Category: Baking

I Rainbowed Bread

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Sunday I decided to make bread. I made this decision around 1pm, went to the store, then came home and laid down until around 6pm. Which left me finishing the bread about 10:30pm. Because I’m good at planning like that. Oh well.

Anyway, I used this white sandwich bread recipe from Julia Child which created two loaves of bread. I only rainbowed the one because getting this:

took about thirty minutes and was only one loaf. Next time I will split the whole thing into seven and dye it before splitting for the two loaves.

Another thing I learned doing this is that, while the glass storage container is roughly the same size as the bread tin and is oven safe, it doesn’t exactly let go of the bread very easily. Even with cooking spray. So I’ll probably be better off just getting a second bread tin like I contemplated at the grocery store.

Overall, the rainbowing process was really simple. After the first rise, I added food coloring to the dough by making a little dimple in the ball and dropping the food coloring in before kneading it with my fingers. It does get a little messy, so I would lay down a cutting board or maybe even parchment paper, and possibly consider gloves. The food coloring will wash off, but it will take a few washings. I’m just saying, if you make this bread in the middle of the day and are planning to go places afterward, probably best to protect your hands.

More Kitchen Experimentation

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Last week I wrote about making a body butter lotion. I really like “sciencey” DIY projects like that. It’s always so cool to be able to make things like that myself. So when I came across a string of Lush substitute DIY posts on Pinterest, I knew I had to try them.

The first project I tried was the bath bomb recipe found here. Super simple, just four ingredients (I left out the colors). I don’t really get to take baths often, but I do like using those shower melt things to help with congestion. I tried one once that was just baking soda and peppermint oil, but it didn’t really have enough smell to it and washed away too quickly. But these new ones work great. Lasted a lot longer than the plain baking soda cake in the shower stream, too.

Another simple one I found was the sugar lip scrub. I didn’t bother pricing it out, but it uses so little of each of the ingredients there’s no way it’s not a better deal than the $10 it costs at Lush. Plus, it really is just things you probably have around the house. One tip for using that recipe, though: I had to add almost twice as much sugar to get the right consistency.

Pups Save A Cake

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The little one has become obsessed with the show Paw Patrol over the summer. And with an end of summer birthday, that meant he knew just what he wanted for his birthday cake (instead of the “George and the man with the yellow hat” cake he had been asking for since his brother’s birthday): “Paw ‘trol wit Rubble sleeping on da grass and da Pup Pup Boogie Monster.”

I used the frozen buttercream transfer method to create the pieces. I found pictures from Google and put them together like that in Photoshop, created the “Happy Birthday” shield, then flipped it all so it would turn out the right side up.

I got a bit creative with mixing the colors so I only had to make one batch of icing for the decoration. I also baked a strawberry cake from this recipe, which is the only one I could find that didn’t use strawberry Jello. Then I had to make a second cake to turn it into a full cake because:

Once that was solved, and the cake was frosted, I pulled the tray from the freezer, flipped it over on top of the cake, and peeled off the parchment paper. All I had to do after that was add the smaller details and it was ready for the party.

Making the cake this way was super simple and created some really nice decorations. Way better than it would’ve turned out had I tried to draw them all on with icing.

Have you ever used icing transfers? Do you bake birthday cakes, or just order them from the store?