Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Responses to comments on "Mountains and Choppers and Doctors - Oh, My!"

For some reason that continues to allude me, Blogger is being a bitch and won't let me comment on my previous post on my hiking-trip-gone-wrong, which means that I have no way of acknowledging peoples' comments. So here's my way around it:

@Kirsti - I don't see why I should try to look less thrilled when I **am** thrilled ;) Well, obviously not thrilled to be in the situation where I **have** to be air lifted, but thrilled that, given the circumstances, I am not only surrounded by skilled medical professionals but I also get to ride in a plane/helicopter. Wheeeeeee!!!!!! :) Also, bike? Yes, please!

@Kat - Yeah, I'm not super-excited at the prospect of going under the knife and not coming out of it with a brand-new pair of b00bs! I'm also a bit concerned that Zappy the Second will do a lot more pacing and therefore be much more of a presence in my consciousness, but I guess I'll cross that bridge if/when I come to it. But at present, feeling cruddy like I am and worrying all the time, I'm kind of looking forward to it (albeit in a somewhat apprehensive manner).

@Katie - thanks for stopping by and for your good wishes. I dare say your loved ones would prefer for your new years to be full of champagne and lots of sparklers and not impromptu rides in helicopters :) Also, don't tell my mum but I actually don't mind being in hospital **that** much cos I kind of like getting my meals on a tray!!! I know, I'm a freak...

@Jenni - You're right, life is what you make it, no matter what is thrown at you, and I fully intend for mine to be a good one. Hopefully I don't get blacklisted for medical and travel insurance cos that'll make it harder!

Thanks for stopping by, everyone!

Saturday, 25 June 2011

The Mad Tea Party!

The other day I stumbled across A Fanciful Twist, which is a blog running a virtual tea party whereby bloggers blog about their tea party filled with baking creations and everyone spends the tea party frolicking about the blogosphere. It's basically a networking opportunity, and I, as The World's Suckiest Blogging Networker, thought I would give it a crack. My biggest problem is my  general laziness (business?) and lack of time spent visiting and commenting on others' pages. So I have a grand total of six followers, all of which I know in the real world, which is kind of lame, but at least I don't feel like I'm whoring myself out. The pages I read and actually enjoy are few and far between.

Also, allow me to preface this by saying that, given I only just stumbled across this concept, I had no time to organise and photograph an actual tea party, nor do I have my nice tea things here with me in Melbourne, so I decided that simply baking something that would be nice to have at a tea party would have to do the trick this year. My next post will, however, be about tea. But not tea parties. Tea. And lots of it. You'll see!

So - TO THE TEA PARTY!!! Or, more accurately, to the baked goods.

As I may or may not have mentioned before, I have a phobia of cupcakes. Well, not of cupcakes per se, because that would be quite dumb and really, quite freaky. Clowns, I can understand. I said clowns. CLOWNS!!! (Hi, Jamie :) Hehe that was mean. Sorry dude.) What I mean to say is that I have a fear of making cupcakes and having them turn out all dry and yucky and have people judge me and tell me that I'm an awful cook or worse still whisper it pityingly behind my back but tell me they're good to my face which means that I'll continue to bake them forever and think that everyone loves them because they'll just smile and nod and pretend but really they'll never ever want to eat my food ever again and also judge me on my incredible lack of punctuation even though I am deliberately attempting to convey the enormous stress of the situation by neglecting to use punctuation... Wait... I think I might have Issues (note the capital 'I')... so, in order to make peace with my Issues, I thought that I would make an effort to Embrace the Cupcake, because it's waaaay outside of my comfort zone.

Well! I'll tell you what! From here on in, I'll be referring to my Comfort Zone as my Cupcake Zone, because I really did rock these cupcakes! Hardcore! Seriously! Be jealous, because I know you can't all make cupcakes like I can! I haz wikkid skillz! And I iz very clearly exczitedz about themz becauze of my prolificz usagez of the letterz z!!! zoisdkfnxiojzoij,mnozizzz (<-- for good measure. It seemed right.)

(Oh, and back to my Issues, I really must have something very odd going on with cupcakes, because I have literally hundreds of differently coloured cupcake wrappers, despite the fact that I know that I never, ever bake them. Until now. I have photographed the Leaning Tower of Cupcake Wrappers, which have accumulated in mum's cupboard over time - every time I see a pretty or colourful wrapper, I will buy it. Nearly every time, anyway. I'm aware of it now and am trying to use what I have up, I swear! (Exceptions can, of course, be made for super-cute or themed wrappers like the ones Wilton [huh, who knew - whilst Googling this, I discovered that a cupcake wrapper is actually a fiddly, often laser-cut outer wrapper such as the ones at Pinkfrosting, as opposed to a cupcake liner, which is the traditional, concertina-edged ones like the ones here at Cupcake City], and also for cupcake wrappers that people give me as gifts. *looks around hopefully* Guys?) This stack does not take into account all the ones I have in my own cupboard in Adelaide, although the double-ups there are ones I bought Kirsti a long time ago  and forget to send her (I bought myself some, too, otherwise the freight would have seemed exorbitant on a price-per-unit basis *nods convincingly*). Literally the only ones that mum can be blamed for in this photo are the plain patty pans, and the plan Texas muffin wrappers. I can only assume that I am lured by how pretty they are. I love colourful things. I think I may have been a magpie in a previous life...)

DAMNIT!!! I say again, I rotated this bloody picture and blood well saved it, and STILL it un-rotates it when I upload it!!! STUPID BLOODY BLOGGER PHOTO UPLOAD THINGIE!!! (does anyone know how to fix this? I tried to upload to Picasa and then take it from there, but it uploaded the bloody thing sideways... grr) So I guess you're going to have to put up with the fact that a lot of my photos are sideways. I suspected this might happen again, though, which is why I tried (and failed) to take most of my photos in Landscape, not Portrait.

So, for now, turn your head sideways to fully appreciate my photographic prowess. I hope you're reading this at work so that someone sees you and it looks funny :)

 So anyway, I decided to ease myself into this cupcake business (even though I successfully made them from scratch less than a fortnight ago, but thems was the rules at the time) by being a Betty Crocker Cheat.

And you know what else? Because I was baking at mum's, I had a special treat in store.

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

(Are you one of those people who need to turn the map upside-down or sideways to read it, and therefore require this second photo of the same object to figure out what it might be?)

No, it's not a bird or a plane... it's... A KENWOOD CHEF!!! The above photos are of the Kenwood K-Beater!

Oh! I can't even begin to describe how happy I am to use this! (Maybe I can begin by reminding you how unhappy I am to use those stupid hand beaters, although I must admit the the one I own is a lot better than the one I was cussing about in my very first baking post.)

Look, mum, no hands! I am free to frolic about, free as a bird, and do whatever I please! Like take (slightly) better photos of my cake batter being beaten than I have been for the last two years. With two hands. Huzzah!

*wipes tear of joy from eye*

So anyway, now that I'm done being excited about the mixer I got to use, I wish to put it to you that there is something amiss in this photograph.

That's right. The good folk at Betty Crocker told me on the box that the mix made 24 cupcakes, but it only made 23. Twenty-three. How perfectly scandalous! The batter should magically fit into 24 cupcake wrappers, and not at all depend on my ability to judge what one-twenty-fourth of the batter might be in terms of soup-spoons-full. Although, just quietly, I think I did a pretty good job of it...)

While they were baking, I whipped up some buttercream frosting. At first I was lazy and tried using the whisk attachment because the K-beater was dirty, and this was the result. So then I had to wash TWO beaters, and one of them twice, which kind of countered the whole purpose of my initial laziness. I feel that there is probably a sage proverb about that...

Once I had successfully shaken off the laziness and played about with quantities (don't ask me how much butter and icing sugar I used, cos I just sort of added it until it looked right... I think it was about half a block of butter (softened a little) and maybe a cup or two of icing sugar (added a heaped spoonful at a time), but I can't be sure), I came up with this delicious creaminess.

And then I played about with flavours and colours. I began the day inspired by Cadbury's 'Snack' chocolate (a block filled with sticky, sweet, deliciousness in various flavours), discovered that there is no such thing as pineapple essence (at least, not at Safeway), and so settled on the ones I already had.

This included the below peppermint essence which I would assume is from the seventies, or at the very latest, the early eighties. It has been in our cupboard for as long as I can remember. Long enough ago for - little known fact - pharmaceutical company Faulding to still be making baking products! One can only assume that they offered this service because, back in the day, all essences were based on ethanol, and who better to make an ethanol product containing peppermint oil than a pharmaceutical company?

(FYI, they just don't make things like they used to. I miss alcohol-based essences (they are still available but harder to come by. You can tell the difference because the alcohol will either be listed on the ingredients, or it will have "keep away from naked flame" written on the bottle!), particularly vanilla essence. I think the alcohol element was what made it so good for cleaning your fridge because it actually removed the odour-causing bacteria, not because of the sweet, powerful vanilla smell which merely masks the stink the bacteria make.)

I made peppermint (green), orange (orange! Who'd have thunk!) and rose/Turkish delight (rose pink) flavoured buttercream frosting. I used a drop of green colouring with the peppermint icing (green seems to be a very strong colour, so one drop was enough. Mind you, I did use mum's old McCormick's food colouring, which, again, dates back to my early childhood, so it may have evaporated and intensified a little), along with very little essence because it was so strong. I have no idea how much orange essence I used because the stupid stuff kept running down the side of the bottle instead of neatly dispensing into the mix, but I know I had to use more of that than I did for the peppermint. The orange colour was obtained with a 2:1 ratio of yellow to red colouring, but I think I used about eight drops of yellow and four of red in total for this depth of colour. And I used rosewater to flavour the pink icing, which seems to be quite a subtle flavour, so I added and tasted, added and tasted until it was just right. I used Queen rose pink colouring (large bottle), and again, it was a case of adding just a little at a time until the appropriate colour was reached.

I just want to put it out there and say that seeing these beautiful colours fills me with light and happiness and makes me remember why I love baking. I feel that it's okay to put such freaky-deaky shee-at out there, because most of you are my friends in the real world and are already well aware of the fact that I'm a bit of a weirdo, and those of you who have stumbled across me in other bloggy ways are probably bakers, too, so you'll understand.

I had lots and lots of fun creating different swirly designs with a large star tip, which seems to be the fashion du jour, and I rocked it. Until the bag split, that is, and the tip came off, and I nearly ended up with peppermint frosting everywhere. So for all but one of the green ones, I had to improvise and spread it on with a knife and decorate with various bits and bobs from the cupboard, such as rainbow hail (which, having spent the last six months looking at animal scats (= poo) at work, reminds me of small, colourful versions of antechinus scats!!!), silver cachous (mind your teeth!) and sprinkles. I call this photo "Cupcake Wonderland". They're so very festive :)

I hate to brag, but I really do think this could be the perfect cupcake - chocolate Devil's Food Cake, with rose buttercream frosting. Yummo spagummo!

Phobia quashed.

PS - I did actually branch out a little further during my previous cupcake effort than the Thai Ginger Cupcakes - I took the leftovers, whipped some cream and made my first ever butterfly cakes! I know, I know... nearly twenty nine years and some fairly complicated baking creations, and I was a butterfly cake virgin. Go figure.
Look! Pretty, coloured cupcake wrappers!

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

2011 Ice Cream Cupcake Contest - Thai Ginger Cupcakes


Apparently I have to preface this blog with a picture of the compelted product, simply because the stupid message board on the contest FB page keeps telling me that there's an error with uploading my picture. Hopefully the thumbnail on the link to my blog counts... I'd hate to be disqualified for not having posted the actual photo. Pleeeeeease, competition organisers, pleeeeeease... show me some mercy!!!



ZOMG!!! I totally forgot about this until I was was having a fat week and reading a weight loss blog today (heh. I love irony. I said IRONY, not IRONING!!!).

Also, please forgive the formatting. I wrote the draft in Outlook on 2 different computers, and... well, it decided to do its own thang. Wow, it really is. No matter how many times I highlight the text and change the font size, the font size I am typing in remains smaller than the stuff that came in the email. Plus the margins are all up the creek.

Ok, I may have figured out the font problem. Maybe.

The dealy-o is this:

      You can enter any time through June 15, 2011 (I don't know whether this is inclusive, but for us Australians, Kiwis and various islanders leading the charge towards the International Date Line, that level of detail probably won't be an issue).
      
 You have to blog about your ice cream-cupcake creation before the 15th, including a photo, recipe and link to the posts about the competition, both at www.cupcakeproject.com and at Scoopalicious (done!)
    
  You have to post a photo of your cupcake to the Cupcake Project Facebook Wall (which means that I have to find it!!!), including the title of your cupcake and link to your post in the photo caption
    
  Last but not least, you have to complete the entry form, the link to which is available at cupcakeproject.com.
    
   I opted to make ginger cupcakes with a toasted cocount and lime topping. Let's call them Thai Ginger Cupcakes, because we can (and because they contain some very Thai elements - ginger, lime and coconut. Note that next time I would consider experimenting with using green tea icecream instead of vanilla and ginger)

SO! To the recipe (and to the seriously retarded formatting. It just gets worse. I'm so sorry):

THE CAKE:
125g butter
1c sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2c plain flour, sifted
1tsp bicarb soda
2tsp ground ginger
1tsp cinnamon
2tsp mixed spice
2tbsp treacle
1c milk




Pretty self explanatory - Get out your favourite red mixing bowl.

Cream butter and sugar. Eat some because you have no self control at all. 



Add eggs, add milk and flour alternately in 3 batches and stir until smooth. Stare at the batter, thinking "I'm surprised they didn't use brown sugar in this recipe. That would have made it a richer colour and less sweet" and then realise you haven't added the warmed treacle (zap it in the microwave, ten seconds at a time, until it is sufficiently runny to part company with the bowl easily). Add warmed treacle. Lick treacle spoon. Marvel at how bitter it is, yet what a nice flavour it has.



Fill your patty pans to about half what you normally would, and bake at 180OC (160OC F/F) until they "look right", which should be about 15-20 minutes (the recipe I used was for a cake, which should be baked for 50 or so minutes, I believe in a square pan, but I can't really remember, but what I DO remember is that it said you should ice it with pink icing. Ahh, CWA Country Classics, how I loveth thee!)


THE TOPPING (not an exact science):

1a. Take vanilla icecream out of the freezer and let it sit on the bench to make it easier to handle (notice how little icecream we go through? I actually had to buy icecream for the express purpose of entering this competition!)
1b. Toast a little under a cup of shredded coconut in a nonstick frypan until lightly browned in places. Watch out - it burns very easily!
2. Revel in the fact that you're marrying a man who brought a microplane zester into the relationship (seriously. How awesome is that!)
3. Zest a lime and toss it through the cocount. Realise during editing how close that typo was to a word that you really hate. Make sure your readers know that you meant "coconut"!

4. Chop up NAKED ginger and mix through icecream (crystallised ginger would be too sweet. I decided to add ginger to the icecream to make it less sweet)

ASSEMBLY:

Once cool (unless you're impatient, like me), trim cupcakes down to a good height if need be. Smoosh some vanilla icecream around until you can make it hold the shape you wanted (I used one of those little Pyrex food prep dishes as a mould, and that worked quite well).

 Roll the top in the cocounut/lime mixture. Return to the freezer if the icecream is a little runny. Take them out more quickly than you should because you really, really want to eat one. Bemoan the fact that in order to trim the cupcake you had to handle the wrapper, which made it all stupid and limp, and realise that next time, for presentation purposes, you should probably pop a fresh cupcake wrapper on the outside


(Note that I stole the topping idea from Donna Hay's Instant Entertainer, which has a "recipe" for these delicious icecream sandwiches. Take 2 icecream wafers (and you could probably fancy them up by using those thin, round wafers that are often served with cheese, which the recipe may actually call for, but all I had was the regular wafers, plus they're more robust than the thin ones) and put a slice of vanilla icecream in it. Roll the exposed icecream in the coconut/lime mixture. ATTENTION ALL FRIENDS WHO I OCCASIONALLY INVITE TO DINNER: PLEASE DISREGARD THIS INCREDIBLY SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE DESSERT RECIPE, AND CONTINUE TO COMMENT ON HOW FANCY AND DELICATE THIS DESSERT IS. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.)

And that's about it.

Now all you have to do is eat it!
Oh yeah. And blog about them. And then enter the contest. That's the hard part. Especially when you want to go to bed...

Sunday, 28 March 2010

I love programmers!

Just now I was mucking about with the settings on my blog, and I discovered that you can actually post... well, posts... direct from your email account. You can also send them to your blog as a draft. And you can imbed images in it.


Like this. (That's me all prettied up for Lori and Rob's wedding this arvo.)


OK well that didn't actually imbed but it does appear to have attached . I wonder how that will turn out. I also wonder whether I would be able to make it imbed in Outlook. Anyway, I'm sure I'll figure out the finer points of it sooner or later. But all I know is that now, when I think of awesome things to blog about while I'm at work, I can actually do it! Wicked!!! (As it turns out, it did imbed - at the top of the page - so I just dragged it down.)


Thankyou, blogspot programmers, for having the foresight to know that The Man would decide that blogging does not constitute valuable use of work time, and that I would need this feature.


Love, Ness xoxo

PS - FYI, Settings --> email --> choose either direct post or draft post, and make up an "email address" for it