Roll it and Finally!!

I was watching Spring Bake off on TV and they made rolled cakes. I've never had much luck making a perfect rolled cake. They always crack. the trick is to use Angle food cake or make a chiffon Cake, with a little sponge spring to prevent cracking. I think the angle food / sponge cake is probably a little too spongy. I think next time I'll make a chiffon cake. I wanted to try their technique of piping a design into the cake. It worked!! First you put down parchment paper on your pan, then color some of the batter with food coloring. I used a decorating bag and just a round narrow tip. I piped out flowers and vine leaves. Rolled it up and let the cake cool off. I looked up how to stabilize whipping cream. Add a little gelatin. Since I had strawberry flavored, I used a little of that in the whipping cream. I chopped up the strawberries and also added some on top. I cut off the ends for a clean look. It turned out exactly how I was expecting!

We will be eating this tonight with Beef tenderloin. The kids offered to make us dinner tonight. Can't pass that up!

 

The baking TV show also made some cookies using corn starch that melted in your mouth. I upped the sugar since I though it was a little on the non-sweet side. Topped them with some melted white chocolate and dusted them with powdered sugar. They were just okay. Maybe I'll re-make using orange juice and orange zest.

I'm still on my diet. Eating around 1200 - 1500 calories per day. The weight loss is slow. I'm eating most of my calories 1000 at dinner. We've been hitting up going out, so I have an apple orchard which is around 200 calories. We had some thin crust pizza with just a tiny bit of cheese. I've also indulged in popcorn and some fried chicken wings. I don't eat the skin but do like some of the fried crunches. My weight loss progress I can tell is slow. I'm getting there. I'm just not where I was hoping to be at this point. No worries. Plenty of time before June to lose another 10 pounds.

We got some great news this week. Steve is ready for a full cornea transplant in his right eye. It will be scheduled the middle of May and then he should be able to see again in that eye. His accident was back on November 2nd and he hasn't been able to see clear in that eye ever since. We had three options for surgery. We picked the most aggressive. The main goal is to be able to see again and sooner then later. He will always wear a color contact lens due to the color loss from the iris.  He might also get a lens prescription to see more clearly if needed. We could have opted for a 50% chance of the cornea relaxing with an incision to loosen it up, but then he would have to wait another month to have a lens put in which means two surgeries instead of just one. Or the other option was to get the full cornea and then again wait for the lens at a later surgery to get the most clear sight. It's not a big deal to get laser surgery on that eye or a prescription for contacts or wear glasses. He is fine with the lens how ever it turns out. I'm sooo happy he will get his vision back. Right now it's like he is looking through a thick fog. His eyes fight each other to see and it's making life not so fun for Steve.