Scenes from our next episode...

I decorated these. In a pretty serious way. And soon I'll give you the dirty (read: extremely clean and even kinda cutesy) details.

But not now.

Now I'm going to tell you exactly why this week sucks.

+ My car has a cough.

+ I lost my wallet (for a minute, but it wasn't ever really gone).

+ I've been putting off a trip to Walmart for weeks. I went today but... I thought I'd forgotten my wallet and didn't go in.

+ I've read a little over 2/5 of my students' final papers. Can't tell you for sure b/c I left my gradebook in the office.

+ My hair is an awkward length.

+ Today I had pickles for lunch.

+ I've started drinking coffee again and it's all I think about.

+ So far this week, I've left my headlights on twice. Both times nice people have told me within 5 minutes (Represent, GA!).

+ Justin Bieber's mom fell victim to a Belieber stampede today.

+ It's the last week of classes.

+ It's the last week of classes.

+ It's the last week of classes.

How are your weeks, loves?

How NOT to Prepare for Guests

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I'm sure many of you are getting ready to welcome friends and family into your homes. I know what you're up against. You're anxious about the timing of dinner, the comfort of your guests, and the random statements that will come flying out of your grandfather's mouth. So, dear reader, let me calm you down a bit. Sit back, relax, and learn from my (not terribly) recent experience.

Here's what not to do mere minutes before guests show up at your door.

The morning of your guests arrival, do not fondly remember the ambitious (but delicious) zombie cupcakes of a few weeks back.


Do not let the zombie remembrance remind you of the giant two layer Chocolate Cake with Turtle filling in your freezer.


Do not let the memory of cupcakes gone by encourage you to pull the two cakes from their frozen safety and thaw them. The day of your guests arrival.


And once the cakes are thawed, you might not want to take a picture of the mammoth cakes just to show your friends later that yes, you could in fact lift a giant two layer Paula Deen cake full of caramel, chocolate, and nuts.

Okay... you might want to take the pic, because even once things really hit the fan, you'll at least have a goofy shot of yourself that might just one day turn into a blog header... or something.

Anyway... back to it.


Oh... it's getting more obvious, isn't it.

Please don't decide that one hour is plenty of time in which to make and pour the chocolate icing over the cake before your guests knock on your door.

And... ugh... this really getting hard to talk about... I think it's still too fresh.

Please, please don't answer the phone when your guests call you from 20 minutes out and say, "20 minutes? That's actually perfect. I'm just pouring an icing on my cake real quick and then I'll head up to the coffee shop. I'll sit outside and wait for you there."


Because you just had to know that the 1/2 inch lip you left around the giant cake on the biggest plate you have was not going to hold that icing. And you should have seen it coming when the icing started pouring over the sides without covering and your (silly) response was to add more to the top.


So, yes, if you've gotten this far and done this much this wrong, then you will just have to suck it up, pick up your guests, and welcome them into your home, now complete with chocolate icing dripping down the counter, drawer pull, cabinet, and well onto the floor.

Even your Kitchen Aid will be embarrassed to be seen like this.

But... even if everything goes as wrong for you as it did for me, it doesn't mean your guests' visit is doomed. We had fun. Didn't we, Kira?

Mint Julep Cupcakes, or What Season Are We Having?

Boys and Girls, I have news. It's November. (That's not the news bit.) And Smalltown, Georgia is still enjoying temperatures in the 70s.

I don't get it. I keep getting up in the morning and making tough decisions about which ridiculously patterned sweater to add to my already patterned (sometimes twice) teacher outfit, only to walk out the door and realize I don't need it. A few days I've been glad to have it but then shrugged it off by afternoon again.

So today I asked my chatty 9am class what I should expect. It went something like this...

Student A: "I'm freezing!"
Me: "Really? Tell me, how cold will it get in Georgia?"
Student B: "Oh, it gets pretty cold."
Me: "Now, what do you mean by 'pretty cold'? Because I've been living in Maine for the last two years..."
Student B: "Okay, no, it doesn't get cold. This is about as cold as it will get."
Student A: "No way, it will get a lot cooler! Like in the 40s, probably."

(-_-)

Friends, I can do 40s.

So when I ask what season we are having, I really am asking. Apparently this is fall, but it feels like winter to my students. To a Mainer, this feels pretty dern close to an endless summer.

Since I don't know what season it is and since my Australian friends are having a different season entirely and who knows... they might be confused too... I don't think any of you can sass me for making a seasonally inappropriate cupcake.


Like many before it, this cupcake came to me in a dream. I woke up from an afternoon nap with the startling knowledge that I had all the ingredients to make a bangin' Mint Julep cupcake.

The cake is vanilla mint bourbon with a white chocolate bourbon ganache filling and topped with a mint bourbon marshmallow buttercream.

Overall, the flavor was... bizarre. The cupcake tasted a lot like the drink. Some tasters enjoyed this (one said, "What is this filling? More of that!"), others did not.

I wasn't sold in either direction.

I dropped one off in a colleague's office in the morning and came back from class later to find the following message on my dry erase board:

"How can you stand that much speermint?! It's like eating gum or toothpaste! But I still love you."

Hilarious. There is nothing I love more than an honest review. None of that smile and nod business for me!

As it turns out, the verdict is out on both the season and this Mint Julep Cupcake. To both this cupcake and the season, I say a big "Why you always gotta label things?!"

A Halloween Reflection

When the fellow in the middle was commissioned to zip my $9 Goodwill dress of infinite tightness, he gripped the zipper, started pulling up and asked only one question:

"We're going all the way up?"

Yes, dear. Have a bit of faith.


This morning, when one of my students asked how my weekend was, I thought about it and said, "It was nice."

When she asked me if I did anything for Halloween, I said (without thinking), "No... I didn't... How was your dad's haunted house?" She launched into a story about scaring children and I returned to my gradebook.

And... we're back to normal. At least for another 362 days. Sigh.

Starve a Cold, Feed a Fever (?)

Is that the way the saying goes? I... ya know... could google it. But it's not really that important. Because... well... I eat when I want. Sick or not.

But this weekend, I am a bit sick.

I blame my students. All 109 of them.

I used to be one of those people who could say, "Oh... I don't get sick." (It wasn't true. It never is when people say that, but they still say it.) Anyway, since I've started teaching, I can't even pretend.

So today I might be dealing with the swine flu. About a dozen of my students have it. It only makes sense.

But I'm taking it in stride. And tomorrow when I go back to class, I'm going to do my best to "Spread It Around!"**

And finally... I fed the swine flu. I fed it:

+ a baconeggandcheese bagel sandwich
+ a grande soy caramel macchiatto
+ Simply orange with pineapple
+ leftover spaghetti with rosemary sauce (stay tuned)
+ pita chips & roasted garlic hummus
+ V8 red pepper soup with a buttered, toasted honey wheat bagel
+ 2 cups of decaf coffee (in progress at time of typing)

Doesn't that just look ridiculous all written out like that?

Well... I regret none of it. And I can't promise it will end there.

** Cool people will have recognized the Golden Girls reference. "Spread It Around!" was Blanche's incorrect understanding of the Sunshine Cadet's motto. Dorothy quickly righted her: "Sunshine, Blanche! Spread sunshine around." And... like the cadets... I plan to spread around nothing but sunshine tomorrow. I'm no supporter of this pandemic.

The Yeast Beast and How I Conquered It

I guess that title makes it sound like an epic battle, but, in reality, I just found a really good recipe.


For some reason, I've always been afraid to work with yeast. I don't know... something about the living aspect of the thing made me nervous and certainly convinced that I would kill it.

But since I've been in Georgia, I've been introduced as "Amanda. She bakes." And, more than once, people have responded with, "Oh... so you make bread!" and I've had to make an awkward face and try to let them down easy with the promise of cupcakes.

Well, no longer.


This weekend I made Honey Whole Wheat Bread following MeckMom.com's recipe. And aside from the fact that my mixer couldn't do all the dough work and I had to finish it up on the floured counter, I followed this recipe to the letter. And it worked like a charm.


MeckMom speeds up the rising process by putting the dough in a just slightly warm oven twice. So... though you can expect to devote at least two hours to the bread baking process, it is a relatively quick recipe that turns out 4 loaves of bread. (I cut the recipe in half.)

And, as it would turn out, one of my new "You bake bread?!" friends called while I was in the throes of bread baking. About an hour later when I showed up on her doorstep with a hot loaf of Honey Whole Wheat bread, she knew exactly what to do with it.


Homegirl toasted it with garlic, a move that the rest of us were unsure of in theory but in love with in practice. Then she whipped up a quick tzatziki sauce with garlic, cucumber, and sour cream. It was... amazing.

So will I bake bread again? Heck to the yes.

And how will I respond when new friends excitedly ask "So you bake bread?!"?

I'll smile, raise an eyebrow, and say something smarmy like, "Among other things..." Because we all know that a skill is infinitely more impressive when downplayed.

What I Learned Today, Aug. 17, 2009

Today was the first day of school, so I started off on the right foot by... well... learning things. So please enjoy What I Learned Today.


1. The perfect costume for today can be confidence in textiles.


However... the picture of said textile confidence can be oh-so-disappointing when you realize that you haven't gotten to the "wash mirror" portion of the VA -> GA move. Ugh.

2. There is no accounting for taste.


This painting is the only thing in my office at the moment. It needs to come down yesterday. I mean... I really love it and the wall color. And the purple door trim. (0_o)

3. There are faculty perks.


Some universities (read: mine) have bathrooms designated for faculty. Those bathrooms are supplied with various creams and lotions. Drawback: You will run into a faculty member in the bathroom.

4. When the interwebs are against her, a girl has to keep herself busy.


I lugged my laptop to campus today because I was promised (by a giant banner that proclaims "WIRELESS INSIDE") wireless. How-ev-er, my computer was rejected because of missing Microsoft updates. Boo.

So... without interwebs again, I read. Turns out young adult lit was also the perfect costume for today.

5. In Georgia, fruits behave differently.


Apples, for instance, brown before you finish cutting them. I'm not even kidding. Blanche Devareaux once said that people mature faster in the South, and I now believe her.

6. Just because they are a must for this season's fashion, doesn't mean they'll be nice to your feet for an entire 8 hour and 20 minute day.


Yep. Nothing witty to say about that.

I also learned things that I didn't take pictures of. For example, even if one makes it through an entire day of teaching 5 classes without breaking a sweat, that same one will sweat it out in the 6 minute ride home in the preheated oven-hot car. You are happy I didn't photograph this.

Finally (for now), I learned that when one enters five classes with the same tattoos and piercings, 2 students in 2 different classes will point them out in an attempt at solidarity. Goodness gracious.

I'm curious. What did you learn today?!

A Day in the Life

So... I don't know if you know this, but I aim to please you guys. Sure, I blog endless cakes because I like to bake and I like to write, but... really... if I'm being honest with myself, I know that I blog all kinds of tasty treats for y-o-u.

And though this blog is now pretty much devoted to food stuffs, it didn't start out that way. I started this blog completely without capitalization or a theme of any sort. I blogged about my day or someone else's. I blogged about moving away from my friends two years ago and I blogged about why I liked blogging. As you might assume, I didn't have many readers at that point. I'd say there were probably 3. And that's being generous.

I guess I had been blogging about a year when I wrote my first post about food. From that point on it's a long and probably uninteresting story, but I'll just say that it seems that you guys most enjoy posts about food.

BUT...

Recently some readers have asked me to post about my personal life and to include pictures. Of me.

So here we go... a post about me. Completely free of dessert.

A (Semi)Normal Day for Amanda, Summer 2009

Monday mornings start with Wilton classes, so those mornings are quite hectic. There is a lot of running, flailing, and general messing about the kitchen before I shower in a frenzy, throw on some clothes and run out the door, having forgotten at least one thing.


All other mornings, though, start with bad hair and cereal.

After a glorious bowl or two of something fantastic (this morning it was Island Vanilla Kashi), I shower and debate over the perfect costume for today.


I don't usually take a myspace quality mirror pic, but... for you... anything.


This day, like many, I headed to my favorite little coffee shop and sat down with coffee and the current read. However, there were a couple of things that went down a little bit differently than usual. First, I drank iced coffee instead of hot. Second, as I was pouring skim milk into my coffee, a twenty-something there with her boyfriend told me she liked my "really cute outfit" and as a result, I ended up spilling a bit of milk on the counter. Typical reaction.

Other than that, the coffee shop visit was same as it ever was.


I left the coffee shop for the grocery store where I bought another strange collection of things needed for a baking project. Pina Colada mix and three boxes of pudding-free yellow cake mix... and apparently the face that those ingredients require. :)

About 5:30 the family starts trickling in and then the day is no longer my own. I don't remember what we did for dinner this night, but it doesn't matter since I promised you a food-free post anyway.


This pink t-shirted night I, very untypically, ended up at a karaoke bar where I was blessed by the song stylings of a fellow named Cookie. (Click through if you dare, but don't say I didn't warn you.)

This summer, regardless of whether I spend my days on the beach, in the coffee shop, or stressing over job applications and the like, my nights end pretty predictably. Without an ounce of regret, I can tell you that I spend my evenings with four of the hottest ladies in Miami.


Tonight Dorothy got married. Again. And she wore the most structurally devastating dress I think I've ever seen. The toilet paper roll deep-V is really something, isn't it?

And now... before Rose and Miles finish their conversation about moving on after previous marriages, I'm going to turn in. It's been a long day.

Reality TV Shows and the Cakes that Love Them

Let's just start this post with a little bit of honesty. Reality TV is fun to watch. It's easy to make fun of and it's pretty addicting. My family watches a fair amount of television, most of it of the reality persuasion.


One of my family's favorite reality TV shows is Big Brother. For us, it means summer and pizza and friends coming over. It also means trashy young people fighting to stay in a living arrangement that requires extrememly awkward physical challenges, weeks of restricted food allowances, hours of painful small talk, and scores of conspiracy theories.

Clearly, Thursday night's Big Brother 11 premiere demanded a cake.


I used the Big Brother occasion to try a recipe from Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes. I haven't bought the book yet (I am working on it!), so I followed the recipe for Chocolate Sour Cream Cake and Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Icing according to Smitten Kitchen.


**Alert: it's a wonderfully simple one-bowl chocolate cake with a creamy rich peanut butter icing.**


These two make a really cute couple. They really bring out the best in each other.


But what's this? A ring o' cake?

Hahahaha... here begins my awkward first attempt at a carved cake. :) I wanted the Big Brother cake to be a hot tub since so much of the houseguests' time is spent either cannoodling or at least scheming in the hot tub out back.


I used cinnamon graham crackers to signal the wood paneling on the outside of the tub. And I frosted the ring o' cake so I would have room inside the cake for water.


I used Wilton recipe icing for the water, writing, and other decorative elements. I filled the hot tub with blue water, a dark blue Big Brother logo, and white hot tub bubbles. That done, I piped the houseguests names around the edge of the tub and finished her off with a reverse shell border.


So is it ridiculous? Is it a bit much? Sure. And probably.

But it was tasty! (And it made watching Big Brother mostly bearable.)

Traveling Cupcakes

For the first time since last summer, I made cupcakes on the road.


It's always weird baking in someone else's kitchen. The stuff is different and it's in different places. The ingredients may or may not be there, and timing is always a little bit tricky. And slower.


But despite all of that, this particular group of friends needed cupcakes. And when my friends need cupcakes, I really just can't refuse them.


So around 11pm after about 4 hours on the road, we started to pull our ingredients and kitchenwares together. We ended up being one egg short but we did find Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla; those things definitely even each other out in my mind.

What kind of cupcakes did we make?


That's an interesting question. Flavorwise, these cupcakes were the rich chocolate cake of the Hot Fudge Cake cupcakes paired with a raspberry buttercream and topped with a raspberry puree. We called them...


Sexual Chocolate cupcakes. If you are as lost as I was when it comes to that phrase, then Wikipedia it. Apparently it is the name of a band in Coming to America. Beyond that reference there are 11 other explanations for the phrase "Sexual Chocolate", some of my favorites being a weightlifter's nickname, Alanis Morissette's backing band, and an actual brand of chocolate produced in Berlin.


Makes sense now, right?

Well... whether it does or not, these cupcakes were pretty good. Since it was quite late by the time we finished baking them and making the icing, they didn't all get iced. And even fewer of them ended up with the puree. So they were half-assed but still tasty. The raspberry buttercream was really sweet because we didn't have any milk but that actually worked because the puree was so tart. All things considered, I'd say the cupcakes were good for on-the-road cupcakes.


See how highly my tired self recommends them?

My Workspace

I've been living in the family home for a little over a week now. Our house would be considered "full" during the year when my parents and brother live there. During the summer however, when my sister comes home, its downright cosey. And then... when I come home... it's... you know... kind of tight.

Sometimes when I cook dinner, my Dad hangs around "helping." One night I made Pastor Ryan's Cajun Meatloaf.


At this point in the vegetable seasoning process, my Dad asked, "Can I eat this with a chip?"

When I bake, I sometimes have to contend with other people in my kitchen. Notice all of my ingredients lined up and ready to rock?


And please notice my sister's garbanzo beans, olives, and avocado just to the right.


And now, a mere 10 minutes later, my brother joined the act with his Taco Bell lunch. Wrapper on counter, burrito in hand.

I know I've been spoiled by having control over my previous kitchens. So I'm doing my best to suck it up. :)

And I'm soldiering through. For you, my loves, a chocolate cupcake.


I'll be posting the ooey gooey details tomorrow. If it turns out anything like I'm planning, it will be fantastic.

If you'll excuse me, my siblings are sitting in the backyard under a sprinkler and calling for me. There are perks to this arrangement.

Busy Busy Blogger!

So I am ridiculously busy these days. Have I mentioned it? :) I have one paper, one presentation, and three guests to prepare for. And I have to get ready for these things on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday, irrespectively. Parallelism be damned!

Because it isn't your fault that I have no time, here are some pics that have been knocking around on my phone just begging to be blogged.

Enjoy!

1. "Gender" Fail


"Gender" is not the nice word for sex. I repeat: "Gender" is not the nice word for sex. One's BMI has absolutely nothing to do with one's prefered cut of jean or choice of footwear. One's gender, however, can be easily distilled from both.

2. It is so about the destination.


This is the view from the railroad bridge. When I get the urge to run (for health purposes), I aim for this bridge. It's quite lovely and I enjoy it much more than the run that gets me to and from it.

3. More flies with honey...


This is the nicest "Get the hell out of our trash" message I've ever seen.

4. Behold the wonder


It's peanut butter. And this picture alone makes me love and hate Sam's Club all at once.

5. Baby's first adventure in the car


Cheese got a ticket to ride and cheese don't care!


Alright, my next post will be upbeat and without any hint of stress. This I promise you. Like N*Sync.