Baking, Uncategorized

Buttermilk chocolate pound cake.

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So, I hurt myself last month and had to take a break from cooking. But I am slowly getting back to myself, and today I am baking with some help to use up the buttermilk that was being stockpiled while I couldn’t cook. We normally go through a lot of buttermilk.

So, here we go with a ‘triple chocolate buttermilk pound cake’. I grabbed it off a web site just to use buttermilk. This is the buttermilk, vanilla and [amazon_textlink asin=’B00DTR9R9Q’ text=’espresso powder’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’002′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’d0ba76d2-ca52-11e8-bedb-595448e40aa8′] ( not instant, but plain old normal. It’s powdered- it dissolves.).

This is the butter, eggs and sugar.

And the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder, which they say to wisk, not sift, which is easier. And seemed to work ok. Since we no longer need to sift  to remove bugs, but to put air into it, this actually worked well.

Then there were chocolate chips— that was 2 types of chocolate.

And now, before a stint in the oven…

Almost done! Smells so good!

Done! That’s an actually bit of broom corn from a broom class we took. It’s what people used to use to check cakes. You can see it came out clean. [amazon_link asins=’B0743B496X’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’002′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’b548546b-ca54-11e8-92f1-531b2aeea62b’]

And then there were two glazes, a buttermilk glaze and a chocolate glaze. Neither was remarkable, but both were serviceable. But I didn’t get a photo of it before being cut because company came and we served it right away. It was a decent cake, and really moist. Company liked it, but It’s not one of the best chocolate cakes I have made for the amount of work that went into it.  So, not a keeper. Two people had 3 pieces each though, so it was certainly not a bad cake. 🙂


I am going to say something about the pan. A lot of comments on the recipe was about how hard it was to get out of the pan. In 1991, I needed to stock a new apartment, and I went to the now defunct McCrory’s that was across from the University I went to. I purchased a few items, including a springform bundt/flat pan. On the way home, I dropped that bag and dented the round part. I pounded it out and it worked fine. I got it out specifically to use it fro this, but the cake plopped right out easily.
I love this pan and would recommend it to anyone. I have more expensive and newer pans, but I will never stop loving this first one. This is basically it, only way higher quality.
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Food, Uncategorized

‘homemade peanut brittle’

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Recently, relatively speaking, this peanut brittle recipe made the rounds on Facebook. I have never had any luck making peanut brittle, and Hex likes it, so since this one looks a little different, I will give it a try. I have a pound of peanuts on hand in the cabinet (well, 15.5 ounces). I am hoping I can get dinner on and clean the kitchen and supervise the boy who is working on math while working on it. Wish me luck!

So, everything is prepped. The buttered pans are in the oven that I heated to 200 to just take the chill out. In the past, cold pans have been an issue, chilling the syrup too soon. I did all this after starting the sugar because there is plenty of time waiting for it to come to temperature. Plenty of time.

This is my current candy thermometer. As you can see, it’s losing it’s numbers, but hey, it’s cheap. And I have used it for deep frying as well.
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The pot was a present from my mom. I <3 you mom.

Post adding peanuts:

Well, so far, so good. Not burned, not clumpy. After they cool, we’ll see how it is.

And success. Not only the best I have ever made, but a really good brittle. Hex is happy, which is good, because he deserves to be happy.
We agree, it needs to be more salty. So I will add probably 1/4 tsp of salt to that vanilla, water, soda blend at the end and try that out.
Certainly a keeper!

And if you have been scared of making candy, don’t be. People have been making candy long before we had all these tools to help. Just do it! 🙂 Even just to say you have.

crafts, Uncategorized

Colorful egg dish

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A few weeks ago, we went to a sort of estate sale. ‘Sort of’ because no one had died, they were just downsizing. One of the things we picked up was a deviled eggs plate- one of those plates with egg shaped hollows for eggs. We bought it for a friend who always makes deviled eggs for herself and her friends.

It’s a practical and cute dish, but when we handed it to her I could tell she was less than thrilled. This is a woman who dies her hair rainbow, after all. So I said, you can use nailpolish and color it!

And she did. And it looked awesome. And I looked at my plain egg dish and thought, ‘you came up with that idea, can’t you do it too?’ And thus, this post. 🙂

and her art page is here, so you can see for yourself why that was obviously too boring…

Above is my plate. 🙂 Here is my nailpolish collection.

So, first, to choose nice spring colors…

And here it is with one coat of each color I chose. Some of these polishes are definitely higher quality! I will let these dry and do another coat (or 10).

Ok, three coats, and looking, well, sloppy. Now to clean them up and add details.

So far I have learned that the cheapo LA Girl and Wet n Wild work great compared to some of my more expensive polishes. And I have learned that this stuff works wonders. The streaks stopped when I added two drops to the polishes. So don’t throw out clumpy polish! Give it new life, and throw it out because you don’t like it, not because it went bad. 😉

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So, I have been using my manicure tools to paint up the eggs. Done of them are better than others, but overall they are fun. I didn’t balance the colors well, so if you do this, I wish you better luck. I like the dots more than the stripes.

The larger dots were actually just the handle end of the paint brushes. 🙂

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It’s not easy to do the stripes. I need more practice, but the painters tape is so much more convenient than the tape designed for nails.

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And, finally, it’s done! I really hope it lasts. It took a while. 🙂

My son says it looks like it came off Pinterest. I will take that as a compliment.

And it’s not going to be mixing with food or stored with food or heated with food. And nai lpolish doesn’t come with warnings not to bite your nails anyway, so it’s pretty safe. IANAL, YMMV, etc.

 

 

 

Surviving independently in a city.