Caramel love cupcakes

I have been terribly negligent, using my parents arrival as an excuse to not bake. I apologize and hope to get back on schedule shortly. First though, I will take a cooking break to a) work on papers and b) give people time to vote on the next baked good. Hopefully I will post the choices on here in the next few days.

     For now, here is the winner of the last vote, the Caramel love cupcake!

Here is the inspiration:

here is what I ended up with:

 

 Ta da!

     There you have it. I actually made a traditional french butter-cream for the frosting... and then added caramel of course. From the feedback I have decided that the cake is probably not the best, and is rather dense but the frosting is a winner. Also, people loved my mock-stroopwaffle. Since I could not find such a thing in the stores, nor did I have money to buy all the ingredients needed to make the real thing I bought apple-cinnamon waffles, cut them in half, put cinnamon and caramel in the middle, and because I had no small cookie cutters, cut them into pie wedges. I like the look, and so far I have heard no complaints against the taste, so I call it a win. 

     So that people have time to vote on another kind of baked good I think I will make the mead frosting cupcakes so that I can play with a different kind of apple cake batter and see if some other recipe might be more satisfying.

For now, I hope all of you who tried the cupcakes enjoyed them, and I will attempt to be more consistent with the blog in the future. Here's hoping.

Choose your poison

     I have finally found a home for the two rainbow cakes from my previous post. I have been informed that the first cake did not have sweet enough frosting, so for the second I attempted to remedy that by adding more powdered sugar to the butter cream frosting. I have been told by a few that it worked, but if you are reading this and disagree I would love to know. I am on a diet that inhibits sugar intake so I'm honestly not the best judge of what is sweet enough right now. Which brings me to my next baking project... but first - I wanted to show you want I did with the left over tops of the cakes (that I got rid of with the awesome cake leveler.)

 

     Ta da! I decided to take some disposable shot glasses, crumble the cake and layer it with the frosting. I think it turned out quite charming for some extra bits of cake that I thought about tossing out. I am now ashamed that I almost threw all that yumminess away. It would have been quite a waste.
 
     As I was saying earlier though, my taste for sweets is off a bit of late and I would like to remedy that. This coming week I want to focus as much as possible on flavor. While I still care about ascetics, I feel that I should learn more about how to make things taste the way I want them to, and the way other people like them to.
     I will bake one of four styles of cupcake this coming week. The choices are all listed below, complete with picture and description of each. I would love for as many people to vote as possible. You can leave a comment on this blog, or post your vote on Facebook, or Twitter. You can even email me your vote if you feel so moved! Point being, VOTE. That way I know what people want to eat and I can bake accordingly. And remember, those who vote, get at least one cupcake!
     Now that I have firmly established this "I want people to vote thing" let me set out the guide lines for voting. The important thing to know is that you can vote for more than one cupcake. If you do vote for more than one, please rank your picks. You can tell me why you voted, or you can simply write the title of the cupcake. Eventually I will figure out how to make a poll on here and things will get a lot easier for you guys.

     IMPORTANT: Let me know if you are allergic to any of the current cupcake picks. I do not want to be responsible for a trip to the hospital and the use of an Epi-pen. I will do my part and list the ingredients (other than the obvious flour/milk/cream/sugar/butter), do your part and keep me from injuring friends.

      Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the cupcakes.

1. The "Love Carmel Cupcake"

This cupcake was designed by a loving blogger in memory of her mother. If you would like to see her blog she is over at http://www.thelonebaker.com/. This cupcake is full of carmeley goodness with some apple-spice thrown in for good measure. The waffles on top are dutch stroopwaffles (hard waffles with caramel in the middle) and baking this cupcake would mean an excess of those, so be prepared to suffer. ;)

Ingredients: Apples, Cinnamon, Caramel, Vanilla, pie spice

2. The "Apple Cinnamon Cupcake (with Mead Frosting and a Honey Swirl)"

This cupcake was inspired by the Rosh Hashana tradition of dipping apples in honey. The recipe I would use is from the blogger at http://www.cupcakeproject.com which is where all of the cupcake recipes below would come from. If I cannot find someone with an open bottle of mead who is willing to donate to tablespoons I may have to change the frosting to a cinnamon one. So keep that in mind while voting.

Ingredients: Applesauce, apples, cinnamon, mead, honey

3. The "Better than sex cupcake"

No really, that's it's actual name. There are five different types of chocolate in this thing. If you want chocolate, vote for this. This is no ordinary cupcake.

Ingredients: Vanilla, chocolate, cocoa powder, salt, coffee, brandy(maybe), white chocolate

4. The "Yogurt and Honey Cupcake"

This is the cupcake to choose is you are tired of the heavy sweet flavors. It gets lightness from the yogurt in the batter and the fact that the frosting is yogurt (with a honey drizzle). Don't get me wrong, these are still sweet, just in a different way. If you want something interesting and different, this is the cupcake for you.

Ingredients: Geek yogurt, vanilla, honey, salt


So there you have it. The four choices for this week.  Choose wisely as you all have to eat them.

The cake is not a lie!

     My hands may look like I cleaned up after a sick unicorn, but I have completed the famed rainbow cake. This cake would have taken very little effort if not for the amount of dyes that I had to mix. My icing apparently did not come out as sweet as I would have liked, but I will still count this a success rather than failure since my whole point was to focus on coloring and icing instead of flavors.
     The only "specialized" equipment I used was a cake leveler and an icing spatula. If you do not know of the magic of cake levelers and you bake often, you should check them out. I had no idea how I would stack three rounded cake layers without them tipping over, and then there was the cake leveler. It's basically a garrote wire between two sticks. You place the sticks on the counter, make sure the wire is at the correct height, and drag the wire across the cake. It was quite easy and wonderfully helpful. The icing spatula was also a help, but was not new to me, so not as interesting to play with.
 

  

      Coloring the batter took a lot of dye. The red batter took 115 drops of red dye - over half the bottle. The green icing took almost 100 green drops. If anyone is interested in the exact ratios I can give them to you, but I didn't want to go into the boring details here. I used a plain white cake mix with applesauce instead of oil for the batter.

The cake layers themselves only took about 18 minutes to bake at 350 F since I used small four inch spring form pans (so that I would have several small cakes to ice instead of one large one.) I think the colors turned out wonderfully. I made my own butter cream frosting for the icing. It made the cake quite tall and the slices looked a bit odd, but there was no danger of it toppling thanks to the cake leveler!

 

     Here is the finished product! I reversed the color progression from the picture I found (I thought red made more sense on the bottom so that blue was next to violet.) I found that my original sprinkle method (throw them and hope they stick) did not work quite as well as applying them with a spoon. I simply filled the bowl of the spoon with sprinkles, and pulled it up the sides of the iced cake. There were very few empty spots left after using that method. In order to ice the cake I put it on a cake round with the turntable from my microwave underneath (it's cheap and it works!) That turned out to be unnecessary since the cake was so small, but it was still fun to get to spin the cake around instead of trying to maneuver my arm in such a way to keep the icing smooth.

     I took the finished product to gaming tonight, and here is a picture to give the scale of the cake. If you have ever played D&D, or any other table top game involving mini-figs you will have a better idea of just how tall the cake is. Also, I have put the original picture that inspired me next to it for a comparison. If you happen to want some there is another un-eaten cake currently.Hope you enjoyed this week's cake! 

 

The great cake challenge

     Hello again wonderful, brave readers. I have been lax about updating my blog of late, much has happened but I am writing now to tell you about a challenge I have set my self and think I might need a bit help with. Don't worry, your part involves eating cake. Yes, that's right, I am looking for people to eat cake and cupcakes and other sweet things, and maybe bread. Well, definitely bread because at some point I want to make bread that looks like a panda.
     The point being, I am going to attempt to make/bake/or otherwise throw together some sugary delight about once a week. Most of the things I make will be inspired by a recipe or picture that I find online which I will post here along with a picture of what I end up making. I have already chosen my first delight - a rainbow cake. See below.

     I chose this particular rainbow cake because not only do I have to dye the cake batter, but I get to dye frosting and use sprinkles as well! I have no idea what recipe was used for the cake in this picture, I am going to use a modified white cake mix with butter-cream frosting though. Hopefully I will not resort to mixes often, but this time I'm really focusing on learning how to stack a layer cake and dye frosting properly, and I may add powdered sugar clouds on top!

     Though I have chosen this week's sweet, I need help choosing for next week. So that I don't resort to dice rolling I am going to post three to five pictures every week (there will be some underlying theme every time of what I want to work on that week, but I will most likely have widely diverse treats) and I would love for people to vote on what they want me to make. As your motivation to cast a vote - I will attempt to make at least enough to feed those who do vote, regardless of whether yours is the top choice that week.
     Hopefully I will have pictures up of my attempt at a rainbow cake sometime tomorrow night or Tuesday. Do let me know if you would like a bit!

How to change a tire, and other life lessons

This lesson brought to you by "a screw in the road" in conjunction with "the nice man from Triple A."

Yes, I ran over a screw a few nights ago. It was late at night, I was hoping to get to sleep in less than half an hour and then I ran over a screw. I was slightly distraught by the occurrence. In hindsight I would refer to it as "overly emotional" but my nerves have been kind of raw all week for one reason or another. So, without further ado, how to change a tire:

1. Find the spare tire.
This step is possibly the hardest if it is in your trunk and you have a lot of other stuff in there too. Still, persist or you will not be able to go further.

2. Hope that you have the little jack and wrench that may or may not be with your spare tire.
If these things are not present, I would suggest calling someone that has these things.

3. Try to find a place that is level and dry and limp over to it with your car.
If there is no dry spot put something like floor guards underneath the jack so that a) the jack doesn't slip and let the car crash onto your legs or hands, and b) so that the jack doesn't sink into mud allowing the car to slowly crush your legs. In other words, use common sense, the car is heavy, don't let it fall on you.

4. Put some sort of block behind the wheel that is opposite the flat tire. For example: if the front passenger wheel is flat, put a block behind the back driver wheel - if the back passenger wheel is flat, put a block in front of the front driver wheel.
This is so that the car doesn't roll away, and possibly off the jack onto your legs. Hopefully by now you have figured out a way to avoid leg crushing all together.

5. Take off the hubcap and loosen the nuts while the wheel is still on the ground.
If you put the car in the air first the wheel will wobble and make life hard on everyone.

6. Put the jack in place and begin lifting.
This step has different parts depending on the type of car and the type of jack. There is a space on cars, sort of between the door and undercarriage that is reinforced, and this is where you want to place the jack so that there is no damage to your vehicle. Once you find that spot, start working the jack.

7. The car is now in the air. Take a second to breathe, you have done the impossible and lifted a mighty beast. Remember that this is a bad time to goof off or become unfocused, that mighty beast is depending on you and could also crush you if you do something in the less than smart category.

8. Finish removing the nuts and take the tire off.
The order in which you remove the nuts does not matter, just don't loose them.

9. Put the spare tire in position.
Side note - this is not easy in the dark.

10. Place the nuts back on, but only by hand.

11. Once all nuts are loosely in place choose one and tighten it with the wrench, then go the the nut opposite that one and tighten it. Do not tighten the nuts in order or the wheel will go on at an angle. You want a star pattern when tightening, this should keep the pressure even enough to make the wheel go on straight.

12. Yay! Your spare is on! Does it have air in it? If not, hope you can make it to the nearest gas station or friend with an air compressor to fill it. (That should be the first place you drive if you are even a little low on air.)

13. Slowly lower the car. Make sure nothing is in the way, especially the odd limb or appendage.

14. Pack stuff up and drive to safety. If the flat cannot be repaired almost any tire place is probably ok, but if it can be fixed make sure the shop you go to can fix it.

15. Do not drive any longer than necessary on a spare tire. Those things can seriously mess up your alignment, and I'm not talking neutral good --> chaotic good. I mean, there will be screeching involved, it's scary.

That's it! That's all it takes! I owe my new knowledge to the wonderful AAA guy, who did all of those steps for me (which meant my life was very easy.) I'm glad I learned how to do this on my own, I think it's a skill everyone should have just in case they get stranded somewhere.

Staring at armor

Tonight I decided to go to an SCA fighter practice. I'd been once before, only to observe. I realized then that the loud noises would probably be amplified in the helmets and that I would undoubtedly get a headache every other time I tried to go. Still, the desire to return kept nagging me. Finally I gave in a couple of hours ago.

On the ride there I became consumed with the fear that they would throw me into some smelly loner armor that made it impossible to breathe, move, or see... but they didn't. I walked into the gym of the military building that our barony uses during the winter months (yes I said winter, it's 44 here.) The lights, the smells, the sounds, all washed over me, bringing up memories of elementary school basketball games. In some spaces the scent changed and I was brutally reminded of army recruits.

I braced myself for a worse smell that I knew would come if they tossed loner armor at me. The three men ambling about the gym all waved politely. One asked if I was going to fight, I said yes, he said something along the lines of "great" while nodding his head in a style somewhat reminiscent of my uncle. The men went back to adjusting straps, hitting themselves to see if pieces moved, and adding bits here and there (sometimes with ducktape.) Two of them began to circle one another, the third, the fighter's marshal asked if I would like to do some slow work.

"Sure... I'm not entirely certain what that is, but I'll try."
"Well, do you wanna learn heavy fighting?"
"Yes?"
"That's a good start, we'll try slow work." Then he picked up a stick that looked small in his hands, and handed it to me. The rattan had weight to it, but was not as heavy as a normal wood, though I knew its weight would secretly wear at me until I couldn't lift it if we went too long. Then he handed me a shield. All told I probably held it up for five to ten minutes... He called it a light shield. My left arm begs to differ. It's not so much that my arms hurt or feel particularly tired, I just have absolutely no motivation to lift them for any less than necessary tasks.

He taught me some basic moves. It was slow going. I had never been allowed to put power behind my blows, and now I was being encouraged to do so. I found that I was more afraid to hit this ridiculously imposing figure before me, than I was of him hitting me. I knew he wouldn't break, I knew he was in armor, but I saw no need to hit him just so I could learn. He started holding up a sword wherever I was aiming. That helped, but then, when I needed to string blows together I waited for his sword to move. Add to this that I had to think about every swing. Did I move my hips correctly, did my feet pivot too much or too little? I over think things. It helped when I remembered how I had to move in Karate. My shots came in better once I let my body remember what it already knew. Hit from the ground up.

It was a great night. I was actually tired and able to sleep. It was wonderful. I think I'll try again.

Random

It would be so incredibly easy for me to be one of those maniacal super villains. I have all of the back-story needed to turn evil. And I mean one of those justified-everyone-would-understand-why-I-did-it villains. The sad thing is, I want to be that. Villains are more interesting. Heroes are whiny, they rely on their friends, and once all is said and done they get all the credit for none of the work and I hate them. Except when they're The Doctor. The Doctor is the only hero I've ever wanted to win. So yeah, I either want to be a villain, or The Doctor.
The End.