Betty Needed A Green Tan

Today, I was going to continue to clean house, but Joey had to leave at 1:30 to go get his physical evaluation done, which would involve him spending the night away from us. Since my father's birthday party is tomorrow and Joey won't get back in time for me to bake his cake tomorrow, today became baking day instead.

First, I made biscuits using one of the recipes I posted last night. The one that called for butter instead of shortening. That was a disaster. They were like bricks. I temporarily considered making a house out of them. They were like rocks on the outside, but were barely cooked - almost gooey - on the inside. I did find a tip later that for 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of butter should be used and the recipe called for 2 3/4 cups flour and 1/2 cup of butter. The ratio wasn't right to make biscuits light and fluffy. So next time I get brave enough to try and make biscuits, I will try it with 2 cups of flour instead of 2 3/4 cups.

After that disaster, I decided to assuage my pride by making muffins. I'm good at muffins.

I've been making muffins with whey using a recipe that specifically called for whey, but it was dairy whey, which is dried sweet whey that can be used instead of sugar. Silly me, the first time I made it, I used yogurt whey because "yogurt is dairy." Now I know why that batch of muffins turned out bitterer than muffins usually are. The second time I used that recipe, I used whey in place of the milk, used 1 cup of sugar instead of 1/2 a cup of sugar, and added 1 tbsp of flaxseed meal. Joey still didn't like them and neither did I. He said they were too grainy, probably due to the flaxseed meal and I thought they had too much sugar but didn't taste any sweeter than the other batch. So instead of looking foreward to new and exciting recipes, I looked back at old favorites and remembered Betty Crocker. Joey liked the muffins I used to make using that recipe. And they only called for 1/2 cup of sugar for the same amount of muffins that called for a whole cup of sugar in the other whole wheat recipe. That was a nice start. But the good stuff stopped there. See, Betty Crocker's recipe called for all purpose white flour and milk and that's all just too white for my tastes. So I doctored it a bit. I made it greener by using whey instead of milk. Then I made it tanner and healthier by using 1 cup wheat flour and 1 cup white flour instead of 2 cups white flour and I aded 1 tbsp flaxseed meal. He liked this batch.

Then I took him to meet up with his ride to MEPS and came home to bake my dad's cake. I used this recipe for chocolate cake as my dad loved German Chocolate Cake before he became a diabetic and this is sweetened with stevia which is not shown to adversely affect diabetics and is shown to positively affect them. I also found a recipe for coconut pecan icing that calls for no sugar. Unfortunately, either between the store and the car or the car and the houes, I misplaced the evaporated milk I bought on the way to take Joey to meet up with his ride. So I'm going to have to make the icing tomorrow. I really hope he likes it and that it isn't gross. I've never cooked with stevia before, so I have no idea what to expect. . . So that's my day in baking.

Now I'm off to make more yogurt ;)