Baking a Cake

Strawberry Buttermilk Cake
Originally uploaded by mLee*

I've been inspired to start baking again. I'm off the Artisan Bread for a little while as I let my bins linger and haven't felt motivated to refresh them. Right now I have two sitting in the back of my fridge with about a loafs worth of old dough needing to be tossed. Shameful I know. Ever since I burned a batch of sprouted wheat a couple of weeks ago when I put the newly sprouted berries in the oven, set it on low and then proceeded to go to the gym for three hours. You see, in order to dry one out one must have the oven at around 125 degrees and mine only goes to about 225 so the idea is to turn it on low for five minutes and then turn it off and sit, repeating the process every hour for six or so hours. Except I didn't turn it off before I left the house. Thankfully I didn't come home to a burned down apartment only a bunch of stinky black wheat berries. And I don't respond well to personal failure.

So now I'm playing with berries. I needed a snack to bring to my woman's group tonight and I came across a lovely recipe on MinervaO Flickr stream the other day that I had been meaning to try. Hers is an adaptation of a recipe that can be found on the Smitten Kitchen blog. I made two. One to try and another to bring. Goes great with a dab of whipped cream. The tang of the buttermilk and the lemon zest really makes the cake. I mixed it all up in the Vitamix before scooping it into two pans and adding the berries. I accidentally added almond extract instead of vanilla as the packaging is nearly identical but that didn't seem to effect the yummy factor.

Poking around the Smitten Kitchen blog I found an interesting recipe that led to a bit of an epiphany . Homemade Poptarts only sounded so-so until I realized that I could fill them with Nutella. Maybe that can be my project next week.

I'm really hoping that Alex will bless me with a nap today. I'm exhausted and I have a lot of work to do. It is not like I am actually able to nap these days anyhow regardless of how tired I am. I just push through my day sleepy as can be.