No Helpers

The grandkids (and us grownups) polished off yesterday’s epic-fail cake before bedtime. 

Rainbow carrots fresh from the garden of my pal Debbie

I was curious to see if I could duplicate whatever the problem was - plus we had another basket of strawberries in the fridge- so I made another angel food cake today. Can I just say it’s a lot more fun to talk Leo through the process than to do it myself? Separating 12 eggs is a cold, messy job. 

Once it was out of the oven, I surrounded the inverted cake pan with enough pots to guarantee it couldn’t fall over again. And… victory! 

Tall, tasty, non-fail cake. (I still like the taste of fail-cake better…)

Angel food cakes use just egg whites, so I again had 12 yolks left over. Throwing them away bugged me so a quick internet search later, this 12 Yolk Pound Cake (here) was ready to bake. 

The tube pan being already in use was my excuse for trying out the new springform pan (it’s powder blue. So pretty.) I was curious if it would leak (it did not!) or if the shape would affect the bake time/texture (it did not!) As a bonus, there was a crusty, crunchy lip around the cake that was very delicious. 

And no, we aren’t going to eat both cakes ourselves. Mary’s favorite cakes are angel food and pound cake, so half of each went home with them. I’m going to slice and freeze the rest of the pound cake and keep it for snacking after the angel food is gone. Sure has been a yummy couple of days!

Are We Done Yet?

Donovan and Jac kept me company while I did today’s sorting (and by ‘company’ I mean we were in the same room while they played Minecraft and tried to talk me into going downstairs to get them cake 😜).

Today’s stats: 1 big bag of trash, 2 boxes for donation and a home found for some of my EPP projects. 

I know I’m never going to work on them again (or at least the chances are very slim given hand, shoulder and eye issues) but I was having a really hard time letting go. Knowing they’ll have a good home helps. 

Funny for the day: apparently I had (have?) a problem with scrap management (we are not going to call it scrap hoarding…) 

All 4 of these bags/boxes have fabric pieces ranging from teeny tiny to quarter yards, going back to when I started quilting. Most of it went in the trash, a few fat quarter-sized pieces are in the donation box and that small black bin in front holds all I’m keeping. (I still think I might do a string quilt someday.) The funniest part? In 13-ish years I’ve been quilting, I’ve never made a scrap quilt. But some day I might… right??

Duck, Duck, Goose

Today was bake, slime, sort - kinda like duck, duck, goose for grandkids.

It’s Strawberry Season! and we live adjacent to the strawberry growing capital of the world (we saw strawberries from Oxnard when we were in Paris and London) so Leo and I decided to make angel food cake - her first time - while Pop made a run for berries. (And Jac sulked because she had to be off her phone for an hour. Grandma is so mean…)

Everything went well until we took the cake from the oven, inverted it so it could cool for 3 hours…. and within a couple of minutes it fell right out of the pan. 

I’ve never had that happen before and I’m not sure why it did this time (maybe it wasn’t cooked all the way thru and was too heavy? Any other ideas? Same recipe, same pan I’ve used for years…)

A deliciously epic fail. It didn’t stop the littles (and the grownups) from nibbling away at the edges before it was even cool. (Turns out I prefer the heavier, collapsed version to the original, so as Teena said, ‘hey, new recipe’!)

Then Leo helped Jac make squishy shaving cream slime, which Pop may not appreciate come shaving time tomorrow… Jac almost lost it again when I didn’t have the right colors of food coloring but Leo saved the day by mixing in some acrylic paint. Not something I would have thought of but it worked! 

Happy Jac (cake + strawberries + slime = happiness for 8 year old’s) helped me sort another row of fabric bins. 

Two more stuffed boxes are ready to donate and 5-ish more bins are empty. Making progress!