Mardi Gras Preparations

(yeah for yeast)

Why hello there!  Yes, I am still here.  I guess I took an unannounced break or something.  I have been overly optimistic with my projects lately and what always happens with that is I either throw my hands up and finish nothing because I can't figure out which is the most important (none of them) or I have a small meltdown.  I have done both of those lately.  However, today I am on a roll so in the spirit of marking something off of my list I thought I would tackle a king cake for Mardi Gras.  I had no idea that kneading bread could be so therapeutic.  Not that I need therapy or anything, but it was nice, mindless task.  I can wait until I get to "punch" the dough in a few hours.

I have always wanted to make a king cake, a real king cake, but you know me and baking, well we don't get along sometimes.  Today, I was feeling adventuresome and thought I would give it a shot.  The scary thing is that I was going to have to work with yeast.  YIKES!  I had to ask my mother-in-law this weekend about yeast.  What do you do?  How do you use this stuff?  You know the drill.

I decided I would tackle this "to-do" when the little lady took her nap.  I would have liked her to help me, but you know I was scared of the yeast so I thought it best to tackle this first go round on my own.  I knew that Jack wouldn't want to help this time because he had only asked me 15 times if he could play Angry Birds.  Speaking of Angry Birds, I think I'm a little angry AT the birds.  Seriously, they have stolen my 5 year old and I would like him back.  I'm thinking of telling him that the birds have flown the coup of something.  I doubt he would be believe me.

I have all of my supplies at my finger tips.  I am ready.  First I needed to scald the milk.  Actually, first I had to look up what it meant to scald milk.  Second, I burned the milk.  Good thing I had a fresh gallon because we weren't starting off so well.  I finally get everything worked out with the milk and am about to move on to the yeast.  I wasn't sure about this.  At this point I could save myself a lot of time and effort if I just poured out the milk, but I was determined.  My gosh, I bought Mardi Gras colored sugar crystals for this.  I had to move forward.  I measured my warm water and checked the temperature to make certain it was just right.  I poured in the yeast and the sugar and waited.  I waited and waited.  I thought for sure that this was going to be a bust, but you know what?  It started to bubble!  It smelled like bread.  It was all frothy and fabulous.  I'm surprised I didn't do a little jig.  I do that sometimes.  I mixed everything.  I even had some dough fly into the living room.  Don't even ask how because I'm not entirely sure myself, but it was working.  I had dough!  Next, came the kneading and I wasn't sure quite how to do this, but I have watched enough cooking shows that I figured I could give it a shot without having to google that too.  So I worked.  I pushed.  I pulled.  I stretched.  It was fun.  Finally, I threw my dough into a bowl and now it is time to wait.  I keep looking in the bowl to see how much it has risen.  My fingers are crossed.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Mardi Gras with my non-sausage version of Jambalaya, a King Cake sans the plastic baby Jesus (I would like to avoid an ER trip with the 2 year old), beads and some groovy tunes I'm sure.

I'll post pictures of the finished cake tomorrow.

Next, we must work on our Leprechaun trap.  Jack is certain that he is going to catch one :)

Wish you were here.

this is the dough right after kneading