Baking

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you might already know about the ‘Dinkelmaus’—the German equivalent of a bean bag (literally translated as ‘Spelt Mouse’). I made quite a few last year as gifts and even shared a free pattern, which you can find here. My son couldn’t find his a few days before Christmas, and I realized we could use another one or two as well. With that in mind, I went out and bought six pounds of spelt. Knowing myself, I worried the spelt might sit forgotten in a drawer until summer, so I got to work right away. Doing them in assembly line fashion sped up the process, and by the end of the day, we had three fresh Dinkelmäuse, all ready for use—no spelt sitting forgotten in the drawer this time!

I recently bought another plastic tote for my sewing area. There always seems to be so much small stuff lying around, and I thought it would be convenient to toss everything into the tote at the end of the day to keep things looking more organized—and maybe even make it easier to find what I need. So far, the plan has worked really well with one exception: Lexi, my little helper, decided that a tote is just a fancy box, which, of course, means it is her new cat bed. She claimed it immediately, and now I am wondering if I need to buy another one to actually store my sewing supplies.

Have you ever tried making chocolate soufflé? A couple of years ago, I started binge-watching baking shows—first the British version, then the Great Canadian Baking Show—and at some point, the Canadian version featured chocolate soufflé. It looked so delicious that I decided I had to try it myself. At first, I was a bit intimidated because so much of the commentary online talks about how tricky it is to make a good soufflé and get it to rise properly. If you have also been hesitant to try your hand at chocolate soufflé, do not be intimidated anymore. I found a wonderful recipe online that explains everything in detail for beginners and highlights what matters most. Sally McKenney from Sally’s Baking Addiction makes it so easy to create the perfect soufflé. You can find her recipe here.

The soufflé we made on Christmas Eve was my third attempt, and while the previous ones were good, this one was exceptional in how much it rose. I watched a YouTube video on how to properly fold the egg whites into the chocolate batter, and maybe that made the difference. Sally’s recipe uses three eggs for 24 ounces of soufflé, but I only used two, which is plenty for the three of us. I prepared two 6-ounce and one 4-ounce ramekin for 16 ounces of batter, but we had so much that we filled another 4-ounce ramekin halfway. That is the one in the lower left corner of the picture, and the reason it did not rise as much as the others—there was much less batter to begin with. It takes about 15 minutes to bake them, and we could literally watch the soufflé rise in the oven. I was almost worried that the one in the upper right corner of the picture would topple over because it was rising so much and so quickly, but it held its shape. And it was delicious! Go ahead, give it a try—making chocolate soufflé is much easier than people make it sound.