Baking Fool

Usually, summer is for fruit and salad - delicate, slimming eating. But here in the Pacific Northwest, summer was a late arrival, and sunny days are interspersed with overcast ones. That means I still feel like baking... which does not create a beach-ready midsection.

Sam was asking for "muffin? muffin? muffin?" so I made these. They sounded so good, and I had some raspberries. Raspberry Crumble Muffins. They look good, don't they? Well, they would have been much better if I didn't have some sort of brain hiccup while I was making the streusel topping. I managed to completely omit the sugar. It tasted a bit floury, so I scraped it off every muffin I had. I made a second batch with cherries that were awesome - and not floury. Sam? He decided that he didn't want a muffin after all.

I must take a tangent here to comment on my son's fickle nature, as I have done before. So, he loves raspberries and cherries and all manner of interesting dishes ... when we are out and about and especially if someone other than me has prepared it. I get excited. I buy ingredients. I get it all home, work my magic, and voila! "No, Mommy. O's." Fickle. The boy eats zero vegetables.

But he did eat this - surprise. I put sausage on it - his favorite. I snuck peas into the sauce, along with artichokes. Great! BUT, he wouldn't eat it two days in a row. I spent too much intellectual time wondering about people who don't like leftovers - my son is now one of them. You can't make anything else out of pizza, either. There is no disguising the leftovers.

I made some wheat bread too. I decided to go with my tried and true recipe, instead of the 5-minute-a-day version that makes four loaves. I think I let it rise too long. I think I always let it rise too long because the top always seems to flatten out like that. Hm. I must experiment.