Contemplations and Concoctions

Yup, that's my wonderful little baby boy.  7.5 weeks old and already giving attitude just like his Mother!  That a boy!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Mmmm, two of my favourite things...  chocolate cake and ice cream! 

So I had good intentions of making this for dessert for Christmas Eve.  But then life happened.  Tim worked right up to Christmas Eve which made it hard to do this with a baby in the kitchen so I didn't get started until boxing day.  I made the Crème Brulée that day and then planned to make the rest following but that didn't happen either so my poor little brulee sat in the freezer for a few days by himself.  I am happy to report that he is doing well now that he had joined his buddies!  But...  I'm not done quite yet!  I had a miscalculation (didn't read fully) and put the dacquoise on the top of the log as opposed to the bottom, which means I needed to make more (which is ok because the leftovers are so yummy!).  So I have made more  dacquoise and it is ready to go when I get the ganache done.  I burnt my caramel (yeah, I know bad me) so I'm going to try again after my little man is in bed.  Hopefully it will work better this coming time and I will be able to finish tonight!  I am SO looking forward to enjoying this one as it has been the most exciting I think to date for me and I can't wait for more Daring Baker's challenges in 2009!

UPDATE:  Ok, everything is done!  Except for the icing and it is setting up right now.  I'm very excited to try it!  The ganache tasted amazing!!!  It's in my blast chiller (also known as my deck) as we speak.  I thought -25 Celcuis might freeze it faster than whatever the freezer inside is set at.  I'm hoping to have some pictures very soon of what it looks like so far but I guess we'll have to wait till tomorrow night for the finishing touches as we are planning on eating it for New Year's Eve.  I think this is my favorite challenge so far.  I'd like to thank my brand new Kitchen Aid Standing Mixer from my wonderful husband for Christmas.  Without you life wasn't complete! :P

Isn't it beautiful?!  I love it.  I can't wait to try it out on more things.  It's like having that extra third arm I've been looking for since my little man was born!  Just in time for the other one to come out and make day to day life even more challenging!  That's ok though, I can't wait for this new little person to make their appearance.  We've even decided on a name and sorted the baby clothes last night.  Ok, I'm getting side tracked.

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. 

They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

And the Challenge this month is…
A French Yule Log!!!

I have such good intentions...  I made the cake last weekend and was ready to start the frosting when I got just too tired and decided I would do it the next night.  Well... 4 nights later I finally did the Frosting! 

I enjoyed this challenge as I'd never made caramel this way before.  I've always done it the cheaters way with cream.  It works really well but does have a slightly different flavor than this way. 

Hosting this month's challenge was Dolores at Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity.  Helping her along the way are co-hosts: Alex the Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo, Jenny at Foray into Food, and finally but definitely not least, Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go!

So I make pizza a fair amount at home, mainly because I like to know what's going into my sauce and what I'm feeding my little ones.  But I had never tried tossing the dough in the air!  It sounded like a step that really wasn't necessary to me.  I thought it would do nothing for the dough.  I was so wrong!  It made such a huge difference in the crust.  I would recommend trying it at least once even if your sure you'll throw it on the ground.  Took me a few times to get it sort of right (I am by no means a master yet!).  Here is the picture that was requested as part of the challenge of you tossing your dough, flattering don't ya think? :P  

Just in case you all had wondered why I hadn't posted in a long time!  It's because cooking isn't appealing 95% of the time.  Hopefully soon I'll be back at it.  I'm hoping to do my Daring Bakers challenge this weekend.  Wish me luck!

The weekend is only half over and already it's been one of the best in memory.  I love spending time with Tim and our son on the weekends.  It reminds me what is important and what really doesn't matter.  When I gave birth to Riley I remember looking at Tim holding him just after while we still waiting in the delivery suite for my room to open up and thinking "Wow! I really love this man" and ever since then I've been looking at him and he just surprises me more and more.  The way he is with Riley just reaffirms for me that I made the right choice when I decided to marry him (after dating for 7.5 years!).

I use to love this...  one of the restaurants Tim and I use to frequent had this on their menu and I ordered it almost every time.  Their servings were huge and I could normally eat it for dinner and two lunches!  It's basically fettuccini Alfredo with Chicken and mushrooms.  It also normally has green onions sprinkled on top but I used parsley from my garden herbs.  I made the pasta from scratch purely because I think it tastes 100% times better than boxed dried pasta.  Although, I do still use it for those extra lazy days or when I just don't have the time to make pasta. 

Homemade Pasta:

100 g of all-purpose flour

1 egg