Pie in the Sky

Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai

A family of two boys and a mother move to Australia where the mother works in a bakery. The father had previously been a baker, but he died in an accident before the family moved. The older boy struggles to learn English, while the younger child has made more progress. Both decide to secretly make the cakes their dad used to make. The older boy feels that this will help solve his problems and feels dedicated to making all the cakes the old store used to sell. They need to use some subterfuge to make sure their mother does not find out. There are a few conflicts and eventually the older boy learns that the other kids at school are not making fun of him and he starts to become friends. He also gets closer to his family and adapts to life in Australia.

Baking pitas and apple cake

We baked an "Apple Hill Cake" from the Los Altos Stake cookbook for Sunday yummy today. It was ok. We probably overcooked it a little. (A real rarity in our oven.) The frosting also seemed to be a little lacking in sugar (1 cup powdered sugar to 8 oz cream cheese + butter and lemon juice.) However, I didn't mind the 'extra-cheesy' version of the frosting.

The cake itself was 4 cups apples, along with some sugar, flour, eggs and oil and a lot of spices. I think I like butter better in cakes. Nuts would also have been helpful. There was a nice apple coffeecake recipe we tried before.

However, it was nice to use up some of our abundant apple crop. Now we are throwing away all sorts of apples with even the slightest blemish. First we tried to save them, give them away or make applesauce, but now they have caught up with us. Just wait. In a few months, we'll be buying apples. D'oh! Too bad the pomegranate crop looks to be coming in at three fruits this year.

For dinner, I also whipped up some hummus (and finished off the tahini in the process.) I did get to use some fresh ranpor lime and lemon juice. (And managed to break the lock that locks the food processor on to the blender base. Maybe its time we got a new food processor/blender.)

After cutting up some carrots and celery, I discovered we were out of other good vegetables to serve with the hummus. It sounded like a good time to try pita bread again.

I used the king author recipe. Just flour, yeast, salt, sugar and oil. Its one of the easier breads to make. Just kneed it together, let it rise for an hour, then roll it out. After sitting for a few minutes, it goes in a really hot oven for 5 minutes and - presto - pita.

The recipe actually called for 5 minutes plus 2 minutes, but they seemed to be done after five. Our oven running hot for two recipes in a row? This is unheard of. Perhaps its the hot day causing it to act that way.

I actually used white flour in the pita because, well, its yummy. I prefer cakes and cookies with whole wheat, but pita just seems to need the white stuff to have the yummy fluffy texture.

The kids ended up making pita faces using hummus to stick the veggies on the pita. Yummy!