Baking Time!

Hello readers! Well this week has been a busy one! I did the finishing touches onto my Movie Trailer and now can be seen under my Movie Trailer page above. I can finally say that I have used iMovie and it was not as scary as I initially thought it would be.

This week I went back to the kitchen and decided to bake something. I have a major sweet tooth and so I was quite excited to try and bake one of Jamie Oliver's dessert recipes. I decided to try and bake his Gluten-Free Blondies - something sweet, yet healthy as it is gluten-free, dairy free and vegan! In the UK, the recipes often have measurements in grams, so after I converted the ingredients to cups (I do not have a scale to use), I was ready to conquer the kitchen! I have to say that I had a lot of fun baking these, as I was also using it as an opportunity to capture the finishing touches to my movie trailer. Unfortunately, not everything that is healthy taste good. As I mentioned before, I think I have a very powerful oven, so after about 20 minutes (10 minutes before what the recipe calls for) my blondies were burnt around the edges and yet raw in the middle. My experiences with gluten-free products have been mixed as the flour texture is very different to white or even whole wheat flour. After patiently waiting to cut into these blondies, I was left very disappointed. The recipe says these are sticky, gooey and sweet. I found them dry, yet moist, and just missing something. It was almost like an incomplete cake where I skipped a few key steps to the recipe. See the picture of my work below!

So, I leave this week's adventure for my genius hour with the motto that not everything that is "healthy" tastes as good as the nutritional information! Speaking of which, I have not mentioned before but one feature of Jamie Oliver's recipes that I like is the nutritional information that it shows with the recipe. Often you have to guess for yourself, but for anyone that is curious how many calories, fat, sugar, etc. that is in a dish (or sweet), has this information provided for them with his recipes.

I am nearing an end to this Genius Hour Journey soon, and unfortunately I will not be able to visit Jamie Oliver's new restaurant in Toronto (and first one in Canada!), but I do plan on going there as a celebration moment to finishing this project. I may just have to leave the healthy baking to him and his pastry chefs and try something when I am there!

In the upcoming week I am going to look further into Jamie Oliver's Food Foundation, as I have only researched one branch under his big Food Foundation's umbrella, and it would be incomplete if I did not research deeper into this side of his business and life's work.