Maremy's Blog

I don't know if it was the snow day this week or just that I LOVE to bake whenever I get the chance, but I did A LOT of baking this week. As I type this, I have bran muffins with cranberries baking in the oven. Yummy! Well, hopefully; it is my first time giving the recipe a try.

I always love to try new recipes out. I usually end up modifying the recipes, particularly when it comes to sugar. I always use Splenda when I bake. I also use whole-wheat flour. I have low blood sugar so I try my best to stay away from white flour (it can cause major fluctuations in blood sugar) and if I have anything with too much sugar, it can actually cause my blood sugar to rapidly drop (hence the reason, I keep the sugar as low as possible when I bake). I also add in flax seeds, different nuts (if it will work with the recipe), both of which are quite healthy.

I've heard some people comment they haven't had much success baking with whole wheat flour but I haven't had any problems. I've found muffin tops come out a bit differently but it doesn't seem to affect the taste. Sometimes the dough is a bit drier but that is relatively easy to fix.

Yesterday, which was a snow day, I decided to give homemade brownies (right from scratch!) a try. I found the recipe on vegetariantimes.com (I have been looking on this site a lot recently for recipes; they've got some really good stuff on there). It was an interesting recipe. If you're interested, you can find it here. No egg (banana instead) and soy instead of milk (I drink both so I usually have each on hand). I didn't use vegan chocolate chips though; just plain old semi-sweet chocolate chips. Anyway, they turned out quite good! They are not sweet at all, like most of the brownie mixes are. I don't like anything overly sweet and I loved the way the brownies turned out! Jeremy enjoyed them too. He's got more a sweet tooth than I do, so he has the brownies with chocolate sauce, granola and peanut butter (healthy much? ;) ). I will definitely make them again though!

This afternoon, I was working from home. On my lunch break, I decided to bake a loaf of bread. Jeremy had just finished off the loaf of Demster's bread (we affectionatly refer to it as "Dumpsters" bread ;) ). Our favourite bread is this bread we get in Port Huron called "Aunt Millie's". It is the best bread ever! As with many other foods, we can't get "Aunt Millie's" bread here in Canada. Anyway, I made a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine. We'll find out tomorrow at lunch how it turned out!

Tonight, I made Apple-Cinammon Muffins with a brown-sugar/cinammon topping. They turned out pretty good! And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, I also made bran muffins with cranberries. I think these are my favourite muffins now! When I little, my grandma and I made bran muffins together all the time, and as I was making them, I realized how similar this recipe was to hers. Brought back lots of good memories as I was making them! :) I seem to remember my grandmother adding molasses to her bran muffins though, which the recipe I had did not call for. Oh well...they still turned out really good!

So, in the baking this week I've managed to use up the rest of my flours, eggs, and I'm starting to run low on other ingredients. I don't really mind; baking, as well as cooking, have become huge passions of mine over the past few years. I find it relaxing and is a great stress reliever for me. It was also something I did a lot with my grandma when I was little, so I suppose that is why it is so relaxing for me,

My goal this year is to make an apple pie from scratch. My grandma did that all the time. Unfortunatly, she never wrote the recipe down so I won't be able to use her exact recipe. Hopefully, I can find one that is close! I've also got a pumpkin cheesecake to try to make at some point too.

If you have any recipes you enjoy making (or eating!), please post them in the Comments section. Like I said, I LOVE trying out new recipes! And Jeremy is more than happy to try new stuff too ;).