Thinking Ahead to Birthday

I've always LOVED these little axolotl salamander guys since I first saw them at OMSI about a lifetime ago. So cool. And this morning I found this tutorial on craftmagazine.com on how to make a BIRTHDAY cake in the shape of one! EEEEEEeeeee (breathe gasp) EEEEEEEeeeee! I know exactly what I'm making myself for my birthday... and then I'll send myself a thank you card.

Cooking in '08

I've been busy cooking for the last couple months of good, old 2008. I more or less promised myself not to show anyone these recipes because they make me look like a god in the kitchen, but then I figured that most of you don't live with me and I can still wow them folks with these. I've tried all of these without any messups and with really great end results. Plus, all of them are on the internets so I don't have to mess with a cook book that won't stay open. Anywho, enjoy these during the whole new year thing.

Baked Pasta Casserole

(one of the ultimates of ultimates lately)

Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sparkled Ginger Cookies

(I got Jessie to eat almost a whole batch even after she knew they were vegan... which says something about how awesome these are.)

Classic Apple Pie

(I made that for Not-so-Turkey-Turkeyday and it turned out beautimous, I did use my own pie crust recipe, so I'm not vouching for theirs.)

Pumpkin Scones

(I can't stress how mind blowingly good these are. I gave the recipe to Star and I think she made at least two batches within the first week.)

Apple Crostada

(very tasty, very buttery)

Honey Mousse with Pomegranate

(This is another one of those foods that make you want to roll your eyes back and ask "If this isn't some sort of religious experience, what is?" So good. Mine turned out a tad more yellow than the picture but that's because I used local, happy eggs with happy egg yolks.)

Swedish Walnut Tea Ring

(My first success with yeast, and a tasty success to boot!)

Gingerbread Cake

(this was tasty as heck however I decided to do something silly. I tossed it right out of the pan onto a rack after it had cooled, instead of treating it like brownies and cutting it up while it was still in the pan. Oops. I lost a good chunk out of the middle but that just meant I got to munch on that before everyone showed up.)

Country Crust Bread

(This is my new favorite bread and also the only bread I've gotten to actually turn out like it's supposed to. Ohhh new bread... you smell so good!)

And yes Star, I do know that I haven't put up pictures of those cupcakes I made, but Jessie got into them like a fox in a hen house and before I knew it they were gone. I guess I'll just have to make some more, now won't I? I have my eye on those hi-hats in that book...

21

Evan's 21! We threw a birthday party at Laser Fun Tag or something like that, over in Lacey. That was fun. Then I made him a cake (which was AMAZING! I love this recipe and I think we'll be seeing more of it crop up around birthdays) and Jessie helped me frost it. That too was fun. And then we had bunches of people over for twister, Strawberry drinkies and snacks. We wound up watching Live Free or Die Hard until 3 am. Then Jessie spent the night and this morning we got to clean up all the frosting, strawberry stickiness and empty bottles left in weird places. It was all soooo much fun!

Evan is a huge Mac fan so I think I chose a totally appropriate cake theme.
Jessie, helpin' me frost and dribble.

Thanks Ben... Happy Birthday Evan!

Brithday Birthday Birthday Day of Birthie-ness

I had my birthday party on Sunday. The 2-0. So we decided to throw a party at the house because it's supremely difficult to get people up here and it's got hella room for people and their bodies so it just makes sense to have a party of any sort up here.

The people.

I think this was in the middle of our slightly epic mario cart N64 tournament. We didn't actually finish it because with that many people it takes a while, so we watched the equally epic Superbad movie instead of finishing the game. All of this was after eating a diabetes-triggering amount of waffles, chocolate chip waffles, syrup, cool aide, off-brand Captain Crunch cereal, and then this sweet cake that Star made me. Oh, the food theme was breakfast foods, I think I forgot to mention that. I like breakfast foods, I like breakfast for dinner, it's my party SO that means we eat waffles for dinner on my birthday. So there. It was awesome.

The cake.

Cake had dinosaur sprinkles, chocolate frosting, little round crunchy sprinkles, captain crunch, marshmallows and huge Ikea candles. Plus, I'm getting younger because I only had four candles. Four was a good year anyway so I'm not too worried about it.


Katherine and Peter gave me bunny peeps and a bunny drawing for my birthday (infinitely appropriate, I think). Towards half way or somewhere during the party we decided to nuke the bunnies. Not the real Monty, but the little neon pink squishy ones. This was not as exciting as it sounds. But it did give us flat road-kill bunnies.

The present.

Before and after shots from the day after.

.... And Then I Was Dubbed the Best Chef in the WORLD

We went to the Standa grocery store (the only "supermarket" in Florence and I say supermarket in the broadest of senses, it's really really tiny) down the street to pick up things for our first dinner in the house. We've eaten out or with the class up until now so tonight was a special occasion.

While at the store I found this cake in a bag thing. And of course, you say to yourself "Cake... in a bag!? Why, this is genious!" just like I did and then immediately buy it. So it comes with everything and the instructions were pretty basic even if they were in Italian. So all you do is pour it into a pan and shove it in the oven. Which is

A.) genious

and

B.) totally fool-proof.

Until you remember that you don't know how to work this strange oven in a foreign country and that you don't read instructions very well when they're in English and will therefore be much worse off when they're in Italian.

At this point you should realize that something fabulous happens during the course of this experiment to make it blog-worthy.

One of my flat-mates, Taya, smoothing out this totally awesome purchase in a cake pan.

Alright at this point we've figured out how to work the gas oven (something none of us has ever done) AND succeeded in avoiding death by accidental gas leak. So at this point the story will not turn into fodder for a new CSI episode. I stick the pan in and sit down to watch over the sweets for the next 30 minutes while it bakes. 3.5 minutes later I'm throwing open the oven as smoke starts to seep around the door. Of course the burner at the top of the oven is hot and OF COURSE you don't stick the cake right up next to them. Right?

WRONG.

That's exactly what I do. But since I'm sitting there I was able to save it thus far. It continues to bake on the bottom shelf for the remain 30 minutes and, when the knife test comes out clean, is pulled from it's oven-womb and into the cold, cruel world. My next BRILLIANT idea is to quickly flip it over and try to tap it out of the pan, pretty much immediately.

Have you ever started to do something and mid-execution thought to yourself "This is NOT a good idea" but continue to do whatever it is you're in the process of botching anyway because you just can't stop yourself? Well this was the result of just such an incident.

So I'm sitting there trying to come up with a way to repair it.

Frosting? Good thought, but there isn't any.
Whipped cream? Another good one, but none to be found.
Smooshing? BRILLIANCE! And I have two hands with which to smoosh!

I've got to give Taya credit for this one. Since we couldn't glue it back together or really even scrape it into a shape, she came up with the idea of making a jelly-roll, or something which involved rolling the cake. Sounds good in theory, I mean, it couldn't get much worse so what the heck?

Anyway, long story short this poo-log was the end result. It tasted fabulous, so kudos on the cake-in-a-bag invention, BOOOOoooo to my cooking skills. Perhaps next time. I hear it comes in apple cake as well....