Artsy Fartsy

The camouflage cake was a hit.  I used this cake (yum, like a big, moist brownie), with this frosting.  Add about a gallon of food coloring, one tank and several army men, and you get birthday perfection.

I frosted the cake the night before the party and had a terrible thought when I woke up that what if all the green frosting colors melted together in the refrigerator?  I was so worried that the mixing and blending and smoothing of camo shapes with various palate knives would be for nothing and we’d have a big nasty green blob cake!  Luckily that wasn’t the case.

Here it was the night before just before I found that it was almost too big to fit in my refrigerator and almost had a breakdown on the kitchen floor.

And here it is just before the candles were lit (sorry it’s a bit washed out).  I made the army guys look like they were holding the candles.  It was such a fun cake to make.  Now if only Charm City Cakes would open a Connecticut branch…

Last night I was trying to come up with a quick and easy way to use the ingredients I already had in my kitchen to make a fun and interesting treat to take to one of the barbecues we’re going to this weekend. Among the random ingredients I had on hand were graham crackers, a bag of stale mini marshmallows (only the best for my friends), a bag of chocolate chips, and half a bag of mini chocolate chips. Hmm… I smell S’mores.

Now you may remember when I tried to make S’mores Becky Balls (on a stick). Those, while delicious, were a failure. I figured that this new idea couldn’t possible fail. I would warm four mini marshmallows on graham crackers in the oven, then smoosh them, sandwich-style, with another graham cracker and dip the whole business in melted chocolate. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Well… they’re pretty. And they’re good in the way that anything dipped in chocolate is good, but they just don’t taste s’mores-y enough. Perhaps if I had used fresh marshmallows? Full-size marshmallows? Or maybe Marshmallow Fluff? Ohhh… Fluff! I bet that would have worked. Oh well, I’m out of chocolate and graham crackers. If anyone has the urge to try this out with Fluff, let me know how it comes out!

A couple of weeks ago I bought a large tub of plain yogurt and I have no idea why.  I must have been planning to make something but I can’t remember what it was.  I can’t let a big tub of yogurt go bad, so I’ve been using it here and there - in a potato salad, a creamy tomato sauce, etc. - but tonight I looked at that sad, purposeless container in the fridge and thought: frozen yogurt.

I had to look all over for my ice cream machine, I almost forgot I had one.  I used to use it so often, I considered buying another bowl for it because the one bowl I have takes about 24 hours to refreeze and sometimes that was too much time.  It’s been a couple of years since my last batch of homemade ice cream, so I dusted off the machine and started trying to figure out how to make this yogurt into something delicious.

The last time I made frozen yogurt, I tossed vanilla yogurt into the machine and hoped for the best.  What  I got didn’t taste like dessert, it tasted like cold yogurt (go figure).  This time I had to make it better.  Since I was using plain yogurt, I knew it was going to need sweetening.   I went to the fridge… well I had a batch of “nectar” I made for the hummingbird feeder.  It’s really just simple syrup.  That would do.  I had a third of a jar of caramel ice cream topping, too.  Yum.  And half of a chocolate candy bar I shouldn’t have bought at the store.  Perfect!

Let me tell you… if you’re afraid to cook, go buy yourself an ice cream machine.  You can’t go wrong.  I let the yogurt-syrup-caramel blend in the machine for about 20 minutes, then layered it with the chopped chocolate and froze it for an hour.  It was amazing.

I can’t think of anything else to say now because the inner battle I’m having is distracting me.  Part of me wants desperately to go back to the refrigerator and eat more.  Part of me is so full it wants to throw up.  That’s some good frozen yogurt.

On Saturday (remember back then when it was sunny and warm?) we had a wonderful late afternoon of sitting on the deck with friends and enjoying the homemade hummus I had just whipped up in my food processor. I know some of you are rolling your eyes, but seriously, if you love hummus, you need to try making it yourself. I found the recipe in this month’s Cooks Illustrated magazine. It requires simple and inexpensive ingredients and I made it in about two and a half minutes. The most exotic ingredient is Tahini which is a sesame paste that’s very much like peanut butter, and can be found in almost any grocery store. I bought mine at Stop & Shop in the natural foods section. It comes in a container the size of a jar of peanuts and should cost less than $5. Go find it, then make this hummus and die happy.

Restaurant-Style Hummus
from Cooks Illustrated May/June 2008

I added a bit more water than the original recipe suggested (1/4 cup) because I like a softer texture to my hummus. With 1/4 cup of water the hummus was still tasty, but it was dry and more of the consistency of paste.  You can decide what texture you like your humus and alter your water accordingly.

3 tablespoons lemon juice (or the juice from two lemons)
1/4 - 1/2 cup water (see note above)
6 tablespoons Tahini
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 14-oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cumin
pinch of cayenne

1. Combine the lemon juice and water in one small bowl (or measuring cup). Combine the Tahini and olive oil in another small bowl (or measuring cup).
2. Process the chickpeas, garlic, salt, cumin, and cayenne in a food processor until almost fully ground, about 15 seconds. Scrape down the bowl, then with the machine running, pour in the lemon-water mixture and process for one minute. Scrape down the bowl again, then with the machine running, pour in the Tahini-oil mixture and process for another minute.
3. Transfer mixture to a bowl, cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes to let flavors blend. Then eat the whole bowl yourself, or be nice and share it with friends. It’s perfect with my new favorite chips, Tostitos gold corn chips. Mmmmm….

It would be nice if I had a picture of the hummus to share, but I was too busy shoveling it into my mouth to stop and take a picture.  Yes, it was that good.

This has not been my week.  It started when I made a lasagna and realized, as I began to assemble it, that I forgot to buy mozzarella.  Next I took the doorknob off of the danger door so I could paint it and not only did the paint come out looking like crap, I now can’t figure out how to get the knob back on.  Then I cut out fabric to make two new tote bags, only to realize too late that I cut them out the wrong size.  Sigh…  This should have been a sign.  But no, I continued to try new things and, of course, screw them up.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a dessert that I wanted to make.  It’s based off of a candy-type thing a friend of my sister’s makes with crushed Oreos mixed with cream cheese and dipped in chocolate.  They’re frighteningly good and we call them Becky Balls.  I was wondering if I could combine other cookies with other cream cheesy things to make different varieties of Becky Balls and I decided to try making s’mores balls with graham cracker crumbs and marshmallow fluff.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Then I saw these adorable cupcake pops from Bakerella and fireworks went off in my head.  What if I put s’mores Becky Balls onto lollipop sticks?!  How cute would that be?   In my head it was cute.  In real life, not so much.

I mixed one sleeve of crushed graham crackers with 4oz. of softened cream cheese and about a cup of Fluff.  Then I rolled them into sticky little balls and put them in the fridge where Luke saw them and asked, “are those meatballs?”  No.  After they chilled and firmed up, I put them on sticks and dipped them in melted chocolate.  My hopes were high, I mean, see how fun they look?  And I just know they’re going to taste good.  Chocolate, graham crackers, cream cheese, and Fluff?  Yum.

Yum?  Yes.  Success?  No.  After the third pop was being dipped, I heard a “thunk” on the counter and saw that the first pop I dipped had fallen off the stick and hit the counter in a sticky mess.  Crap.  Maybe I pushed the stick in too far.  I tried a few more.  “thunk” “thunk” “thunk”.  GAH!  OK, maybe the chocolate is too warm and the Fluff is melting.  I stirred the melted chocolate to cool it off a little and I put the other balls I made onto sticks.  Those were the same graham crackers and 4oz. cream cheese with a cup of peanut butter.  Mmmm…  I dipped two peanut butter pops and watched as they both broke in half and slid down the sticks in slow motion.

So disappointing.  The sticks are obviously not working for these so I decided to salvage what was left and make them candies instead of pops.  Oh well.  They’re still yummy, just not as cute.  And the s’mores ones - they’re fantastic.  Better than the peanut butter ones, if you can believe that.

Maybe I’ll take the weekend off from trying new things and start over again next week.  My luck, I’ll set something on fire or stitch myself to the sewing machine table next.

I have to confess, I have this mental… deficiency.  It’s a problem with my wiring.  It involves shopping and it drives Luke up the wall.  He will frequently be looking for something in the pantry, like a can of corn, and find, rather than the plain golden corn, a can of creamed corn.  Creamed corn?  Who buys creamed corn?  I do, by accident.  I get overwhelmed by the variety and similar labels of everything in the store, and then I grab one of what I think is the right thing, only to realize after I get it home, that’s it’s not the right thing.  Corn, tomatoes, shredded cheese, it happens all the time.  And not just with food.

My sister got to experience this phenomenon recently while I was in Kohl’s trying to find undies for Luke.  I know his size, I know the basic fit he likes, and I know that I can’t stand white undies on men so I was looking for the colorful ones.  That’s three separate factors to keep track of in the midst of a dozen manufacturers.  I’d find some that were the right color and the right fit and realize they weren’t the right size.  I’d grab one that was the right size and the right color and look in my cart to see I had the wrong fit.  My head nearly exploded.  Andrea tried to help but I told her I was going to give up and tell Luke to buy his own damn undies.

This short-circuit in my head doesn’t really bother me all that much.  It’s frustrating, but I also think it’s kind of funny, a Lisa-ism.  I don’t do it on purpose, yet the harder I try to avoid it, the more inevitable it is that it happens, so I have to just go with it.  The only time it really annoys me is when I screw up major ingredients that I need for a recipe.

One of my favorite easy recipes is Sloppy Joe Pot Pie, which I got from the Bisquick website.  Only, since I only read the recipe the first time I made it, mine is completely different from that recipe.  Namely, I like the barbecue Sloppy Joe sauce, and I like to add a can of corn, and lots more cheese, oh and some other things, too.  Really, you can’t go wrong with this recipe, and I am a living example that you can not screw it up.

Driving home from work tonight, I was mentally going through my pantry trying to decide what to make for dinner.  I knew I had ground turkey in the fridge, and I was certain I bought the Sloppy Joe sauce last week, so I decided on Sloppy Joe Pot Pie.  I stopped at the store because I knew I didn’t have any Bisquick (actually I prefer Jiffy mix, but they’re practically the same), and  I grabbed some corn and extra cheese just to be safe.  I got home, threw the turkey on the stove, preheated the oven, and looked in the pantry for the Sloppy Joe sauce.   Which was not there, but you know what was?  Baked beans.  Because you know where the Sloppy Joe sauce is sold in the store?  You guessed it.  Next to the baked beans.  Now what?

I decided to wing it and make up my own sauce.  I combined taco sauce with barbecue sauce and ketchup and I think I got it!  It smelled just like the Sloppy Joe sauce.  It was all comically down hill from there.  I couldn’t find my deep dish pie pan to make the Sloppy Joe Pot PIE, so I dragged out a big loaf pan instead.  I put in my ground turkey sauce creation and went to layer in my corn.  Guess what?  I bought the wrong corn!  Only it wasn’t too bad.  It wasn’t creamed, it was Mexicorn, which actually went well with the taco sauce.  Then I added my cheese and Jiffy mix and threw in the oven, at the wrong temperature I realize now that I’ve seen the Bisquick recipe again.  Oh well, I smell it cooking now and it’ll be delicious, I’m sure of it.

So if you’re a bad cook, or a clumsy shopper like me, take heart.  This is a recipe for you.  Follow the link to the Sloppy Joe Pot Pie recipe from Bisquick and have at it.  Add to it, change it, I guarantee it will not be bad.  I’ve made it with Gardenburger crumbles instead of turkey.  I’ve gone without the egg.  I’ve added sour cream and cottage cheese layered under the Bisquick, I even tried spinach and mozzarella.  And now tonight, I made it in a loaf pan without the sauce…  It’s all good.  Go and enjoy.  I hear my oven timer going off, it’s time for me to go enjoy mine.

Thursday I sewed. (You knew that already.)

Friday we repainted our bedroom.

Saturday we had friends over (I baked a cake).

Sunday we celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday.

And here’s a bonus picture from my weekend. Sunday I was overcome with incredible willpower and did not slam the dryer door and turn it on high.

Reality is not a happy thing to get back to.  After a long and blissful two weeks off, I’m back to the real world today.  Alarm clocks, traffic, footwear, and having to leave my sleepy pup and sleepy husband home while I go to that icky place called “work”, it all sucks.  I much prefer being home.

The last weekend of my vacation was a good one.  On Friday, Luke got home from a long night at work and found me, holding the car keys, all dressed and ready to go… somewhere!  OUT!  I wanted to go anywhere.  I told Luke I wanted to go learn something.  Go to a museum or something, anything!  So Luke took a brief nap and then, rather than go out and expand our brain cells, we went and killed some.  I had to go to Manchester to run some errands and I bribed Luke to go with me by offering him snacks and beers at Chili’s.  Only instead of Chili’s, I remembered that there was a bar called the Blue Turtle that I had seen while Christmas shopping because it’s next to the Barnes and Noble.  It looks cute and neon from the outside so I said let’s check it out.  Holy cow, it was so worth it.  It’s not only a bar - it’s an ARCADE!  We ordered some beers and a game card and went out to play air hockey.  Then we raced motorcycles and rode a virtual roller coaster.  It was so cool.  I love arcades.  I was sipping a Guiness and thinking of our friend Megan, so I sent her a text and it turned out she was shoe-shopping in the same mall!  We met up for some more fun and chatting and shoe lust, as Megan had just taken advantage of a serious shoe sale at Filene’s.

Saturday we spent the day at Paula and Karlo’s for Paula’s Annual Girl Party, as I like to call it.  Luke came along to occupy Karlo, since they are not girls, and the girls commenced having fun.  I brought my camera with the full intention of taking pictures, but only managed to take several pictures of this girl:

And a few of this one:

Pretty sad photo documenting on my part.  But we did get to hang out and talk and eat and have fun, as usual.

Sunday I woke up feeling sad.  It was the end of my vacation, the longest one I’ve had since I got married and went on my honeymoon.  It was the end of my free time with Luke and my alarm clock-free mornings in a snuggly warm bed with a snoring Molly under the covers next to me.  We all lazed in bed for a while and then decided we should get up and start the day.  We ended up on the couch watching Myth Busters and drinking coffee until we were both embarrassed at how lazy we were.  I got up to clean the bathroom (woo!) and Luke made some meatballs.  Then it was time for Luke to go to bed.  Boo!  That meant I was almost time for ME to go to work, big boo!  I was so sad I couldn’t even make anything last night.  Instead I read magazines and watched Iron Chef.  Very pathetic.

I did get to see the new Jamie Oliver cooking show though, that was the only bright spot in my Sunday.  I now see that have a serious British fascination obsession.  I must have been born on the wrong continent.  I love British slang and British books, and especially British chefs.  I have always loved Jamie Oliver because he’s scruffy and cute and cooks delicious simple meals, but I’d watch his show just to hear him give out recipes amounts in grams and kilos.  I love that!

Anyhow, reality, that’s what I was talking about, right?  Well to suspend reality just a liiittle bit more, I have an appointment tonight for my very first pedicure.  My sister and I are going together.  Maybe it’ll make the rest of this lousy day disappear and make me feel like I’m back on vacation.  Sigh… I hope so.

This year, to thank the nice mail delivery person who has to drive up our long driveway to deliver over-sized mail, and the nice maintenance man at work who vacuums my office (you have to work here to appreciate how rare it is that I get my office vacuumed almost daily), and anyone else who has done something nice for me, I baked thank you cookies.

These are gingerbread cookies from my Gooseberry Patch cookie book, and they’re mostly made of butter which means they’re delicious. I cut out various sizes of circles, and then with a simple thinned down buttercream frosting, I piped out “thank you” or “thanks” and even a few “gracias” when I got tired of writing the same thing a hundred times over on the big ones. On the smaller ones I made snowflakes, which was way more fun. I also made a few batches of pumpkin butterscotch cookies, put them all in clear bags and tied them with silver ribbon. Ta-da! Delicious Christmas thanks.

I wish I could send one to each of you who reads this sometimes lame, sometimes boring, always chatty website every day. Thanks a bunch!

In the spaces between beading and sewing and paper-crafting lately, I’ve been baking. It is the Christmas season, after all. Time to make so many batches of cookies that they start coming out of your ears. Last week was a week of baking mishaps, but really, is it ever truly a mishap when it’s made of sugar and butter? After scoring big with Dorie Greenspan’s most delicious World Peace Cookies, I turned back to my new favorite cookbook, Baking From My House To Yours, and decided to make the Brownie Buttons. These are tiny brownies baked in a mini muffin pan, then dipped in white chocolate. Mmmmm… As mysterious as the World Peace Cookies were for having no eggs in them, the Brownie Buttons were similarly curious, having almost no ingredients and only two tablespoons of flour. Unfortunately when I pulled my mini muffin pan out of the cabinet, I found that some strange chemical reaction had been happening which caused the non-stick coating to bubble off of the pan while it sat. Yuck. I scraped the flakes off and scrubbed the pan, but didn’t want to bake the brownies directly in the pan in case the coating was still flaking off. Instead I used little paper liners, figuring that I’d peel them off when the brownies cooled so I could dip them in the white chocolate and they’d look as pretty as they were supposed to. Well, it was a nice thought. The paper will absolutely not come off of the brownies. They taste good, that’s for sure. (I had to “dispose” of the brownies I crushed and tore apart while trying to pry the paper off.) But I can’t make my pretty Brownie Buttons, so in a bag they went, labeled “Failed Experiment - PLEASE EAT” so Luke would know it was safe to taste them.

Then I baked a new batch of World Peace Cookies and screwed those up, too. I didn’t realize until it was too late that I didn’t have enough brown sugar. I substituted granulated sugar for the bit if brown sugar that I was short, but knew that brown sugar provides moisture to the dough, so figured I’d wait to see how dry they were an maybe add a little water if needed. I also wanted to try making them with dark, dark chocolate to see how they’d taste. I used Lindt 85% cacao chocolate that I chopped into little bits. One of the keys to this recipe is not overmixing the dough. In fact, undermixing it is the best thing to do. Unfortunately, the missing brown sugar problem resulted in crumbly dough, forcing me to add water and mix more than I really wanted to. The dough didn’t feel right as I was wrapping it up to chill in the fridge, and the next day when I baked them, they came out all wrong. First off, they were flat, which I think is a result if the extra mixing. And secondly, the dark chocolate was so dark, it was bitter. But the cookies still had a great texture, they were soft and chewy, and there was no way I was going to throw them out. Vanilla ice cream to the rescue! The sweetness that was missing from the dark chocolate was replaced perfectly by making the cookies into ice cream sandwiches. They are so amazingly good that I have to force myself to forget that they’re in the freezer. I almost ate this one when I took it out to photograph, but forced myself to put it back.

Then on Monday, I was trying so hard to not leave the house at all, but we didn’t have any of the basics, no milk for breakfast, no English muffins. Luke had nothing to eat for breakfast (at 10:30pm) but I really didn’t want to get dressed and go to the grocery store so I decided I’d make muffins! I had a can of pumpkin in the pantry that was aching to be cracked open. Pumpkin muffins it would be. I got everything out, preheated the oven, and realized that I didn’t have any eggs. Grrr! I would normally pester my neighbors for eggs in a situation like this, but they were away in Maine and Luke won’t let me get chickens, so I had to come up with another plan. I turned to my absolutely favorite cookbook, Cookwise. It explains the science of cooking, the hows and whys. If your cookies come out flat, this book will tell you why, and how to fix it. Don’t have any butter and want to use oil? This book will tell you if you can get away with that. I love this book. So I looked up eggs. What do eggs really DO in baking? Can I go without them? It turns out that in baking, eggs are really a binder to hold the crumb together. They also provide moisture, but mostly they provide structure. Fine! I can put up with crumbly muffins. But will they rise? I can’t put up with flat muffins. Those are called pucks. Just to be safe, I added a little more baking soda and baking powder to the batter, both of those provide the rising power, and I added a bit more pumpkin to add the moisture lost from not adding the eggs. Amazingly, they came out perfect. They’re light and fluffy and crumbly and delicious! This is what I love about baking, and truly the point I wanted to get to nine hundred and forty nine words ago, don’t be afraid of baking! Baking is fun, and things don’t always turn out the way they were supposed to, but they still turn out. Make something else out of them. The brownies that won’t part with their liners - I’m going to crumble and put in the freezer to sprinkle over ice cream later, or make into a pie crust. If the muffins hadn’t turned out, I would have crumbled in the food processor for a crumb topping, or at least given them to the birds to eat, but at least I tried. That’s what matters. Baking is fun, and you can always eat your mistakes!