unbirthday

I have this friend. We hardly get to see each other, for no other reason than that we both seem to have terrible timing. Because of this timing, we missed each others' birthday. So yesterday we made up for it by having an unbirthday party.

In honor of this unbirthday, I made dark chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel frosting and caramel sauce drizzled on top.

*Buuuurp*

Ahem.

Diabetic coma, here we come.

Try not to judge me on my cupcake frosting. I seem to have misplaced all my piping equipment, leaving me with the oh-so-classy Ziploc with the corner cut off treatment. Ha.

There was an exchange of soaps, honey, teacups and journals, and cupcakes (and coffee ice cream) for all, which made it a very merry unbirthday indeed.

Here's hoping your day was as sweet as mine! Now to go loosen the ole pants button...

Happy New Year!

I finally did it! I made Baked Alaska, number 3 on my thirteen by thirteen list. I figured why not work down to the wire and do it right before 2013? Plus it feels like a festive sort of thing, so New Years Eve it is.

It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and the kids sure loved it. (My weird husband doesn't like cake OR ice cream OR meringue, the party pooper. But he did at least try it).

I made my own black forest chocolate cake, topped it with the ice cream (I sent my husband to the store, so we are using Maple Pecan ice cream. No comment.) and I used Martha Stewart's recipe for Swiss Meringue to insulate it. Tada!

Well, I wish I could say I was going to do something fabulous tonight, but we've spent two days cleaning camping gear, doing eight thousands loads of laundry, and cutting up, marinating, and vacuum sealing a ton of deer meat. All while hacking up our lungs with the flu. I'm dead on my feet and I keep pausing mid-job to stare off into space from pure exhaustion. My head feels like it weighs a million pounds and is stuffed with very wet wool. This state of being is not conducive with hanging out till midnight to party in the New Year.

Plus, nobody we know is having a party.

I guess we'll have to be satisfied with some bacon-wrapped deer tenderloin, homemade bread, mashed potatoes, and baked Alaska. And champagne! Even if all it does is send our poor flu-ey selves straight to sleep. :)

Happy New Year everyone!

high five

Yesterday I had my two nieces over for a day of Christmas cookies, crafts, and whatnot. My sister-in-law is seven months pregnant and needed some time away, and I was more than happy to have a load of kids in aprons blowing up my kitchen.

We made sugar cookies. The Star Wars cookies presses that my dad and stepmom got the boys last year were a real favorite with all the kids.

There's my super girly niece who is bizarrely in love with Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings. She's making a Darth Vader cookie.

We watched "Elf" and had popcorn (so I could have a chance to clean up a bit). Note that they're all still wearing aprons.

We painted salt dough ornaments (and each other). The glittery purple storm trooper was my favorite, I'm so bummed I didn't get a picture of that one.

Five kids, playing nice. I have to say it made no difference to me whatsoever have two more in the house, it was just ever so slightly louder.

Then the rest of the time was full of wrestling, "he hit me!!", the building of train tracks, and swinging on the swing.

All in all, a good day. I'm slowly learning to...unclench...when it comes to kids making stuff. I just want things to be pretty, and it's hard to intentionally let someone (even a small someone) make a cookie that looks like it was thrown up on. I'm just saying it like it is. But it is really cool to see what they come up with on their own, without any undue supervision/taking the cookie away to do it myself so it LOOKS RIGHT. Ha. My youngest made a yellow Darth Vader with gold glitter on it. I mean, who's to say what's "correct" when it comes to art, right?

I'll just have to keep telling myself that.

Poor Malcolm was feeling sort of out of it all day yesterday--he didn't even notice when his cousin Willow painted his hair blue, and not once did he complain about something she did. That right there told me something wasn't right. Then this morning he woke up with an upset tummy, a fever, and breathing that sounds like General Grievous. So our plans for another craft day with friends is out the window. All in all that might not be a bad thing--I think after our whirlwind couple of weeks we could all do with some down time. And I do have an x & + quilt to finish....

the good, the bad, and the ugly

Hey. About that internet silence.

Two words: Busted. Laptop.

That's the bad. The good? My mom had an apple computer she wasn't using, and offered it in exchange for my husband to fix up my stepdad's gun. Yes!

The ugly: the horrendous pictures my ancient camera takes. The disadvantage of having a giant, HD computer is that I can see very clearly just how awful my pictures are. AND--there's no place on this computer to stick my memory card, which means I need that USB cable that came with my camera a million years ago which I have since lost.

So. About that internet silence. Yeah.

The thing is I'm dying to share some stuff with you all--quilts in progress, pictures of my trip to Birch (Fabricworm!) fabric store in California....aahhhhh!!!

Oh well. I guess you'll have to wait. Boo.

when cookies go bad. and then get better.

It's been a rough week here at the G.'s. And when life gets me down, I can't just lay in bed and mope. I must move. I must clean and sew and most importantly--bake. I can't help it--baking just makes me feel normal and homey and motherly. My sister-in-law recently said to me that my house always smells good, like something yummy was baking or about to be baked, and to me that's one of the nicest compliments a home can get.

Now, naturally, if you're going to bake when you're in a really, really yucky mood, what else do you bake but extremely fiddly, temperamental, silly things like macarons?

It seemed like a good idea to me.

Well.

For my first batch (oh yes. there were several) I tried Mandy Mortimer's Earl Grey and Lemon macarons. Sounded good to me. I don't particularly like Earl Grey tea, but I love the bergamoty smell of it. What could go wrong? Mine came out looking just like hers:

Not.

I actually wished I'd been able to find my camera last night, because I would have loved to show you what those things looked like. Despite my misgivings when my meringue wouldn't make peaks, the domes were perfectly smooth, but the feet (the frilly little part at the base of the cookie for you mac newbs) were these giant amorphous puddles that gave my macs the appearance of having lived in the vicinity of Chernobyl for awhile. Not to mention my attempt to combine sky blue with brown gel coloring gave me dark teal cookies. Not a bad color in general, but certainly not that pretty blue I was going for. My husbands response when I took the tray out of the oven was to loudly snort and proclaim in a booming voice, "EPIC FAAAAIIIIL!!!"

But maybe they would still taste good? My husband bit into one, made a "are you kidding me?" face, and set it back down. "Tastes like overly sweet Russian black bread." I pouted for a second before biting into one myself. He was absolutely right. Needless to say, I didn't even bother with the lemon filling.

This morning I decided to try again. This time I wanted raspberry flavored macarons with chocolate ganache. I followed the basic recipe that seems to be standard on every blog and website, adding raspberry extract to the batter. Unlike the first time the meringue came out beautifully, and I was convinced these ones were going to be THE ONES. I followed all the instructions I read on the subject and folded my batter until it came off my spatula in a ribbon. Then I piped it onto the parchment and right away I sensed something amiss. It seemed way too runny. After 18 minutes in the oven, they emerged. Puke-tinted, flat, footless, and unpleasantly gooey on the inside. Ick. And: Dang.

The kids ate them, but then, what are kids but tiny humans who think hot dogs are fine cuisine?

Okay, I said. One more try. This time it HAS to work. I reviewed all the info and decided that I would follow Sprinkle Bakes Cayenne Macaron recipe, minus the cayenne and cream of tartar, and using 5 tablespoons of sugar instead of the 1/2 cup of extrafine sugar. I would follow her mixing and piping technique, but I would let the macs dry out on the counter for a half hour instead of 15 minutes since I live in Florida and the ambient humidity is higher. I also decided to keep the oven temp right at 350 instead of fiddling with it during baking. Aaaaaandddd.....

Nice smooth tops! Cutie little feet! Non-gooey middles! Excitement ensues.

I made a sour lemon curd to fill them with, out of what I had on hand-- the yolks left over from the whites I'd used, greek yogurt, and lemon juice.

While the curd was setting up in the fridge, I brushed the tops with some luster dust.

And then I piped the lemon curd onto the cookies and sandwiched them together, et voila! Tiny little hamburgers of delight.

I'm not gonna lie and say I consider these to be the pinnacle of macaron perfection. They were supposed to be bright, cheery yellow. See those nice splotches of yellow on the macs? Yeah. Old gel coloring doesn't like to mix with batter apparently. For me, the chief draw of making these things is the cuteness and the colors. So...not such a success in that sense. But in the technique and outcome of the things themselves, I'm kinda proud. And the lemony filling is the perfect thing to offset the bland sweetness of the shells. Yum.

So. That being said, I feel quite comfortable crossing #7: Make Macarons off my list. Yay!

Etsy party tonight!!

So, I just want to say I'm pretty excited about tonight's Etsy party at Tempus Projects. Aside from it being exciting to get with other crafty peeps I'm just really looking forward to a fun night out, sans kids. I do love my kids, but sometimes it's nice to relax without wondering where they are, what they're doing, and are they perhaps choking? You guys with kids know what I mean. 

Anyway, they asked people to bring cupcakes so I decided to revisit my old friends, who have some long overblown name that I refuse to learn, instead calling them "Campfire Cupcakes".

Graham cracker bottoms, a layer of bittersweet chocolate, chocolate cake, and meringuey gooey toasted topping. Yum. Makes my teeth hurt. Also makes me wish I wasn't trying to avoid carbs right now. Ugh. At least others can enjoy them (at least I hope).

Hopefully tonight will be rad.

peculiar pancakes plus pumpkin procreation

i've said it before and i'll say it again: i'm shamless about trying rack up as many "mom is hilarious" points as i can while the kids are young and still labor under the mistaken notion that i'm actually funny. one of my favorite things to do in this pursuit is to make, as they call them, "silly pancakes". 

now, my mom used to make smiley face pancakes for us when we were little, and i have lots of memories of her standing over the pan with a spoon trying to drip fat swaths of batter into the curve of a mouth or giant eyes. so that's where i started a few years back, and i've been slowly perfecting my technique since then. first of all, i am a firm believer that it's important to have the right tools. behold my weapon of choice: the leftover infant medicine dropper. 

second of all, don't rush. a beautiful work of pancake art requires precision, yes, but patience as well. the design needs time to darken before the rest of the batter is applied or your face will be faint and wan. and there is nothing funny about a wan pancake.unless it's just the way those two words sound together. wan pancake. wan PANcake. WANPAN cake! okay, i'm done.

this morning i also got the opportunity to facilitate some botanical sex. get your mind out of the gutters, pervs, i mean of course that i was out bright and early this morning using a paintbrush to pollinate my pumpkins. we're having a real honeybee crisis as you might know, so i was just, ahem, giving my cucurbits a helping hand. the flowers were huge and wide open this morning, but this is what they looked like a few hours later:

i guess all that baby-making action tuckered them out.

i was tempted to photoshop in a few cigarettes, but thought that might be crude. 

vanilla, baby

okay, so i have a confession. for most of my life i considered vanilla to be like the ultimate tasteless flavor. vanilla ice cream? booooring. vanilla perfumes and soaps? blech!

and then at some point my mind began to change. little by little, one day at a time, i fell in love with vanilla. my boring adult self began to detect subtleties in the smells and tastes of different vanillas. vanilla bean ice cream became my favorite. what is the meaning of this? i asked myself. the answer is probably that i'm getting old and boring. but i don't care!

then, about two years ago when craft magazine was still in print, i came across this article. oh. my. gosh. DIY vanilla? how freaking cool is that?! unfortunately, i had no money for pricey vanilla beans. so i waited. and schemed. and waited some more. i saved every empty vanilla bottle i used in the hopes that someday, maybe, i'd have my own little vanilla stash, and could bestow delicious fragrant homemade vanilla on all my bakey friends. yes, i know bakey is not a word SHUT UP. 

well the other day i bit the bullet and ordered some vanilla beans online. and yesterday they arrived. i could smell them through the box and ziploc they were in. heavenly! 

today, i jaunted into the liquor store with a baby on my hip (because i am always a classy person) and picked up a giant, look-what-a-lush-i-am bottle of bourbon. i then went home and made me a big old mason jar of vanilla. 

(note the lid. that's right, i save spaghetti sauce jars, too. don't hate me because i'm a cheapskate.)

i'm really stupidly excited about this. i can't wait until it starts to develop. i can't wait to hand out little bottles of brown vanilla joy to passersby on the street, while my halo of benevolence is shining behind me. the fortunate people of tampa, florida, will go home clutching their precious extract and telling their children bedtime stories about the crazy vanilla lady who tosses around small glass bottles with reckless glee.

on a side note, i also used to hate the color pink and would mercilessly mock those who wore it or used it in pretty much any context. and now i sort of guiltily like it. WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME.

consolation by cookie

okay, so obviously i'm a bit out of sorts about my finger. what's a girl to do, then? invent a cookie!!

these are so yummy, and the innovative result of being bored, in pain, and craving something sweet while also having a plethora of weird ingredients laying around. the sour cherries go so good with the bittersweet chocolate, and the cereal and coconut give it texture and solidity. so here's a recipe of my very own:

jenn's consolation cookies

• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp. soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup five grain cereal (or oats, i just opted for "healthier")
• 1/2 cup coconut
• 1/2 cup dried tart cherries
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
• walnuts if you like them

cream the butter and sugar, mix in the egg, then dump the rest in. i know some people employ traditional, fussy ways of baking but i'm not one of them and it turns out exactly the same when i'm sloppy about it. so don't judge me.

drop on a baking sheet (i use a small ice cream scoop) and bake for about 12-15 minutes at 350. et voila! yummy cookies.

after all is said and done, i could only eat one...

my kids, at least, will enjoy my efforts.