Baking and Stuff

Don't laugh when I say this, but Mark and I would like to someday open our own bakery.  That way we can bake all kinds of great things, but then other people will eat most of it, and we won't gain weight!  What brings this up is that we are trying to avoid watching TV.  I know, what does that have to do with baking?  Well, we mostly watch TV when we get bored.  Sundays, unfortunately, can often fall under the category of boring.  There is only so much scripture reading and Ensigns that you can read on a Sunday, right?  So then we think, let's just watch BYU TV, which is great and all, but about 5 PM they have some pretty lame shows on, so we turn it to a different channel, and thus opens the black hole of television that sucks us in.

Back to the point.  In order for us to avoid watching television on Sundays, we have begun cooking and baking together on Sundays, and we love it!  Not to mention I have found this totally awesome website, AllRecipes.com, that has about a bazillion recipes that are really great, and have ratings from other people who have also tried them, with tips on how to make them even better.  Wow, I am really rambling!

Sunday at church  the Elders reminded us that we were having them over for dinner, again (for the third time in a week, we love feeding the Elders!  Great taste testers.), but we didn't really have a complete meal available without going to the store.  We had half of several meals, but not everything.  The closest we came was to hamburgers, but no buns.  So, we decided to make our own buns!  Seriously, this website makes you feel like you can do anything!  When we got home from church we got busy making dinner. 

My specialty, unfortunately, is dessert.  I made a pumpkin roll, which I LOVED even though no one else did, and I also made some gluten free pumpkin cookies for a friend since we were going to their house to play games after dinner.

Mark is the bread man!  He read this book which I blogged about previously, and he now specializes in bread.  Speaking of which, he made some Pumpernickel Rolls in his dutch oven for our branch's Manly Man cooking contest last year (blogged in the previously mentioned), and on Sunday a member made a specific request for them for the Halloween Party next Saturday.  Holla!

Man, I am seriously rambling!  So, any way.  Mark made homemade (obviously!) Hamburger buns.  They were really good, especially for the first try!  With the exception of the mixing and kneading (the KitchenAid was all over the place!), here's the progression...

And here are my cookies and Pumpkin Roll...

The Pumpkin Roll looks funny because it is wrapped in plastic.

Tonight my culinary skills fell flat, though.  I had 5 Granny Smith Apples sitting on my counter, and decided I would give candied apples a try.  They were candied all right, the candy equivalent to an Everlasting Gobstopper!  We ended up peeling the chocolate/caramel coating off and just eating the apples.  Notice the distressed look on Mark's face...Sad!

I am going to use the other 3 apples tomorrow for an Apple Bread Pudding using some bread that Mark made.  Hopefully that will turn out better!