Sunday was a day of baking. I began with Orange Sesame Whole Wheat Muffins, a recipe that I adapted from Carnation evaporated milk. I only make it when I have the Cara Cara oranges for zest. With their toasted sesame seed and toasted coconut, the muffins are strictly for me, as Scott does not do well with either ingredient. I will freeze two, with the rest for breakfast into the week. I baked these as six large muffins.

I then moved on to Ron's Irish Porridge Bread, a recipe that I printed off from King Arthur in June of 2014 but had never gotten around to baking. I used the steel oats option, as I do not have Irish oats. I made a few changes by substituting 3 ½ cups whole wheat flour for that much AP and replacing the other cup of the AP with Bob's Red Mill Artisan Bread flour. I deleted the whole-grain bread improver, which I have never used. I think the artisan bread flour replaces using it. I also added ¼ cup of flax meal and used ¾ cup of buttermilk and proofed he yeast in ¼ cup water. I took the maple syrup sweetener option. I replaced ¼ cup butter with canola oil. I cut the salt from 2 tsp. to 1 ½ tsp. Initially, I seemed to have too much flour--I should have held back ¼ cup--and I added ¼ cup more of buttermilk. That was too much, and I needed to add another ¼ cup of bread flour. The Ankarsrum takes a longer time for kneading, in this case, about 16 minutes, but it is a gentle kneading. When I can pull a windowpane, I end the kneading. The bread had great oven spring. While the recipe says 30-35 minutes, the bread needed 40 minutes. One loaf had a slight blow-out on a long side, probably a shaping error.

I baked a coffee cake for my little sister, she's really my niece.

Kimbob the Pistachio Pineapple cake was delicious and I will make this many times.The green color is pretty for Easter too!

Very pretty, cake, Joan!

I have been craving pizza, so on Tuesday, I made sourdough pan pizza. This time, I added another ounce of water since the first crust I made with the Ankarsrum was somewhat dry. This one came out perfectly with the lightness I prefer in my crusts. Once the dough was mixed, I kneaded it on speed 2 for 5 minutes, and that was enough. The pizza came out very well.

I was a bit concerned when I was making the sauce while the dough was on its second rise, because we had a severe thunderstorm warning come up, along with two brief power outages of a couple of seconds, then perhaps 15 seconds. Winds were 60 mph, and a neighbor had part of a tree snap off and fall onto her driveway. Our next-door neighbors had water in their basement, and a neighbor further over also had water come into his house, although that is more a feature of that house's entryway. It was a fast, heavy rain. We did fine. There has been additional rain this evening, and just enough thunder to make Annie nervous. We turn the fan on high on her and put her blanket on her in her bed, and she feels as safe as she can.

Today I baked blondies, jam filled almond bars and sugar cookies rolled in pink sugar and others in gold sugar. My friend's husband asked me to bake some cookies for his photography exhibit at the library tomorrow. It'll be fun to see his pictures.

Kimbob--my favorite cornbread recipe has 1 Tbs. of sugar. I, too, dislike sweet cornbread.

I made wholegrain pumpkin waffles for breakfast on Thursday. We do not usually have waffles midweek, but today is the thirteenth birthday of Annie May (aka Merigang Songbird), our Australian Cattle Dog. So, we treated her to waffles for breakfast, then a nice long walk on the pedestrian/bike trail that starts at the town park. For dessert at dinner, she had some of her usual little bits of frozen vanilla yogurt as well as bits of one of the small four Apple Barley Cakes that I baked yesterday. It had been a good birthday for her, but alas, it is now raining with rumbles of thunder. So, she is in her bed on the floor next to my desk, with a fan on and her blanket over her.

I baked Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday. My recipe was adapted from one that ran in the Los Angeles Times food section sometime in the 1980s. I have adapted it over the years to make it more whole grain and to use some honey as well as sugar. It has never been a recipe that rises quickly, especially with the large quantity of whole wheat flour and some oats, even though I use the Gold yeast for sweet dough. Both rises required two hours each. In addition to the cup of golden raisins, I added ¼ cup each of candied orange peel and candied lemon peel that I rehydrated with a bit of orange and lemon juice, then mixed with the raisins, I used the Ankarsrum for the first time with this recipe that I have previously mixed and kneaded in the Zo bread maker. It worked very well, even in mostly incorporating the fruit when I added it at the end of kneading. I do not make the crosses but slather on glaze to cover the tops. We each ate two for dessert at dinner tonight. Scott though these were my best Hot Cross Buns ever, and I agree.