Well, this weekend we had a big spring snow-storm, which was wonderful. It allowed us to have Friday night to ourselves (we cancelled Youth Group which normally takes 4 hours of our evening). It also caused an event at work to be postponed, so I was able to have a Saturday to myself too. So, I spent a large majority of my day on Saturday, and some of Sunday in the kitchen.
I really do love baking. I'm not great at it yet, but I do enjoy it. Mitch always makes fun of me because I get COVERED in flour and even though I wear an apron, I still manage to get various baking ingredients all over my clothes. But that's half the fun of baking.
I have mentioned before that I have been reading Nourishing Traditions, and so I used their principles, to make my own recipe for a Spelt Pie Crust which I made an apple pie with some big MacIntosh apples that we got at the Farmers' Market, and then I also did a Spelt crust peach pie with a woven top. It looked pretty good, even if I do say so myself.
I also made some buckwheat/spelt pancakes which were delicious and so light. I soaked the flour in buttermilk for a full 12 hours (like it told me to do in the book) and I really think that made all the difference. After eating some of them (with unpasteurized honey, and some fresh local maple syrup) I didn't get that heavy, bloated feeling that normally happens after eating the pancakes that I used to make from a gluten-free pancake mix.
Then I tried my hand at making some buttermilk biscuits. Now, I have been making my mom's tea biscuits for Mitch for a while now, and he LOVES them, so this was a big test... would he like buttermilk, spelt biscuits? He was as surprised as I was to say that he did.
With that same dough, I made honey-cinnamon buns, and raspberry jam rolls. They were SO good.
And last but not least I made the basic muffins from Nourishing Traditions, but I added, blueberries to one batch, and I added a chunk of apple and some cinnamon to another.
So, to say the least, I kind of went baking crazy this weekend. But I loved the way that the house warmed up, and got all cozy feeling. And it smelled AMAZING!
Buy the book for the recipes. They are so yummy. I think I'll go have some supper and a piece of that apple pie. Mmmm.
