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Monthly Archives: May 2017

Filler! Sketchy flowers edition

I’ve been trying to find more constructive ways of decompressing and relaxing.  I had been playing mindless match 3 games and the like because they’re easy to pick up and put down.  But in the event that I end up playing for a long time, it feels like I’ve wasted a lot of time.

That’s happening more and more, actually, on the occasion I try to play a video or computer game.  There are so many things that I need to attend to that spending a few hours on a video or computer game feels like a very inefficient allocation of resources and I end up being more stressed and frustrated.  This doesn’t happen as much with board games…maybe because there’s a social aspect to it.

The mindless match 3 games were ok because I could focus solely on trying to match three of whatever instead of things that were bothering me.  But…too bad it’s mindless and I have nothing to show for it after playing.  Also, the calming effect was pretty much only happening while I was playing the game when I had something else to concentrate on.  I needed something else was relatively simple and produced some kind of result (i.e. the calming effect lasts beyond the actual activity, if even only for a little bit, and maybe have something tangible to show for it which is a reminder of the decompressing).  So, I’ve taken up sketching and painting again.

Now then, I haven’t done anything serious with the sketching/drawing/painting since I was a child.  Remember the watercolor painting I was doing earlier?  That was an extension of the sketching.  I wanted to be able to ease myself back into drawing and painting.  Turns out, around the time I was actively looking for other things to help me decompress, Sandy Allnock released an online class on whimsical sketching.  This worked out very well for me.

Here are some sketchy flowers.

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This ended up turning out better than I anticipated.  It really didn’t look all that great until I filled in the background.  But you will note how at point I got tired of drawing in the little flowers to break up the black and um…it’s notably just black there.

I make! Cinnamon Star Bread edition

This.  This is what I made.  An empty, dirtied piece of parchment paper.

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Or really, I made a loaf of cinnamon star bread (some time Januaryish)…because I wanted to bake with cinnamon, didn’t want to take the time to roll and cut cinnamon rolls, and needed something dessert-y to offer as refreshment.  And apparently it was really good because I didn’t even have time to take a picture.  It was gone in a flurry of hands and the parents of the kids who devoured the bread were left lamenting that they didn’t even get to try it (and that it smelled so good).

I saw the cinnamon star bread pop up on King Arthur Flour’s site back in December and made a mental note to try it.  I didn’t bake one right then because I didn’t have any potato flour or instant mashed potatoes on hand.  I was going to try it without but I was reading KAF’s comments and user comments and became convinced that the potato flour was necessary for a softer, moister loaf.  Also, I like to try and make things as instructed the first time around.  Can’t judge a recipe when you go and make a bunch of changes to it at the outset.

So I made it as directed, by weight, but I noticed a discrepancy at with the listing for the potato flour.  I didn’t have any, as all I could find last minute was potato starch.  Potato starch and potato flour are not the same thing and generally are not interchangeable.  I had picked up a bag of instant mashed potatoes instead to use in place of potato flour.  It’s probably better anyway because I can always find a use for instant mashed potatoes.

Now then, I assume that KAF lists different volumes for potato flour and instant mashed potatoes because instant mashed potatoes is less dense than the flour.  But I couldn’t find anything that confirmed that.  So I ended up going by the serving size volume/weight conversion as listed in the nutrition info, which was lighter than what KAF listed, about 35g instead of the 48g.

I used my own cinnamon sugar mix as I like using brown sugar for that molasses-y background and also because I am VERY. FOND. of cinnamon, 3tbsp per 66g brown sugar.  You’ll have to mix it a bit more than if you were going to make your cinnamon sugar mixture with white sugar.  It’s never been a big deal for me though.

Oh, did I mention that I kneaded the dough by hand this time?  I didn’t use the KitchenAid at all!

After resting the dough, I divided it into four portions.  I really wish I had used a scale.  I got lazy and had already put the scale away so I just eyeballed it.  Which means that two of my 10″ rounds were by no means 10″ in diameter.  I used those as the inside layers and the two bigger ones, that were 10″, as the outside layers.  I figured this would give me the best chance to seal the points of the star without things falling apart.

Anyway, it baked up very nicely.  It smelled wonderful in the oven, as things made with cinnamon often do.  There were a few kids who were constantly sniffing the air when the bread was in the oven.  I would show you a picture of the first one, but alas, I do not have one.  As the bread was eaten before I had a chance.

I have since made the bread several more times (generally with the KitchenAid and a scale, and sometimes cutting the cinnamon down to 2 tbsp per 66g), so here are pictures of the subsequent loaves.  The darker one is one in which I actually remembered to egg wash before putting it in the oven.  I tend to forget.

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