Mother Daughter Bake Off

So last week I was quite sick, and was home for the week. And since my daughter attends the same day care that I work at, it was just easier to keep her home than get dressed and go out of the house twice a day to both deliver and collect her. (My husband was working a split shift that week, and was unable to help with either of these, which would have made all the difference).

Towards the end of the week, I was starting to feel better. And my daughter was going nuts. She'd watched a lot of tv. She'd played every computer girl-game known to man. She'd painted and drawn so many pictures that the kitchen and living room walls were covered. She had pearled and beaded, built sculptures with Lego, played with her dolls and gone outside to take pictures with her camera (we'll chat about that later) until she just could not do these things any more.

Finally, she was bored.

So I asked her if she wanted to make cup cakes from scratch. Not from a package.

I didn't need to ask her twice.

Before going further, do realize that this is NOT a food blog. You will NOT find professionally taken pictures here. If you want that, why not visit two of my favorite food blogs:

The Pioneerwoman Cooks: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/

and

Everybody Likes Sandwiches: http://everybodylikessandwiches.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, this is the story of my day with my daughter.


First, I don't normally use recipes when I cook food. I'm more of what you would call an intuitive chef. However, I do know where my boundaries lie.... usually anything that comes after dinner and involves dessert. This would include cupcakes.

My recipe came from a Norwegian recipe book pictured below. spis drikk lev, which translates as eat drink liv.



Oh yes, and before I get sued, I should say that this book was created and put together by Fran Ward, to whom I am eternally grateful for. Her hard, industrious work will be an inspiration to me for many years to come.


The recipe chose is called SPICED CUPCAKES, found on page 32, as seen below.



Unlike most North American recipes, the ingredients are measured out in weight.


First, 250 grams of flour are tossed into a bowl of your choice.



Next, 2 teaspoons of baking powder.

And then 175 grams of brown sugar. Mine was quite hard since I had not used it for quite some time (perhaps close to a year?) and I needed to spend a lot of time breaking it apart with a fork.

Next go the spices: .25 teaspon of cinnamon and .25 teaspoon of freshlly ground nutmeg. I ignored the instructions here. First, I added a lot more spices (Norwegians are NOT known for spicing up their foods) and added ginger as well. Secondly, I doubt I will ever in my life have a fresh nutmeg to ground, so dried powder had to suffice.

In the meantime, my daughter needed a job to do, so that she could rightfully say that she made the cupcakes with a little help from me. Thus I gave her the most important job: chopping up two bananas into tiny pieces.

We just won't tell anyone that after 4 minutes she thought that this was not fun any more and wanted me to finish the job she started.

I chopped up the apple needed.

As for the liquid ingredients, one needs to whip together: 1 deciliter (100 ml) of milk, one egg and 3 tablespoons of peanut oil (I only had raps oil).

Then you pour the mixture into your dry ingredients:

And mix it together until it is nice and thick like this:

Then you put in all the chopped up fruit:

And mix these until the batter looks like this:

Then you fill up the cup cake tins.....

And give the bowl to your daughter who is eternally grateful because she has NOT had ANY fun this week.

And ignore her when she's still working on it 15 minutes later.

Now, as the cup cakes were baking, the house filled with a wonderful smell that reminded me of autumn: apples, spices, thick breads.... Mmmmmm......

Now when the cup cakes came out of the oven, they certainly looked a lot different than what was in the book...

One cannot see it from the picture below, but they really did look a lot different.

But they tasted wonderfully. I would definitely make these again any time soon. Even if my daughter refuses to help me chop up bananas.

Finally a New Post!

It has been a long time since I've posted on my blog. This is despite those who have been nagging me, wanting to see what has been going on during my summer. (Yes, BM - I've been listening to you. You too TW.)


It has been a long summer with lots of work. And I've come back from my holidays and jumped right back into my full time job. So my evenings have been dedicated to washing huge garbage bags of clothes, towels and weeks of bedclothing... as well as the clothes we are using in our every day life back in the city.


But I've finally got around to finding the pictures I want to use, and getting my head around what I it is I want to say.


First of all - here is the most important of our projects: the porch on the third side of our cabin. This is what we (and especially my husband) has been dreaming of for 10 years.



We have already been out here eating breakfasts, watching the sun rise.


(Well, okay, that's a bit of a lie - have day light almost 24 hours a day means that we would have to wake up at 3 am to see the sunrise. Maybe we'll try that in October. But we have eaten lots of breakfasts out here).


We've also eaten lunches out here and myself and my husband have enjoyed a glass of wine or two (or more...) in the evenings.


And I also have to say that since we've been using this side of the cabin we've seen more animals this summer than we ever have in the 12 years we've been living out here in the summer. We've seen: porpoises, a family of mink, sea eagles, weasles and lots of fish jumping out of the water. It is quite amazing.


In the autumn, when the grass begins to die, I will (yes, that is *me* I said) be starting to dig out the dirt down the forth side of the cabin.


We'll be starting to build the forth balcony next spring.

I am a bit hesitant about it though. It is a steep incline, going straight down to the sea.

But, great things do not come without great risk. I will just check my life insurance before starting.

We're also using the porch as a storage place. Until now we've had piles of nicely stacked building materials covered with tarps. They've been green tarps of course, so they blend into the landscape. But they've still been there and have bothered us. Now we've got it all tucked away...

And they're protected from the rain....

The second major project that we've completed was to re-routed our water supply around 20 acres of property. Here is where we used to get our water....

Which was way at the far end of the first porch we built 8 years ago. And completely on the opposite side of the cabin to where the kitchen is.

But with hard work done by my kick ass brother in-law and my cool nephew...

And a little bit more tinkering here...

(If the truth be said, it was my brother in-law who did all of the important work on this project)

And paying my 7 year old son an advance in his allowance to crawl under the second porch (build 3 years ago) which is muddy and wet, to pull and push the hose and tap to where it is supposed to be....

We can now simply go out our kichen door to get our water. We will be building a stand for the sink pictured here.

The third project: I spent 3 days (with the help of one of my younger nephews and my son (7 years) and daugher (5 years) to paint this wall. It would no doubt have taken me a lot less time without the help, but it isn't always the point to get something done in the least amount of time.

And most of the paint actually ended up on the wall.

We are really happy with the color on the wall - although you can certainly see the difference with the wall beside it:

Here's a better view of the painting that needs to be done next summer....

But at least we'll have a great view to comfort us while getting the work done.

Finally there was a bit of fun building. My daughter has been after her father to make a proper bed for her pet lion. You could see that she totally fell in love with her father when he got the job done:

It's a perfect fit.

And inbetween all of this work, and the fishing, swimming, water tubing, and day trips we took, I was still able to get a lot of crafting done.

It has been a very good summer this year.

Adding Surface Area to our Holidays....

So for those that have been have been following my blog, you'll know that my husband and I have been working on improving our sea side cabin for years. This year we're adding porches, replacing two windows and painting walls. For the work that we did last Easter, see this post:


http://plaskdesign.blogspot.com/2009/04/working-together-as-team.html


But now we're doing the fun stuff. The stuff that's easier to do, quicker to build. And looks impressive.


Everything started out well from the beginning. My husband purchased his materials when there was a sale at the lumber yard. I myself was stunned. I never even knew that lumber yards and building material stores had sales. The result was that we were able to get everything we needed instead of just half of it. And here it is:



You'll see that one piece of clear fiberglass/plastic on the top of the pile. We need that because last Easter my son did this:




While swinging way too high on this:

We haven't actually gotten to that part yet.... but we're working on it.

And so in addition to all the materials we bought we still have our previously purchased materials that will also be used:

Here's a reminder of where we last left you at Easter, having dug holes and made huge cement blocks, on which the vertical supporting beams will be placed.

And this is how far we came yesterday, just after lunch:

I was trying to get my husband to wave to me. His response was to become very irritated and told me to come down and help him (as opposed to vaccuuming the crumbs that kids had left all over the living room floor because they decided to take their breakfast down from the table so that they could play with all their little Bankugan toys).

I spent 45 minutes helping him put up the last vertical supporting post, as well as securing it to the cabin itself. I also got three big horsefly bites that I am still treating with aloe vera.

But all this was good - it would have taken him at least twice as long to complete the job himself. And soon after that he was able to complete the days work:

I am so looking forward eating dinner out here in a couple of days.

One Cozy Morning.....

The women in my family wake up early. It's always been this way, as far as I can remember. Even when attending parties and being up to the early hours of the night, I still don't sleep to later than 8.30 am.


This has continued into my holiday this year. Less than a week into my holiday and I have not managed to sleep later than 6.30 yet. But I'm working on it.


In the meantime, I had a very nice surprise yesterday morning. I was up and water was boiling to make coffee. And I thought I would take a picture or two of the water outside of where we are.





The water was perfectly peaceful, only interrupted by small circles made by feeding fish. It was so quiet...... with the exception of a little bit of insect activity. It didn't even appear that the birds were awake yet.


And then I heard a little giggle. I turned around and saw a flash of pink disappear around the corner and back into the kitchen.


I wish I could have reacted fast enough to get a picture of that. But as said, it was early and there was no caffine in my bloodstream yet.


So I too snuck back in the kitchen and found my favorite girl waiting for me with a big smile on her face. I made the two of us breakfast.

She was hungry! But while eating we had, for the first time since maybe Easter, a really good conversation - just her and I.

We spoke about Canada, about fishing, and swimming and sinking to the bottom of the ocean. She mentioned a dream she had a week or so ago, and I told her of a nightmare I had when I was little, that seems silly now. Even she thought so.

We spoke about the cartoons that we might be watching if we were home, and how neither of us really missed them.

And then she says: Take a picture of us together, Mom.

Well, my hair was not washed, and neither was my face. But this was here and I, right? So here is the picture, which she at least really liked:

And then it's time for posing.....

And Voguing.....

(with chocolate not yet washed off....)

And time to hang on the swing......

And prove that she can climb up all by herself.

Back.......

And forth.......

And then suddenly she's forgotten all about her mother and life opens up with all its possibilities....