Certifiable

I opened the mailbox this morning to find a much anticipated document from my friends at Ivy Tech. 

Now I get to buy a frame and hang it...um...somewhere.

I'll have to work on getting the wall in a real bakery to hang it on.  But this sucker is good for five years, so I have a little time I suppose.  In the meantime, you can be assured that I know how NOT to introduce food borne diseases into anything I make:). 

Yay:).

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations to Christy Knapp of Linton, IN!

You are now the proud owner of a 10" square tube pan from Fat Daddio! 

Thanks to a really useful site, random.org, I was able to pull a number out of a virtual hat and Christy is the lucky one today!

Don't worry though!  In a week or so, you might be the lucky winner of that awesome hemi muffin pan!

You don't want to miss it, so stay tuned!

Give Away #1: 10" Square Tube Pan

My apologies for anyone left waiting while I bake. 

I had a small disaster that delayed this post by a day or two.  You see, my initial post was supposed to be about angel food cake.  But thankfully, the total disaster that ensued after my egg whites fell and turned my awesome cake into a goey, gross glob - well, that gave me an opportunity to test the dishwasher-worthiness of the pan as well.  (Just so you know, it did just great in the dishwasher.)

I don't blame the pan.  I blame Irene.  I'm sure the pressure systems that girl is spewing out are affecting Indiana.  I'm CERTAIN.  But Irene couldn't touch my amazing apple cake. 

Oh.  My.  Goodness.

First of all, this recipe is to die for.  It's one I found not long ago and altered a bit to make it my own.  I also used the apples that are literally falling off the tree in my back yard, so in addition to being delicious, this cake was also frugal.  Gotta love that! 

Here's the recipe, with my own attempts at photography in between...

6-8 apples (mine were super tart green ones)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar

2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup melted butter
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup apple juice
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
1/4 brown sugar
1 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter, line with parchment and flour your tube pan. Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

If you're thinking that's a lot of apples.  You're right.  Stay tuned for a series of
posts on apple pies, apple gumbo, apple dumplings, apple sauce and finally,
apples in the garbage disposal cuz we CANNOT eat any more apples!

Sift flour, baking powder and salt in bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment or large mixing bowl. In another bowl, combine butter, apple juice, sugar and vanilla. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix just until moistened, then add eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl to make sure it's all mixed up.  Do not overmix!

Sprinkle brown sugar in bottom of pan, half of the apples and half the walnuts if desired. 

Scoop and spread half the batter, add the rest of the apples and walnuts, cover with remaining batter - this might take a little maneuvering as the batter is on the thick side. 

Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

And when you turn it out of the pan...oooooo, look at all that carmelized goodness!

See what that brown sugar does?  Oh, heaven:).

And what a wonderful pan I had to bake it in!  Want one of your own????

Just remember DA RULES!  Post your name and say something nice - or send an email to bakelore@gmail.com, subject line "I love Fat Daddio!!!!" And please, if you don't mind, tell me where you are!!

Good Luck!

Bake Lore has been hijacked!

Wait?! What is this?! I'm not Amy! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Hello everyone! Many of you don’t know me except by reputation. I am the infamous Lennon Lore, husband to the Baker Lore herself, and sometimes cake delivery boy. Let me start off with saying that posting on blogs about cake and bread and sugar and pastry are not normally within my purview.  I have a gun blog (that  I never post on) and I’m much more apt  to speak about firearms at length than anything else. That and Star Wars, even though my sad devotion to that ancient religion hasn’t conjured up the stolen data tapes, OR given me clairvoyance enough to find the hidden rebel base. But I digest…

At the current time of writing this, my wife doesn’t know I’m doing it. She didn’t ask me to post this and she may in fact turn it down, too embarrassed to post it on her blog. We shall see.

You see friends; I’ve been there since the beginning. I was there when Bake Lore was nothing but the unnamed, undefined twinkle in the eye of a woman who was living in a matchbox house in Kentucky who had the Food Network playing incessantly while her husband trained to kill terrorists a few miles away at Fort Campbell all day. I like to imagine the beginning of Bake Lore was a particular incident about four years ago when I witnessed my Galway Girl gleefully making a sculpture out of butter cream icing, cheezits, pretzels, and whatever else she could get her hands on one night when we were staying with her parents for the weekend. Really all her cake making is just this; a deep rooted desire to play with her food. Only now she does it like a boss, making pretty/delicious things, thankfully the cheezit quantity in her cakes have taken a sharp decline in the last few years.

Now I am her husband so of course I’m biased, but that doesn’t mean this stuff ain’t good. I get a firsthand look at what exactly goes into these creations, ingredients and labor-wise, and let me tell you, it can be pretty intense. These cakes take HOURS of labor to make just one. There have been a couple of weeks where a night or two I am forced to make like my hunter gatherer ancestors did and order a pizza because the kitchen is full of CAKE and there is simply no room to cook anything else. As for ingredients, Amy is insistent, especially for her bread, to only use the very finest, ALL natural ingredients. She soaks her wheat before she uses it, because a good hot bath is the best stress reliever there is, and trust me, you don’t want stressed wheat in your bread. Stressed wheat makes bread that doesn’t think clearly, gets poor sleep and makes decisions poorly. It also releases nutrients that are super healthy that you’re not going to find in your Bunny Bread. There’s also something about phytates that , honestly, I’ve had explained to me like four times and even read an article about it, but I still can’t remember what they are and what they do, I just know they are bad for you. They mess up your digestion, or something. And make you impotent. And they are racist. And they killed Jimmy Hoffa.

Really the thing is, Amy has a whole philosophy about her food, and how it should be prepared, and like all philosophies deeply held, this permeates down to the way she prepares all her food. I may jest with her about it sometimes (Many a ribald of Larry Groce’s “Junkfood Junkie” is heard in my house), but in reality, I admire and support my wife 100%. Sure, there are things I would have done different, she shot down my idea to name the store The DGC Bakery (that’s Damn Good Cakes), although, it would have been awesome (I find that girls are rarely concerned with awesomeness as much as they should be).

So really, I’m very proud of my wife and all that she has done with this passion of hers. It’s really impressive to see the whole thing, where it’s came from to what it is now and where it’s headed. I’m very proud of you, honey.

Announcing: Give Away Rules!

I just recieved a huge box from Fat Daddio, with my name on it.

Oh the baking-geek joy that fills my heart! 

Inside, I found two for me and two for you, as promised!  I will be doing two separate give aways since the items are very different. 

First and foremost - - here's the LOOT!

The 10" square tube pan in the picture below is the first item. 

Our premium angel food pans are built to last! Each pan is constructed of 14 gauge anodized aluminum and features an even wall thickness. The anodized aluminum allows the cakes to climb well and release effortlessly. There is not a finer tube pan!

Next up, we have another unique item for your bakeware collection, the Fat Daddio, something they call a Hemisphere Muffin/Multi pan.

Fat Daddios muffin pan series are built from 18 gauge anodized aluminum and feature a rigid rolled rim that creates a very durable pan. The anodized finish promotes even baking and easy release and cleanup. With 8 styles, we offer everything from the standard muffin pans to our best selling square muffin pan.

You must be dying to know how to get your oven mits on these bad boys.  Here's how it's gonna work:

DA RULES:
1.  I will use my set of bake ware, and blog about my experience and the recipe I used.

2.  You will obsessively compulsively check Bake Lore to see when I post about my experience and tell all your friends and relatives to do the same.

3.  When I publish the post about each item, you have two ways to enter the give away:

• First, post a comment and say something nice.  (Snide comments will render your entry void...*raspberries*.) 
• Second, you can have an additional entry by sending me an email at bakelore@gmail.com and using the subject line: I LOVE Fat Daddio!!  Also, say something nice.  I'm 30 now, and I need compliments more than I used to.
• So, for each give away, you can enter a total of TWO ENTRIES - or more if you use another email address I suppose.
• USE YOUR FULL NAME so I can make sure the correct person gets the loot!!  No name, no loot!!!!!!

4.  After THREE DAYS - with the option to extend if I feel like it:) - during which you will continue to check the blog and like the facebook page (see #2)! - I will announce a winner, chosen at random.

5.  THIS IS IMPORTANT:  The winner is entitled to one piece of bakeware - and free delivery or pickup.  The big point of this promo for me is to build up my LOCAL base, so  - -This give away is limited to those who are within a one-hour driving distance from Linton. 

This includes the Linton, Bloomfield, Jasonville, Dugger, Terre Haute, Bloomington, Sullivan, Washington, Vincennes and all points in and around beautiful rural Indiana - - this is your time to WIN!

I'm so sorry, but I just can't afford to ship to my fans in Latvia, though I love you dearly! (Es Tevi Milu! - - That's "I love you" in Latvian, for reals.) 

Sooooo, if you are one of the lucky winners (which you will know instantly because, again, see #2), that will bring me to your door with your Fat Daddio Pan - or you can pick it up in person.  And...by the way... If you decide you want me to throw in some bread or cookies, you totally have to pay for that:).

That's all for now!  Keep checking BAKE LORE!

And if you have questions, email me at bakelore@gmail.com, subject line: Fat Daddio Giveaway.

STAY TUNED!!!!

It's My Party...

Today, is my 30th birthday.

I left my 20's behind in an exhausted heap and I'm moving on and moving up.

During the course of this milestone birthday, I heard, possibly over nine million times - - "You didn't have to bake your own birthday cake, did you??"  As if that would somehow be a fate worse than turning 30;).

I love to bake!  What better way to celebrate than to really let loose in the kitchen and create something for myself that truly celebrates the occasion with flavors that I, me and myself really love? 

So I give you, Amy's 30th Birthday "Cake"

Lemon Almond Tiramisu
Tasty enough to make you forget your real age!

Real, fresh lady fingers, gorgeous, golden lemon curd, almond syrup and layer after layer of all of it.  No one stuck a candle in it for me...however, I did get my own version of "Happy Birthday" direct from my brother, who is in Israel.  It was in Hebrew, but I caught on:). 

Yes, that is a tea candle. 

I had to put up with a lot of complaining from those who believe cake is the ONLY acceptable way to fete one's natal day, but I blow raspberries in their general direction.

It's my birthday, and I'll eat lemons if I want to!  So there!

Thank the Maker for lemons!  They are one of my delights here on earth:). 

Happy Big 3-0 to me!



Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

C is for Cookie and that's good enough for me: A guestblog

Another guest post tonight brought to you by the other Lore sister. Only this time, we're talking cookies. If you haven't checked out her normal writing routine yet, head over to Enduring, Caitlin's blog. She's slowly, but surely, starting to chronicle her baking adventures.

Ok. I'm just going to lay this out there for all your readers. If you read my first guest post back in June, you'll see that I've experimented with a little cake decorating in my day.
And in my day, I mean once.

Here's the deal: both of us Lore sisters love to bake and are all about healthy foods and whole grains.
But Amy--she's the fabulous cake lady. Me? I'm just the cookie monster.

Now, I wasn't one of those kids who was rewarded with a cookie every time I did something good. My mother was all about moderation. But I remember Christmas after Christmas, she would spend hours and days in the kitchen baking up mounds of cookies and candies. I was always right there, attached to her leg trying to steal the beaters when she was finished with a dough or swiping my finger in the icing bowl. Mother wore the blue checkered apron, and I wrapped the matching pink one around me several times just to tie it tight. I always knew a flour war would ensue.

I always felt like each one of those cookies had been made especially for me. It was the individual-ness, the specialness that made me fall in love with a cookie.

When I got married last year, my cookie recipe box was pretty full with family favorites, most homemade and simple and always, always delicious. Now as I nurture the foundation of those family recipes, I'm starting to add some more complicated and even some new healthy favorites that my own little family enjoys.
Most bakers I know are not big fans of cookies, mainly because there's often more than one pan involved. Bakers have to reload cookie sheets, reset timers, and bake in rounds, but I think the repetition is what I enjoy so much about baking cookies. I fall into a rhythm, and I often soothe myself by learning to feel when the cookies are done. And when I'm baking family recipes, feeling in my soul when the cookie is perfect, I know I'm in the right place at the right time.
I feel joy.

This short prologue brings me to my quest: I am ever so slowly questing towards finding and creating perfect, bakery style cookies. This quest involves the ever favorite chocolate chip cookie because we all know that's the staple of any bakery (and every child's favorite.) However, my quest also involves taking some of those famous packaged cookies that we love and turning them into delicious homemade creations. Such as those super soft sugar cookies with the melt-in-your-mouth icing mounded on top. And those black-and-white sandwich cookies with the creamy middle that are always better dipped in a big glass of milk.

So that's where I was this weekend. Up to my ears in crumbly, fudgey, chocolaty cookies and delicious cream cheese icing.
What can I say? I prefer my homemade oreos to have more than one bite.

This is only one version of my homemade oreos, though. Some people, such as my husband, like to call these ones Whoopie Pies; however, a cookie connoisseur like myself knows that Whoopie Pie cookies are more cake-like in cookie consistency and not so crispy and fudgey like this oreo version.

I guess you can call these an in-between cookie: not quite whoopie but not quite your average, crunchy oreo.

But let me tell you, you'll still want the big glass of milk and you'll definitely say whoopie! after you eat one.

Because as always, these are homemade.

Sweet, with more love than you can taste.