yonmei

12:57 pm: It is a truth not sufficiently acknowledged...
...that no one ever sees themselves as the villain: no one ever thinks of themselves as the bully.

Healthcheck warning: this leads to Kathryn Cramer's website via HideMyURL

In other, more pleasant thoughts, it has occurred to me that there is a lovely meme to be had comparing fandoms to cake.

The manly moustachio'd fandoms of the 1970s and 1980s are chocolate cake, solid and multilayered with thick chocolate frosting and sandwiched with more chocolate.

(The Professionals has an unexpected chocolate-ginger layer that involves Gordon Jackson/Cowley. Bodie and Doyle are chocolate cake even though neither of them have moustaches.)

House is a series of green tea vegan cupcakes with rosewater icing and little silver balls, though attempts keep being made to stir it in a more normal direction.

What is your fandom? What is its representative cake?




(This post wants you to know *bouncing up and down a little* that it was inspired by jekesta's RiptideIsLove multifandom vid, which is all about being in love with a fandom so much you can't really think about any of the rest. Or anything else. Really. It is (the fanvid, not this post) deep and meaningful and clever and funny and cute and full of Avons, or at least one Avon.)

Tags: cake, fannishness, racefail 09, silly memes

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

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

11:30 am: Sad cakelings
I've used the Lakeland Garden Gang cake tin four times now - this morning was the fourth - and each time it's been harder to get the fubsy little cakelets out intact. This morning they all broke when attempting to remove them cleanly. This is sad and annoying: it is evidently basically a one-shot product. I did think it might be. :-(

The Garden Gang cake tin is currently listed as "unavailable" on their website, so I do wonder if too many people complained....



Give clicky to pink and orange dragons, please...


Tags: ;l, cake

06:01 pm: Awful Warning
For years and for decades, when in the right mood for it, I've quite enjoyed McVities Jaffa cakes. (They convinced a judge in a court case that they were cakes (VAT-free) and not biscuits (VAT-added) by making a giant Jaffa cake. I would like to have seen that.)

Jaffa cakes have a spongy cakey sort of biscuity layer, and then a round circle of something that looks (if you're patient and keep chipping away at the chocolate, as I once did when I was 8) a bit like a small flat circular piece of congealed marmalade, the thin cut variety, and then covering both cakey sub and orangey circle, a thin layer of rippled chocolate.

That's it. They're quite nice. You wouldn't want to eat a whole lot of them, but they're perfectly good buy-for-the-office biscuits. (They have 12 in the box, so when they were bought for the family, they were "two each and fight it out for the two left over".)

Anyway, McVities have produced something dreadful: strawberry jaffa cake. I bought a box out of curiosity. I ate one. It tasted like ... well, like slightly awful biscuit with some kind of slightly stale jam flavour. Chocolate barely discernable.

I made myself a cup of tea and ate another. I dunked it. It was still horrid.

I had to read A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down to take the taste away. Ugh, horrid. Stick to orange Jaffa cakes, McVities, they're what you're good at. (There were blackberry and apple jaffa cakes a couple of years ago: I don't think I even tried those.)



Tags: biscuits, cake, tea

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

04:36 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

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

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

12:14 am: Hello, 2009
I'm making cupcakes.

Also soup (Brussels sprouts; celery; onion; red chillis; red lentils; fresh coriander; turmeric); and beginning a fresh sourdough batter, since I'll need to make more bread in a day or so.

Is this an omen, or merely habit?

Tags: bloody bloody bloody, cake, happy new year

11:55 pm: Christmas flashfics
( Sachertorte, for the ravens )

( a bauble for ruthi )

( curtains for whatho )

( ruffled dragovian )

( Afrai Arabesque )

( rainherder's rum )

( unintentionally ruthi )

Tags: cake, christmas day stories, dragon eggs need clicky, flashfic, write write write

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

08:02 am: On Saturday, I made a cake
It was the first very large all-vegan cake I ever made, for a friend's 42nd birthday, and it was quite successful.

Only quite: I have not figured out how to deal with the lack of structural cohesion in cakes made without eggs, and the base cake mixture I used is literally liquid when you pour it into the pan, so it's impossible for it to come out as flat as you want the layers of a layer cake to be.

On reflection, it would probably have been better to use the recipe I have for vegan chocolate ganache to stick the layers together (that has solidity! - tastes great, too) and use the fluffy "buttercream" icing on the top and sides. (That had Cointreau in it, and also tastes fabulous.) It was holding together OK till the taxi I used to take it up to my friend's house went over three speed bumps and cracked the ganache.

But it was fun. And it tasted good. Rich, sugary, lethal - exactly what a birthday cake ought to be.

Now it's Monday morning and I really, really, need to quit drinking coffee in bed and get up and go to work.

Wish me joy.

Tags: birthday presents, cake

08:36 am: The Fan History wiki thing...
[deleted]

Let's all talk about something else. I don't actually care one way or another about any of it. Fanfeuds are boring. What kind of cake do you like?

In answer to bethbethbeth's deleted comment: I'm planning to make a yeast-leavened fruit cake with a strawberry sourdough starter for the birthday party Saturday.

In answer to bethbethbeth's second deleted comment: I suddenly got the idea when I thought I could make a starter using strawberries for the fresh fruit, and then when I mixed the dough for the cake, I could add fresh strawberries to it. And I had this birthday party coming up next Saturday, for which I had committed to make a vegan cake, which meant I needed a very moist, very light yeast dough, since I wouldn't be adding any eggs or butter.

Tags: cake

04:42 pm: What fresh hell is this?
( My woes, let me show you them )

I am trying to think of nice, happy, fluffy things.

1. I made a cake. It is a very good cake, and I shall ice it with lemon icing.

2. I can go home now. It's after five.

3. My garden is nice.

4. My cats are lovely.

5. Bob is well and purring.

6. Cake is nice.

give dragon eggs clicky

Tags: bloody work, bob, cake, computer disasters, dragon eggs need clicky, family stuff, lists, self-obsession

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