It is lighter than a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, and the strawberry flavor is quite mild. Some sliced strawberries on top would be good, that's probably something we'll try at lunch tomorrow, if not at breakfast. 🙂
I think it's a cake we might make every now and then as a change of pace, but I don't think it'll be something I'll make nearly as often as a Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake. It would also make a good 2nd cake to make for a group if there may be people who don't eat chocolate.
I'm tempted to try heating the butter/milk/sugar mixture and adding that to the flour so that some of it gelatinizes like with the chocolate version.
We had burgers on the grill, plus 4 bean salad.
I made the strawberry glazed Texas sheet cake today (1/2 recipe), pictures in cake thread.
Cake before frosting:
Cake after frosting:
At last weekend's family reunion, my wife's cousin brought a pasta salad with diced apples and pineapple in it. It was quite good, I'll suggest she ask for the recipe.
I think I'm going to make a half recipe of it in a 9x13 pan.
We had salami and tomato sandwiches tonight, and 4 bean salad, which Costco has again.
I don't know about the planting and fertilizing equipment, but I know wheat harvesters are very different from corn or bean harvesters.
It used to be that many wheat growers wouldn't own their harvesters, they'd contract for a team that roams around the region harvesting wheat fields, bringing multiple harvesters with them so they could do your fields quickly. I know one wheat farmer who referred to it as the 'Million Dollar Parade' because of the cost of those harvesters.
BLTs are on the menu tonight.
We had steak on the grill, plus baked potato, sauteed mushrooms and steamed broccoli.
I have the flying sponge for semolina bread going and will make peanut butter cookies just before I bake the bread so I only have to heat up the oven once today.
I think my 2 spaghetti squash plants didn't survive transplant, I'll have to see if I can find some at the farmer's market. I've got one more that finally germinated under the lights, but it only has one true leaf so far so I think I'll give it a little more time before I try transplanting it.
I'm trying to take a picture of the part of the garden that is our test plot for the Nebraska Urban Soil Improvement project, using the same viewpoint and angle and at the same time of day (early evening) then I'll see if I can stitch them together.
I was originally planning something on the grill tonight, but there are storms in the area again this evening, so we'll figure out something to make indoors.
I tend to use the 'poke a hole in the middle' method, but my bagels are usually about 3 ounces of dough, the ones you'll get at a bagel shop will generally be somewhere between 4.5 and 6 ounces each, so the 'wrap around the hand' method works well, especially if your dough is as soft and developed as the ones in those videos. (Mine seldom is.)
I find boiling them for about 45 seconds then flipping them over and boiling them for another 45 seconds works best, but as the second video notes, the timing of each step varies from day to day, some days the dough has to rise longer, other days it needs to boil a little longer.
There was an interesting discussion in the Bread Bakers Guild forums a while back about whether or not bagels should be boiled in lye (or some other alkaline solution.) This is one of those areas where bakers get pretty passionate, the majority of the Guild members were very opposed to using lye, though I know of some NYC shops that use it. (Pretzels are another matter, using lye or baking soda when boiling them is pretty much universally approved.)
I did some testing, and when I used an alkaline solution, baking soda, the surface of the bagels got darker. I don't think it affected texture much.
What the boiling does is to gelatinize the starch on the surface, which changes the surface texture to add some shininess and a bit of a snap when you bite in. I think it may also help hold the toppings on.
We went with a rotisserie chicken from Sams tonight, I'll make stock with the bones again.
