oops!

You see I recently joined a cooking group and this month's theme was 'guilty pleasures' and after much deliberation (with myself) I decided to make the Gray family favorite Meringue Crust Chocolate Pie for which I needed to whip cream.

The KitchenAide is a cream whippin' beast! After letting it work it's magic for a short while I started to divide the product (as needed for the recipe) when I decided that there was not the volume that there should be so, "I'll whip it some more" I thought and set the whisk to whirlin'. I stop it again and it's lumpy and look like a sad ugly cousin to cottage cheese. "Well I can't use it in the pie now" I said to myself, a tiny bit worried because that was my only cream and the cooking group was the next day and the morning was already booked "guess it can't hurt to keep going now." So I cranked it up again and when I finally stopped the whuring whisk a poured off the thin milky liquid it donned on me:

I had accidentally made butter
I had wondered about that possibility

Now if you've never accidentally made butter I can tell you... it feels odd and a little bewildering with some undertones of exciting.

When I went downstairs to where Dennis was working and relayed the story. I could tell he had a similar feeling. He gave me a hug and with my head under his chin he said something to the effect of 'well, if you're going to 'oops' in the kitchen, making butter isn't that bad."

Here are the other parts of the pie that will have to wait for more whipping cream.

But I was not too worried about cooking group because that day I was trying a recipe I had found online for the Great Harvest Bread Company's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread. I fell in love with this bread while we lived in Logan (when you walk into the shop they give you a fat slice of bread to sample with plenty of butter). Any one reading who knows-- yeah, you know! So I had a back up to bring that turned out really well and just so happened to compliment my accidental sweet butter!

Here's the recipe if you want to give it a try. It's very moist and dense. This recipe makes two loaves so it great for sharing.

GREAT HARVEST PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP BREAD

2 1/2 cups white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

3 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

16 oz cooked or canned pumpkin puree (not pie filling) (15 oz can will work too)

1 cup oil

4 eggs, beaten lightly

2/3 cup water

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two (9x5 inch) loaf pans or three (8x4 inch) loaf pans. Mix flours, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together in a large bowl; set aside. Mix pumpkin, oil, eggs, and 2/3 cup water together and stir into dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips. Place batter in prepared pans. Bake 60 or 70 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Lately with my quick breads (mostly banana bread) I've been liberally dusting the tops with a cinnamon/sugar mix and have been happy with the result. :)

[and I would like to thank my cousin Melissa for showing me how to accomplish an effective use of depth of field-- I honestly didn't know my camera could do that!]