When the weather outside is frightful, make challah. And read perhaps too much about bread baking.

I’ve dabbled in scratch baking before. You know, the kind that requires yeast to be bloomed or proofed and then for the dough to sit around for at least an hour while it doubles in size. I’ve been able to successfully pull off cinnamon buns, a few babkas and dinner rolls. But this past weekend when snow began to fall, I decided to make one of my favorites: challah!

My family is not Jewish, but my grandmother bought these from a local bakery when my mother was young. They have since found their way into our house. In fact, we most recently had some during Thanksgiving. It was one of the sweet flavors that balanced out the savory in my mother’s stuffing, and it was heavenly.

As you can probably tell from my photos, I started my challah in the late afternoon, finally pulled it out of the oven in the late evening and then sliced it up the next morning and made it into french toast for my family. We devoured it at a rate that did not allow me to grab my camera, but photos of the baking process and a recipe, from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, await you after the jump.

There’s a photography book giveaway at ZestyCook!

Cory, otherwise known as ZestyCook, will be giving away two copies of “Fundamentals of Photography” by Tom Ang!

According to his review, the book offers tips useful to both beggining and advanced photogs shooting film or digital cameras. It includes 11 chapters which are broken down into brief (usually two-page), easy to digest sections. In short, if you take photos at all, this book should be on your shelf. Check out his post here to find out how to enter!

Read about the camera I shoot with and browse my list of food photography 101 favorites after the jump.

An afternoon of Panda Cupcakes

Yesterday afternoon my friends Denise, Tisha and I embarked on a mission to make some panda cupcakes from Alan Richardson and Karen Tack’s book, which Denise received as a Christmas present. The book’s creations are adorable! Making these was a great group project since all the components that transform these cupcakes into pandas take a considerable amount of prep work. By the way, the lovely kitchen you see in these photos is at Denise’s parents house.

The cupcake decorating ideas in this book vary from the whimsical, like our pandas, to the elegant like a white Christmas wreathe.  It also comes with a cupcake decorating kit, which includes metal decorating tips and some disposable pastry bags. However, one of the book’s big draws is that you need little more than some candy, plastic storage bags and time.

There’s also a section in the back with recipes for making your own cupcakes from scratch. We saved some time by using white cake mix and vanilla icing from the grocery store, but I’d be happy to give the book’s cake recipes a go next time.

Making 24 of these little guys took us three hours, complete with messes, improvised ingredients and laughs. Ooodles of fun photos after the jump!