May 31, 2005

Restlessness and Cake

I've been a little restless in the baking department, lately. I like to have some sort of baked goods on hand for taking to work, and with only two of us in the house I prefer that the baking items are ones that can be sliced, wrapped and frozen in advance, so I don't end up resentfully staring at a somewhat stale piece of coffee cake at the end of the pan. By having two or three different things in the freezer, I can mix it up and stave off boredom.

The thing of it is, even with the mix-and-match approach to stocking the freezer, I'm finding my frequent flyers are starting to pall a bit. Don't get me wrong, I love that coffee cake (and the fact that it can be varied quite a bit in itself), and I will probably always love the Devil Fooled Cake, but it seems that for months I've been oscillating between the two, with the Spiced Sweet Potato bread thrown in when I just can't face the others anymore.

Of course, there are many more cakes and cookies and squares in my repertoire - so why the repetition? The thing of it is this: I like to eat relatively healthy foods, and if I am taking baked goodies in my lunch EVERY SINGLE DAY, I want to make sure that they're not completely detrimental to my health. Those three are the shining stars of my heart-healthy, lower fat, and all-around guilt-reduced recipes.

Last week I experimented with rumball brownies, based substantially upon a Cooking Light brownie recipe. It was fairly tasty, but needs work, and I can see myself tinkering with it in the near future. Still, brownies are not usually a go-to snack for me (even non-detrimental ones) and while these little darlings are lower in fat (clocking in at about 30%) than most recipes, I'm looking for something more in the 20% range so that I can snack with impunity.

Tonight, I plan to attack a simple snacking cake made with apricot nectar. The recipe is a hybrid of many different recipes that I've found online - most of which call for prefab cake mixes, which I tend to avoid. I will, of course, keep you posted with the result.

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