baking and stuff
Took the bananas out of the freezer and pureed them last night. Then made the banana cake. I think the recipe was:
- Cream 1/2 cup butter with 1-1/2 cups sugar
- Add two eggs, one at a time, then 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Sift 2-1/4 cups flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, (and 1 tbsp powdered buttermilk, since I don't have the liquid version)
- Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture, alternately with 1 cup mashed (or pureed, in this case) banana and 1/4 cup water (or buttermilk, if you have the liquid version)
Divide into two 9" pans and bake at 350 for ~30 minutes.
So.
What is it with Southern ladies and their flat-ass cake layers? In future, if I were to bake this in separate layers, I'd use an 8" pan. I haven't tasted this one yet, but the layers baked unevenly, so I'm bound to make another one (assuming it passes the flavor test). At that time, I may just bake all the batter in one 8" or 9" pan and cut it into layers.
Since I don't quite like how this cake came out, I think I'm going to try out a banana buttercream for it, rather than going all out with the french buttercream. (The idea for the banana buttercream is to use the formula for the peanut butter buttercream and just sub in banana puree for the peanut butter.)
In other news...
My gym has decided that biometric scanning is the wave of the future. Cardless entry for all! is their rallying cry. I said "No thank you" and kept waving my card at the desk clerk until I got some attention. This is a gym, not a Swiss bank. Exactly why should I submit to a fingerprint scan every time I want to get in there? (The program is brand new. It'll be interesting to see if the clerks' currently gentle queries of my desire to sign up for the cardless entry program will become more insistent over time.)
Offer me a cash incentive, on the other hand, and sure you can have my data. I went in for biometric screening this morning. It's part of the employer's health incentive program; they add some money to your paycheck if you complete a certain number of health-related tasks each year. Considering that this data could probably be used in some nefarious insurance pricing scheme, I don't know how I'd feel about participating in the program if I weren't as healthy as I am.
This morning's results were surprisingly good. My favorite number:
Body Fat -- 25%
The "Athletic" range tops out at 24%, so I'm at the low end of the "Acceptable" range according to their chart. This is much better than the 29% (or was it 32%?) reading I got a few months ago. On the other hand, this was a caliper test done first thing in the morning, as opposed to a device test done in the middle of the afternoon.
The rest of the numbers were more or less as expected:
cholesterol--LDL <200, HDL 66, Ratio 2.2, and I think there's some other number I'm forgetting
weight/BMI--could stand to lose a few
waist circumference-- <35" (and in just under the wire)
blood pressure--109/55 with a pulse of 64, nice and low and perhaps on the cusp of being too low (thus I was advised to stay hydrated, and don't stand up too quickly for fear of making myself light-headed)
The women who took my cholesterol and blood pressure readings were really impressed, like beaming at me. So I wonder what kind of numbers they tend to see.
- Cream 1/2 cup butter with 1-1/2 cups sugar
- Add two eggs, one at a time, then 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Sift 2-1/4 cups flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, (and 1 tbsp powdered buttermilk, since I don't have the liquid version)
- Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture, alternately with 1 cup mashed (or pureed, in this case) banana and 1/4 cup water (or buttermilk, if you have the liquid version)
Divide into two 9" pans and bake at 350 for ~30 minutes.
So.
What is it with Southern ladies and their flat-ass cake layers? In future, if I were to bake this in separate layers, I'd use an 8" pan. I haven't tasted this one yet, but the layers baked unevenly, so I'm bound to make another one (assuming it passes the flavor test). At that time, I may just bake all the batter in one 8" or 9" pan and cut it into layers.
Since I don't quite like how this cake came out, I think I'm going to try out a banana buttercream for it, rather than going all out with the french buttercream. (The idea for the banana buttercream is to use the formula for the peanut butter buttercream and just sub in banana puree for the peanut butter.)
In other news...
My gym has decided that biometric scanning is the wave of the future. Cardless entry for all! is their rallying cry. I said "No thank you" and kept waving my card at the desk clerk until I got some attention. This is a gym, not a Swiss bank. Exactly why should I submit to a fingerprint scan every time I want to get in there? (The program is brand new. It'll be interesting to see if the clerks' currently gentle queries of my desire to sign up for the cardless entry program will become more insistent over time.)
Offer me a cash incentive, on the other hand, and sure you can have my data. I went in for biometric screening this morning. It's part of the employer's health incentive program; they add some money to your paycheck if you complete a certain number of health-related tasks each year. Considering that this data could probably be used in some nefarious insurance pricing scheme, I don't know how I'd feel about participating in the program if I weren't as healthy as I am.
This morning's results were surprisingly good. My favorite number:
Body Fat -- 25%
The "Athletic" range tops out at 24%, so I'm at the low end of the "Acceptable" range according to their chart. This is much better than the 29% (or was it 32%?) reading I got a few months ago. On the other hand, this was a caliper test done first thing in the morning, as opposed to a device test done in the middle of the afternoon.
The rest of the numbers were more or less as expected:
cholesterol--LDL <200, HDL 66, Ratio 2.2, and I think there's some other number I'm forgetting
weight/BMI--could stand to lose a few
waist circumference-- <35" (and in just under the wire)
blood pressure--109/55 with a pulse of 64, nice and low and perhaps on the cusp of being too low (thus I was advised to stay hydrated, and don't stand up too quickly for fear of making myself light-headed)
The women who took my cholesterol and blood pressure readings were really impressed, like beaming at me. So I wonder what kind of numbers they tend to see.