bikingandbaking: photo of my road bike with a tag reading "51" on it (Default)
More rides, both in Zwift and out on the streets; got a tiny bit of sunburn on my legs yesterday when I went out for a 50k/31mile ride because I forgot that that was a thing that happens. [personal profile] dphilli1's allergies were acting up, while I wanted to get some more miles & hills in. Plus knock off a 50k for George Swain's virtual brevet series, although I doubt I'll finish the challenge as I'm not sure I really want to spend an entire day doing loops from home to rack up 150k or 200k, and I started too late to manage 8 50ks before the end of May. But 50k is generally a nice ride length, and needs no water refills, so I'm sure I'll do a few more of those.

I headed out to Walden again, the hilly way (Belmont Hill/Concord/Trapelo), and then made the way back a little less flat this time. Legs feel good; set a few PRs and silvers on Strava, which means that I'm probably ahead of where I was last year, hill-wise, even if by this time last year I'd ridden most of a SR series. I do think the climbing and intervals indoors are helping -- I dragged myself up the Zwift replica of the Alpe d'Huez in just under two hours, which I was proud of (although if I'd gone just over I'd have a better carrot to strike for next time, oh well):

A screenshot of the virtual cycling app Zwift, showing completion of the Alpe climb in 117 minutes

Mostly, it was just gorgeous out, with New England being its lovely spring self:
A bicycle resting against a war memorial topped with an eagle, in front of a brick building
A white church against a blue sky, with a tree and a road in front of it

Today, instead, I rode indoors with friends and then cooked and baked -- made some enchiladas (no photos) for dinner for the week, and since I ran out of the lovely hipster english muffins I had been eating (Stone & Skillet), I made my own. These came out phenomenally well, to be honest; I wanted something edible and these far surpassed that. I did singe the first few I grilled but not too badly. And my sourdough starter is definitely not active enough; great flavor, no lift, so you'll see notes in here on how to either salvage this recipe halfway through, or how to just give it some yeast to begin with and just use sourdough for flavor.

A dozen english muffins on a pan, plus one on a plate split and buttered

Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin English Muffins )
bikingandbaking: photo of an old 80's exercise bike (spin spin spin (there is a season))
It's my first season as RBA (Regional Brevet Administrator), theoretically running brevets.

Well, that's obviously not happened. Someday, I'll ride with other randonneurs outside of Zwift. Hopefully.

But at least Zwift somehow got the secret handshake to talk to my somewhat-ancient CycleOps exercise bike; I didn't pony up for the smart one but I did get the one with real power, so I can race people virtually. Still so few women that, amusingly, in the race I did yesterday, I was 4/7 (4/11 for most of it but I guess the last 4 didn't finish) in group D. If I'd ridden in group C I would have been 2/2, no one at all raced B, and I would have *won* group A as 1/2. Long-term paying for both Peleton and Zwift and often going for months using neither is probably not actually the right plan but for now it's fun.

However, this is mostly a baking, not a biking, quarantine post: for once I made myself birthday cake, since buying a treat wasn't happening, and I have all this time that I'm not commuting.

It's mostly faithful to the recipe in my retro-reprint Betty Crocker, but I made a few tweaks and thus feel free to rename it, as the original one is a little "ooh we added some spice and made it ~exotic~ (even though it has less spice than the applesauce spice cake a page before that is not given a vaguely ethnic name". Except I haven't thought of one yet. (If you want to google the original and other variants, it was listed as "Araby spice cake", and this repost of it is accurate to my cookbook.)

Unnamed chocolate spice cake with mocha buttercream filling and White Mountain frosting )

I contemplated various flavorings for the frosting, but I love the classic plain White Mountain. Could try doing the mocha thing like the filling with it too, or go for contrast with orange blossom water or something, but I'm also just as happy I didn't, since we only just finished eating the rosewater-and-pistachio vegan aquafaba meringues I made recently.

Oh, right, recipe for those, too:

Vegan pistachio rosewater meringues )

Evidently you can do cooked frostings with aquafaba, too, but that's an experiment for another day...

Pictures later when I figure out where I'm posting them now that my Flickr is out of space, including the one of a half-eaten meringue that everyone on Facebook thought looked like I was eating a minature dinosaur skull, evidently...
bikingandbaking: Photo of homemade Russian tea biscuits (tea biscuits)
I've posted this recipe before to other journals, I'm sure, and it's basically a slight variation on the ur-Recipe that is all over the internet, but I'm still going to post it.

These are not the powdered sugar Christmas cookie that goes by various probably-inaccurate country names (Russian tea cakes/Mexican wedding cookies). Instead, they're a fist-size breakfast pastry most closely resembling a hulked-out rugelach. And they're basically a Cleveland thing -- every coffee shop had them, growing up, and most groceries had their terrible rendition. As far as I can tell, no one is quite sure how they ended up named "Russian", except perhaps that it indicated raspberry somehow.

russian tea biscuits
Recipe and more pictures )

Profile

bikingandbaking: photo of my road bike with a tag reading "51" on it (Default)
recipes and ride reports

Syndicate

RSS Atom

March 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
13141516171819
2021222324 2526
2728293031  

Style Credit

Page generated Jun. 29th, 2025 11:57 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios