It's alive, it's aliiiive!

I've always been way too afraid of yeast to bake my own bread. Any organism that lies dormant for a couple years only to awaken, hungry and smelly, when poured into a quarter-cup of warm water sounds like a science project, not food. In fact, my first exposure to Yeast, Model Organism was in a college biology lab, which I'm sure has a lot to do with my violent aversion to it. And even the word "yeast" is grosser than gross, a squirming Anglo-Saxon belch -- not something I want to usher into my kitchen and eventually eat.

Now that I've been properly psychoanalyzed, I am proud to say that I bought a package of Fleischmann's yeast (wow, even the brand name is gross) and made something with it! I found a pizza-like tart recipe from the web. I liked the idea of starting with something fairly flat and simple, nothing that tomatoes and basil couldn't salvage. All in all, it worked out fine, although I was unnerved by the warmth and feel of the dough and scrubbed my hands at least five times with soap and hot water.










P.S. I love this commercial. Enjoy.

Cupcakes for Eli

The KitchenAid is awesome--it's quick and efficient and makes a cute whirring noise as it cheerfully does my bidding. I chose to make buttermilk cupcakes as my first baking project. I promised they would be fluffy and sweet, and they were...

What failed me this time was not the KitchenAid. Nope, it was my inability to read labels. I mistakenly bought whole grain pastry flour instead of normal processed white cake flour. To be fair, Whole Foods chose not to carry any cake flour because they hate freedom, so what I got instead of tender, fluffy cupcakes was tender, fluffy cupcakes with some residual grain particles to chew on at the end. Oh, and colon health, because I really care about that at the age of 24.


There are ten whole cupcakes left. Eli's got his work cut out for him this week (I don't think these are suitable for bringing to work; it would just make me sad). But there will be many more baking projects to follow--Eli recently started studying for CFA Level II, and I'm always happy to whip up some extra brain food.