Week 15: Orange

 Week 15.  F1 is the size of an orange.  To celebrate Orange week I decided to make an Orange themed dessert.  I only had one orange for photography purposes.  Orangeya glad we're having a baby.

 Orange Bars

Just like lemon bars, only different.

1 cup flour
1/2 cup room temperature butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp grated Orange peel
2 Tbs orange juice

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix flour, butter, and powdered sugar.  Press in ungreased square pan (8 x 8 x 2 or 9 x 9 x 2 inches, building up 1/2 inch edges) Bake 20 min.  Beat remaining ingredients until light and fluffy, about 3 min.  Pour over hot crust.  Bake until no indentation remains when touched lightly in the center, about 25 min.  Cool; cut into squares.

 The first thing I did was zest and press my one orange.

 Mix flour, powdered sugar, and butter together and press into a pan and bake for 20 min at 350 degrees.

 While I was waiting for the crust to bake on the orange bars I realized I had more orange juice left.  This meant I could do a second dessert!

Whip together eggs, sugar, orange juice, salt and baking powder and pour over the hot crust.  Put it back in the 350 degree oven for 25 min.

Orange Crisp Cookies

Just like chocolate chip cookies, only different.

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 brown sugar

1/2 cup room temperature butter

1/2 cup shortening

2 tsp grated orange peel

1 Tbs orange juice

1 egg

2 and 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix sugars, shortening, and butter.  Mix in remaining ingredients.  Roll dough into balls and flatten on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake until edges are light brown, about 10 - 12 min.  

 Cream together sugars and soft butter and shortening.  I can sample the dough at this stage.  I am a notorious dough eater, so it has been very hard for me NOT to eat the dough once raw eggs have been added.  I can't eat raw dough when pregnant.

 Add the rest of the ingredients and mix.

 Orange bars are done.  Dust with powdered sugar.

 Bake cookies are 375 degrees for 10 - 12 min.

 An Orange themed desert.  TWO orange desserts with ONE Orange.  Served on an Orange plate with an Orange mug.

 Enjoy.

J and K's F1

F1 generation, for first filial, referring to offspring.  F1 (genetics) the first filial generation which is comprised of offspring(s) resulting from a cross between strains of distinct genotypes.  The F1 generation is the generation resulting immediately from a cross of the first set of parents (parental generation, P1).

J and I are pleased to announce, August 23rd, 2015, that we have a bun in the oven.

J and I will have been married for 9 years this November 2015.  This event has been a long time coming.  Our first few years of marriage I thought we would have children within 2-3 years, like my siblings.  When that did not happen I went through a phase that we were never going to have children, that we did not even want kids.  Then I went through the baby obsessed phase and really wanted to have one of our own.  Now that this is finally happening I am terrified and kind of excited.  Terricited.

I first suspected that I might be pregnant the 1st of June, 2015.  It was when I started my resolution to increase my running distance and look into running a marathon.  Nope.  I could not jog on the treadmill anymore.  My breasts hurt.  My body hurt.  I hurt.  Everything felt slightly off.  We started calling my "yucky-hurt" condition the "Maybe Baby".  I took the pregnancy test June 23rd, 2015.  The results were no surprise, just a confirmation.

July 14th, Week 9.  I had my first ultrasound.  Baby is the size of a kidney bean and due 

February 14th, 2016.  

I went through 3 months of morning sickness.  It was awful.  The worst was the entire month July.  I was throwing up every day, multiple times a day.  I had caught a bad head cold and could not take any medicine for it.  I could not breathe.  Then I went and spilled hot soup on myself in the lunch room at work, thus scalding my chest, tummy, and lap (inner thighs).  I had both legs wrapped with second degree burns and it hurt when I walked.  There was one point where I could not even drink water without vomiting.  I lost 5 pounds in 3 weeks.

August 11th, Week 13.  Second ultrasound, this time with my husband.  Baby is the size of a lime.  We now call it a limey and talk with an English accent.  (Though I still refer to baby as kidney bean.)

I have a bit of a baby bump going.  This was the last week I could comfortably wear my skinny jeans.  Sigh.

Since I was finally out of the first trimester, you know the scary miscarriage probability time, I was through the worst of the morning sickness, and I was starting to show, we decided that now would be a good time to announce our decision to become parents to my parents.  August 22nd is J's birthday.  We invited my parents and siblings over to celebrate. Only one sibling made it, but she had 4 kids with her.  I made porcupine meatballs, bacon risotto and yellow cake with orange cream frosting.  We picked out a "Congratulations on becoming Grandparents" card and gave it to my parents after dinner.  It was the best reaction I could have hoped for.  They had no idea it was coming.  They are happy for us.  I love my parents so much.

Since one of the four children at the birthday party was a 5 year old we knew we could not keep our secret much longer so we had to tell everyone.  Charlie took the news the hardest.  He was pretty upset.

  Once he forgives us and comes out from under the bed I am sure he will be a great older brother.

J and K.

Strawberry Short Cake

Angel Food Cake is perfect for Strawberry Shortcake.  I used to watch the Strawberry Shortcake cartoon.  I used to play with Strawberry Shortcake dolls.  I even had the Strawberry doll house.  Every once in a while I like to pretend that I am inviting all the dolls over to my house for dessert.  Except the Purple Pie Man, he was a jerk.  I love this cake recipe because it delicious, fairly quick to make, and I only need a few ingredients so I rarely have to run to the store in the middle of baking if I forget something.  I have also been able to successfully make this recipe with half the ingredients if I don't want to eat that much cake.

Angel Food Cake

12 egg whites, room temperature

1/4 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp almond extract

1 and 1/2 cup sugar, divided

1 cup cake flour

Bake 375 degrees for 30-35 min.

The hardest part is all the eggs.  What is the phrase, "To make an omelet you have to break a few eggs."  To make Angel Food Cake you have to break a dozen eggs.

Whip together room temperature egg whites with a pinch of salt until fluffy.  Add Vanilla, Almond, and Cream of Tartar and mix that in.  Then add half the sugar (3/4 cup) 1 Tbs at a time until stiff peaks form.

Sift together the other half (3/4 cup) of sugar with cake flour and fold into the egg whites 1/4 of the mixture at a time until it is thoroughly incorporated.

I was itching to use my heart-shaped silicone baking tray.  These little guys bake in 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

My big pan took 40 minutes to bake.

While I was waiting for it to finish baking I whipped up a dish of heavy cream.  Strawberries and Cream are my favorite thing to eat.  I added Orange extract instead of vanilla this time to change things up a bit.

Both cakes turned out great.

And now for the strawberries.

Enjoy.

K.

Christmas 2014

We finally got snow.  It was a Christmas Miracle.  We have not had much snow this year.  Our little dog Charlie loves snow.  I thought we had a black dog, but when he was done playing, we had a white dog.  

I made Gingerbread cookies.  I was craving something ginger for the holidays.  I know a lot of people with allergies so I am always looking for recipes without the offending ingredient.  This is a good recipe for egg allergies.

Gingerbread Cookies

1 and 1/2 cup dark molasses
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup shortening
7 cups flour (plus more for rolling out the dough)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp allspice
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix together the wet ingredients and sugar.  Add dry ingredients and mix until it clumps together.  Form into a ball, cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.  Roll out and cut into shapes.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 min.

I like to roll it out and cover it instead of ball it and cover when I refrigerate.  Makes rolling out later so much easier.

I pulled out all my Christmas cookie cutters.  I have too many cookie cutters which are sadly underused.  I either need to stop buying cute cookie cutters or make more cookies.

This was a significant batch of gingerbread cookies in that it was the first time #1 - I did not burn them and #2 - I did not break any coming off the pan.  I think my problem is that I always roll out too thin.  But if I roll it out too thick the shape deforms in the oven.  I have not quite got the perfect thickness down yet, but I am working on it.

These were, I can honestly say, the Best Gingerbread cookies I have ever made.

As per adult tradition; we have a nice family Christmas dinner the Sunday before Christmas.  On Christmas day everyone comes over to my parent's house for Christmas breakfast and to open gifts.  With 5 kids in the family, we have always drawn names.

This year I got Richard.  Knowing he is a Captain America fan (who isn't) we got him a deck of cards and a magnet.  Since he plans on traveling we wanted to get him something small that he could take with him on his world expeditions.

I love my parents.

Over the past few years grandkids have been added to our family Christmas.

I got J a Star Trek tricorder lunchbox.  He loves Star Trek.

I think baby Ava would have been happiest if we just got her paper.

I got a new vacuum.  I spent the next day vacuuming my entire house.  I love to vacuum.

Ava and her paper.

Dad has recently taken up stained glass making so we got him his own Glass Grinder.

Mom has decided to take up oil painting again and got some canvases.  I love to see my parents enjoy artistic hobbies.

This was my favorite present from my husband Jody.

I received all 4 Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa tins for Christmas last year and decided to make them my entry way table Christmas display.  Then  I found out there was a Penguin.  Due to my OCD I became obsessed with obtaining the penguin.  I saw it at my parent's house.  I could not stop talking about it for at least two weeks,  Since I could not find it in any store (I checked 5) on Christmas Day I took my parent's penguin.  Then the next day I went back for the hot chocolate.

Now my life is complete.  I have the best husband in the world, a new vacuum, gingerbread cookies, and the penguin.

Merry Christmas.
K.