Baking break

I'm actually getting a surprising amount of knitting done in the new year, and will steek Ian's cardigan very soon, but I've also been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately. My big girl's seventh birthday was Friday the 4th, and since her teacher is a World Wildlife Fund devotee, we decided to make an endangered animal cake.

I've been moving away from boxed and packaged anything, but up until now I've baked her cakes from a box so that I could spend more time decorating. This year, I made the devil's food cake and buttercream icing from scratch, and was pretty pleased with how they turned out.
After the birthday weekend passed (capped on Sunday with a matinee of Princess Ida by NYGASP, which was fantastic), I finally took the plunge with the Tassajara Bread Book that I've been perusing since early December. On Monday I made white bread (since that was the flour on hand). The book has some really wonderful illustrations and is very reassuring for novice breadmakers. Combine that with its philosophical bent, and it's the closest thing I've seen to a knitting book about making bread.

Then, Friday, while thunderstorms raged outside, I made the whole wheat version.

Compared to storebought:

Not too shabby.
This morning I made their whole wheat pancakes, which were nice, and I may just make some coffee cake tomorrow, or the fancy apple popover.