my mom loves it and her family like the tradition of getting together.

Save

Tags baking, cake, Q, weekly planning

Get Baked

Sweet Saturday – Chocolate stout cake with bourbon icing

Post author By whiskybaker
Post date 2014-08-03
No Comments on Sweet Saturday – Chocolate stout cake with bourbon icing

remembered to take a picture after half was eaten

I occasionally bake for my co-workers and those lucky enough to have offices near ours. It keeps me in practice and I get to make stuff that sounds especially yummy. When I’m not eating keto I love beer, well, even when I am eating keto I love beer I just try really really hard to drown my sorrows in whisky in its various forms, but I digress…

I like beer. So I loved when I stumbled across the beeroness. I can’t remember if someone pointed the blog out to me but I’m glad however it happened. Anyway, when I saw her recipe for Epic Chocolate Stout Cake with Chocolate Bourbon Sour Cream Frosting, well, I gasped. And made it for my co-workers.

Although I usually follow recipes to a T the first time I make it, here I made two layers instead of three. I ended up with some cupcakes instead.

The icing was quite lovely.

this will become the icing... — this will become the icing…

And seriously, I _LOVE_ my mixer

And here’s the final result:

The icing is a bit stiff so it needs to come out of the fridge well before you want to ice it.

Tags cake, chocolate

Get Baked

Cheesecake with brownie crust – keto friendly

Post author By whiskybaker
Post date 2013-07-17
No Comments on Cheesecake with brownie crust – keto friendly

I really wanted to post the pictures of my recent strawberry-jam-making adventure but figured I ought to do another keto friendly recipe first. We had some good friends over for supper in June and it was a completely keto friendly menu (except for the quantity of wine of course).

yep, that's a huge hunk of meat — yep, that’s a huge hunk of meat

Toby made this huge prime rib roast and stuffed mushroom caps:

after baking...and uhm, some had been eaten — after baking…and uhm, some had been eaten

Also cheese covered summer squash, oh yea, and that prime rib thing:

But here I am supposed to be talking about the dessert!

Toby found this recipe on a website called All Day I Dream About Food and it seemed too good to be true. Let me tell you, it is pretty damn good.

This (plus cocoa powder) will be cake... — This (plus cocoa powder) will be cake…

As it was the first time I was trying the recipe I tried to follow it as closely as possible, well, except the part about melting the chocolate in the microwave. We don’t have one!

Chocolate, almond flour, walnuts, eggs, fake sugar, butter and vanilla all met together to form the brownie base of the cake.

All baked. Seriously, my baking posts are kinda lame when they amount to “I followed the recipe” but still neat to see what the final product looks like made at home I think.

And uhm, there was much wine and talking and I forgot to take a picture of the cake after it had chilled until it was almost all gone

Served with a dollop of whipped cream:

It definitely makes it easier to change your approach to eating when you can eat stuff like this. Especially with good friends.

Tags cake

Get Baked

Chocolate sheet cake – definitely NOT keto friendly!

Post author By whiskybaker
Post date 2013-06-11
2 Comments on Chocolate sheet cake – definitely NOT keto friendly!

I have, on occasion, made treats for my office mates. I came up with some sort of order for everyone to pick a treat. Most recently the choice was “plain chocolate cake; you know, the kind that’s dense inside and has a bit of a crisp outside.” So that was my task. And what I found was Cook’s Illustrated Simple Chocolate Sheet Cake.

List of ingredients:

3/4 cup cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon table salt
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), plus extra for baking pan
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Okay – as an aside – I really wish magazines and cookbooks would use both cups AND weight measures. Weight measures are so much more accurate than cups and spoons. Sigh.

This will be chocolate cake... — This will be chocolate cake…

Set the oven to 325f; grease a 9×13 baking pan with butter and set aside.

Sift the cocoa, flour and salt together and set aside. The recipe says to melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave. We don’t have a microwave so I used a pot over another pot on the stove.

You can see the pot of chocolate and butter in the pot of water getting ready to melt. The blue bowl in the back has the cocoa, flour and salt. The other bowl has the eggs, sugar and vanilla that had been whisked together.

Once the chocolate and butter was melted, I whisked them into the egg mixture. Then the buttermilk and baking soda were added:

Then the dry ingredients were added and it was all dumped into the baking pan:

Okay, here it is ready to go in the oven:

35 minutes later and:

I’ll let you know what my co-workers thought of it. No one ate it here on the day it was made because we had this huge burger and poutine dinner 😉 Toby snuck in a small piece – he thought it was an absolutely fine chocolate cake, not wonderful, it was just chocolate cake. Which is what I was going for I guess so there you go.

Tags cake, chocolate