Foul Mouthed Cookies

So I made my friend Chelsey some cookies for Christmas... Chelsey lives in Japan, so I had to bake and mail them out fairly early, like 1st week of December early.... They were brown sugar cookies that had blue jolly rancher windows...

Cute no? But then there was the "Law of Letters", the "Law of Letters" states that if you have tactile letters of any kind, you must group them into naughty words. This happens often with alphabet magnets, alphabet cookies, and chocolate. So at around 2:30am in the morning (I had cookie issues so I had make like 6 batches... I also started late...) me and the Boy spelt out the following...

Apologies if I offended your delicate sensibilities...

Holiday Baking

So the past few days have been devoted to my annual holiday baking. Every year I make gingerbread following this recipe with a few minor adjustments, I double all the spices, and add some nutmeg. Yesterday I think I developed an RSI from all the piping I did.

This year I also made red velvet shortbread , which looked and smelt alot better than they tasted, but it was very festive. I used this recipe from the cookie exchange, and Boy thought they were very tasty so maybe it was a personal taste thing...

However, the piece de resistance in this year's goodie bag, was the hot chocolate on a stick. I made peppermint marshmallows (that worked!) to go along with the chocolate cubes, and they are delicious if I do say so myself. Fairly easy to make too if you don't go though all the bother of making your own marshmallows but you should, cause it's easier than you think and so much more tastier than store bought....

Hot chocolate cubes (to be speared with sticks)

adapted from Foodie with a Family

• ½ cup heavy cream
• 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk (1 1/4 cups)
• 3 cups semisweet chocolate (3 cups chopped chocolate bars or chips)
• 3/4 cup unsweetened baking chocolate (4 ounces)
• wooden sticks, lollipop sticks, candy canes or bamboo skewers
• optional, crushed candy canes, marshmallows and/or cocoa powder

Directions

1. Combine the cream and sweetened condensed milk and heat on medium until it steams, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching
2. Remove the dairy from the heat and add all the chocolate. Let the chocolate sit and melt for 10min
3. Stir the chocolate mixture until its shiny and smooth, add any flavouring you want at this point, i added a tablespoon of vanilla, but expresso powder or even a splash of frangelico would be nice.
4. Pour it out into a 8"x 8" (or 9"x9") pan lined with tinfoil
5. Let the chocolate sit for 4hrs or up to overnight to set, cut into cubes with a knife heated with hot water and then wiped dry
6. Spear the cut cubes with a stick

For the Peppermint Marshmallows I used Alton Brown's recipe, but used peppermint extract instead of vanilla.

Anyways, if I don't post again, Merry Christmas Everyone! Hopefully there is alot of delicious baked goods wherever you are too!

Holy Crap!

Has it been 2 yrs already? Thanks Boy for eating all my baking FAILs and dealing with my crazy!

Cooking in Colour

Holy crap, an actual post! A post not about stuff or people I think are cool... fancy that!

So my best friend Dani had a really crappy week, and she also has a pair of lucky rainbow underpants. I used to have lucky Hello Kitty underpants, but then Winners had a sale on Hello Kitty underpants and now my panty drawer is suffering from a Hello Kitty over population.... so yeah, Hello Kitty underpants have had their luck seriously diluted.... Anyway, enough about my underpants... Dani had a seriously crappy week, so I decided to get my bake on and made her some lucky rainbow cupcakes! I used this recipe (the 1-2-3-4 cake), well I halved it since I don't need to be rollin' in cupcakes, and then split the cake batter equally into four bowls, dyed each quarter bit of batter with food colouring and then layered them into the cupcake liners... kinda a bit more work then blapping the white cake batter into a pan, but much more visually striking. I then made this frosting, but a) I didn't make enough of it, and b) I don't think I whipped it enough because while it tasted good, it still had a kind of buttery texture. The thing is I whipped it for a good 15min on high, and that's the longest I've ever kept my standmixer on, and I was worried for the motor. But I find recipes all the time that say use the standmixer for half an hour to 45min at a time so I suppose I was just being overprotective of my standmixer... When all was said and done, I brought the cupcakes along to the Dr.Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog and Buffy Double feature and they were much appreciated. I kinda wish I remembered to bring my camera so I would've a had a picture of an actual person enjoying my food as supposed to just pictures of food... blerg, next time Gadget! Next Time!

Dish cloth? What dish cloth? I don't see a dish cloth in the background....

Oh and for the past two weeks it's been bitterly cold, like -40°C, with wind and snow, and probably ice nasties falling from the sky... So while I had stuff to do and places to go, I opted to stay in way more than going out. So last, last weekend I made gnocchi, beet gnocchi to be exact so that explains the excessive pink-y-ness of the above two pictures. Gnocchi is an italian dumpling pasta that's normally made with potatoes in southern Italy, or ricotta cheese in northern Italy. I made the ricotta kind since the gnocchi is supposed to be a bit lighter and because I didn't want to boil, peel and mash potatoes. I followed this recipe since I had some leftover roasted beets, but added some more flour, about a 3/4 of a cup or so. To form the gnocchi, I didn't use the spoon out and form into balls with my hands method, because I'm lazy and didn't really like the idea of pink beet hands. Instead liberally floured my counter and then took about a quarter of the dough, rolled it out into a snake that was about 1" in diameter and then sliced the log into 1" sections. I then got fancy and rolled the little pillows around with a fork in the flour so they would get ridges, but that's completely optional. So after all that work I froze them and then promptly forgot about then for two weeks. Finally last night, being too cold to fathom going to the grocery store, I brought out the gnocchi. Normally you just throw the gnocchi into boiling water, wait until they float and then roll them in a bit of butter and call it dinner, but I decided to throw in some sautéed peas and spinach and fry up the gnocchi so they would be crispy on the outside. So good! Even Boy really liked it, and he spent the entire evening I spent making the damn things calling then yuckies instead of gnocchi. The beet flavour wasn't really that strong, but man, was it sure pink... I liked to pretend they were little organ bits...

I have a fear of pasta making, more specifically, a fear of an uber pasta FAIL. Gnocchi is like the first step into pasta making, they're a dough and proportions and hoping to all hell that they'll boil up right, but it's alot less fussy than like... making your own spaghetti. One day...after I buy the pasta maker attachment for my standmixer... I will attempt my own pasta...one day!

Current Girl Crush

Girl Crush

Something or someone that I find amazingly awesome, so mind blowing and inspiring that I must tell other people (usually it's Boy, but oh look, I just started a blog...). It has nothing to do with physical, or romantic attaction, just pure awesomeness.

So my current Girl Crush is....hine!

She is a japanese artist currently residing in Vancouver, I believe her speciality is needle felting, but she does some graphic design, stop motion animation and regular felt cloth crafting too. Either way, I find her stuff amazing, and you should check her out!

The video posted at the top is *another* amazingly crafty video by They Might be Giants, who are well on the their way to becoming a new Girl Crush, if only for their music videos...and I also dig their music too. I love the little felt atomic particles, the felt nucleus is so damn cute!

Here's the stop motion video she made that for etsy

Oh, and just so you know, previous girl crushes have been a roasted garlic havarti cheese, fluevog boots, Natalie from Bake and Destroy, and a robot designed to study social interaction. So these post will totally be a reoccuring thing.

Why the hell didn't I think of that?

Uhg, this is from Orange Guppy on Etsy... I have like 10 of these damn balls lying around my craft room and a string of led lights from ikea that I bought because they were only $2... I guess I now have a use for them...doy! Dude's selling them for almost $50USD, if I wasn't so damn lazy I could be making a fortune! Well at least I have a christmas craft project now...well this and cookies...

Blah blah blah

I kinda feel like I'm ignoring my blog, even though it's been only 4 days since my last post. I have a bunch of pictures from this weekend's cooking adventures (in my kitchen...with beets, not THAT adventurous) but I just can't seem to muster up the energy to make a proper post. Hopefully tonight... or maybe tomorrow... I've also picked up Patapon so that's been a...distraction... my thumb hurts from making beats...

I've also realized that I have pictures of people up yet, it's all mostly food... and me... which isn't good. I keep toting my camera around but good lightning, or hell, workable lightning and people has yet to present itself... I'll work on it... promise!

BEARD!

LG has a new funny series of videos about texting etiquette...

More James Lipton Beardy goodness here

Dilemma...

So Electric Six is coming to Edmonton and Vancouver...in march. I really want to go see them, and if I go to the Vancouver show, I can add in a couple days and visit my friends D&K, and y'know, galavant about and be asian. But I'm kinda super broke now, like bordering on debt... but I had planned on being out of debt by Febuary... but then who knows...NYC could turn out to be more expensive than initally thought. I could go the cheaper route and go to the Edmonton show where it would cost significantly less since I could drive there, but it's still Edmonton. Or I could say to hell with being a responsible adult and go to both shows, because when is Electric Six gonna come around again? Urgh... I wish I didn't want things so much, it would make life so much easier...gah!