What I've been up to including but not limited to baking

Once again I ate a soapy piece of food. Usually this mistake keeps within the cake bake circle of things but today it found its way into my pancakes. I wanted to make a cornmeal pancake of some sort so I searched the internet for a promising recipe. Everything looked fine and tasted great dripping with syrup but a piece on its own had that all too familiar taste of having eating a particularly unnatural bar of soap (though really I have no reference, thank goodness :) You would think I learned from my previous mistakes but while I was adding soda to the batter I did think it was a bit much and did it anyway. My hubby had doubts I didn't make a mistake and looking at the recipe again he was right. It wasn't supposed to be baking soda but baking powder.... grrr. It was a good recipe though, you can see it HERE.

Banana Pumpkin Bread

Luckily a lot of recipes of late worked fine. I made some great pies for my mother-in law including a nice banana pumpkin bread so the baby had something sugarless to snack on. I'll add that recipe later. All the guests on her birthday commented on the nice pies but really I didn't care much because I LOVED them. Both were from Ken Haedrich's book Pie, which as you might know is the best pie book ever! I had chosen a Pumpkin Cheesecake and a Mocha Ricotta as I know my in laws don't like anything too sweet. The Mocha came with a great rich Mocha Chocolate sauce too, yummy!

Left a Pumpkin Cheesecake, Right a Mocha Ricotta

Yesterday we had nice tiny quark cakes, like cheese cake but made with quark (obviously). I also made a great banana bread that I sadly don't have the recipe of. I thought I could remember it but I didn't.

I have also had some non bake related projects going on of which I'll post some pics soon. I've made my baby a cute winter coat. Ever shopped for a day for 1 article of clothing and come back empty handed because they just didn't have your vision? My baby needed a new coat but somehow every girls coat is either pink, too frilly or has texts like "I'm the cutest girl you'll ever see" which is true but not something I want my 1 year old to wear. So I searched through my stash of fabric (which has become surprisingly large) and found a cute purple wool felt. I used it to make a coat for myself a few years ago and thought it would be perfect for her. It's now waiting to have the sleeves shortened and then it will be ready for winter.  

I've also become a web editor for the anthropologists professional association where I hope to become the main contact person for all universities and institutes related to anthropology in my country anyway. Also I get to blog, which is just fun!

Lastly I started restoring one of my oldest dolls today. She's been with me since 1989 and she has soft skin, pretty eyes, curly hair, a cute button nose and sweet dress. Her name is (don't laugh...) Pipi (pronounced pee-pee, I was 5 don't judge ;). Her face was dirty but I didn't know how to clean it, also I had no idea who she was or who made her. So I googled the only terms I could think of: '80's dolls'. And TADA! there she was. Pipi is my My Child doll, produced by Mattel in the 80's. They have quite a hardcore fan club and I have seen some awesome OOAK make over dolls. I found a site that had directions on how to clean her and fix her hair so I did that today. She now sits on the couch in front of the heater to dry.
I cannot believe she is 14 years old. I can still remember standing in front of a huge row of My Child dolls in what must have been a Toys R Us. They had so many different ones, with different skin colors and clothes and hair. The funny thing is all those choices and I did actually choose my child. Pipi is pale and blond in a pretty pink dress. If she's had blue eyes instead of brown she would have been a perfect likeness of my real child.
Pipi is looking nice and clean again with soft hair, but it's not as nicely curled as I've seen in some pictures of restored dolls. I wonder how she looked right out of the box and hope to find some pictures when I'm at my parents tomorrow.