Baking Day 2009

This year for Christmas I asked for a Kitchenaid mixer. I had 2 reasons for that request: 1. I L-O-V-E love to bake! 2. I am pretty much the messiest cook ever and I figured a stand mixer may be a little less messy than a handheld mixer (picture me with a handheld mixer and stuff flying all over the kitchen...) My parents delivered with an awesome RED Kitchenaid!! Pretty much totally excited.
Last year for Mothers' Day my mom asked for a wheat grinder. My dad got her one, but has she used it yet? No. Not until today that is.
Our goal for today was to use our new kitchen appliances. It was a lot of fun. I think we started about 12:30 and finished after dinner about 7 hours later. My back and feet ache, but my heart is happy. :)

Our first task was to figure out how to use the wheat grinder. This was our test run and it worked! As nerdy as it sounds, it was fun to watch the wheat be sucked into the grinder.

This is what the wheat started out as..

We used the whole wheat flour to make honey whole wheat bread. It took probably 3 more cups of flour than the recipe called for (I blame the fact that it was snowing), we forgot to put the salt in until the last minute (which cause a little panic that it wasn't mixed in well enough), and I had to convince my mom not to throw it out and start over. The dough rose (raised??) beautifully and we got 2 loaves out of it. Yummy!!!

This is me with my new red mixer and wearing my awesomely cute apron that my friend Amber made. So exciting!

While the other dough was rising we started on our banana bread. We got 8 smaller loaves of banana bread. Here's the problem, every time I make banana bread it is ALWAYS raw in the middle and overdone on the outside. Today was no different. I had one loaf turn out absolutely perfectly, and then one for sure (probably 2 or three, I didn't cut into all of them) that was still goo in the middle. We stuck it back in the oven and then it came out hollow. Any banana bread suggestions are welcomed! I chose not to make the normal loaf sizes because of that problem, apparently I can't handle small loaves either.

The whole wheat bread dough being prepared to go into the oven...

My gooey banana bread. Oh dear!

The finished products. I'm disappointed that I forgot to take a picture of dinner, homemade french onion soup (SO GOOD!!!). Here's the final count of all our projects: 2 loaves of Honey Whole Wheat Bread, 8 loaves of banana bread, a bazillion homemade Oreo cookies, a new recipe from one of my cooking magazines Chewy Brownie Cookies (with a Sarah White twist, cut up Snickers), and French Onion Soup. It was a yummy day. I'm glad my mom let me make a mess of her kitchen. It's much more fun to cook with someone else!

And I swear my diet resumes tomorrow!

Oh wait, tomorrow is New Years' Eve. My diet resumes Saturday after all the partying!