Rike's Journal

A few days ago rhi posted the link to a recipe for candied espresso walnuts and loving walnuts and espresso, I tried it out today. I tweaked the recipe a little, using another tablespoon of espresso powder instead of the instant espresso and I ended up baking it for about twice as long as called for to get the nuts dry and crispy, but it came out very nice. The espresso, I used Manaresi, an Italien 60/40 Arabica/Robusta blend, is much less in your face than I expected and more of a subtle, mocha background note and there is almost no bitterness. I'm not sure if that's from the lack of instant coffee or from the salt.

For the next time I think I'll try a sugar flavored with cinnamon, mace, allspice, cardamon and cloves instead of just the cinnamon. I still have a small jar of that kicking around, it was billed as giving an oriental flavor to coffee but I didn't like the way that it turned my coffee gritty. It should work ok with this. I'm also wondering if you could use another kind of nut. Hazelnuts would probably be too sweet, but pecans might be nice.

In other news, Dreamwidth did a code push and among other things published a new theme called Summertime. I've had a hankering for that since they first posted about it on dreamscapes a few months ago. I love the little twirly icons for reading page and network and so on.

Made a rye and wheat bread with lots of seeds yesterday. A few pictures under the ( cut )

Well, I haven't baked with my sourdough, yet, but I think I can start the first try tomorrow.



Doesn't look very appetizing, but smells like my uncle's bakery.