We’ve had some unusually cool days this week, so beginning Thursday, once I realized the temps weren’t actually going to even reach 66°, I decided to take advantage and get some baking done. Once those 90 and 100 degree days come back, I’m going to be very thankful I did this (if there are actually any baked goods left by then!).
I always get a little bit tickled at my baking day pictures. They aren’t the prettiest pictures in the world, you know? Take for instance this picture of my big roasting pan of baked potatoes:
Ugly, isn’t it? Does it inspire you to bake potatoes? Eat potatoes? Cut black spots off of potatoes?
Well, anyway, I took that picture to show you that we (as in the boys) scrubbed 26 potatoes and baked them so we can make Homemade Hashbrowns. I LOVE doing this, but certainly don’t love baking potatoes when it’s hot outside. Now we’ve got a nice stash ready for Hashbrowns!
Moving on to the next (ugly?) picture, we have my bowl of bubbling sourdough starter:
Now, deciding whether a picture of sourdough starter is ugly or not depends on whether or not you get a kick out of making sourdough bubbles. The picture itself looks a little strange, but I happen to really appreciate sourdough, which means that I think those bubbles are beautiful. But what do I know? I think armadillos are cute.
I made a batch of Corn Dog Muffins and snapped the picture while the hot dogs were still exposed. Not the most appetizing picture, but the end result is always yummy!
So how about we quickly follow those pictures up with a picture of a big batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies I made to put in the freezer? I’m always needing cookies to take somewhere, so I decided to bake some and stash away to be prepared for later.
It was almost dark when I took the following picture, so the shot looks a little bit yellow. I made a double batch of Honey Whole Wheat Bread, a batch of Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns and a double batch of Pancake and Sausage Muffins.
That should hold us over for a while (in theory).
One last picture – I’m excited to show you my container of Cocoa Butter that I ordered and just received from Mountain Rose Herbs. I want to use them to try a different variety of Homemade Chocolate Chips, and maybe Homemade White Chocolate Chips. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Is it baking weather at your house, or are you more in the mood to sit in a swimming pool while sipping lemonade?
rain rain rain here…just finished baking some healthy donuts! The kids LOVE them
It’s rainy season here in Guatemala!
Hot weather here in VA. Suppose to cool down by Monday, just in time for my Freezer Cooking Day. I have been waiting for a free day to do some stock piling cooking. I love cooking, just wish my picky daughter would eat more of what I cook. I would love to try your pancake sausage muffins, but I know she wouldn’t eat them. It would take me months to finish them off.
A fun tip I have is to make a big batch of cookie dough and scoop the cookie dough into balls. Then freeze on a cookie sheet until hard. Once hard, put the frozen dough balls into a zip bag. When you feel like a fresh baked cookie (is there anything better than a warm from the oven cookie?), just bake them straight from the freezer. It’s great for me because I’m single and it is far better for me to bake just two at a time than an entire batch- which I would likely eat- ha!
I saw the cocoa butter at Mountain Rose Herbs and wondered if it would be good for making chocolate chips. I don’t know of a recipe, though. We are ordering in 12 days, so maybe I should get some!
Thanks, now I’m hungry and I just ate! LOL It all looks so delicious. I wish we had days below 90…I guess I will just have to do early morning cooking when it’s only 80…
It’s too hot to even sit by the pool here in SC! You would have to be in the pool! Even though we have central A/C I hate to bake in this weather. We are staying cool by eating cold and frozen things like Popsicles.
It stays in the 90s at the very least these days here in central Georgia. Too hot to even think about using the stove too much. It cools down some at night, but I am definitely not a night person so cooking is out of the question then. But i’d love to stock the freezer so maybe i can wake up extra early one or two mornings and do some major cooking then! : )
It’s hot here, but a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do, right? :) On a side note…PLEASE…make white chocolate chips…Pretty please?
It was in the 60’s here today. I took advantage of it and made bread and blueberry muffins. I can’t wait to use your recipe for hamburger and hotdog rolls!
It was super pleasant in St. Louis today. I made bread, cooked black beans and frijoles. Then I used the frijoles and your taco seasoning (among other things) to make Taco Cornbread Bake for dinner. I’m curious, Laura…do you use all sucanat in your chocolate chip cookies? We’ve recently switched to using sucanat in place of white and brown sugar, but the chocolate chip cookies I made using only sucanat were terrible! If you only use sucanat, I’ll have to try your recipe.
it’s so hot here! I made bread a couple of days and thought I was going to pass out.
The weather here is too cool to feel like summer. I made a double batch of your hamburger buns & discovered it would be better to make 2 single batches given the way it climbed up my kitchenaid & the amount of time it took to clean it! My family uses these as sandwich rolls for the kids lunches – we love them :) Also baked cookies & cupcakes for last-week-of-school events. Bring on summer!
My three oldest kids are visiting family in the States in addition to a week+ of rain in Port-au-Prince has left me with a very full freezer! I am thankful for some time to get ahead, but I am so ready for my kiddos to get back so eat some of the yummy food I made for them!
Curious…did you bake all those potatoes at once in that big roasting pan? I’ve never baked potatoes in a pile, but if it works, I think that would be wonderful to do so many at one time!
Yes, I have found that it works very well to put a huge amount of potatoes in my big roaster – it does take longer (about two hours) – but it works great!
Definitely not baking weather here but thank you for posting about the potatoes! I wasted…WASTED a whole bag of potatoes and onions because I thought I could just freeze them. Yeah, they turned into disqusting, soggy messes:( And a huge waste of money.
So, thank you! Now I know how to do it:)
Michelle
Faith on Fire
Today is nicer, but it was very cool 50’s-60’s after being 100 gotta love the weather, so yes I did do some baking, making some bean and cheese burritos to take on our vacay, they make yummy lunches and freeze great!
It isn’t baking weather here in SC but I still do some. I have made 2 banana cream pies, 1 toasted coconut cake, and some savory things like roasted portabella mushrooms, onions, and red bell pepper; chicken parmesan, and other things.
Question! Once you bake all those potatoes, how do you store them til you use them? The fridge, counter, or what? I try to bake several things at once here, like potatoes for supper, and sweet potatoes for the struesel muffins and put them on the counter overnite, but what about to use for later? How long will they keep and where is the best place to keep them?
Thanks,
Bobbie
I either store them in the fridge and just pull them out as I need them, or I shred them like hashbrowns and freeze them in gallon sized freezer bags.
In the fridge, they should keep for about two weeks. In the freezer, several months.
I’m jealous of your bread. Really, I am! I’m a fellow maker from scratch (though I use my bread machine to do the kneading), but my bread has been having issues due to the Kansas humidity. Do you have any suggestions for me? It doesn’t rise well and then pours over the side of the loaf pan instead of rising as pretty as yours. My kids are forgetting what a piece of bread is supposed to look like (more square than rectangle! :) ) I even added almost an extra cup of flour to help and it didn’t. :(
Hmmm, I’m not sure. Help me out here – you say it doesn’t rise well, but then that it spills over the top of the pan while baking. Does that mean it’s rising in the oven and spilling over too far? Everyone has different bread baking experiences and frustrations. Yeast is a tricky thing and is finicky depending on climate of the day, temps of the day, etc. Frustrating!
Well, it rises enough to look like it’s slowly pouring over the edge of the loaf pan instead of up in a nice oval bread top. I assume the yeast is working since it does rise – it just seems too ‘heavy’ to hold up once it doesn’t have the pan to rest on. Does that make sense now? I started making bread like this last fall so I assumed it was humidity that was messing it up now.
Sometimes if I’ve let my bread rise too long in the pan it will rise up, then fall in the middle, which sort of sounds like what you’re describing. I guess I’m stumped on this one. Are you using my recipe or a different one? https://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/how-to-make-whole-wheat-bread-tutorial (No prob if you’re using a different one, I can just answer questions better about my own recipe since that’s what I’m used to!)
Mine is slightly different — I use olive oil instead of butter and a bit of white flour to make it a bit softer. Maybe I’ll just use your recipe next to see if I just need to try something different! :) It’s not really falling — it seems to heavy to get up high enough to do so. I’ll just keep playing with it. My fam. of 6 doesn’t seem to care. Btw, I LOVE your blog and from scratch recipes. My family is eating much healthier since learning how easy it is to make most things from scratch. I have quite a few newly marrieds ask how I got interested in all the ‘from scratch’ baking, not ‘box’ baking. I bet you’ll never truly know how far your influence reaches! My how God has blessed you! :)
I have a question about your Chocolate Chip Cookies…what kind of whole wheat flour do you use? I made a batch and they were really grainy and runny. They kind of turned into “pancake cookies” as my kids call them. I love using Whole Wheat flour, but have trouble making it always work right. Thanks…I love your recipes! I have 2 boys (soon to be 3) and 1 girl and you inspire me to keep cooking healthier even when feeding hungry boys. :)
I use freshly ground whole wheat, which does turn out pretty finely ground. If the cookies were runny, you may want to add more flour next time – which doesn’t help the gritty factor – but does help the runny issue!
Laura,
Do you cook them until they are completely cooked and soft or do you leave them slightly hard so they freeze better? I plan to make a batch tomorrow. Thank you for the great idea!
Rebecca
Sorry, I wasn’t clear…I was talking about how you cook your potatoes
I bake them until they are thoroughly cooked through and through, then I let them cool before I do anything. They are soft then, but not mushy once they are cooled.
Oh, with the way my life is going, I’m glad you got the cocoa butter wafers! I have the same stuff from the same place with the same plan (chocolate chips – I also have some sunflower lecithin to hopefully help emulsify things without soy)… just not the time!!
It was about 100 last Friday so I turned on our ac (normally we just play outside in the shade and stay out of the house) and made 15 taco burritos, 15 breakfast burritos, 10 bags of marinated chicken breasts, 4 bags of cooked chopped chicken, 10 bags of cooked burger, 6 hamburger patties, a loaf of your cinnamon swirl bread (that turned into sweet bread, too much brown sugar not enough cinnamon) and about 32 cups of chicken broth =] Boy was it hot but I got it done and my bread was awesome! It rose in about 15 minutes lol. I have pictures but my blog is being dumb today. =] Thanks for the help when I started this last fall. We are hoping by spring time I can be a full time sahm again! =]
I finally got to this one… Man I’m inspired. I so need to do some baking while it’s cool here! Maybe tomorrow… Or tonight after the baby’s in bed… ;)