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.

Chocolat

Do you remember that film, Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche as a charming chocalatier and Johnny Depp as a rapscallion manouche? I could probably watch that movie at least a million more times, and listen to the soundtrack at least three more times after that. I love seeing the creamy, luscious Johnny melted chocolate and the perfectly tempered chocolate sculptures, and that roasted chicken with the chocolate mole in that dinner scene. Now I'm getting hungry.

Anyway, I always think of that movie whenever I make chocolates. I haven't quite the same amount of skill—making chocolate from scratch using rocks or whatever is definitely out of my skill set. However, tempering and molding chocolates, and making truffles and chocolate-coated fruit? I can totally do that.

Oh yeah. Totally. 

I don't know what it is about Valentine's Day. I'm not really all that big on celebrating it. But I love it because it means it's that time of year when I make chocolates. :D So, in there we have regular chocolate truffles, bonbons with white dots on top that have mocha truffle inside them, striped/zig-zaggy bonbons that have butterscotch truffle in them, yin yang bonbons that have nutella in them (because my bf loves it and it was easy), pink marzipan hearts, chocolate-covered strawberries, and chocolate-covered cherries. 

The cherries were fun—I was thinking about making cherry cordials, but that involves a lot of effort and waiting a week and stuff like that, and seeing as I was making the chocolates the day of when I was planning on giving them to bf, I ended up just coating them in vanilla sugar and then chocolate. The result is absolutely scrumptious. Maybe if my bf reads this he will send me one of his fantastic closeups of the cherries, since my camera did a shoddy job, and his camera is made of magic and rainbows and generally takes good photos. Bf was definitely a fan of the cherries. Yesterday I suggested that I might make a double-layer box of just chocolate-covered cherries for him for his birthday, and he looked like he was going to cry with happiness. So I guess they're pretty good. 

ETA: Picture from bf! Huzzah.

Beautiferous.

Anyway, since I made bf chocolates, I also had to make him a card. I'm not the best at papercraft or love-dovey declarations of love-dovey-ness, but I figured I'd give it a shot using a piece of cardstock, a heart-shaped paper doily, and my paper cutter:

See. It's a heart! Folded in half! With things cut out of it! Magic!

I thought I did a pretty nifty job. I like simplicity, so I figure this worked out pretty well. No peeking for you at the love-dovey declarations of love-dovey-ness, though! :P I'm guessing my cat approved of either bf or my efforts, because she wouldn't go away when I tried taking pictures. (In the picture above, she is behind the card because of the way I angled myself.)

Or maybe she just likes being the center of attention 24/7. 

Speaking of cats, my other cat just clawed the crap out of my poor, legging-covered knee because it was absolutely imperative that she be on my lap RIGHT NEOW possibly because I was paying attention to the other cat via a computer screen. My poor legs.

Welp, I will probably post next week. Looks like Thursdays may or may not become a Thing. I make no promises. I've been doing a lot more work on my Tonner goddesses; a little at a time. Maybe I will post my progress next week. I've also been working on some silly embroidery that I might also post; I just need to finish the Q! But it's hard. :( Until next time!

picture spam!

Happy Earth day!! I've made a couple things since my last post, and I've been too lazy to post... sorry. :( A lot is going on. And I have lots of writing that I should be doing... :(

Anywho, Heather came to visit and I made her a mini cake:

(Note to self: next time, DON'T forget the baking powder! hehe)

I also made trifle for my mom:


This is my parents' friend, attempting to ruin my trifle:


And a very scribbly self-portrait:

(At the bottom, it says "Self-portrait #18 million." Probably accurate.)

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.

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!