Strawberries!

I've been pretty into strawberries recently. I don't know why. Ok, I know why. They are delicious and they wear their fruit-clothes inside out. And they were on sale at Trader Joe's.

It all started a couple weeks ago when I was thinking about college. In college, I was really poor, but still a bit of a foodie. (And I was really pretentious, but that's beside the fact) A frequent meal of mine would consist of (day-old) french baguettes with hunks of (store brand) cheese. Sometimes I'd drink wine (good ol' strawberry Arbor Mist) with it, and if I was really feeling fancy, I'd steal grab some strawberry slop from the resident's dining hall to eat with it. Iknow, I know, so classy!

The thing is, it was a really delicious combination. So I decided to try to recreate it, with good food.


I soaked strawberries in Cotes du Rhone wine with a bit of black pepper, then baked the (premade, I'm lazy) mini french baguette, and sliced it up. I topped the slices with TJ cheddar cheese (my favorite!) and baked it. I topped the melty-cheesy-bread with the wine-soaked strawberries. It was incredibly delicious, and not just because I had already finished off the bottle of wine. I even made it again for bf, and he agrees. I'll probably post the recipe on recipezaar, when I remember to.

Later, bf and I were talking about how making chocolate is my new thing. I made chocolates for my friend Heather's birthday (and forgot to take a picture >_>) and she really enjoyed them. Bf always has these ideas for Restaurants That He Should Open, and he said that it would be really interesting to open a chocolatier that only made fruit/chocolate combinations.

The idea piqued my interest, so for Valentines Day I made him a box of fruity chocolates.


Obviously, there were chocolate-covered strawberries, which were actually superfun to make. The little chocolates are filled with raspberries that were coated in chocolate and wine truffle. (Note: Chocolate wine truffle was a surprisingly bad idea. I'm going to have to work on it. Or use a recipe next time. It was fine with the raspberries, but not so great on its own.) I also made (no picture) wine-filled chocolates. It was really hard. :( Only four of the nine I tried to make actually worked out, and they leaked a bit. I'm not sure how to make it work next time, but I'll figure it out, cause it was really good.

This reminds me of some polymer clay charms I made. So cute.

My dinner date with Heather

Oh yeah, and our menfolk came as well.
Heather and I spent wayyyy too much time making craploads of cupcakes. We made 12 Mars bar/rice crispies "no bake cupcakes" (you can see them in the tower picture), 12 carrot cake cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting, and 12 Victoria sponge cupcakes, half with chocolate buttercream, and the other half with raspberry filling and whipped cream. Delicious. A couple of pictures:
Heather really wanted to try out my snowflake fondant cutters, which I warned her were less-than-useful. It only took her about 18 million tries, but she got 5 snowflakes! Then we stuck the Cornish hens in the oven, later than planned. We made sangria which tasted like "raisin juice," but damn, did it look pretty! I was at the supermarket and I saw some starfruit, which has always interested and intrigued me. I smelled it, and I was SOLD. And, it's even as delicious as it smells. I want to go wherever these things are grown, when they're in season, and try some of those. It must be magnificent. (Yes, I am biased against produce in the supermarket, and for good reason.) But slices of the starfruit looked lovely as garnishes for our sangria. I'll have to try to think of more things to do with it!
The hens were kind of a failure, because Heather and I stuffed them with dates, and then I forgot to factor in that extra time, and we cooked 4 instead of 2, and I didn't factor that in, and we didn't cut them in half, either. So, you guessed it! They were seriously undercooked. It may be tacky to stick a little hen in the microwave during a dinner date, but we were too hungry to wait. Reviews said, however, that the recipe was delicious. I will make it again, but I won't stuff it, and I'll only make 2. And I'll use less olives, cause Josh doesn't like 'em, and who else would I cook it for!?

Should I be making a New Year's resolution to write here more? Nah.

So, for Christmas my parents gave me a sewing machine. Oh yes. You know how this is going to turn out. My plan is to set up a little craft area in my basement, because my room is really just too small for me to do crafts in. So hopefully, I will start churning out those angels and demons soon.
I did a lot of cooking for Christmas, and even took a couple of neat pictures. I love deviled eggs, and I got a new cookie-maker-pump-thingy device from my sister. It is my new best friend, and I used it to make swirly centers in the deviled eggs. :D

And (of course) I made cupcakes, too. I was lazy and used cake mix and premade frosting. My sister was happy. She loves the crap stuff. Eventually I will convert her to my delicious baked goods.
This weekend I have some grandiose plans with Heather to make an excessive amount of baked goods, all magnificently decorated. I'm not sure how well it will work out, but at the very least, I'm gonna make some more cupcakes. We're also making a fancy-pants cornish hen dinner for our double date. I'm crossing my fingers for success.