yonmei

08:14 pm: Cake supplies
I visited the Polish deli that sells mini phials of flavour (because otherwise, they just linger in the cupboard past their Use By date, except for vanilla). And the big supermarket to get icing sugar and muffin cases.

I am now totally fully equipped to make moar cupcakes. I just need an occasion to justify cthulhu cupcakes!

(Or skull cupcakes. Or Magic Mushroom cupcakes.)

Tags: baking, cake

01:01 pm: Beer and cakes
Went to a birthday party last night at the Regent: latish, due to finishing off stuff at work. Brought what got dubbed; "Lesbian goth cupcakes OF DOOM!" (chocolate-and-peanut-butter cupcakes in cute little black cupcake liners with white skulls). I was challenged to do Cthulu cupcakes next time, WITH TENTACLES, and I've actually thought of a method...

CUPCAKES THAT WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN.

Tags: baking, beer, cake

10:01 pm: Stockbridge street market: a nice walk, but
I walked over to Stockbridge street market today. It was quite a nice walk (mostly along the Water of Leith walkway), but not much of a market: a book + prints + seaweed stall (where I bought Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and an Italian phrasebook, but no seaweed, because I really don't like seaweed very much); a jam stall run by a 17-year-old boy and his brother (I bought orange-and-passionfruit and blueberry-and-blackcurrant); a preserves stall run by someone who basically pickles up whatever there's a surplus of (I bought courgette-and-basil pickle); the French Connection crepes van, the French cheeses van (I bought 150g of cheese), and the sourdough-bread and French-pastries stall (I bought a wholemeal sourdough baguette and a croissant and resisted every single one of the pastries). There was no coffee. There were three or four other stalls selling things I was massively uninterested in. There was no fresh produce. There were very few customers.

(According to walktoit, which doesn't seem to know about the river path route, it's 4.4 miles round trip: it took me about 50 minutes to get there, a lot longer of course via Starbucks and lunch back again.)

I walked back to the Starbucks the other side of the river, mostly because they have an upstairs room which is slightly invisible and therefore the odds of finding an unoccupied sofa or armchair are higher than in all-too-conspicuous Costa) and on the way I bought The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and two packs of cupcake liners, one with skulls and one with mushrooms.

Then I sat around in Starbucks for however long it took me to re-read Little Lord Fauntleroy, say hello to the guy who works there who I know I know but whose name I can't remember, and drink a medium latte, my first coffee of the day. With an extra shot of espresso. Little Lord Fauntleroy really is an awful, awful book.

Then I walked back home, via the Stockbridge colonies, the river path, and back via Inverleith, where I sat down under a tree and ate the two scones I'd packed, some cheese, and part of the baguette.

Bumped into a neighbour as I was almost home, and came in for a cup of tea and caught up with the gossip with her and her girlfriend: bought cherries in the supermarket and ate them with the last of the white wine and a cup of tea sitting on the front step. So that was lunch. Sort of semi social. Seriously. Bumping into the neighbour was the most social contact I had all weekend, if we discount conversations with librarians, Tattie Shaw-keepers, and people running stalls at Stockbridge market. Possibly I might have had more social contact if I were better at remembering people's names.

I sort of collapsed and semi-watched Stargate Atlantis and the Simpsons in between being slightly brainded, and woke up in time to watch House.

Now I need to make goth cupcakes.



Tags: baking, support your local businesses, walks

12:32 am: I just read this on my friend's journal....
"...and I must follow him because I am meeting yonmei for breakfast tomorrow 2 hours earlier than I usually wake up."

I am still awake, and likely to be awake for another hour at least, as the first layer of cake is baking (maple! yummy delicious) and ideally I need to have all three layers of cake baked before I sleep. (I can then force myself to wake in time to meet afrai for breakfast at the farmer's market, buy the butter and cream and cream cheese I'll need to ice and fill the cake, and eggs for more scones, and take myself home to bake scones, get ready for PARTY, layer the cake (marmalade-with-whipped-cream filling) spread the icing (this may be as uncomplicated as plain icing sugar made briefly liquid with orange juice and maple syrup, probably), and wait for it to almost set before I decorate it with maple sugar candies. Or possibly, if I have time to stop off at the Sicilian bakery, marzipan fruits. In which case I shall probably not put any maple syrup into the icing.

The point is it has to be a BIG cake. A street party is not a party unless there's a cake so big the children dream about it months later and no matter how much cake they eat they cannot eat it all. *beams* And I made a cake like that last time, so I need to do it again this time, because that's how traditions happen. Yay.

I also have to make more sesame seed scones with cheese. I may try making the next batch with the end of a bottle of red wine. Why not?

I'm running late because of my parents, and then a neighbour who came round. She's also baking for the party and has killer period pains and she's running late because she went to a workmate's husband's funeral today, so I feel a bit bad about complaining.

Tags: baking, breakfast, cake, imaginary friend meetup, scones

12:02 am: OMG I did it! Cakes shaped like butterflies!
Okay. Er. I'll calm down. It's just that they rolled out of the mould so cute and round and fubsy and did I say cute?

Ages ago, I bought a cake tin from Lakeland Plastics. (Ages ago: it was a post-Christmas present to myself.) It's like a six-muffin tin, except the cake moulds are in the shape of insects - ladybirds, butterflies, honey bees. I'd kept on not using it - partly for want of a special occasion, partly because I couldn't quite believe it would work.

But I thought, I really just have to get over using it for the first time. So I settled I was going to bake with it this week - today - and I did, and ... omg so cute! I have six mini-cakes, one of the butterflies is a bit burned, but they are shaped and adorable. When they cool I'm going to ice them, which I don't normally do with cakes I just made to treat me, but these... they're round and fubsy! (They rose underneath, so they roll.)




Tags: baking, cake, omg hearts

04:44 pm: Redemption: Zocala
My cakes seem to be more popular than my fannish Tarot readings (I think about half of the readings I've done have been for the Pink House crowd: I did one or two for all of them and nerdcakes). But, it's been fun.

Especially when people give feedback. The "Tarot reading for new fanfic" actually would work quite well for generating new ideas, melancharisbron: next time I visit, let's have a go doing readings for each other.

The Guinness chocolate cupcakes with yogurt-raisin toppings went fastest, but the person who wanted a recipe was inspired by the gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with cranberries.

Virtually everyone who wanted a "fannish Tarot reading" is female...

Tags: baking, redemption, tarot

12:15 am: To Do list: Thursday
0. Hang up Wednesday's wash
1. Do a laundry.
2. Collect prescription drugs
3. Collect laptop for User2
4. Call Ajay check time for wakeup call
5. Book taxi
6. Pack Redemption stuff
7.1 Make vegan cupcakes: Chocolate with Guinness
7.2 Make vegan cupcakes: Almond
7.3 Make vegan cupcakes: Vanilla
7.4 Make vegan/gluten-free cupcakes: Banana-Walnut
7.5 Make vegan/gluten-free cupcakes: Chocolate
7.6 Make gluten-free cupcakes: Cranberry-Vanilla
8 Bake bread
9. Buy dried fruit and washing-up liquid and gluten-free vegan chocolate
10. Print out Tarot and such
11. Go to Milk.
12. Check out Dan Savage ILSLISC.
13. Call home insurance and add laptop / camera
14. Buy cat biscuit
W3. Tell Transamurai what did. Be apologetic.
W6. Format the thing, email round.
W7. Fill out PB form, return by post.
W8. Fill out coop form, return by post.
T5. Insert remaining 30+ records in portrait for directors Monday: email to Fresh Start.
T6. Finish Vacuuming hall carpet and stairs.
21. Ice 7.1, 7.4, 7.5 with chocolate ganache
22. Set all three alarm clocks
23. Make green soup
24. Write to do list for Tuesday
25. Freeze green soup




Tags: baking, lists, redemption

04:36 pm: cupcakes for Redemption
Okay.

So, currently my plans are:

1: Chocolate with Guinness cupcakes, topped with chocolate ganache, decorated with golden sultanas: Vegan.
2: Almond cupcakes, topped with rosewater frosting, decorated with flaked almonds: Vegan.
3: Vanilla cupcakes, topped with lemon frosting, no decoration: Vegan
4: Banana-Walnut cupcakes, topped with chocolate ganache, decorated with banana chips and walnuts (obv): Vegan / Gluten-free
5: Chocolate cupcakes, topped with chocolate ganache, decorated with dried cranberries: Vegan / Gluten-free
6: Cranberry-Vanilla cupcakes, topped with vanilla frosting, decorated with dried cranberries: Gluten-free, but I may make these with egg.

2 boxes for the vegan, 1 box for the gluten-free.

Also, a fruit-cake, neither vegan nor gluten-free, for the room party Friday night.



Tags: bake sales, baking, cake, chocolate, redemption

11:27 pm: Mmm, cheese bread
I found a wrapped soft cheese at the bottom of the freezer, so I cut off the crusty rind and kneaded most of the rest into the spare piece of dough (there is always a spare piece of dough: it never quite works out trying to make exactly enough for 24 rolls: the difference between flour and yeast in each baking always changes the dough, and this is why the French Revolutionary Government declared it a scientific heresy that bakers were responsible for short weight loaves, and why you can buy bread by the gramme or the kilo in France today). I formed it into four rolls, topped each with a piece of the remaining soft cheese, and baked in the oven till brown and crusty.

OMGdelicious. It was really difficult only eating one. The other three will freeze nicely, though.

I finally got to see The Devil Wears Prada. The novel was an interesting example of "fiction for women", the kind that makes you think about how this culture is for women, and how skillful writers can play on the edge of what-we-accept/what-we-resent to create the best of what we unfondly call "chicklit". I'd heard the film substantially changed the novel, and it does - I suppose they couldn't bring themselves to make Meryl Streep play a woman as dislikable as Miranda in the novel, a woman with no redeeming characteristics. There were a handful of other changes - Miranda pays much more individual attention to Andi in the film, instead of barely noticing she's there, and Meryl Streep delivers the best Miranda lines in style. It remains utterly unrealistic about the fashion industry, with much more prurient gaze at women's bodies: the best part about "chicklit" is that it is unabashedly aimed at women, which films are not.

I finally succumbed and bought the first season of Cagney and Lacey on DVD. There won't be any more after that and this makes me sad: please sign the petition, if you haven't already.

Tags: baking, bread, cagney and lacey, cheese, feminism, films

09:17 am: More foolishness with dragons and cheese and Cramer
Kathryn Cramer claims Aliases Are for People on Wanted Posters, and kindly informs us all:

I made a rare use of my LJ account to preach the gospel of using one's real name. The LJ pseudonymous masses remain unconvinced. What most amuses (not exactly fascinates) me is the persistent argument that since one can't completely verify who someone claims to be, there is no real difference between using an alias and using one's real name. ..... Seriously folks, it does matter whether you use your real names. Aliases are for people on Wanted posters. Aliases are for con-men and crooks. Give it up. Come out.

Well, gosh wow. No.

I bought Camembert at the farmer's market with every intention of taking it to my friend's housewarming party, and indeed packed it... and then when I got there, it turned out that it was not the sort of party where you just drop food contributions in the kitchen and people eat them. I'd never been to a party he'd thrown before, and it was definitely more organized than most parties in our range of friends. Well. (I did, however, firmly present him with the cupcakes, despite the Key Lime pie on offer, since the alternative would have been throwing them out: they'd been baked Friday and were gluten-free vegan, and I find gluten-free cupcakes seem to keep less well than the regular wheat-flour sort.)





I'm having fun breeding my dragons now. Whee.

Tags: ;l, baking, dragon eggs need clicky, everybody lies, seeing friends

10:39 am: I have found out what I can do with my birthday cupcakes....
They are going to a trans poetry/prose performance tonight, as the free entertainment, since the place where the event is happening doesn't have a cafe-bar at present. So, joy. (There are 24+ wee cakelets, chocolate with Guinness, banana-walnut, more chocolate-with-Guiness with a crumb topping, some rather precious almond with rosewater, and a very few of the gluten-free spice cakes with peanut butter.)

I hope they have a good time and embrace their destiny fully as cake.

Next major baking session, Redemption. Actually, I need to make another trial batch of gluten-free before then, as I have a notion for a different recipe that involves ground almonds... and so far, no one's poked their head up on the Redemption mailing list to say "I'm coeliac and vegan AND ALLERGIC TO NUTS" even though I specially asked.

Oh, I got a warning e-mail from someone suggesting I not produce a t-shirt that says "This is not a t-shirt. Anyone who insists that it is, is just putting on airs to be interesting" as it would just stir up trouble. Hm. The worst of it is, while I still think it would be very funny, he may well be right. What do you think?





Tags: baking, cake, dragon eggs need clicky, dragons, redemption, sometimes i love my job

10:58 pm: Yesterday, and today
I get depressed, over nothing very important, and it becomes difficult to write about stuff.

It was my dad's 82nd birthday yesterday. I gave him cake, and a jar of "pumpkin marmalade", which is quite tasty, and a book; Jane Austen's England, which I knew he would like, and he did.

Also, I heard the spectacularly good news that his book is to be published: the magnum opus he spent 10 years writing and then discovered no publishing house wanted to do a book by an unknown writer (unknown except to academic fans of Robert Southey) about an unknown hero (unknown except to Quakers who recall pre-WWII). But, my dad's wealthiest former PhD student had one of her books made into a movie, and - clearly being a person of taste, discerment, and good judgement - is offering the university press a private subvention to produce the book. So, yay.

My brother rang to wish him a happy birthday and to tell us he was having his wisdom teeth out tomorrow.

I left just before 10pm and just missed the 11 bus, so walked downhill for 40 minutes and caught the next 11 bus on Princes Street. My ankle hurt. I probably overdid it.

Today I slept in. And it snowed. I have awesome amounts of cake leftover from Saturday night, but I shall consider it a trial run for cake-making for Redemption.

It didn't snow much where I live or where I work (I got caught in a couple of flurries, but it never lay down on the pavement and looked pretty). And according to Weather Pixie, right now it's 3 degrees above freezing and raining lightly. I took some cake to work: I think my favourite is the banana-walnut cakes.

My mum gave me a tray for 12 mini-muffins (even smaller than most fairy cakes) and a big six-muffin tray. Also a muffin recipe book.





The Mess From All Hell still seems to be merrily going on on livejournal, but I really don't want to know about it any more...

Tags: baking, dragons, family stuff, weather

01:30 pm: Dragons, and baking...
Chocolate spice cupcakes without gluten... chocolate cupcakes with Guinness... vanilla cupcakes with walnuts.... more chocolate cupcakes with Guinness... fruit cake made with lemon curd and eggs...

saddleback. And:


Tags: baking, dragon eggs need clicky

08:47 pm: Injera; and crumpets
Injera is a griddle-cooked bread made in Ethiopia from teff, the primary cereal crop in Ethiopia. (I checked: teff flour is buyable in the UK, at a cost of at least £4 a kilo. I think I shall constrain my curiosity about what teff tastes like yet a while.)

Injera is made by mixing up a thin sourdough batter, about the same thickness as pancake batter, and pouring it on a hot griddle, or a skillet. Traditional meals in Ethopia are served on a large injera, with folded injera used to scoop up the stews and salads, and at the end of the meal you eat the injera that served as your plate. All of which sounds great.

What came to my mind was - having a tub full of sourdough starter that wouldn't take half an hour to wake up with some hot water and and more white flour - could I try using the method with my basic sourdough starter?

So, I took the tub out of the fridge, added some white bread flour and some hot water (I'm usually quite relaxed about the temperature, but in this instance, wanting the starter lively soon, I added just enough cool water from the tap to hot water from a just-boiled kettle so that the mix was as hot as you can get and not kill yeast - if it's too hot for a bare hand, it's too hot for yeast to live in). Then I waited half an hour or so till the starter was lively with bubbles. Found my griddle, put it on the gas, greased it with ghee. Took a ladleful of the starter to a separate bowl, to which I added a large pinch of salt and then whisked it smooth with my plastic whisk. (Picked up only a few weeks ago for moments like these - sourdough reportedly doesn't like metal, and I'm superstitious about it now.)

Then I just poured half the mix on to the griddle, and waited: you can see griddle cakes, any kind, cook from the bottom up. Injera is not supposed to be cooked on the top side: I just waited till it was cooked through, lifted it off the griddle to a plate, and ate it almost immediately.

Yes, it was very good. The slightly sour flavour came through much more strongly than it usually does when I make sourdough bread - very immediate. It left me wondering why I hadn't tried this before - though I suspect that, like most hot wheat breads that haven't kneaded enough/rested enough, it's not very digestible. It would have been a good base for stews and such, though for Ethopian-style dining I'd want a bigger griddle to make a bigger trencher. But it wouldn't have folded well for a scoop - it tended to crack.

Okay! Now I wanted to experiment with a mix of different gluten-free flours (and I also wanted to try out crumpet-making again, since injera batter suddenly gave me a clue what thickness crumpet batter is supposed to be...). The next cake I made was a mix of sourdough batter and polenta-grind cornmeal, and it didn't work - though a finer grind might. Next, buckwheat flour - which by texture should be more successful anyway, and also ought to produce something like a blintz in flavour....

Tags: baking, bread, griddle cakes, injera

04:34 pm: I made chocolate Guinness cupcakes
But the event for which they were made has been cancelled.

Two dozen cupcakes.

Very nice, mind. Any ideas what I could do with them?

I have also been writing. I haven't been keeping proper track of a wordcount. About 1500 words today, and about the same yesterday.

Tags: baking, cake

12:29 pm: Website to remember for Redemption
Next February. I'm just thinking ahead.

I'm going to make a batch of gluten-free cupcakes and a batch of vegan cupcakes before I go (Thursday night), and pack in a couple of airtight containers, and bring a box of gluten-free icing sugar and a bottle of lemon juice to make Dead Simple Icing to put on the cakes, Saturday morning, for the market Saturday afternoon, and so I can tell which are gluten-free and which are vegan, decorate them with gluten-free sweeties and vegan sweeties. From the useful sugary website I just linked to, or some other one.

Plus, if I have room, some cake for the Friday night room party.

Tags: baking, cake, fannishness, redemption

07:14 pm: Happy birthday to all of you!
It's my birthday. I hope it's a happy day for all of you.

Have cake! (If you want cake in reality, you will have to come to the Forest Cafe on wings of thought and help yourself to a slice before it's gone.)

Choose between:
( chocolate cake )

( spicy fruit cake )

(They were both made with cake-making materials I had bought anyway and needed to use up, so they fulfilled my goal of having a cheap birthday.)

Tags: baking, being poor, birthday, cake

11:26 am: I won a prize!
Seriously. I did. I am so proud.

Last week the local fruit'n'veg co-op had a baking competition/bake sale (that is, you brought in something you'd baked, it was judged, after the prizes had been awarded, the baked somethings were auctioned off, the money went to the pensioners' social group fund - I guess they figured mostly the pensioners would be doing the baking, and I think mostly they were right...).

I made a basketful of scones - hemp/wholemeal scones, with a bit of cheese and mustard, to Aunt Margaret's recipe.

They won! I was awarded a voucher for £5 to spend on fruit and vegetables (so I treated myself to a melon and a pineapple) and a large hardback glossy food-porn type cookbook, the sort I never buy: Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life. It's supposed to have gardening tips as well as recipes, and somehow I doubt I'll be using it much: but I won! *is proud*

Then I got into work (late, because, um, I had to stay and listen to the fruit'n'veg co-op workers praising my scones...) and there was no one here to listen to me bragging, so you get to hear about it instead.

Tags: bake sales, baking, scones

06:53 pm: Off to the pudding party, bearing mince pies...
...and wearing the most appropriate t-shirt in my wardrobe.

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(There will be a small* prize for the nearest correct answer.)

*Though pointless** might be a better word for it.
**And would have been alliterative, too. Curses.

Tags: baking, christmas, imaginary friend meetup

12:00 pm: Midnight in the mad bakery
I got in past midnight last night and remembered I'd planned to ice the orange cookies and to make cheese/mustard scones for a lunchtime fundraiser at Dementia Plaza today. Just cheese scones would have been fine: I could have whipped up a batch of scones and had them baked by one am. Icing the orange cookies too... I wasn't asleep till after two. Bah. Still, it meant I had time to clear all the booze out of my system, so that I woke feeling sleepy but at least not fuzzy-headed this morning.

The orange icing was good, though. The juice of an orange plus a capful of orange vodka, mixed with a lot of icing sugar. The cookies? Turned out more cakie than cookie - one of these days I will learn how to get the proportions of sugar, flour, butter, egg right, but till then I keep producing these big fluffy things. With peel that had been soaked in hot raspberry vodka for nearly 24 hours, and the zest of two oranges.

To dinner last night at green_amber's, with sneerpout and Pam WINOLJY. By some chance sneerpout and I had never happened to be in the same non-virtual room before, so it was interesting to meet her at last. It had been years (we had trouble working out how many years) since Pam and I had met - certainly we'd lost track of each other since well before 1997, when Pam went to York.

Dinner was fabulous: much wine (served in pink fluffy glasses), a delicious soup with fresh coriander, pasta with a rich mushroom sauce, and white chocolate key lime pie that was orgasmic. Pam and I both had a second helping. green_amber showed off her matching slippers as seen on Sex in the City. sneerpout noted that she was now drinking from green_amber's slippers. Pam WINOLJY admitted to a pink fluffy dressing gown. I wondered out loud about drinking wine from a dressing-gown.

A lovely evening on the whole, marred by two things: I'd walked over (and walked back, this time via Victoria Street where Pam WINOLJY was staying) and was breaking in a new pair of boots. Unfortunately this was overkill on my feet - the one hour walk to green_amber's would have been fine, but the same back again was too much, and this morning I have blisters, which is a sod. Also, the other thing, about which all I can say is: If you really feel that way about the past six years, all I can do is apologise. I'm sorry.

Tags: bake sales, baking, eating some delicious food, imaginary friend meetup