041 COOKING ANGEL

It has been a weekend of cooking and baking for me.  On Friday with Renee coming over, I started at 7:00 in the morning and began making chili for dinner, putting everything in the crockpot and letting her go.  For desert, I made my World Famous (in my opinion) Peanut Butter cookies.  I’ve made them several times before since I’ve been here, but with practice my technique becomes remembered and improved, and this is my best batch yet.

For a long time, I have told Renee that I used to be pretty good at baking and I think she has started to believe me a bit between Peanut Butter Cookies and Milk Chocolate Chip cookies, but I told her I was quite capable of doing a scratch bake, Angel Food cake.  I know she didn’t believe me on that one.  They really aren’t super difficult but they can be tricky if everything doesn’t go just right.

After we came back from our adventure exploring Maple Ridge and running into a Farmer’s Market/Festival of some type where we came face to face with a Black Bear and me with no camera except my iPhone 6.  Luckily he was a stuffed bear, on display by the BC Wildlife Conservation group.  So I snapped a few close ups.  One day, I’m going to have my big camera and get some live shots.

YOGI NEEDS A PICNIC BASKET

We did another run to the recycling depot and got rid of a ton more Styrofoam, cardboard and old appliances and from there headed down to the Fraser River walk.  My body was not cooperating too well today, so I sat on a bench and watched some birds playing.  Renee and Toby went on.

When we got home I made us some Orange Julius, from an amazing recipe I found online and I swear you cannot tell it apart from the real thing.  We got nice and chilled down from drinking those.  We probably didn’t need it that much though, because while the temperature 3 days ago was 30C the temperature today was only 12C.

But I digress.  Once we finished off the Orange Julius, it was time to make good on my claim of being able to bake an Angel Food Cake from scratch.  I whipped up the egg whites into a froth as needed.  Sifted the dry ingredients 5 times as called for, folded them altogether and poured it into a pan and then into the oven it went.  After an hour it was ready and put out on the counter to cool.

BAKED AND COOLING

TADA, FRESH FROM THE PAN

While waiting for that to happen, I set about chopping vegetables for our dinner of Chicken Fajitas.  OK, I admit it, I used a kit here, but I did chop up all the vegetables and chicken.  We sat and watched the news and scarfed down our fajitas and after a short rest it was time for the unveiling.

CHICKEN COOKING

VEGGIES ADDED

I ran a knife around the edges of the pan, flipped it over and out popped my perfectly done scratch baked Angel Food Cake.  I set out to finish it off by making the chocolate drizzle my Mom used to make.  Where she used semi-sweet chocolate though, I opted for milk chocolate.  I much prefer it.  After drizzling the cake with the chocolate, I cut up some fresh strawberries as a garnish.

DONE AND ICED

FIRST SLICE

Here comes the moment of truth, the big slice of cake, it looks great, handed over to Renee who sampled it and said that “it tastes great”.  She had never had a scratch baked Angel Food Cake, and it tastes quite a bit different from the packaged ones you can get.

After a couple of great dinners and deserts in a row, Renee proclaimed herself stuffed to the gills.  Come to think of it, I am too and after finishing off this article I’m heading off to bed.  Tomorrow will be another long day of doing things and walking Toby.  This being retired sure is a lot of hard work and I’m not sure where I found the time to go to work way back when.