More Easter baking

A long weekend is the perfect excuse to work on baking and projects!

I am finally thisclose to finishing my work on the bedroom. Walls are painted, shelves are built, pictures are hung. I finally finished the trim on the window box seat, although looking at this photo makes me think it could use another coat of paint. Other than that though, I am pretty pleased with my peaceful little corner - a perfect place to sit with a good book and a pot of coffee to watch the rain.

For Easter dinner, we decided on duck - easy and festive. I like this recipe from Epicurious. Super simple.

Served with spring asparagus, braised red cabbage, a potato gratin, and homemade bread.

For dessert I wanted something light and springlike after a rich main course - and Ontario rhubarb is already in the shops! So I opted for a classic rhubarb custard cake. I found a number of variations on the same recipe online - funny sometimes you see things on blogs with beautiful photos and recipes that don't quite make sense. It is so obvious that the pictures are borrowed because the blogger has no idea what they are talking about! In this case, the miscreant in question suggested you could turn this gooey-bottomed, fluffy-fruity-topped cake out onto a rack, and then flip it right side up again. Sounds like disaster to me! Others made it in a square pan and served directly from the pan; I wanted to be a smidge less casual, so I used a springform. Worked perfectly.

Rhubarb Custard Cake

1 1/2 cups diced rhubarb
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs water
4 eggs, separated, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter, melted, room temperature
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 cups milk, room temperature

Simmer rhurarb, 2 tbs sugar, and water over medium heat until rhubarb starts to soften. Drain and set aside.

Beat egg whites will stiff peaks. I like to use a copper bowl for this.

In another bowl, beat yolks with 3/4 cup sugar till thick and lemon-yellow. Whisk in vanilla and melted butter.

Whisk in flour and milk alternately. It will be very runny.

Fold in egg whites gently.

Pour into a very well-buttered 9" springform pan. Spoon the rhubard over top, gently, so as not to crush the egg whites.

Bake at 325f for 60-70 minutes, or until it doesn't wobble terribly when you jostle the pan.

Let cool on a rack for 10 minutes before removing the sides of the spring form pan, then allow to cool completely befre serving.

Best served with whipped cream!

What I've been up to

Another long break, but it's not because I've been doing nothing.

First off, I spent the winter divided between being deathly ill (pneumonia, pleurisy), taking care of a sick kid, and filming on location in different parts of the province. Oh, the glamour of getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to drive to Belleville! It hit me too late, "Oh yeah, this is why I stopped working in production," it's just too stressful.

Anyway, I did manage to accomplish a few things in the interim.

I built shelves!

Basically done here, although they still need a final coat of paint. As do the walls, obviously.

I have the paint and rollers and all ready to go, just as soon as I find the time...

I got yarn in my xmas stocking - what a clever Santa, bringing cashmere! - and knit a sweater:

Focussing a camera is not my strong suit. Also returned to a project I'd set aside before, a pair of gloves...

... to match a hat. Also did some baking. No photos of Mary Berry's Cherry Cake from Great British Bake-Off, even though I made it twice (once under-baked, once over-baked), or the Honey Cake from the Mile End Cookbook, but I did manage a blurry snap of the gateau St-Honoré I made for Valentine's Day - a small one, just for the kiddo and me.

And today, I knocked two long-half-finished projects off of the to-do list. I finished recovering the cushions on the porch chair...

... so it matches these porch chairs.

And finally, I finished off a pair of pyjamas. The Fenelon Fair has a category for "Ladies' Sleep Pants" which has unfortunately led to me having three half-pairs of pyjamas waiting for the tops to get done. The bottoms for these were done in 2014! Ah well, better late than never.

what i did on my summer vacation day seven: a fond farewell

our final day, in between packing and cleaning, i had to finish up the raft.

there were just a few finishing touches to add - a hitching ring:

and a ladder:

then away we go! we loaded on the anchors, paddled out 50 feet, and dropped anchor. then rested in the sun, while the kid swam back and forth to the dock a few times.

so nice to look out from the cottage and see our raft floating in the sun!

what i did on my summer vacation day six: afloat!

on saturday we were threatened with rain, so decided to try to get as much done as possible on the raft before the deluge, and then go in to the fair in the late afternoon after the skies cleared.

there was a lot of hammering to do...

but fortunately i had help! my strong kid is pretty proficient with a hammer.

one of the things on the list for this day was to buy chain for the anchors. i had looked at chain on previous shopping trips, but wondered - how much to get? prices ranged from 69¢ to $2.29 a foot, so if i bought 100 feet of chain, that could add up to a lot of money. so, i measured out 50 feet of rope, brought a ball of yarn with a sinker tied on one end, and swam out to see how deep it was.

holding on to the length of rope (to measure distance) and ball of yarn (to measure depth) was a bit futzy, and i instinctively reached for the ground with my foot.

guess what? i touched bottom.

lake depth 50 feet from shore: about five feet. i don't know why in the world i thought it might be deep enough to require a hundred feet of chain, but i am very glad i measured before buying! i ended up getting two 10-foot lengths - one to connect the anchors, one to loop through it and connect to opposite sides of the raft. this way, the chains stay well under the raft, so no worries about banging one's feet in the water.

then it was off to the fenelon fair to see how we had done, eat mini doughnuts, and send the kid on some rides.

there were ribbons!

the ghostbusters costume won a $25 fabricland gift certficate! just in time for me to start this year's hallowe'en costume!

and, who'da thunk? my sorry little cukes took first place!

helps that no one else entered pickling cucumbers. whew.

we topped the evening off with a final open-fire dinner (sausage and corn), and a trip to the demolition derby. not my usual fare, but we had loads of fun - and the fair at night feels much more exciting!

what i did on my summer vacation day five: fair entry day

friday morning is always the busiest of our cottage week - getting entries ready for the fair!

i didn't have quite as many as usual, but didn't have time to spend finishing any needlework at the cottage with a raft to build. also i was sad to see that my squirrel pattern did not include any instructions at all for the tail! that's the second time that's happened to me with cottage knitting, grr.

anyway, i did have a fairly hefty bag of stuff to take in: a ghostbusters costume, my scissors shirt (yay len's mill for giving me another snippet of the fabric!) maple leaf forever cardigan, linen middy pullover, double-leaf saroyan scarf, end of year leaf cloth, pyjamas...

and some cookies, and brownies, and (not great) jams, and really awful cucumbers:

(those aren't the world's worst cucumbers; i left the world's worst cucumbers on the vine, because they looked more like avocados.)

then it was back for lunch. having a big roast chicken for dinner on the first night was a very strategic decision; the rest of the week, lunch was salad with various leftover veg (peas and beets, here) and then topped with chicken breast. lots of protein and nutrients for the carpenter.

speaking of, frame all done! all that's left is to flip it upright into the water, nail on the top boards, and then float it out 50 feet where we'll anchor it.

what i did on my summer vacation day four: anchors aweigh

thursday we spent basically the entire day on the water!

first up was making the second anchor. these things weigh 200 lbs each! it may have been for the best that i didn't get enough cement to do both on tuesday, as carrying and mixing the cement was exhausting - really feeling my age and lack of exercise.

so we took a little swim break.

and relaxed in the sun with some knitting! i think i want to re-work the shaping on the mighty oaks baby cardigan, so i switched to knit one squirrel two:

then, back to work. i was a bit bummed to find that handley's is not terribly accurate with their cutting - my 8-foot cedar planks varied from 95 to 97 inches, not great for making a square frame! so i had to cut some down to size.

also bummed to find the screws that came with my L-braces were phillips head. i hate phillips, and didn't have a phillips bit for my drill, so did a lot of driving my hand. wah. between that and the cement, i was pretty sore by the end of the day.

i decided getting the outer frame together would be my goal for the day. and i achieved it!

to celebrate, we had hamburgers and corn cooked over an open fire. i love cooking over a real fire - something you can't really do in the city.

what i did on my summer vacation day two: lumber & cookies

the lumberyard wasn't open on the holiday monday, so it was back to town to pick up supplies for a raft and anchors.

i also had to pick up additional chocolate chips - the ones we got at the country cupboard tasted worse than a brown crayon! the yeast we got there was deader than a doornail, too - so i baked a loaf of bread and hamburger buns that we could have used as paperweights! my plan had been to bake more later in the week for the fair, but that flew out the window.

and unfortunately i made a tactical error with my anchors - i thought i needed 3 bags cement total, but i needed 3 per tire! whoops. i was a bit bummed, as the concrete needs 3 days to cure before you can use the anchors, and by the time i realised it, it was too late to get more. sigh. at least i got one done.

and of course there is always time for knitting on the dock!

a word of advice on bay window seats

Ever since I posted about building my bay window seat, it’s been a popular search term here. More specifically, people have been searching for “bay window seat dimensions.”

You can't search for bay window seat dimensions.

Unless, of course, you are building a house from scratch, and wondering how big to make your bay window so that it will be right-sized for a comfy seat.

If however you already have a bay window, and want to build a seat in it, you need to measure what you’ve got. They’re all different, every last one. And if you have an older home—the kind more likely to have a big ol’ bay window just crying out for a bay window seat—your bay window is likely to be just a little bit wonky, due to the settling of the house over time and whatnot.

You cannot look this stuff up!

That said, if anyone is building a house from scratch and does want to know the particular dimensions of my particular window seat, it's 90” wide, 22” inches deep, and the seat is 22” off the ground. Each triangly bit is 30” wide, and the middle rectangly bit is 30” wide as well. If someone would care to drop off some high-density foam that fits these dimensions so I can finally make the cushion to go on the top, I’d be most grateful.

busy day!

after spending the holiday going back and forth between running around and sick in bed, this new year is going to be all about finishing what i've started, and putting the past - including past projects - behind me.

we'd given the kiddo a challenge: finish 200 chapter books by the end of the year. he did it! his reward, was to get lights back in his room (we'd taken his lightbulbs out of the ceiling fixture, as he kept turning it on and staying up late to read), and a new ceiling fixture to boot - one we'd bought a good year ago, actually, which had languished since then in the downstairs closet.

which meant digging in that closet, which got me in the closet mood, and taking on another half-started project: the kid's closet. used to be, we could put stuff in there, and it would have effectively disappeared from his life. now, he crawls through there, and because the curtain road was grownup height, he'd make a mess anytime he wanted a proper shirt. i'd measured, and tg had cut a couple of shelves down to size, but that's as far as we got. today: done!

here's his reading corner (i do need to cover that chair, i have the fabric and all, another project to finish this year):

his bed:

homework station:

and dresser with photos of friends & family:

the downstairs closet, meanwhile, got a bit of a re-org:

and most importantly, a new set of cupboard doors (built from some of the same leftover lumber from my old work bench that i used to build my bay window seat):

it used to be a real quagmire in here. coats would fall off of hangers and the kiddo would decide to "play" in there, and it would turn into a jumbly mess and you couldn't find anything. i'm hoping this will keep some of that at bay. i want to put a lock on it too to keep the beenster from getting back there!

and speaking of, i've put a new set of hooks at his height - no more excuse for not hanging up his coat and snow pants!

this was all done with stuff that we had on hand - lumber, hinges, knobs, the works. i do want to add extra hooks and a lock though, those will need purchasing. but i think the fact that this stuff could be built without having to leave the house for any supplies at all shows that i am too much of a packrat!

so close!

but not quite! much work done today, with the usual 4-year-old interruptions. all i've left to do is cut the top pieces (already measured and marked) and screw/hinge them on. here's a preview of what it will look like (the paper on top is the template i made to cut the top to size):



and a couple of shots of the frame:





the "character" (aka random asymmetry) of this old house made it all a bit more futzy work than it needed to be. but so very glad it is almost done! next steps will be a coat of paint, shortening the curtains and making the cushion. thinking i'll get enough fabric to recover the seat by the vanity as well.

although, i have to say, the idea of buying more fabric pains me a bit... after hauling my stash out of the crafting table, and then cramming it back in the three-quarters-finished window seat to make our room somewhat livable for the meantime. can't wait for thursday, my next day off. although i'll have the kiddo underfoot. we'll see how it goes.