Daring Bakers: Mets la main à la pâte!

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Oddly enough this coffee cake contained neither coffee nor cake.

It was, however, delicious.

The recipe for the Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake can be found here.

A few things I would like to say if you are to make this. The sweet bread takes time to rise, so plan ahead if you want this for a breakfast.

Also, The instruction say not to be timid when making cuts into your wreath and i will second this advice. I was afraid all the meringue filling would fall out while it was baking, and it did to some extent. But the Spillage was the most tasty part. The meringue was crispy and chewy and I kept wishing there was more that had spilled.

I recommend this recipe to anyone who loves cinnamon rolls and other sweet breads. I will seriously be making it again but playing with the fillings. Toffee or Marshmallows will be first on the list.

Spring Break

The weather has warmed up here, and we had a few days without rain so Harvey and I have been spending a lot of time outside. Last week we had visitors and it seems like all Harvey and Owen wanted to do was be outside. The noise in the video background is the wind.

Rashes

For those of you who don't know already, Harvey has developed several serious rashes this year. And by serious I don't mean bright red skin, though he's had his share of that. No, I mean raised blisters about the size of peas that may or may not be full of puss and bleed if the diaper rubs too hard on them. They come for about 2-4 weeks, disappear for 2 and then return. I didn't think much of them at first because it is only diaper rash, it wasn't affecting his behavior, it was healing naturally and I do not enjoy taking a toddler to the doctor. Well now we are on round 3 of this, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and go see a doctor.


Harvey was a real trooper during the whole thing. The doc wanted to culture the pustules, so Harvey had to lay there for about 5 minutes, and by lay there I mean he was forcibly restrained by his mama, while the doctor proceeded to poke his little bum trying to get the pustules to ooze.

Naturally, we went and picked up Harvey a baloon when the poking was all done. Luckily for this mama, Kroger, our grocery store/ pharmacy, gives out free balloons to kiddos who ask. Harvey and I love Kroger. FYI they also give free cookies.

We won't find out what kind of rash he has for a week, but like most things kids go through, it will be either viral or bacteria. I'm hoping for bacterial because then the antibiotics he is on will make it go away permanently this time. In the mean time Harvey has been running around neked like a crazy fool.

For the record, Harvey's current round of blisters is healing up all on its own. I really hope we don't have to go through all of this again.

Car Crayons

I recently won a set of mini spatulas from a blog called the Newlywed Chefs. Now this isn't something I would have ever picked out for myself, but let me tell you, they be well used here. It really is amazing how quickly my spatulas are used. Anyways, The Newlywed chefs is a cooking blog that I recently discovered. They have many yummy looking recipes and you should go check out their site if you have a minute.

On a completely unrelated note, but seeing as I don't want to wait to blog about it, I made Harvey some car crayons today.

Now Harvey LOVES to color, but he has this thing against crayon wrappers. And because he has such small stubby fingers, he tends to remove said wrappers with his teeth.

Which is fine because crayons are non- toxic and all. However, I am tired of picking up crayon wrappers and broken pieces off the floor.

So I started to look into making home-made crayons. I wanted to do them completely from scratch with beeswax, but wouldn't you know it, beeswax is expensive. So instead I took those broken up pieces and melted them in a hard candy car mold graciously loaned to me by a dear friend.

Harvey loves them, and now all I have to worry about is "tire tracks" on the walls.