Sage at Sage Rd. in Sage, CA.

May 2009 DB Challenge: Apple Strudel

I was a little nervous about this month's challenge: Apple Strudel. It was something I had never made before, not even anything close to it. The puff pastry like dough was a little intimidating. So, of course, I waited till the last day to get myself up to the challenge.

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.
*
Overall, this went smoother than I expected. I made double the dough, just in case I messed up the first one and didn't need it so I'll be making another one with that other dough. I chose to stay with the apple filling, didn't have rum so I subbed plum wine which gave it a little milder taste. I didn't time this right, after rolling it up, I didn't have enough time to bake it before picking up the kids so I wrapped it and baked it after I came back. By then, the juices had seeped out which caused the bottom to caramalize and get a little hard. But overall it came out better than I expected. The dough part went pretty smoothly, I think I'll keep this recipe.
*
Check out other amazing creations from my fellow DBers and the recipe from the DB website.

Devil's Slide

Another hike with Marmu, this time up Devil's Slide.

Gummy Bear Ice Cream

Took the Ben & Jerry's basic vanilla recipe and added some gummy bears to it. I was afraid the gummy bears would turn rock hard, but they didn't and was quite good. Makes me wonder what other candies would taste good in ice cream. ^_^

Hiking with Marmu

I had been itching to hike, even the weather's been a bit warm. It's been a while and I had a little time today so Marmu and I headed out to the Ernie Maxwell trail for 1 1/2 hrs.

The flowers were blooming, they were pretty. I didn't care for the bees buzzing around though. I thought to myself, if the kids were with me, they'd be freakin' out now!

"Twas a beautiful day and we had the trail all to ourselves.

Ben & Jerry's Cappucino Ice Cream Clone

Those Ben & Jerry's ice creams are really good but just too small for the price. So I've been looking at Ben & Jerry's clone recipes. Found one for Cappucino ice cream. I was surprised to see cinnamon as one of the ingredients (a whole tablespoon!) but decided to follow the recipe as-is. The cinnamon taste was pretty strong, kinda took away from the coffee flavor. But it's one of those that was good in it's own way. Sure, a little disappointing if you're looking for a COFFEE ice cream, but if you're just looking for GOOD ice cream, this one's a winner (unless you HATE cinnamon ^_^).

Mango Ice Cream

I like recipes that are simple to make but still have delicious results. Here's one: mango ice cream. 2 lg. mangoes, 1 c. cream, and 4-6 T. sugar (depending on how ripe your mangoes are), blend them all together in a blender and put in your ice cream maker. Mangoes sorbets are good too, but I only had 2 mangoes on hand, and I wanted the "creamy-ness". The only thing was that it was a little hard. So I zapped in the microwave a little bit. I've seen other similiar recipes that incorporated egg whites. That probably would of helped.

Ferns with My Folks

My parents came up yesterday for a little visit. Knowing it's fern time, we headed to Fuller Mill Creek to see if we'd get lucky.

And we did! Perfect timing, they were just starting to shoot out and there were no traces to other pickers before us.
That's my dad counting the rings on the tree... 150 yrs old!

We got Marmu to hop on to some boulders.

Abby got into the picking thing. So her and my mom did most of the work.

I think they liked Marmu. Can you tell? ^_^

Idyllwild Spring Challenge 2009

Headed out to Hurkey Creek for the Idyllwild Spring Challenge, a first bike race for me and a second one for Emi. She raced the 7-mile last year and wanted to try the 9.5-mile this year so we raced that together. It had been fun, going out riding with her to train, even those times when we got lost. I think it brought us closer.
Raceday...it was very windy, shirts flying around everywhere. So windy our new EZ-up even broke, and we had so many rocks on the shirts keeping them in place. But I was really glad it didn't rain, as was predicted. That would of been miserable.
At the start line. A sight I thought I'd never see.

Emi (on the left) coming in to finish.

Abby participated in the kids race.

Awards ceremony for the kids. They all got a cool wooden medal.

Mr. Brown Shugga

Emi took first place, although she's eleven she raced in the 15-18 year old category so she could do the longer course. There was one other 15-yr old girl racing against her but she had a meltdown and didn't finish. That really says a lot about how tough Emi is. Like her socks?

2nd place for me, only 2 minutes behind the winner, and on a singlespeed so I think I did pretty darn good. ^_^

Pretty cool trophies.