Clafoutis: I have it, You want it…

So I was without internet today, and I have already beaten all the games I own.  So as you can imagine I was quite bored, and when I’m bored I usually do one of two things; either work in the studio or work in the kitchen.  Since we are experiencing one of the hottest summers ever here in Oklahoma, I decided to stay out of the un-air-conditioned studio and work in the kitchen, where it was relatively cool (compared only to the torturously hot studio).  I’ve been watching Good Eats lately and I wanted to try a couple of recipes that looked quite tasty, and I needed to make another loaf of bread and some fudge for our bread exchange.  So here are the items that I made today, starting with the raw ingredients.   

First up is the fudge, the raw lineup goes like this; heavy cream, dark chocolate, peanut butter chips, light corn syrup, salt, and sugar (I just realized that instead of sugar there is bread flour in this picture, but I promise that I used sugar when I made the actual fudge).

And here is a picture of the fudge after cooking, cooling, and cutting.

Next is Clafoutis (I know it sounds like a disease, but it’s really a French dessert).  The raw lineup goes like this; eggs, all-purpose flour, milk, vanilla, and cherries. 

And here is the finished product.  I know it looks like a mess; I had a little trouble getting it out of the Dutch oven.  I’m thinking now that I should have let it cool in the Dutch oven before trying to remove it.

The next project I went to work on was making concentrated fruit syrups to make drinks out of later.  The lineup for these are; strawberries (the strawberries are pictured, but I also made some with blueberries, and cherries), water, lime juice, and sugar.

And here are the three concentrated syrups/juices that I made:

 Strawberry

Blueberry

And Cherry

I also made a loaf of Kolach to send out for our bread exchange, but apparently I forgot to take pictures of both the raw materials and the finish product.  I guess I just was so excited to get started that I couldn’t take the few minutes to take a picture (in my defense I was in a slight hurry to make it to the post office before they closed).  Anyway, it turned out to be a pretty good day with a lot accomplished, and now I get to wait for the internet to start working again so I can post this (amazing) post.