Girl Interrupted At Her Baking

I haven't blogged in ages.  I miss it.  Unless booze pudding can somehow accidentally be misfiled in a folder labeled, "baking", I haven't done much of that either.  And I miss it.  I've tried my hand at a few other apron-esque endeavors, if you will, but nothing else feels quite the same.

My first endeavor was jam.  We have a glass stove top in the apartment in which I currently reside.  I melted it.  "But aren't they built to withstand insanely high temperatures?"  One would think.  Anyway, I had been wanting to try my hand at preserving for a while and, after reading numerous blog posts and articles each detailing the ease and simplicity that is jamming, I thought that it'd be a breeze.  Yeah, well, this breeze melted my stove.  Apparently when you sandwich hot jam in between a hot stove and a hot stock pot, the glass revolts.  What is with me and glass?    

At any rate, I was somehow able to create five jars of strawberry jalapeno jam.

If you decide to try your hand at preserving, I highly suggest this article here.  And, if you're curious to try strawberry jalapeno jam, you can find the recipe here.  I added a couple habaneros to the recipe to give it an added kick. (and kick it does!)

I sorta cheater "baked" like the lazy person that I often am to make the pastries below.  They are just rolled out Pillsbury crescent roll dough, filled with jam and cream cheese.  Tasty and fattening, but too easy for me to feel good about myself.

Another endeavor: homemade Snickers.  As with the rest of the female race, I have become addicted to Pinterest.  And it is through Pinterest that I discovered the beauty that is homemade Snickers.  Go Pinterest. These little devils threw me off the South Beach diet wagon hard and fast.  And they are worth it.  Make them.  Now.  They are easy and no stoves were harmed in the process (diets maybe, but no stoves).  You can find the recipe (and better pictures) here.   

This is the giant block of yum before being cut into smaller squares of mini yum

All those things were fine.  And scrumptious.  But it's this kind of thing that I'm missing.

I made these a couple months ago for a Kung Fu Panda night at a friend's house.  They're chocolate peanut butter cup cupcakes.  What I really wanted to do was play with the melding of chocolate and wasabi, but who, besides me, would  eat that not as a part of some television reality show?  So, I went with the other obvious Asian ingredient...peanuts.  I just stuck a couple mini peanut butter cups in each liner before filling them with chocolate cake batter.  Nothing too impressive.  But the frosting.  Oh that frosting.  For the frosting, I just mixed peanut butter, cream cheese, nutella, and unsweetened coco powder.  Nothing else.  No powdered sugar even.  I wish I had written down the measurements, but I didn't :(  I was just throwing things together in a mad fury, trying to get them done in time.  To finish things off, I just rolled out fondant circles, formed them into fortune cookies, and dusted them with cake glitter.         

But that was a couple months ago and I am growing lonely for my piping bag.  However, somewhere in that growing loneliness there is an idea growing with it.  Puppy chow cupcakes.  Haven't figured out all the ins and outs of them, but I'm going to make them on Saturday.  It's been decided.  And that is going to get me through the rest of this work week.  So stay tuned.  Hopefully it won't take me another two months to tell you how it goes...

Cold

I'm blogging via phone. Let's see how long it takes for me to tire of tapping this small square of a keyboard.

Prince Charming and I broke up. Well, we're just on a break, but this is my first foray into the "on a break" realm and it sure sucks like a break up. I should probably be careful about what I write, being that said boy visits this site from time to time, and I don't want to say anything that might embarrass me. Granted, the four minute voicemail I left him a mere 12 hours after the alleged "talk" has left me with little pride anyway. Someone needs to create an app that saves all the voicemails you leave other people. I know i have left some ridiculous voicemails that could have only been spawned out of drunkenness or depression, however I have a theory that if I were to hear them replayed they would be twelve times more mortifying than I think and I would delete every single "I probably shouldn't call you" number from my pone. People like me need that kind of reality check. Regardless, I somehow had the sense to not leave a voicemail the second time I called him and he didn't pick up. Have I mentioned it has been a whole 25 hours since "the talk"? I have reached new realms of patheticism.

Hoping it'd help, I baked. Peanut butter cup cookies. I even added broken pretzels and red piping gel to make it a little more festive (see the terrible phone pic below). Well, the cookies have cooled, the once melted chocolate is hard, and my insides still feel cold like an untouched, empty oven. Preheating always seems to take longer when you're watching. Now off to find a distraction that keeps me from my phone...

The Curious Capers of Concucky Con Cupcakes...Coined by one Carzipan

I have been taking picture after picture lately, waiting for an opportune time to blog, but no such time has surfaced as of late.  Well, until now.  However, now has come and the opportunity to post all my slightly less than epic pictures has arisen, yet going through my pictures is less than appealing to me.  I feel like writing.  But what about, I do not know.  Kind of. I feel like I need to post some pictures first, however, in order for you to keep reading.  Boo, 2011.  Well here are your visuals, you filthy little chin wags.  (Confused?  Watch this.  Ellen and I are one and the same).  A quick, quick summary of my summer baking for ya:

Remember that vanilla sugar I blogged about  little while back?  I finally opened up that jar, five months later.  I can't tell you how much I wish this picture were scratch 'n sniff.

Eight eggs and a couple cups of vanilla sugar later, I had these little beauties.  Orange cardamom cupcakes made for my precious cousin's bridal shower.  I unfortunately did not think through temperatures in Riverisde during the month of July and my orange cream cheese frosting has a hot, melty mess.  Obladi, oblada.

Fast forward one month to this:

Before you judge this little guy (or me), know that on the inside it is filled with lots of yumminess.  Strawberries...  

...and lots and lots of lime zest.

If anyone is curious, no matter how durable your aesthetician will tell you that gel manicure is, it cannot stand up to a grater.  Neither can skin.  No worries, the first batch was tossed.

Anyway, this cake was made to celebrate the birth of my main squeeze who has trouble "ruining" a beautiful cake with a fork.  And because eating is so closely tied with caking and caking is so closely tied with my personhood, I needed to create an ugly cake for the sake of our relationship.  A pretty cake was created, in addition, for the sake of my sanity.  Who ever knew the powerful pull of sugar?

 

Heavy whipping cream tastes so much richer in buttercream frosting than your typical milk, but it adds an interesting (read: unpleasant) texture that I always forget about.  I should have gone with plain old milk over whipping cream for the aesthetic cake, especially considering that guitar is still sitting in his fridge three weeks later.  Oh well.  One day I'll understand him and one day I'll be able to differentiate between taste and aesthetics.    

Alright, we're reaching the end of my pictorial tour.  Almost.  

This was stolen off my instagram.  They are chocolate peppermint cupcakes made late one night last week.    Life has been more than crazy as of late and there was something very soothing about knowing that a spatula still has the healing powers it did one year ago.  Anyway, the peppermint feels very December-esque, but I truly believe that even just a hint of peppermint heightens the chocolate flavor and is appropriate year round.  Just my take, though.  

And now we've come to the final picture. Let's see if you actually stick with me long after this.  

This picture actually has a lot to do with what is truly on my mind and heart; what I actually want to blog about.  This post is already so long.  Full of pictures.  Full of fluff.  None of my heart.  Yet it is full.  My heart and this post, that is.  Oh well.  Here is a picture from dinner tonight.  Cupcakes turned dinner.  Garlic crescent rolls pressed into a cupcake tin, filled with monterey jack, beef, onions, thyme, garlic, and rosemary.  Cupcakes broadened from desert to dinner.  Cupcakes savory enough to make one roommate just about tear up. (Truth be told, anything beyond a lunchable can do that to her). A cupcaked dinner made for my beloved roommates who love me with longevity, sometimes to a place in my heart that has long been frozen.  Somehow they ice-pick their way in.  This post is full.  It is too full to hear my petty words of being let down and too full to cast light on the hidden cruelty deep within my heart.  Things I had initially meant to blog about.  It is too full (and I am a smidge too inebriated) to handle all my thoughts about Jesus breaking through my icicles and friends melting apart the ice cubes others have thrust into the freezer that is my heart.  So this is what you get.  For now.

There is a treason at sea.

 

Woof

Some of my best ideas come to me at night in those few lingering moments just before my active mind is completely engulfed in the warm, still blanket of sleep.  It is that feeling of slowly slipping into a warm bath or nestling your face into a fresh towel just pulled from a hot dryer, inhaling deeply the crisp yet soft scent of Bounce.  It is in these moments, these night time moments, that many people slip through delirium, yet for me I find in them pure clarity.  Well, sometimes.  Last night's clarity: dog snack cupcakes.  Those who know me well are laughing right now.  Those who don't are doubting my supposed clarity.  Rewind with me for a moment before removing me from your RSS. (Is that even the proper usage of "RSS"?)

Dog snacks.  I love dog snacks.  And by "dog snacks" I mean those little sweetened sesame sticks found in random munchie assortments.  See below.

Sometimes I refer to these other little pub mix gems as dog snacks...

...but for the sake of this post refer only to the former snack.

Anyway, one of my roommates who knows and understands my love for dog snacks is always on the hunt for better and better munchie assortments.  "Better" of course referring to the ratio of dog snacks to pretzels.  She has been known to clandestinely leave bags and barrels of dog snack surprises for me to find.  She is a gem.  And I digress. Where were we? Ratio of pretzels to dog snacks. This brings me to my latest grievance:  Pretzels.  Namely, pretzel sticks and the overwhelming amount of them in my barrel of monkeys.  Er, munchies.  

So last night, as I sat perched on the couch with said roommate, rifling through my pretzel-filled mix for the occasional dog snack, I decided to extract all those pesky pretzels and use them to make something. The thought was fleeting, however, and it did not come back to me until I was laying beneath my sheets, ready to be bathed in warm sleep.  Chocolate cupcakes with a brown sugar pretzel base.  The perfect recipe for making my dog snack hunt a smidge easier. Hence the name. Dog snack cupcakes.

 Being that I am not my mother and do not own a mortar and pestle, I had to get a little creative.  In case my mother is reading this, yes, mom, I did remember to wash the hammer first.

Aaaand, the finished product.  Chocolate cupcake thrown together from the random assortment of fridge/pantry contents paired with a lovely pretzel/butter/brown sugar base.  This one will definitely be revisited.  Praise God for sweet and salty cupcakes. And for dog snacks.  And for roommates who indulge me. 

     

And So We've Come to the Close

I wouldn't be me if I didn't bake something for the final installment of Harry Potter.  These are butterbeer cupcakes with a butterscotch ganache filling and butterscotch buttercream frosting.  The snitch is just a miniature cake pop with gum paste wings. I got the recipe and idea from here.  She is a genius.  I wish I could take credit, but alas, I can't.

More than a Bumblebee, More than an Ant

I haven't posted in about seven years thanks to that good first date from my previous post turning into a good second date and third date and fourth date and...well, you get the idea.  Between entertaining the new boy, moving to a new city, and transitioning to a new job life has grown a tad frenzied.  That is a lot of new for one little mungbean.  It is also a lot of excitement and I can feel my eyes smiling (yes, eyes can smile...take it up with Tyra if you don't trust me) at just the thought of it all.

Somehow in the midst of all the bustle, I have found a little time to bake and thought I'd make up for the lack of posting these last few months with a few pictures.  Who wants to read the book when you can rent the movie, right?

These two pictures are chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter filling.  The filling was essentially a (tasty) conglomeration of random things in the fridge, most of which I can't remember now.  The key ingredient was honey roasted peanut butter.  Yay for Whole Foods and their miracle peanut butter machines.

I also recently rediscovered the joy that is creating with fondant.  Fondant and I have had our ups and downs in the past, mostly because it tastes far less appetizing than it looks, but cakes like this and cupcakes like these or these make me rethink my fondant aversion.  I tried making the Iphone cupcakes with a friend of mine a while back.  She is a professor and wanted to make something fun for her students.  We tried making the fondant ourselves and it was EXTREMELY difficult to work with.  Never again.  Something like six hours and a couple stained shirts later we had these:

Lesson learned:  Cornstarch, cornstarch, cornstarch

So my recent forays into the world of fondant have been brought to you by the letter "W".  That is, the lovely people at Wilton made it for me.  I just had the pleasure of dying and squishing it as I fancied.  Much more successful, if you ask me.

The first couple are from my roommate's Little Mermaid themed party (she works the new Mermaid ride at Disney's CA Adventure).  I'm not going to lie...I was crunched for time and cheated by using a candy mold. The last picture is from a random Monday for a not so random boy who very much deserved a random three layer red velvet Sponge Bob cake sitting on his front porch.  As you can tell, I compromised on the yucky fondant taste issue of mine by making just the shapes out of fondant.  Good compromise, if you ask me :)

Dates and Dinosaurs and Douche-Baggery

I went on a first date last night.  It was the perfect first date.  Perfect.  Not only did we have great conversation, but he was also sweet and gentle towards me.  We really clicked, I felt.  He thought so too.  I think.

All credit goes to my Curious George socks.  I typically wear weird socks on first dates.  Usually underneath the outfit I have spent hours perfecting one can find odd, mismatched socks.  No date of mine has ever seen the socks.  They are my secret.  And though I sometimes joke that the socks serve as a chastity belt, really they are there to make me feel more comfortable and more like me.  They failed me a few months ago when I went on a first date, probably because I went straight from a root canal to the guy's house without taking any pain killers.  Not even dinosaur socks are prepared for that much pressure.  He asked me where I'd live if I could live anywhere and I opted for a candy castle in the sky.  The dinos were retired after that.  So were root canals.  Anyway, doesn't matter...on to Curious George.  

Curious George and I came home grinning and I only stopped sometime today.  I am a little wary to  post anything about guys I date because I never can be sure who is reading this our how secure my "anonymity" really is, but I suppose if he does find this, this post is the least of my concerns (in comparison to other posts, that is).

Anyway, I came home from my date smiling like the smitten little mung bean that I am to a roommate who was anxious to hear all about it.  I had sent her a text earlier while driving home while in my parked car that read, "Best first date ever" and she was expecting to hear a magnificent tale involving limos and ponies and rainbows and Paris.  It had none of that and she simply blinked at me as I mapped out the night for her.  After I finished, she said that any guy that didn't shove me into a broom closet (no guy has ever actually done that to me, mind you) ranked "top notch" on my list and he got way too many points for doing the basics that every guy should do.  He paid.  He walked me to my car.  He was kind and gentle and respectful.  Those are basics.  And those are foreign to me.

I was talking with a roommate today about a guy she is kind of seeing.  She also described qualities he has that most would deem "basic" that she found nothing short of astounding.  He cares for her when she is sick.  He respects physically boundaries.  He has genuine interest in her emotional well being.  Basics.  Yet she too was shocked and, honestly, frightened by them.  She won't actually date him because he is too good to her.  How is it that we have gotten to places in life that we expect and want only guys who dabble in douche-baggery?  Forget dabbling, they're drowning in it.

Perhaps the issue isn't us.  Perhaps the issue is that the so-called "basics" have run scarce.  Perhaps the quality  of the male standard model has depleted as time has gone on and it is foolish to hold out for the bedazzled Prince Charming edition.  I've been thinking about that all day - all through church, all through baking, all through the minutiae my day.  For now I suppose I'm okay putting to rest the thoughts.  Either way, whether or not the date from last night is standard or jewel-encrusted, he was kind to me and he was fun and I am happy.  He has already relayed twice since last night that he wants to see me again.  I should be happy.  I am happy.  I think.

Why do girls long to be treated like trash?  Why do we reject guys for being too kind?  Because it feels wrong and foreign and alien.  Like a bad Katy Perry song.  That's the only answer I've got.  At least for now. In the meantime, maybe I'll test out those dinosaur socks again.  Maybe they're more cut out for second date pressure.