Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Squash Hat

My brother and sister-in-law seem are having another baby which make me fear slightly for the chaos level of the world, but also gives me a reason to crochet super cute things like this squash hat. I got the pattern from crochet-patterns.com and it linked me here. I thought I'd make this one my experiment, so I used some yellow yarn I had laying around. I think I like it better in yellow than orange though, it's like a weird, mutant pumpkin.

It was easy (45 min?) and kind of fun, so I'm going to make more. I also have to work on sizing, because this one fit really well on an apple, which makes me curious about the size of a newborn's head.


Here George models the hat for me, which was nice. It makes him look a bit more like a "hood" than I was going for with the color scheme, but it at least secured my thinking on the size being off.

The Apple Bread

Well, it's been a while. I've been on cake-hiatus. I might be done with cakes all together, but my nephew's birthday is next month, so it's doubtful. Of course, he wants to be a cockatoo for Halloween and if that at all reflects what kind of cake he's going to want for his birthday, he's on his own.

Moving on. I went apple picking today and then came home and went on a mission to create a yeast apple bread. Last year I thought I was making a yeast apple bread, but it turned out it was an apple bread like a pumpkin bread or zucchini bread. You might have thought the lack of yeast and/or rising time in the recipe would have tipped me off.

For this recipe, I followed my father's bread-maker Challah recipe, but before the second rise, I rolled out the dough and spread out a mixture of chopped apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. The result is like a piece of heaven melting slowly in your mouth while simultaneously making the whole house smell of freshly cooked bread. It was truly something to behold.

I'm not sure the pictures really do it justice, but alright...

Then, to add to the amazingness, we slathered it in the cinnamon and sugar rubbed butter I got at the Cabot creamery last month. No words describe this.