People always ask me if I enjoy cooking because I do it all the time. My usual reply is "Not really, but I do enjoy eating healthfully as a result of my hard work in the kitchen." Well today after almost a week off from cooking over the Christmas holidays and after a week of eating food that is not the greatest for me I have gotten back into the kitchen. I whipped up a batch of mixed berry jam and experimented with some leftover pumpkin puree and made a pumpkin loaf. And I must say there is something enjoyable about working in the kitchen and creating something with your own two hands. It was satisfying today to spend some time baking while watching my jars of jam cool on the window sill. (I even used my new label maker and added some handy dandy labels to the jar) What is also gratifying is realizing how my skills have improved over the last year. I never would have experimented with a recipe a year ago but today I subbed in pumpkin for bananas and created my own pumpkin bread. It is still baking away in the oven so I will have to let you know how it tastes when it's done!

Strawberry Tea Bread

Little did I know that baking something in a silver cake pan is different from baking in a black cake pan. I discovered this the other night when trying out a new recipe from the GI diet cookbook. The recipe for "Strawberry Tea Bread" makes two loaves and I used the only two tins that I had on hand, a black one and a silver one. Both of the loaves appeared to be cooked and the tester came out clean after poking the middle of the bread. After letting the cakes cool down I went ahead and started to slice them up so that I could freeze them into single servings, an easy snack to grab out of the freezer for my mid morning coffee each day. When I cut into the cakes the one in the silver pan was cooked nicely but the one in the black pan was cooked on the outside and appeared a little undercooked in the middle. Check out the photos above. The second picture is from the silver pan and the third is from the black pan. The loaf in the silver tin cooked much more evenly and held together properly. The black tin produced a loaf that was crispy on the outside but feel apart in the middle.

COOKING TIPS: After this experience I did a google search to confirm my findings. It turns out you can simply set the temperature of the oven lower so that your baking cooks more evenly. For some tips on different bake ware and how to adapt your recipe check out this link:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5621772_cook-different-cake-pans.html


RATING: 6. In the end they were both edible so my efforts did not go to waste and I had some delicious snacks to get me and my husband through two weeks. I only rated this treat a 6 because I didn't enjoy the texture of the strawberries in the bread and I found it a little lacking in flavour.