The best frivolous cooking tools ever!

 So I was browsing online the other day and saw at Williams-Sonoma (my favorite cooking store, if only I could afford it!) had some fun new gadgets that I was super excited to try out. Now, keep in mind the title of today's blog: The best most frivolous cooking tools ever. The two items I picked up today are absolutely not necessities, but they sure do make baking more fun. And although you often make do without certain tools, why restrict yourself when a tool is created that makes an easy task a complete breeze?

                  First up, what every cupcake baker needs--a cupcake corer! yay! When I have made filled cupcakes in the past, I just insert my frosting tip into the cupcake and watched for the cupcake to swell, yes, you can actually see the cupcake bloat when its got enough filling in it. The annoyance here is that not each cupcake gets the same amount of filling, and I need consistency. Also, the filling often then overflows up out of the cake if the cake swells too much. Unsightly. So, enter the cupcake corer. It basically punches out a dime-sized hole and voila, no more overflow from over bloated cakes, awesome! Right now I am in the midst of making my chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow filling, so I am excited to put this bad boy to work.

Next up, who doesn't like poptarts? nobody that's who. So why not make your own at home? You can make them with any kind of filling you want, sweet or savory (think breakfast poptart, mmmm), and then top it off with what ever frosting you like. Perfect. So I picked up a toaster pastry press at Williams-Sonoma which basically is a sandwich press setup and you make some pastry dough, use the press to cut out the top and bottom pieces, fill as you would a pie, press together with tool and tada! Baked in your very own oven is a yummy pastry. I am thinking about using some of the homemade blueberry compote I made in my first batch. Just another fun thing for me to try out in my kitchen.

Nothing like a little competition...

....to get you motivated!

I couldn't believe that a cupcake shop was opening up at the Alderwood Mall.  What?! Really?! That's what I wanted to do, granted I am not in a place where I can drop a couple grand on a store front, but it was like a slap in my face-throwing my dream job right back at me! Boo.  I couldn't stand for this atrocity. 


SO, my strategy is to check out Pinkabella's this weekend when it opens up and scope the place out.  Keep you enemies close right?

Actually, I've been to Pinkabella's at the Redmond Town Center, and I distinctly remember not liking her cupcakes, yes the store is super adorable with pink ballerina decor all over the place, but I felt the cupcakes themselves were lacking.  The cake was dry and the frosting grainy.  Bias toward my own product, not at all.  I'll shout it from the roof tops that I really like Cupcake Royale--I believe they have some good stuff down there.  Trophy? ehh.  Good cake, frosting not so much.  I can't compete with Cupcake Royale, but I can surely stand my own against Pinkabella. 

Store front at Alderwood mall in the outdoor shoping area

What throws me more for a loop is that this is Margo's (owner) 3rd store and she has only been in business for 17 months, bananas!  I guess that means she must be doing something right...

Part 2 of my master plan, get my signature flavors down.  I can't do a store front, but that's what the world wide web is for.  I'm gonna go online.  I figure I need at least 10 solid flavors before moving any further.  A for sure flavor is gonna be the one I just made this past week, pound cake with brown sugar cream cheese frosting.  My poor co-workers are gonna be cupcaked out since I am using them as my taste-kitchen.  I've already got a request for a banana cupcake with cream cheese frosting, another friend added I should include real banana pieces and walnuts.  Next on my list is to make a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow filling and maybe a butter cream meringue frosting (less sweet than traditional butter cream). 

We'll see which ones make the cut and which get tossed.  This is gonna be fun!

Spring Snow



My view from the lift



Pictures of my recent trip to Stevens Pass.  Mike and I went up last Friday and then I went back up this past Sunday solo. 

What I love about spring boarding is that you're boarding in toasty 45-50 degree weather.  Its nice taking off your gloves and not having to get them back on as fast as possible because you can feel frostbite setting in!

Another perk is there are significantly less people on the slopes.  Oddly enough, there were more people out and about on Sunday than on Friday.  A nice surprise was that the backside of Stevens was finally open, yay!



Yay, both backside runs were open, nice!



I am motivated to get up to the slopes as much as possible from here on out since my seasons pass is collecting some dust on it, I've been up 4 times thus far, almost makes up the cost of my pass.  I think 2 or 3 times should help me break even.  Of course I will aim to go above and beyond that magic number, so anyone looking to get some spring boarding/skiing in, shoot Mike and I email or call us up!

Hopefully the season will be extended, both days I was up there it started to snow lightly...so here's hoping.



The view from the top of Hogsback



Love that almost no one else was up there, wide open spaces!







Looking over Skyline

Going up Hogsback



Bottom of Gemini on the backside, love the blue sky



From the base

(almost) Red Velvet Cake

Anyone who knows me knows I love desserts. Anyone who really knows me knows I adore red velvet cake...

So I tried my hand at making some red velvet cake. But it didn't quite come out the way I wanted it to, first I ran out of red food coloring so the red is not the correct depth of red that I would have liked to see. Second, my baking powder is a tiny bit flat so the density of the cake was a little off. However, aesthetics aside, the flavor was there. I did like the cream cheese frosting with white chocolate curls and the marshmallow frosting filling, it added some sweetness that balanced the tartness of the cream cheese. I even blended some of the marshmallow frosting into the cream cheese which made it silky smooth without altering the flavor significantly.

  Mike took it to work for a good-bye party for one of his co-workers, how convenient that I was baking the night before his departure! Now Mike got to score extra points in the office, he owes me since my friends at work didn't get to have the red velvet that I promised them~instead, they got the pound cake cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting (which I actually preferred!). 

 

So I'll have to make it up to my friends at work another day...I am itching to try this recipe again
and getting the end product just perfect.

Creating Princess Leia

So Mr. Jonas is having his 4th birthday this weekend and I am helping make his cupcakes.  He is having a Star Wars themed party so my friend decided to go with Princess Leia cupcakes.  She found a picture from another blog and I tried to follow it as best I could.  Here are the steps I took to re-create them:

                                                  Started with plain white cream cheese frosting

                                     Added some chocolate hair with the right frosting tip

Then some chocolate dots for eyes

Then I used some heart sprinkles for her mouth

And the finishing touch, some chocolate filled oreo cookies for her trademark buns

Pies in a Jar

Valentine's Day Goodies or mush?

I thought I'd give my friend's at work a different kind of Valentine's Day treat.  I ventured away from the traditional chocolate and candy treats and tried my hand at baking a pie in a jar.  I saw pictures and recipes online.  I thought they were a cute pint-sized treat to hand out at work.

The concept is easy enough, pie crust, pressed into the sides of a mason jar, filled with filling (I used peaches and blueberries), and baked at 375 degrees.  You can bake mason jars because they are intended for canning, so they withstand the heat (not direct heat like on a burner or flame).  You bake them in the oven without the lids on and they are supposed to bake up nicely, just like if it were in a pie tin.  Another option is to prepare them and then freeze them for later devouring.

Anyway, I prepared them and baked them.  Problems, I overfilled them and the fruit juices bubbled out overboard.  Also, I don't like my pies to be super sweet so I was careful about how much brown sugar and white sugar I added to the mix.  So, I had my husband taste the mix before baking, after some adjustments, he approved of the sweetness.  To my husband's dismay, they were not sweet enough post baking.  Where did all the sweetness go?!  Nuts.

But at 10:30 PM it was time to call the game.  I tasted one jar in the morning once I got up, and I liked them, but the test would be if others would.  I tried to find smaller jars, but all I could get my hands on were 8 ounce jars.  I personally thought these were too big. 

I'll have to try again another holiday and double up the sweetness and search high and low for shorter jars.  I love the idea of these treats too much to give up after one attempt.

Irresponsibility and Overconfidence!!!!!!

I can't believe what I got to come home to today!

I get a call from my dad that my parents are at our house, with their dogs.  Typically not an issue.  However, this time I didn't know they were coming and espeically not with their dogs.  They are in my house with our foster dog Abe and thier 3 dogs, without us there to help manage anything.  Tell me that doesn't sound like a bad idea.  Go on tell me.  No, you can't--that's cuz that's a terrible idea and any sane person should know better.  These dogs have not had a proper introduction and the brief contact they had with a fence between them resulted in thier intact lab male going out of his mind trying to get at Abe.  Meanwhile, Abe is not being aggressive at all.

SO my dad tells me the dogs are getting along, expect for that moment my Mom tried to get Abe and Behr (the lab) to go into the bathroom together.  Then they got into a fight and my dad had to separate them.  First of all, why on earth would you try to get two male dogs in a tiny space together who just met.  Second, why do you need to dogs to go into the bathroom with you? Stupid.

Then alls well and the dogs are getting along again.  My dad leaves to pick up yet another dog from the vet.  Leaving my Mom alone with the dogs.  First off, my mom is no dog whisperer, however she'll honk her own horn and say she is in total control of her dogs (not!).  She's the type to keep telling a dog to sit and when he doesn't comply (becuase you never formally taught the command in the first place, but, hey, training is overrated anyway right?) the obvious solution to keep saying the command only louder--and getting mad adds to the effectiveness of the command giving.

Anyways, apparently my dad gets home just before I do.  I walk in and my Dad is visibly mad, and my mom is all dramatic and freaked out.  Great.  I ask what happened.  My dad tells me that while he was gone there was a big 'ol fight and when he entered the house he notices all the furniture in the dinning room is knocked over.  My mom pipes in, she couldn't pull them apart and had a hard time stopping it (no shit).  Behr was going out the back door, Abe wanted to go out too and then you can imagine what happened--two stranger dogs trying to get out of a narrow doorway (bathroom incident all over again, tight quarters). 

I look around the room, there is blood on the carpet, blood on our couches.  Abe is in his crate somehow and he is dripping blood onto his bed.  Berh is on gracie's dog bed (my dad took her with him to the vet and she's still in the jeep) and there's blood on that too.  My mom is saying, "I was yelling at them and they didn't stop".  WTF? Really?  I say (sternly) "you can't yell at them when they are in a fight, they aren't listening to you, you have to pull them apart by the collar".  She got bit in the process becuase who knows HOW she tried to get them apart.  No need to amputate, she's fine.

My dad and I check out the dogs.  We're both clueless because we weren't there when this mess happened.

Berh first since my spot check on Abe doesn't look horrible.  Behr's got bite marks on his lip, swollen under his jaw.  Turn him over and he has a big 'ol cut in his chest, and he's got another on his side.  He's going to the vet.

Now Abe:



The damage?  Abe is limping off his right foot, had both ears torn up (one bite almost went clear through the ear to the other side), bloody lip.

Berh has maybe 20-30 lbs on Abe.  Chocolate lab.  Abe wins.  Its scary because we don't know what the consequences are going to be.  All the rules change when a pit bull is involved, regardless of what the situation is.  In defense or not, doesn't matter unfortunately.  Decades of misuse of the breed, they are essentailly damned.  Everyone hates pits (okay, a majority of people dislike pits).

In the end, my parents are paying $278 dollars to patch up Behr and they are banned from bringing thier entire pack over to our house, I told them (well, mostly directed toward my mom) "you can't bring all your dogs here, you cannot control them.  You can bring 1 or 2, but you can't bring them all.  You don't know how to control your dogs".  Don't care if she's pissed or offended.

After Mike and I clean up the blood, and put was needs to be into the washer, I have to call the agency and let them know what happened, Abe isn't ours afterall.

Thankfully, Becky is understanding and actually isn't surprised because apparently intact male dogs are responsible for most dog fights and attacks.  The magic age of these reported findings? 2 years old.  Testosterone levels are out of control.  Behr is 2 1/2.  Becky's ending comment to me is, "get him  (Behr) fixed!".  Yay, we know.  We've told my parents several times they need to get Behr fixed.  They aren't breeders, there is no reason at all why they shouldn't get him spayed.  Again, irresponsible.  Don't buy the whole 2 y.o. intact male dog thing?  Look it up.