A New Series: Mastering the Art of Baking

For my birthday in 2015, my brother and his then girlfriend (now wife!) gave me this beautiful cookbook from my Amazon wishlist.

I'd found it at the library while shelving. Normally, I'm not one to want to own cookbooks. I get most of my recipes from the internet, plus I find it hard to justify all the space a cookbook takes up when I only like 3 of the recipes.

However, this book is different. I started to flip through the pages, and realized I wanted to make almost every recipe I saw. To be fair, there are several recipes I will never make because I hate feta cheese, but for the most part, I felt like I was looking through a magical book.

Mastering the Art of Baking by Anneka Manning:

(Isn't it beautiful?!)

A few months after my birthday, I gave birth, and I never got around to trying a recipe from the book. I felt like this was something I needed to be able to give a lot of attention to, and I just hadn't had that attention.

Until this spring, when I blocked off a weekend to learn to make choux pastry (and eclairs from that pastry).

Here's my first batch of piped eclairs:

Unfortunately, even after being baked much longer than the recommended time, they were still quite raw inside when I sliced them open. I'm sure they were safe to eat, but no one really wants a doughy eclair.

And this is the part where I have to apologize and promise to work harder to take pictures in the future. I honestly just forgot. I got caught up in the baking, and then the eating, so I have no pictures of the finished product!

At this point, I was upset, but decided to try again. This second time, I tried to cook more liquid off on the stove. After being baked, however, they were still raw inside (though not as raw as the first attempt). This time, I sliced them all open, scooped out the worst of the insides, and then put them back in the oven to dry out the insides that way.

Though unorthodox, this worked. I still hope to figure out what was wrong with my recipe, and have a few other things I can try.

Rather than filling them with the traditional creme patisserie, I instead filled them with whipped chocolate ganache. I glazed them with a simple chocolate glace frosting, just like the book suggested.

Because of the ganache, these were very rich, unlike a traditional eclair, but I thought they were delicious, as did everyone who got to try one.

Love and Ganache,

Leah Joy

P.S. Reminder to self: MAKE THESE AGAIN.

2nd Busy Book

Much earlier this year, my mom and I made another quiet book for Jo. (See the 1st one here.)  We did a lot of planning first, then some shopping, and finally, got sewing. All the machine sewing was done by me, while all the hand-sewing was done by my mom. She has serious skills!

Below each picture, I'll link to the source for the idea.

We decided on a blue theme for the backgrounds, and chose this cute patterned felt for the covers:

Each page has 3 grommets, which are all held together with binder rings.

We also created a hook-and-loop closure to hold everything inside, which - considering the weight of some of these pages - was a very good idea!

Spread 1:

The first page is her name:

Source

...with removable letters. The 'O' makes a great toddler bracelet, by the way.

The next page is a family tree. Behind each flap is a picture of a family member.

We combined several ideas: Source 1 Source 2 Source 3

Jo loves this page, but she's not very quiet about it, as she points to the pictures and shouts, "Dada! Mama!"

The pictures are protected behind clear vinyl squares. My mom hand-sewed down each vinyl square individually, so it wouldn't be too hard to swap out a picture if we want an update.

Spread 2:

A rainbow of zippers!

Source

We used an old holey mattress pad for the clouds.  My mom added some silver thread for raindrops.

The next page is a little garden, with carrots and radishes.

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They all can be pulled up or planted again, and have twine roots securing them to the book. I sewed a small piece of popsicle stick inside each vegetable to give them a little extra stability.

I left a flap at the bottom, so we can easily access the root system if need be.

Spread 3:

This page features a lacing exercise (which she hasn't figured out yet).

Source

And underneath is a cute giraffe!

Source - while we were inspired by her giraffe idea, we thought this one was cuter.

With removable bow-ties!

The next page teaches counting (and Roman numerals, too, just for fun).  Jo really likes to move the beads around.

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Spread 4:

I made a little vest with functioning snaps!

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The pockets are real, too, and are a great place to hide a little surprise snack.

The last page is just full of fun things to look at and feel. We considered making this an 'I Spy' page, but decided that at her age, this is just as much fun. This page accounts for most of the bulk and weight of this book. (And a side note: it's not super quiet when it gets moved!)

Source

Each section has a double layer of white tulle. This holds everything securely, but still allows things to be felt and moved. The top section holds just a bunch of random, fun, colorful items.

This one has rainbow pony beads, plus all the letters in 'Josephine'.

And this last one has these cool translucent beads, with some bright objects mixed in.

The back cover matches the front cover. We chose to leave both of them plain.

We had so much fun making this for her and watching it come together. I really enjoyed the process of passing pages back and forth to carry out our individual portions of the work.

Jo gets to play with this every Sunday during church. She's not always super quiet with it, but she sure enjoys playing with it!

Love and Giraffes,

Leah Joy