Nigella's Chocolate Cloud Cake

My sweet friend (sister from another mother and father) bought me a cook book by Nigella Lawson for Christmas. She saw me gawking at it one day at Chapters and then went back the next day to surprise me with it. Nigella is an amazing cook that was introduced to me by a friend from England recently, her cook books are so well written. I love reading what she has to say as much as I love to read the actual recipes. She has an amazing relationship with food which I totally relate to! So with the help of my new toy (the KitchenAid stand mixer) i attempted my first recipe from her book, CHOCOLATE CLOUD CAKE. I was looking for a wheat free and sugar free desert as you remember from my resolutions and this recipe has no flour and just a little bit of sugar, so I gave it a go, and my oh my was it delicious!! Though i would like to try it again as mine didn't seem to rise as much as Nigella's, i don't think anyone noticed the difference except for me though.

My NEW Toy!!

Ok, a girl has the right to brag when her husband, parents and brother all pitch in to get her the top quality kitchenAid stand mixer!! Here is a picture of my beauty in her new home, my kitchen!

1st Healthy recipe of the year

My attempt at a healthier version of a scone using whole spelt flour and stevia for sugar. Hubby Approved!

Blueberry Spelt Scones

Ingredients:
2 c. Spelt flour + 1/3 cup *
1 Tbsp baking powder
5 packages of stevia
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tbsp butter, plus 1/2 Tbsp, chilled
1 Tbsp lemon juice/Zest of 1 lemon
1 c. 1/2 coffee cream and 1/2 almond milk
1/2 c frozen wild blueberries
1/2 c frozen cranberries

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment.
-In small bowl combine frozen blueberries and 1 Tbsp flour and toss to combine.
-Place blueberry mixture back into freezer.
-In large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
-Take butter out of fridge, cut into chunks and add to flour mixture.
-Cut butter into flour until pea sized or smaller.
-Add Stevia, lemon juice, lemon zest, milk and mix in with a spoon until just barely incorporated.
-Take blueberries out of fridge and knead into mixture until mixture forms a ball of sticky dough.
-Turn dough out onto floured surface and pat down into rough 9-10 inch circle.
-Cut into 8 triangles and place triangles onto prepared baking sheet at least an inch apart.
-Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes.
-Let cool and enjoy.

Domestic Resolutions

I have many resolutions this year but I thought it would be fitting to share my more domesticated goals for 2010.

First and foremost at the request of my amazingly health conscious husband I will try to bake without wheat and use other sources of flour like rice, spelt, kamut, rye etc... and I will also try to bake and cook without white refined sugar hopefully using recipes that will substitute it with apple sauce, stevia, prunes etc...

I want to design/make/sew fun new aprons for myself to use in the kitchen.

I want to decorate our bedroom properly. I have photographs that I would like to get printed large scale to go above our bed and would also like to change the colour of the walls to go with the theme (to be revealed at a later date)

Make home-made soap. I have developed a fetish for home-made natural soap and it has become quite expensive. This year I hope to find a good recipe for hand made soap and make enough of a batch to last half the year or more.

I would like to make a bird feeder out of clay, there are so many gorgeous birds in our back yard, I would love to start feeding them and what better way then to make my own bird-feeders.

Come spring I want to make garden boxes (using recycled wood from crates) for our veggie garden and also build a few for herbs near our deck. I also need to test the soil in the back as last years garden was not so great and I think our soil was too acidic due to the gigantic pine tree just next to the garden. I am determined to have a luscious garden FULL of tomatoes this year!

I would also like to start printing my photo's in either prints or book formats. I have been backing up 2 years of photos this weekend and after sifting through 16677 photographs, I realized that some of them really need to be shared and viewed. I also need to be less shutter happy! So many of them are just not great!

This seems like a big list, but one I think is attainable. I guess only 2011 will tell!