Something salty, something sweet...

The plan was to wake up and go to the cottage. Then the plan was to wake up, bake a tray of simple brownies and go to the cottage. Then our computer decided to erase all the pictures. After my boyfriend went to bad at 5 am (that is 5 in the morning, that is 4 hours before we were going to wake up), exhausted from the fight and a victory over our PC, the plan changed.

I woke up and realized that I have about 4-5 quiet hours. There was no question what to do. It was simple. I bake bread and I try a different recipe when I have time. I chose a variation on a Lavash bread, a middle-eastern flat bread, usually eaten with BBQ and just torn in pieces. The dough turned out perfect, it doubled in size and it was light and smooth. After I let it rise for the second time, I shaped two breads and baked them for 20 minutes. The result was amazing. Golden, warm, chewy breads.. I couldn't resist to tear another and another piece from it.

While the dough was proofing I decided to bake something sweet. The brownies sounded too simple, but there was a cake I wanted to make for some time. It was from a Pure Chocolate book by Fran Bigelow and I had all (well, almost all) of the required ingredients on hand. The cake was called L'Orange and one of the main ingredients was oranges. I didn't have oranges in my fridge, but I had a Pure Orange Oil made from real orange zest. It is one of my absolutely favourite ingredients, so I used it. The batter took no time to make, it was simple and a little bit unusual because of the ground almonds used instead of a regular flour. But the baking process (the easy part, right?) took forever... literally... almost literally. According to the recipe, the cake was supposed to be baked after 45 minutes. But 45, 55, 65 and 75 minutes later it was still almost liquid. I had to increase the oven temperature and bake another 15 minutes to get that perfect moist consistency.

I'll definitely make both recipes again. That is if I don't find anything even more interesting to make...

Excuse my photos. I just got a new camer and I still have no clue how to use it

Lavash
L'Orange

Almost Mexican Dinner

Mondays are busy. I get home only at 6 pm, I have about 15 minutes to get up to my apartment, pack my guitar and drive to my tutor where I spend one and a half hours. So I am really only home at 8.30 pm if I am lucky, most of the time I get home at 8.45 pm. As you can imagine, I rarely cook on Mondays, but this time I was craving some carbs and I had some dying avocados in the fridge and I really really wanted to try one very simple recipe out.

At 8.45 I opened my fridge and found no bread. Well, it wasn't really a surprise for me since we finished the last of it this weekend. But my body needed carbs (and I always listen to my body!), so I found my Big Book of Bread and leafed through it. Breads - take too long and it's already too late; Quick Breads - have to bake them for 50 minutes; Flat Breads... Stop! My mind went back to the kitchen, to the fridge, to those mushy avocados. Guacamole and tortillas! Sounds excellent.

It took me about 5 minutes to mix the dough in my trusty KitchenAid mixer and I started on my lentil soup which was on my "to make" list for quite some time. While the soup was simmering, I mixed a simple guacamole spread and began rolling my tortillas. The recipe said to divide the dough in 12 pieces. Which I did. And then I was supposed to roll each piece into a 10 inch circle. Which I didn't. How on earth was I supposed to do it? My stretched and pulled dough was paper-thin, but nowhere near 10 inches, more like 5 inches. Ok, I am not even going to mention my so-called "circles". After the first two tortillas I gave up on making the perfect rounds and just rolled it out as best as I could.

The result: in 45 minutes I had a stack of 12 delicious, warm, homemade tortillas, a wonderful, garlic lemon lentil soup and a guacamole. Not bad, eh?

Guacamole turned out to be a very terrible model, so no picture of it...

Wheat Tortillas

Lemon Lentil Soup