Missed It

We missed apple picking season again. 

That's two years in a row. I guess I keep hoping both the kids will be free on the same weekend and, while technically they were, one had Covid so we couldn't exactly go anywhere. I still have some applesauce from last year and when I run out I can just buy a bunch of apples and make more, but the outing was always part of the fun. Maybe next year we can plan that better.

What I have done recently is make a chocolate cream pie, something I have not made before. I followed the King Arthur recipe and it was fabulous. The pie did not last long! Much more successful than that red velvet cake, I might add. 

Today I am making chocolate chip cookies, using a recipe from the NY Times. Lately my toll house cookies have been very...thin. I'm not sure what has been happening but they come out very flat and yet still chewy. Weird. This recipe is fantastic. At least, they look good. We haven't tasted them yet. My new coworkers have been after me to make cookies, since they know I bake. So I'm bringing some in for them. The cool thing about this recipe is that you make the dough and refrigerate it for at least a day. The longer you let it sit, the better it is, apparently. Seems to work. 

Fair in the Rain

We went up to the Fair two days ago, the weather was rainy but not super windy. It was the little bit of Hurricane Ian that reached New England, I guess. Generally, I prefer to be at the Fair in the rain because fewer people go so it doesn't feel as crowded. 

From the canning perspective, I won first place for sauerkraut and for tomato (pizza) sauce, and second place for the mulberry jelly, raspberry jam, and salsa verde. I didn't bake anything for the baking competition, but I did spend Friday baking a cake for the elderchild's birthday. More on that later.

One of the most fun parts for us is seeing the rabbits, and this year we spent some time watching the judging of some larger rabbits. There are these little stalls with wire doors that flip up so the rabbits are put in one side and the judge takes them out the other side and examines them. The rest of the rabbits, though, are all trying to get out of the stalls, and so every so often a rabbit's head pokes up above the stalls and a person has to hurry and push it back down before it jumps out. It's like whack-a-mole, but gently and with rabbits. It was so funny to watch!

After about four hours, we headed home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon frosting the cake I'd made and making chile rellenos for dinner.

Ah, the cake. The elderchild requested a red velvet cake like the one on this season's Great British Bake Off (the technical challenge). I looked up their recipe and, after making a run up to Saugus to get 6" cake pans which I discovered I needed right when I was about to start preparing the ingredients, followed the recipe to the letter. It SANK. I'm not sure why. So I cleaned up, went back out to the store to get more red food coloring and cocoa, and used a different recipe, which worked. And tasted really good, I might add. I did use the frosting from the GBBO recipe, which tasted great, but it was so runny. I had to put a skewer in the cake to keep it upright while I tried to frost it. There was a lot of cursing. 

Ultimately, the cake tasted fantastic, even if it was not as smoothly frosted as the ones on TV. 

Happy Birthday!