Zoey, arrived carrying a grocery bag of goodies. For her last birthday, I bought her an apron & several spatulas. She has brought them with her to bake! Good to know when a gift is appreciated.

Zoey's Apron & Spatula

We get started but it’s not a very successful session. It’s not Zoey’s fault. It’s just too difficult for me to get enthused. It’s not about Zoey; it’s about the hole in my life. On the one hand, I’m delighted to see her. She’s a precious child & very loving. On the other hand, she’s young enough that she doesn’t fully comprehend death & the finality of it.

In the innocent way of a child, she asks me about Jim, then comments on his departure. She was here when they carried his body out. It fascinated her. In spite of the efforts of her parents, she watched most of the journey of his body out of our home. Zoey is still trying to process the event in her mind & has no idea of the pain her questions cause me. With time, we WILL get back to baking! Now is not the time though.

My great-grandmother was a very special person to me & lots of other people. She ran a boarding house in Lynchburg, TN for a long time. As a result of that, she met thousands of people that came to eat lunch at her place. For me, she has been a role model & inspiration since opening my cake shop, Sugary Creations. So in her honor, anyone named Mary or Bobo can have a free cupcake on me. Be sure to tell us you saw it on my blog or twitter to get your free cupcake.

Here’s to you Mama Bobo!

PS. If you’re a Bobo, let’s figure out how we’re related!

Yep. Have to try this bread recipe. It was quite an adventure. Was going to get started making it when I discovered I had NO YEAST! No yeast. Didn’t seem possible in this house but there I was. Wanting to get a lot done so didn’t want to break the work rhythm to go get it. Picked yeast up in the evening when I was running another errand.

Mixing the dry ingredients together using the trusty Kitchenaid. No yeast was in here as I discovered later. Oops!

Innocently heating the milk for the English Muffin Bread!

Get home & decide to get this going. Mixes up super easy. Got the batter in the loaf pans. Set them aside covered with a damp cloth. Go back to check them about 30 minutes later. They haven’t risen a bit! Big failure! The recipe says it takes about 45 minutes to rise so baring a miracle these puppies are NOT going to rise enough. Glance to the side. There sits my brand new unopened jar of yeast! Oops! Maybe it’s not the recipe. Maybe it’s operator problem. Maybe I’ll retry the recipe in the morning.

Here I am adding flour still under the delusion I'm making bread.

The batter that I so innocently was going to rise & make a beautiful loaf of bread.

Nice & cool in the morning so it’s a wonderful time to retry a bread recipe. Again the English Muffin Bread batter mixes up easily. This time I try making it WITH the yeast. Suspect that will have a positive influence on the outcome. Check the bread in the loaf pans after 20 minutes and lo they are rising. Must be the yeast! The bread rises just as quickly as the recipe says & I slide the bread pans in the oven.

"Real" bread--you know, the kind that has YEAST in it.

Bread cooks for the required time. Pull out of the oven 2 beautifully browned loaves of bread. Oh yes, it is going much better today. Naturally, I have to give the bread a taste test. Slice off a piece as soon as the bread has cooled, butter it & share it with Sarah. It’s good! That’s our verdict. I have to be honest though & say that I’m not sure how often I’ll actually bake this bread. As delicious as it it, & it IS delicious, I prefer breads that can serve double duty. We enjoy using homemade bread for our sandwiches & this is not a sturdy enough bread for sandwiches. If you’re only looking for something to slice & eat or slice, toast & eat, you’ll be very happy with this bread.

All those beautiful airholes are what makes for wonderful toast!

If you’re an experienced cook, I’m sure you enjoyed my “little” mistake. Probably reminded you of a few of your own mistakes when cooking. If you’re a novice cook, take careful note. Doesn’t matter if you’ve cooked for 50+ years, there are going to be times when you make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. Just try again. Sometimes when you make a mistake, you’ll like the results better, but not when you leave the yeast out of your homemade bread. Trust me on that one.

Orange peels leftover from making ambrosia

First I had a small crisis. I couldn’t locate my Fannie Farmer Cookbook! This is THE book to go to for preserving foods as far as I’m concerned. Did a google search & couldn’t locate the recipe. Didn’t really want to use another one because I’ve used this recipe before & been very pleased with the results. However I did locate it online. It contains the entire cookbook! Unfortunately, it does not have a search capability. Took me quite a while to find my recipe but it’s in there.

Pot with orange peels & cold water. Next step is to gently boil them.

Took half of the orange peels & placed them in a 4 quart heavy pot. Added cold water to the pot until the orange peels were covered. Slowly brought the water & peels mixture to a boil. Gently simmered the peels until they are soft. Drained them & allowed the peels to cool enough to be able to handle them.

The orange peels have been drained. They are now cooling.

The next step was taking a knife & removing the white portion of the skin. While working on that, I put 2 cups of sugar & 1 cup of water into a medium saucepan. After the sugar dissolved, I continued cooking the syrup until it made threads when dropped in a cup of water. In the meantime, the orange peels were cut into strips. Once the syrup was the proper thickness, the orange peel strips were added to the saucepan. They cooked at a gentle boil for 5 minutes.

Orange peel that has been cleaned & cut into strips. It is now ready to be cooked in the syrup.

Orange strips simmering in syrup.

I added a cup of sugar to a bowl. Using a slotted spoon, I removed the orange peels from the pot & allowed them to drain. They were then put in the sugar & tossed until covered. Removed the orange strips from the bowl of sugar & placed them on a pie pan to dry. In the morning, I will bag them. They will then be available whenever I need candied orange peel. The remaining syrup was placed to the side to cool. Later, I will use it to sweeten a batch of tea. That will give the tea a pleasant taste of orange.

Strips of orange peel being tossed in sugar.

Now your orange peel is finished. Let it dry & then bag it.

Don wanted to interview me about my great-grandmother, Mama Bobo. Of course, to most of the world, she is known as Miss Mary Bobo.

My great-grandmother, Miss Mary Bobo, standing in front of The Hotel in Lynchburg, TN.

Frankly, the interview was a ton of fun! Don has done several pieces on the distillery & the boarding house so he is very familiar with the area.  It’s very easy to talk to Don, which I’m sure, is a lot of the reason he is so good at his job. Not sure which I enjoyed more, picking out old pictures to share with him or showing the pictures to him. Thanks to my cousin, Sherrie Moore, it was easy to find some pictures Don would like. (Sherrie has taken on the role of family historian & has diligently been scanning & uploading old family pictures for all of us to be able to access.)

We went through several pictures of Mama Bobo & her sister, Ophelia Motlow. It was delightful looking at the pictures of the two of them when they were young.

A picture of the very young Miss Mary Bobo & Ophelia Motlow. Taken way before Ophelia married the famous Lem Motlow or Miss Mary Bobo had become famous.

My guess is that Mama (Miss Mary Bobo) was probably 15 or 16 years old at the time. This guess is based on the fact that she is still not in an ankle-length dress, the attire for a young woman of the time.

As happens, the two young ladies grew up, married & had children. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty common for such ladies to end up widows eventually as happened to these sisters. But they remained close & talked on the telephone frequently.

Ophelia Motlow on the left & her sister, Miss Mary Bobo on the right, visiting with a friend.

Mama was a delight to know & a huge inspiration. She never outgrew her love of children as can be seen in the photo below.

I look at this photo & I can hear Mama saying "gimme some sugar" right before she leaned over to get a kiss from her great great grandson.

A collection of the blooming daffodils from our yard.

Flowers feed my soul. The beauty of them calms & centers me. The scent brightens my mood & brings a smile to my face.

My roses are blooming their heads off.

Knowing the importance of flowers to me, I have always filled my yard with them. With a fairly new house & yard, there are lots of nooks begging for flowers to be planted in them. Last year, I was too overcome with grief to add more than a handful to the yard. But this year, I have felt Jim nudging me to plant. He has been reminding me that one of the reasons we bought the house was all the places it had that I could plant flowers. It has seemed that the plants themselves are echoing Jim.

Even though it was a 3 year old plant tuber, I got ONE bloom all of last year from this peony plant.

I planted lily bulbs last year in pots. A mixture of Oriental lilies & Asiatic lilies caught my eye last year & I brought them home. Carefully planted them in pots & watched & waited. Nothing! Most of them didn’t even sprout any greenery! The ones that did only grew about 4-5 inches tall & refused to do anything else. The pots were as barren as my soul. But this year — all those barren pots have grown lily plants! They vary in size but all of the pots are full of lush green stalks. They are also loaded with flower bulbs. I no longer remember which bulbs were planted in which pots so it will be delightful surprise after surprise as they bloom.

THIS is one of pots of lilies that didn't even sprout last year!

Having watched all of this and knowing my feelings about flowers, Sarah bought me plants for Mother’s Day. While we were having our enjoyable day together yesterday, we went round to several places & I picked out flowers. There is a strip between the ditch at the bottom of the hilly front yard and the road that is a pain to mow or weedeat. My plan is to eliminate that strip of weeds with a little grass. Slowly I’m replacing the unruly weeds with daylilies.

The lily bulbs had multipled so much, one of the bulbs was forced up in the air. So it grew sideways & produced this lovely flower.

I’m not planting your common orange daylilies. I’m planting glorious reds, yellow, fragile pinks & bi-colors. I picked out 2 different colors of daylilies. Kept eyeballing some Knockout Roses. Everybody keeps telling me they need very little care. I’m about to find out! I picked out 2 of them & they are going to join the daylilies in transforming that ugly weedy strip into a thing of beauty.

This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!

Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.

Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.

I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.

Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!

Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.

In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.

You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.

After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.

After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.

A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.

A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.

On a good year, buying is not so important as I’ll have pie pumpkins from my own garden. Last year was an example of a pathetic year. I was late getting my pumpkins out & then a long hot dry summer hit. The result was that I got ONE pie pumpkin & lot of material for my compost pile. Be late if you must planting tomatoes, you’ll be able to buy tomatoes all summer long. But some years you can’t find pie pumpkins in the stores or farmer markets so if you’re late about planting your pie pumpkins, you’ll do without. That is a terrible thing. Fresh pumpkin is wonderful.

The bounty from this year’s garden isn’t huge, but at least there are a few pumpkins. Only pie pumpkins get planted in my garden! Easy enough to buy a pumpkin suitable for Halloween & I wouldn’t have any use for all the others I would have. In case you don’t realize it, the jack-a-lantern pumpkin is much too watery & tasteless to make a very good pie or anything else. I realize it’s a small crop but considering everything that has gone on this year so the garden was woefully neglected AND had a drought to contend with also, I’m pleased.

Right now, I’m just washing them & admiring them. Later, I’ll get around to roasting them. THEN it’ll be time to decide what to do with that wonderful pumpkin puree!

A picture of the newly purchased bow knife.

This is the best gift you’ll ever give yourself if you enjoy home-baked bread! Within a very short time, you’ll be slicing the most even pieces of bread you’ve ever sliced. Would love to use your freshly baked bread to make a sandwich but you always cut it too thick? No worries. With this wonderful gem you will soon be an expert in slicing your bread whatever thickness you want it to be. Even Sarah, who has a horrible time slicing bread, is getting the hang of it & producing reasonable slices of bread.

Trust me, you’ll soon be slicing nice even slices of bread using the bread saw. No more pieces of bread that are 1/4″ thick on top and 3/4″ on the bottom! Exercise caution when using it though as it is extremely sharp! If you have a mishap with it & a finger, you will have a very jagged and deep cut in no time at all. Just ask me how I know.

A close up of the very sharp "blade"

A gentleman was selling it at a local outdoor market & I was curious. I was fascinated watching him slice bread & tomatoes with it. They were all nice even thin slices. But tools like that are not always as easy to use as demonstrators make it look. It was also a bit pricey! However some tools are well worth the cost. This one is! Bought one & took it home to use. Naturally, I had to make some bread immediately to try it out. I’m in love with it! While it’s not quite as easy to use as he made it look, it really doesn’t take long to get the hang of using it.

I’ve searched & not found on the web the company listed that had the bow knife. However, if you’ll call 1-256-504-1310, I’m confident that they will be delighted to sell you 1 or more of their delightful knife. Tell them you read about it here & maybe they’ll send me a back-up bread saw. Hint hint.

Notice the shy smile this fellow has.

After baking & cooling the cookies, it’s time to decorate them. The cookies are coated with orange royal icing and brownish green royal icing & outlined. Now the fun begins! I have made pumpkin cookies where I tried very hard to get each cookie to look alike, but these are going to be jack-o-lanterns. We all know that each jack-o-lantern is different from all the rest & has its own personality. That’s the intention with these cookies.

Hmmm almost a beatnik look. Remember beatniks? Doobie Gillis anyone?

I loaded the piping bag with brown royal icing & start decorating. As I pick up each cookie, I study it & it seems to tell me what it should look like. Some have faces only & some have hair. A few of them call for beards. Then there are the shy ones that hide behind their glasses. On it goes, until each one is finished. None of them look alike so I’m pleased. Not sure they’re fierce looking, but they definitely don’t look like any cookies my mother would have made.

The more traditional look