Thank You.

This week, I got a flat tire.  It was pretty great.  It happens about once every two weeks or so.  Because my car hates me.  Seriously.  I woke up the other night, and it was standing over me with a pillow in it's hands.  I was like "Penny!  What's this all about?"  She dropped the pillow and zoomed back down to the driveway like nothing happened.  I keep a boot on her front tire at night now.  It was the rear one that went flat.

And one of my extended family members came to help me.  Because the lug nuts were stripped.

And so, I had this brilliant plan.  I was going to make cupcakes, using modelling chocolate, I was going to create a flat tire and one of those "x" shaped tie wrenches, and various other flat tire related chocolate pieces to top a cupcake.


But, the modeling chocolate was a failure.  I believe in documenting my failure.  The end product is a non-newtonian substance.  It's a total disaster.

So, I only had the candy molds on hand, all Halloween.  So I whipped up some ganache.  Which, by the way, turned out fantastic.

And I cored the cupcakes, and filled them, topped them with milk chocolate frosting and candy pumpkins.  Then I sprinkled with purple and orange sugar.

Aren't they lovely?  Here's another set:

Those are chocolate Pumpkins, bats and a chocolate/peanut butter guitar.

Overall, The failure of the modeling chocolate totally messed up my day and threw me off.   So, I never even completed the stuff I was going to complete.  Le Sigh.  Le Sigh.

But someone is eating well tomorrow!  And hopefully they will enjoy.

Curse you, internet!

So, I looked up how to make modeling chocolate online.  I found a place extolling the awesomeness of candymelts and corn syrup blended in.  So... I make this substance.  And instead of modeling chocolate, I ended up with a non-Newtonian substance.

I shoved it into the freezer after no good came from my efforts with it and will now focus my afternoons energies on Molding candy melts for the tops of my cupcakes and leave the molding chocolate for another day.

Meanwhile, check out my molded candies...

Works in progress:

Those little things are spider bodies and bats.

My return to the world of exhibition baking...

Well... Things were hectic for a while.  As in, the Blue Screen Of Death put me out of the online blogging world for a few months.  But, the computer is back, and the baking continues.  I'll post a little of what you missed while I was offline:

Most notably, I took a foray into fondant.  I'm not a fan of fondant.  I think it tastes like crappy stale marshmallows.  And I think it lacks a sort of artisan skill that spectacularly smooth butter cream demonstrates.  not that I'm at that level of awesome yet, but I''ve got goals.

Anyway, it was my sister's birthday.  And there are three things my sister adores.  The color Blue, cuddly bunny rabbits and fondant (of all weird things).  Well, there are more than three things she adores.  But I wasn't about to undertake a Stargate cake on limited resources.

So, I made her a choclate fudge cake with milk chocolate icing and Fondant dots.  And a fondant bnny rabbit.  Who almost instantly began to sink into the icing and drown.  So Megan (The sister) ate it first.

It was a good death.

Anyway, that's what I did.  And now, I'm about to undertake modeling chocolate.  Because I've had to rely on the generosity of some family the past two weeks and nothing says "Thank you" like homemade baked goodies.   Also, did you know it was Clergy appreciation week?  I might also be whipping up something for our ministry team.  Maybe.

Anyway, my mom warmed up the kitchen this morning with her famous (Seriously) pumpkin bread.  And I tested out my brand new 20 dollar digital camera capturing a shot of it:





Curse the grainy image and crappy quality.  How is my cellphone a better camera??

Corporal Punishment.

It's Sunday. Not Saturday, but I made cupcakes today instead of yesterday because of Vacation Bible School. I'm trying to stage it. So I spent yesterday painting backdrops for the water park theme.

So Today! CUPCAKES!

Here's a Before Picture:

Penzey's figures heavily in almost everything I do

I gathered all the tools of my trade.  This time around, I planned on making full sized cupcakes.  I didn't want to spend forever monitoring the mini-cupcakes.  Or frosting them, to be quite honest.  So I was taking the easy way out.

I used Almond instead of vanilla this time out, because I'm anti-vanilla.  And extremely anti-imitation vanilla, and that's all we had.

The almond extract is wicked sweet.  Use less than the vanilla amount recommended.


I have a confession to make.  I sometimes use unnecessary force when combining my ingredients.  Maybe I just don't know my own strength.  No matter what it is, I tend to over-beat the eggs.  I try to not do this, and then all of the sudden, the batter is about 4 times too fluffy.

It's not my fault.  the damn eggs never listen to me.  They whine.  They yell inside.  They fight with each other.  If I have to hear one more tiny eggy demand, I'm just gonna... And then they're all meringue.

This can be a problem during cooking:

I had to watch the oven carefully, to make sure I didn't have another repeat of the family-famous red velvet incident.

When they came out, they were stuck together.  I used my cake spatula to seperate them while they were still warm.

They may not have looked pretty but the choco-holic of the family came in a few times while they were cooling to eat one.  I finally slapped some chocolate frosting on top and handed him one so he'd stay out of my kitchen while I was working.

"Eat this and get the hell out of my kitchen, Grandpa."

I had the parchment bag all set up with the tip and the frosting in the plastic wrap bundles, but in the end, I gave up decorating them and just slapped the frosting on.  I did, by the way, make a second smaller batch, but they ended up a little mangled looking, too.  The papers were slightly folded in.  I did swirl them with a star tip, but they're going up to work, and preschool teachers on a Monday aren't the least bit picky about what the chocolate looks like.

They look stupid.

The truth is, I've reached that "7th inning stretch" part of my job.  It's the whole month of July.  It's around July when all year-round, all-day preschool teachers start to question their sanity and chosen profession.  I'm not going to lie, as I get closer to 35, I feel less and less like spending my day on the hard floor, playing with kids who don't appreciate me.  I'm sure as the new school year rolls around, the excitement of new possibilities will kick in and I'll feel refreshed.  Renewed.  Revitalized.  My cupcakes will probably be much better then. 

Until then, I'll keep baking, because there is peace in the process.  And sometimes that will be enough.

Meatloaf Cupcakes

Look at me, being all prolific blogger this weekend.  Yay, me!

Today, I undertook an interesting idea from a PBS show I saw a while back (about a year ago.)

Today, I made meatloaf cupcakes.  The idea is to make individual serving meatloafs cupcake sized and top with mash potatoes.  Some people then toast the top of the cakes for a fancy dark swirl.  Me?  I sprinkle with carrots.

Enjoy my photo journey.  But first, I totally was decked in my awesome Johnny Cupcakes shirt.

This is not me.

I made the meatloaf from 1/2 lb. ground sirloin and 1/2 lb ground turkey.  I combined this with spices.  Indiscriminately.  I would open the spice, sniff it and dump some in if I liked the smell.  I put in a lot of Shallot Pepper. And Hangary Half Sharp Paprika.  Which I buy from Penzey's, the best spice shop ever.

I don't like to touch raw meat, so i used latex gloves.

mound them then smash them into the greased pan, pressing them to conform.

CONFORM!

 Pop them into the oven at 350.  You now have 40 minutes to finish the day.  My grandmother had been talking about carrot cake, so I decided to make her one.

I only had 35 minutes, so there was no scratch.

There was adding shredded carrots.

This mix smelled heavily of cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamon.  Or, as I like to call it, Awesomeness.

These are Frito Flavor Twists.  I needed a little snack.  Honey Barbeque flavor.  It's like crack, so only put a handful on your plate then hide the rest.

After preparing cake per box, placed to the side to let all the air bubbles rise.

Mash Potato time.  In retrospect, these are super salty, not so great.

Meatloaf is done, pull it out, put the cake in for 45 minutes.

Put Potatoes in pastry bag with a large star tip.

I had to hold it with paper towels because it was very warm.

"Sprinkle" with carrot shreds.

Serve.

 

Once the cake was ready, i pulled it out.  And promptly burned my finger.  2nd degree is the yucky blister, right?

When it cooled, I was ready to pop it out and frost it.

Only it didn't pop out right.

I did state i would document failures

It was frosting time.

I wanted it to be pretty, but to hide the crumbly bits, i went with "homestyle."

Nom, nom, nom

If you can't laugh at yourself...

This week, I did something I shouldn't have done.

ETA: someone complained I wasn't forthcoming enough in this post.  So, fine.  Get out your popcorn.  I changed his name


I had the most adorable gradeschool boyfriend.  He was all shaggy haired, blonde, just like Luke Skywalker.  And he was polite to my mom and my aunt Kat.  And so, he was perfect.  And I planned our lives accordingly, by writing my name with his.   Mrs. Carl Rogan.  Mr and Mrs. Carl Rogan.  Robyn and Carl Rogan.  With hearts.  All over.  In a sweet little gradeschool doodley fashion.


In the 4th grade, he dumped me uncerimoniously for my arch nemisis.  She was everything I wasn't.  She was worldly and edgy, and wore combat boots.  And didn't strive to smell like strawberry shortcake and be as colorful as rainbow brite.  I couldn't compete with her edgy older womanliness.  So, I faded away from him.


The thing about living in the same area growing up, is that you'll spend your entire life with the same kids.  So of course we went to Junior High together, where he went the popular jock route and I slid into the edgy artistic route via speech/debate/theatre.


In high school, I was sporting flannel and black lipstick and he was sporting a letter jacket, but did I still keep tabs on him?  Oh, yes ma'am, I did.  All the while agreeing with my anti-establishment friends that all the jocks were douchebags.  I would listen to Pearl Jam and bemoan that only Eddie Vedder could understand the depths of my soul.  Meanwhile, I transferred my crush over to a truly sad, long, tale.  And slowly I let Carl Rogan by the wayside.  Always holding to him being the first boy I really kissed, not just the little peck on the lips.  And smiling fondly, and sometimes sadly at how fickle men can be.


I ran into Carl a few times after graduation, working summer jobs between college.  He was going through an awkward phase.  Yet, my girlhood feelings would always rekindle when I saw him.  And I'd freeze up and be unable to actually speak coherent words.  Because at some point, I lost my ability to communicate with males who weren't completely gay.  (i've worked on that, by the way, i can have actual conversations with straight men.  I should name a book that.)


Then I went to college, had all manner of misadventures, but often told my getting dumped in gradeschool story as my big epic past thingy.


And that was it.  Until one day, Carl waltzed back into my life.  And I forgot how to talk to guys again, and apparently missed all sorts of signs pointed out by all my friends, and then he was gone, again.


And I spent the better part of a year writing a book where Carl Rogan ended up as a protagonist.  So, now I'm just... my curiosity as to where he is, and if he's still single, is completely piqued.


SOOOOOOO...


I googled him.  I didn't just google.  I'll be open here, I searched facebook, too.  I might have spent a few hours imagining how he maybe does the same thing, while looking at his friends locked profile page for clues.  Then I didn't friend him so I couldn't be rejected.

In honor of my dwelling in my past, I'm posting former cake endeavors for this week.

The white cake is from my very first caking class.  The Grinch cake was my present to my co workers a few years ago.  they medical id cakes were for my co workers at a related medical id job.  The Cass cake was a birthday gift and the monopoly cake was for a family reunion.  we're nuts about monopoly.  and cake.