Aside from a little fiddling with Foreclosures and NEPS, I spent a good part of the day – the whole afternoon, in fact – helping Robert bake some Christmas treats for Bonnie.
She didn’t want us to buy anything for her, so I asked Peter if she’d like some gluten-free baked goods.
Robert kindly agreed to come over, and in fact, he took over the kitchen, and did a fine job with some reasonably complicated recipes.
Gluten-free baking is a lot more demanding and a lot more expensive than baking with wheat flour. The mixes are costly and even scratch baking requires piles of eggs – we went through over a dozen. We also went through a pound of butter, could have used more, and almost 2 pounds of chocolate.
In total, we made a bread pudding, a dozen blueberry scones and a flourless chocolate cake that looked like a cross between brownies and a flan. Robert made a ganache for the cake and a whipped topping for the pudding.
Almost done with 3 dozen custom oatmeal cookies for Ron, one batch with white chocolate, one with butterscotch chips.
I also washed and re-hung the living room curtains and vacuumed a little. Ron cleaned the bathroom and picked up pizza for lunch, insisting that I shouldn’t have to cook. Good guy!