Busy

I miss my blog!  It’s a good thing I have Daring Bakers challenges that will assure that I complete at least one post per month.  With school, homework, and dance there just is absolutely no extra time for uploading pictures and writing on here.  I have a post from September that I still want to add.  Gosh, I’ll get around to it sometime, I promise!

In the meantime, here’s some of what I’ve been baking in my very limited free time.

Oh, and also, I just used my ice cream maker for the first time.  I didn’t take any pictures, unfortunately, but it was delicious.  I used David Lebovitz’s chocolate ice cream recipe and added cookie dough chunks (homemade!) and chocolate chips.  That definitely required a glass of water to wash it down.  Yummm.

Peach Streusel Muffins

recipe

I just made them low-fat by replacing the vegetable oil with applesauce.

Hearty Apple Raisin Pecan Fall Bread

My own recipe; whole wheat quick bread, apples, raisins, toasted pecans

Lower Fat (But Just As Delicious) Chocolate Chip Cookies

recipe

Actually, I liked these better than some versions that use more butter; they didn’t spread as thin and weren’t greasy.

Homemade Ice Cream

What better to do on a summer night than make your own ice cream?  My friend Meg and I decided to have an adventure, and attempt it.  However, we ran into a few obstacles along the way…

First, we had to crush the ice to use in the ice cream maker:

Method #1 – Stomping/Jumping

Method #2 – Dropping

Method #3 – Smashing w. Meat Mallet

Method #4 – Crushing with Blender

Yeah… next time, we’re buying a bag of crushed ice instead!  Ice flew everywhere, and melted all over.  There was a nice pool of freezing water covering the counters and the ground.  But we cleaned up, really!

As for the actual ice cream, everything went pretty well.  We chopped our chocolate, made our delicious sauce, and prepped our dish.

And here it is, our wonderful creation!  Double chocolate cheesecake ice cream with raspberry chocolate sauce.  Well worth the work.  Mmmmm.