Another beautifully sunny day. We can be assured that when the sun is out the cardinals will be singing high up in a tree, entertaining us with the exquisitely melodious trills. Easy to see the pair when the branches are bare, and it will be some while yet before they begin leafing out. It was -4C when we came down for breakfast this morning, and the wind was brisk enough to give us a windchill of -11. 

By the time afternoon rolled around the temperature had nudged its way up to 1C, and the wind didn't feel quite as icily intrusive. And that's when we set out for our daily ramble through the ravine with Jackie and Jillie. Grateful we were that it wasn't quite as cold as yesterday when the wind ripped through our garments just as it did with the forest canopy.

Before that, though, I was busy in the kitchen. I don't often have 35% whipping cream on hand, but I did today. So I thought of using it as a filler for a dessert. Much as I did last Friday when I baked the puffballs that make chocolate eclairs; choux. It wasn't until I baked today's dessert that I realized why I haven't baked a jellyroll in quite a long time. Like the eclairs it's a fussy process, and time-consuming. Not all at once, mind, but the different steps for the completed dessert means returning to it several times. I usually prefer to bake something that can be done in one go, as it were.

My oven, now close to forty years old, is getting a tad crochety. It tends to bake a lot hotter than the setting assures one. So I know that about it and it's easy enough to take that into account when it's in use. Actually I use two small counter-top ovens more often than I do the stove oven, as long as what I'm baking can fit into them. Cookie sheets do not. And it was a cookie sheet I needed today to bake the sponge for the jellyroll. 

The recipe itself is simple consisting of only 3/4 cup of sifted cake and pastry flour, 1/8 tsp.salt, 2 tsp.baking powder, 1/4 cup cocoa, since I planned a chocolate jellyroll. Three large eggs beaten to a thick froth, one cup of sugar added, 1/4 cup of cold water, 1 tsp.vanilla, and that's it. The batter is fairly loose, poured into a wax-paper-lined cookie sheet to bake for 12 to 18 minutes in a hot 425F oven. I can't set my oven to that temperature, it would simply be hotter than hot and end up burning the cake. So knowing my oven I set it much lower.

Once it was baked, it was turned over onto another sheet of wax-paper lying atop a tea towel, the original paper peeled off the baked sheet cake, the cake rolled and covered with the tea towel and left to cool. Then off we went to the ravine, and once again left Jackie and Jillie off leash to poke about at their hearts' content, but not to wander too far off where we couldn't see them. So the compromise is they're off leash and we've got to be vigilant and call them back from time to time.

A perfectly lovely afternoon as it turned out, slightly milder than yesterday. And though it was cold enough we thought, to ensure that the trails remained hard and frozen, such wasn't the case at all. Many of them were mired deep in mud. The wind and whatever sun penetrates should help it all dry, though.

Although few people were out, we happened to come across a friend whom we often see on the trails, with his black Labrador Retriever, a calm, friendly dog. Each time Jackie and Jilly see ahead on the trails a dog they're familiar with, the level of their enthusiasm can be judged by the excited pitch of their barking. 

It's days like these when time is our own and the leisure activities we choose take us to the great out-of-doors that we fully realize how fortunate we are to have all of that -- time of our own, leisure and access to nature. The natural landscape looks more than a tad tired for the time being, there's little colour and texture to catch the eye, everything is sere and wan and dark in turn and we long for spring to fully assert its presence to transform the landscape into the verdant forest we treasure.