Our Happy Acres

Today was an exciting day here at Happy Acres. We got to try out our first batch of soap! It had cured for 4 weeks, and was a basic, unscented soap recipe. We both tried it out in the shower and were very pleased with the way it cleaned and sudsed up.
This recipe formed the [...]

Read Full Post »

My wife loves cherries in all forms, so I set out to come up with a granola that used dried cherries. This recipe is my wife’s current favorite of all my granola creations so far.
It features almonds, walnuts, dried cherries plus sunflower and pumpkin seeds. It also has unsweetened coconut flakes (or chips), which I [...]

Read Full Post »

We made our first batch of soap here 3 weeks ago, and now we are waiting for it to be ready. And waiting. And waiting…you get the picture. We are waiting for our cold process soap to cure, which takes about 4-6 weeks.
This first batch was a pretty basic recipe, using coconut oil, palm oil, [...]

Read Full Post »

These rolls are lighter and less dense than the original recipe, due to the addition of vital wheat gluten to give them more rise. I knead the dough with a Kitchenaid mixer, using the dough hook. It only takes about 5 minutes of machine-kneading to produce a nice elastic dough.

Read Full Post »

I can only hope everyone had as nice a Christmas as we had here at Happy Acres. It wasn’t a White Christmas, but that’s not a bad thing. We had a monster snow for Christmas in 2004, and that was enough to last me for a long time to come!
As is our custom, this morning [...]

Read Full Post »

When my wife and I celebrated our first Christmas together in 2005, I was inspired to make an ornament for the occasion. I was probably also trying to impress her with my crafting talents, though I think she is far more artistic and creative than I am. For this one I started with a papier [...]

Read Full Post »