A parade of foods

Well, since I have been so lax about posting for the past couple of months, I've had a lot of photos log up into a giant, quivering mass hiding somewhere on my boyfriend's computer, since he is the one with the magical camera and all. Of course, now that I have started writing in my blog again, I have developed all of these incredible plans of crafting and sewing and embroidering, which involve me purchasing somewhere around 20 yards of fabric that I don't really need unless I do end up completing these grand plans. Phew.  It's so exhausting, I wasn't able to make any progress this week, other than planning. I'm not even going to bother making promises—they will happen or they won't.

Anyway, back to the subject, which is one of my favorite subjects, might I add: food. Delicious, succulent, savory, sweet, rich, scrumptious, delectable, toothsome, wholesome FOOD. Food is one thing I can say with certainty that I would surely die without. Anyway, since I've made quite a lot of delightful and enticing treats, I figured I'd put in a cut, then begin my little food parade.

Sorry.

I meant to post a "sorry nothing to say" entry on Tuesday Monday because I definitely remember which days I have promised to post, but I forgot. I was exhausted from seeing the Colbert report. :D

Anyway, on Tuesday I made cupcakes for one of my coworkers, whose last day was yesterday. She loves my cupcakes, and says that my delicious frosting has ruined other frosting for her forever. (Sorry!) But anyway, I got to use my new silicon flower veiner, and it was a lot of fun.

I forgot to take a picture in the morning with good light (and a decent camera) so I took one at work with my cell phone. I still think you can see how awesome they are. ;)

What I've been up to: aka, picture-spamming my way to forgiveness.

Ok, I said I made lots of things, and I know you want pictures, so here we go! Things I have created recently include:

A knit bunny. Mostly a prototype, I'm planning on making a larger one later. Not sure how well it will work out, but it's a cute (and easy) pattern from my knitting calendar. I'm hoping it will look a little less like an evil white ant with ears next time.

And as usual, cupcakes for my coworkers!

These were for a meeting to go over editorial standards. I wanted to butter up the writers so they'd be nicer to me. ;) They were my tastiest yet; I had coworkers coming to my desk the next day to see if there were leftovers.

These were for a group outing. I had a lot of fun making the sugared raspberries. The left is gluten-free chocolate with vanilla icing, middle is coconut-lemon meringue with lemon-curd filling, right is vanilla filled with wild berry jam-filled and topped with vanilla icing and a vanilla-sugared raspberry. I picked the berries for the jam, too. :) The berries on the cupcakes are from the supermarket, though.

My Mom's birthday cake. I know, I am an awesome daughter. ;) I didn't have any more pastry bags, so I ended up using my cookie press to do the frosting decorations. It's not really even close to my best, but my mom was happy, and that's what counts. That bonsai tree in the back is also for my mom. You can't see it too well, so another pic.

Also for my mom's birthday. A lil' fishin' dude. A long time ago, my mother and I were looking at bonsai trees. She saw a lil' fishin' dude similar to the one here, and said, "Oh! How cute! I want one!" (or something close, it was over a decade ago, gimme a break!) I said, "I could make that." And I did. Then that lil' dude was broken, and so I made another. I think that story was too long.

I also made this totally sweet flatware organizer out of duct tape and cardboard. I couldn't find any that actually fit in any of the drawers in my new kitchen, and doggone it, I can't have my chopsticks touching my spoons! They'll just fight and make a mess! Especially the Nesquick Bunny spoon. That guy is fiesty.

Ok, does making a dandelion wreath count? My parents' dog really liked it! And by liked, I mean, liked to chew on it. (I also just really like this picture.)

I made... a ... fort? Does that count?? Ok, now I'm stretching. I think this is where I stop and admit that I didn't really make all that much stuff. :(

Anyway, plans for the future involve a lot of knitting, embroidery, painting barbies, and making doll clothes. :D

Hey mom!

Well, this weekend contained Maternal Figure Day. (My PC term, since not everyone has/likes their mother.) Since I am in the happy position of having a wonderful mother, I celebrated the day with her. And of course, since I’m me, I couldn’t just buy her some fancy-pants present; I had to make something. Well, more than one something.

First, I decided to remember how to do embroidery. Embroidery is actually something I really enjoy doing, it’s just so tedious that I tend to get lazy and not finish. Also, I really need to sketch out what I’m going to embroider in detail, and I’m always lazy and use a pen, and then the pen bleeds and it looks crappy. (And yes, I made that mistake this time, again… -sigh-)

I forgot to take work-in-progress pictures, which is too bad, since you would be able to see how I totally changed my mind while approaching the end of the piece and decided to fill in the branches with a poorly-done staggered satin stitch. (I know that’s not the proper name, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is!)

Anyway, here is the finished piece:
Probably the best part was filling in the bluebird with crayon. (Note to self: next time, do that before finishing all of the embroidery.)

My mom really loves it, and it’s already on display in the kitchen. I put black cloth on the back so that you can’t see my messy stitches in the back, and it makes the cloth look kind of dirty. And I keep looking at it and getting irritated, because I can see all of my mistakes and how easy it would have been to fix them. I was on a schedule, though, and I just barely finished it in time (1am, Friday night). Why did it need to be finished by Friday night, you ask? Oh, because I had to make these:
Mmmm. I used vanilla bean seeds for the first time in these cupcakes. My mom was really happy. I hope she doesn’t mind me posting a picture with her in it!

These tasted pretty good, but served as a life lesson: don’t try to bake or make meringue buttercream when it is REALLY FREAKING HUMID. Also, don’t forget to put in the last egg white when making said meringue buttercream… >_> In other news, Swiss buttercream was a lot easier to make than I thought it would be, and delicious to boot. I’m bringing in the leftover cuppies for a meeting tomorrow! :D

(And see that cupcake in the bottom-left corner? That's the one my brother ate. Because it had the most frosting. Of course!)

moar cupcakes

I made pina colada cupcakes this weekend. Very delicious. I only got one picture of them, though, which doesn't at all show how pretty they were.

-sigh-

You can almost kind of see how pretty the frosting swirl was, and how there's lime wedges and shredded coconut on top. You can't really see the pretty yellow color they were. I knew I should have taken pictures before I gave them to people, and had someone who wasn't well, er, marinated take a picture.

The recipe was really good, though, and really easy. I used box white cake mix, (lazy) replaced a portion of the water with pineapple juice, and added crushed pineapple to the batter. Then I made simple sugar syrup with pineapple juice (note: do not take eyes off of boiling pineapple juice for more than 5 seconds... seriously.) I added copious amounts of Malibu to the sugar syrup once it cooled, and soaked the cupcakes in it! :3

The buttercream was made the American way, with butter, powdered sugar and milk Malibu. Heh. I also added some of the pineapple simple syrup, and colored it.

32 of the cupcakes went to my friend's birthday party on Friday, with good reviews. (Best review: "Whoah... this isn't an onion. Awesome!" nom nom) I brought the remaining 15 to bf's pre-show band practice. Bf's friends really liked them. I have decided that my groupie responsibilities are pretty much just to make cupcakes for the band.

I drew up a pattern to sew a gumdrop penguin (you gotta see it to understand). I'll get around to making it once I have suitable fabric. Maybe I'll use the same fabric I did to make Matt Demon.

Pretty in pink

Yesterday I craved cupcakes. I think you know where this is going:


I stopped at AC Moore on the way home from work (well, it's really quite out of the way, but nevermind that). I bought myself a mini cupcake pan, and a 1M tip. This tip is amazing!! I don't know how I survived without it before! I'm still a beginner with it, but I think I did all right. I had the green cupcake papers from when I made the truffles (I needed something to put them in!). They kind of clash, but I don't really care.

These are (gluten-free!) rice flour cupcakes with strawberry buttercream frosting. The frosting was a learning experience. I don't know what I was thinking last night, as I joyfully poured the (defrosted, sorry!) strawberries in with the butter, and then tried to mix in the sugar (I'm going to blame it on it being 10pm with only 5 hours of sleep the night before). It was a complete failure. An awful, terrible, disgusting-looking mess. I wish I had thought of taking a picture, because mere words cannot describe how gross it looked. I panicked, and scooped it out of my mixing bowl into another bowl. Then I mixed up some regular, no-flavoring-added buttercream, and slowly added the curdled, nasty blobs that were supposed to be strawberry frosting. The result, as you can see, had no nasty blobs, and had a good strawberry taste, despite only having half the amount of strawberries it was supposed to.


Actually, eating one of these cupcakes tastes a lot like eating strawberry ice cream in a cone. But sans the brain freeze. I have like 2468735789 of these in my fridge. Why did I make them last night!? I knew I wanted to bring them into work, and that I wasn't going to work today because of snow. I set myself up for eating-all-the-cupcakes failure!

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.

oh hai

So I did make those cupcakes for the company party, by the way. Only about sixty of them. They were gone within an hour, and I was a little too busy at the "special" eggnog table to take a picture of them. But! My peppermint vanilla cupcakes were a hit, despite being my own invention, and everyone was demanding the recipe I used for the chocolate buttercream frosting. Cause damn, son, it was some good frosting. (You can find the recipe on America's Test Kitchen's web site. Really, all of their recipes are amazingly delicious.) Two of my coworkers have gluten allergies, so they were very grateful for my gluten-free cupcakes. :)

Now I'm doing some secret crafting for Christmas (yes, last minute, whatever). Other homemade Christmas presents that I have already made include: Irish creme from scratch, home-brewed raspberry cordial, and delicious delicious fudge. And I'm supposed to make cookies and brownies, too. Mmm. Brownies. I'm not really worried about posting presents here cause the people they're for never read this blog, anyways. Heh.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukkah, Happy Festivus, Happy Yule/Solstice/Dong Zhi, have a wonderful Makar Sankranti and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His Noodly Appendage this Holiday.

Right?

I said I would update on Sundays, right? Right? No. =/

So my word count is a pretty pitiful 28, 546. So, yeah, I don't really think that I'm going to have this finished by November 30th. But I'm going to try!

I spent too much time last week making cupcakes for the Thanksgiving party. But hell, they were delicious, adorable, amazing cupcakes. And guess what? I forgot to take pictures. They were pretty amazing, too. Damn. One of my friends, after tasting one, hid one of the containers of 15 cupcakes so that she could take it home. Haha.

zomg

I just had an excellent idea, and I wanted to share it because I can't find any documentation of it anywhere else on the internets. I've been trying to think of more things I can make with the unnecessary amount of rice flour I have when I thought of it. What if one were to make ochazuke, but instead of using rice, to use rice flour cupcakes?
I imagine it being soaked in a tres leches cake kind of way, perhaps with a whipped cream frosting that is flavored with myoga or crystallized ginger. Hot damn, that would be awesome.
I know that ochazuke is supposed to be savory, but I don't see why it can't be sweet and cupcake-y, instead! This is now, officially, on my to-do list. And if you make this, you are officially required to let me know and/or taste. :D

ETA: I'm not referring to green tea cake, by the way, the kind where you include matcha in the recipe. Oh no no. I'm talking about pouring a hefty amount of strong green tea on top of a cake, and letting it slowly soak in. Yum.

So hey....

Remember that time when I didn't post for, like, ever? Yeah man, me too! Totally weird.

I haven't really been creating much other than poetry, which I no longer will post on the interwebs (for publishing reasons). I also invented some recipes, which are definitely delicious.

Speaking of delicious, I have made some delicious, adorable cupcakes. Yesterday I tried making gum paste flowers for the first time. (Yes, I spent my Saturday night home alone with two cats and a lot of sugar.) My main successes involved getting gum paste all over my hands (and hair!) and getting powdered sugar all over the floor. I had forgotten my book on making gum paste flowers somewhere, so they are mostly magical flowers of my imagination. Very cute and girly magical flowers.

Today I decided to make cupcakes to show off my pretty flowers, not to mention, I'd been meaning to make gluten-free lavender cupcakes for ages. I made lemon buttercream frosting like two weeks ago for these cupcakes I intended to make, but alas, I am lazy. But the frosting has been a great midnight snack until now. (Don't worry, the recipe I use takes seriously forever for the frosting to go bad. As in, I have never, ever had my frosting go bad.)

So, here we have my adorable rice flour cupcakes, soaked in lavender syrup, frosted with lemon buttercream, topped with cute flowers:
Those little yellow bits are lemon "zest." I fail at zesting, so they are big chunks. And here is the front, so that you can see my pretty rose:
And a close-up of the rose that is positively soaked with vanilla vodka because I don't have any edible glue:
I am going to be getting a new digital camera, because I'm sick of my phone's subpar photo-taking abilities. And my old digital camera wasn't close to being the best, either, and I really don't feel like sifting through ten metric tons of crap to find it.

(Hey, does the excessive length of this entry make up for the fact that I haven't posted in like 18 years?)

Lazy

Documenting my creations is beginning to prove to be a bit difficult. This is because of two things:
A. I have no idea where my digital camera is.
B. I am lazy, and haven't been doing anything.

Perhaps "anything" is not the correct way to say it. I have been lazing around trolling the interwebs. And baking. Baking counts as creation!

I wanted to know what it tastes like to use tea in cakes, (more specifically, cupcakes), and I was (you guessed it!) too lazy to bake them from scratch. So I used white cake mix, and used vanilla chai tea instead of plain ol' water. Then I whipped up some cream cheese frosting (from scratch cause it's easy, and cause there is an overload of cream cheese and powdered sugar in my house). The result tastes a lot like spice cake, to be honest. When you eat the cupcakes with butter pecan ice cream, though, you can really taste the essence of tea-ness.

So next time I might use something a little less spiced, and a little more obvious. Perhaps Earl Grey, with lemon frosting? Speaking of frostings, I bet Chambord would taste great in frosting! Alcohol is always good with desserts.

And the cupcakes:

Notice that quite a few have been eaten. They are extremely delicious. Sorry for the crap-tastic photo, I suck at taking pictures.