Thursday, March 15, 2012

Baking in Ireland

I have neglected this blog for far too long. But I promise I have a good excuse... just check out my other blog http://tomoveandbemoved.blogspot.com/ and you will see I haven't totally disappeared from the blogosphere. Alright, alright I haven't even updated that one since December! But here I am and I'm about to do a little recap of my baking experiences while I was in Ireland. They are few and far between because, to be quite honest, I had no idea how to work the oven in our little house. It was totally trial and error, mostly error... so the majority of my time spent in the kitchen was also accompanied by a coffee and Baileys :)
Just to give you an idea on how our oven worked, you first had to flip this switch on the wall...
Then figure out which symbol meant what. I still don't really know...
Then adjust the temperature in Celsius, which is a whole new world for me.
See why the Baileys is so necessary now?

The first thing I actually attempted to bake was a peach tart. Pretty simple crust, and the peaches themselves were already so beautiful I though I probably couldn't mess this up too bad.
It actually turned out alright, although the crust wasn't quite as crusty as one might have hoped. But I'll take it!

The next time I attempted baking was really just for fun with my mom's colleagues adorable children. We got these fun "fairy cake" mixes that had everything in a bottle, then you just add in milk, shake, and bake!
Here's a link to my other blog with more pictures of the kids baking!
Watching them decorate was the most fun, a bit of icing for the cakes, a bit of icing for their mouth, a bit of sprinkles for the cake, a bit of sprinkles for their mouth... and on and on and on.

Finally I tried our oven once more to make some carrot cupcakes for my sister "Carrie Carrot" when she and her husband came to visit us!
I tried to make them semi-healthy then realized its a birthday, so I needed to fancy these babies up. I hadn't worked with marzipan before, but it was so readily available and cheap at the grocery that I decided to buy some and play with coloring and shaping some carrots for the cupcakes!
I think they turned out alright for my first time! Carrie says she enjoyed them at least!
Alright, I think I've at least caught up on Ireland. Now onward, I will try to post about the various baking adventures I've had back in Oklahoma so far this year!