baking hits and misses.

i usually use blueberries or mixed berries when baking muffins. so i thought it would be a welcome change to make cranberry muffins. why not. also, i thought it would be just fine to use my old standby muffin recipe and just substitute the blueberries for cranberries. but i quickly realized, after sampling one of the cranberries that they were incredibly tarty. yikes. i knew cranberries were tarty, but these were scrunch your face tart.
plan B: i simmered the cranberries on a little bit of maple and water mixture to lessen the tart factor. unfortunately, i already had the rest of the muffin ingredients mixed and ready to go so i couldn't simmer the cranberries for very long.
result: cranberry muffins that are still too tarty for my liking. to add insult to the injury, i hate throwing away food, so it was a couple of weeks of trying to finish these muffins, my face scrunching each time i had one!
lesson learned: know your cranberries.

the upside: i baked these chocolatiest chocolate chip cookies today and they're oozing with chocolate goodness.

tea biscuits...

...or scones as they are commonly known on the mainland, which is to say the rest of Canada.

m's post yesterday about our picnic in Ferryland last summer made me yearn for sunny days, homemade iced cold lemonades, and blueberry picking even more. since we have none of these things at the moment, i bake.

i made tea biscuits yesterday. the recipe was for plain tea biscuits but i added blueberries to mine. they turned out well considering how ancient and tiny our oven is. the batch made loads. we had them for breakfast, have been snacking on them ever since, and we still have plenty left. m eats his with butter melted on it and i like mine slathered with cranberry jam.















delicious.