We're not going to the prom, fancy peeps!

My office spouse mentioned that his birthday was coming up, and I'd already discovered his nostalgic fondness for Peeps.  I considered actually getting him a card but ultimately settled for putting a "Happy Birthday" speech balloon on a package of Peeps purchased during a buy one, get one free sale.  Which I mentioned so everyone would know that shit's totally platonic and shit.  Rumors are already circulating among the students.

This left me with a dilemma: what to do with an extra package of Peeps?  As fond as I am of the humble Peep, I have lost my lust for cramming them down my gullet.  Fortunately, Buzzfeed posted a list of ways to make Peeps even more likely to give you diabetes.

Since I had no Little Debbie brand Twinkies available, I went with Tuxedo Peeps.

Since only part of the white candy will show, you can just drag the Peeps through it.  For those of you playing at home, I'd recommend having a candy paintbrush to shape the chocolate jackets.  Either it's easier to use chocolate chips or I just suck at putting chocolate formal wear on marshmallow bunnies.

As you can see, some of the bowties came out better than others.  The bunny in the middle got that interesting expression from my touch up brush dripping.  I assume that he's the James Bond of my Tuxedo Peeps.  Or maybe they're all James Bonds, but he's the Sean Connery and the one with the really crappy looking jacket is George Lazenby.

This Peep was dipped too far in the chocolate, so she has been given a little black dress, making her Smurfette among the James Bonds (Peepsy Galore? Moneypeep?)

Another Lazy Yet Decadent Simonsen Cookie Recipe

For most of the Xmas baking season I've been looking at tubes of premade peanut butter cookie dough and wondering if it would be socially acceptable to mix it with chopped up peanut butter cups.  Today I decided that I was going to live out this insane, PMS-fueled nightmare because...well, my family would probably eat pretty much any horrific baked good.

On the back of my holiday Reese's cups is a recipe for peanut butter cookies that are basically peanut butter cups surrounded by a thin layer of dough.  It was like a bright orange Christmas angel telling me to follow my heart because I'm sure Hershey's Chocolate Flavored Candy Products has my and my family's best interests at heart.

Ingredients

• Bag of miniature peanut butter cups
• Tube of peanut butter cookie dough

Chop up enough peanut butter cups to fill a small plate.  Pour into a bowl and mix with cookie dough.  Using the same knife works pretty well.  Stir until candy and dough is well mixed or until you get bored.  Shape dough into balls, squish with a fork, and bake according to directions printed on tube.  

In researching why you need to put the fork marks on the dough (other than because that is how it has always been done), I learned that there is something called a "cookie shovel."

Balls

So, I saw these beautiful chocolate covered strawberries that are actually cake.  And I thought, "I can make these for my dear friend's birthday.  And everyone will look at my stupid dessert thing and worship me as a god!  A god, I say!"

After I finished laughing maniacally, I hit obstacle #1: no red velvet cake mix at the Kroger.  Using my enormous brain, I decided that I could just use strawberry cake and strawberry frosting.  I returned home, confident and full of hubris, to bake my cake.

In theory, cake pops are made by crumbling up cake and then mixing it with frosting.  It's easiest to mix it by hand, so this stage is wretchedly disgusting.

Instead of rolling my future cake pops into balls, I made strawberry shapes of varying competence before shoving them in the fridge.

My friends, cake pops are a lie.  They taunt you with their smooth, candy-coated surfaces and their charming details.  But man was not meant to dip wads of cake in candy!  I was like Icarus, flying higher and higher until the Sun melted my candy into twisted, deformed shapes.

A lesser person would have given up in despair.  She would have gnashed her teeth and torn out her hair.  I rebranded.

If I couldn't make beautiful fake strawberries, I'd bring the chum bucket.  Which I decided was totally appropriate since it was a beach themed party.

Even my greedy, gluttonous family was not enthusiastic about eating from the chum bucket for some reason.

Yesterday, like Icarus dragging his zombie corpse out of the sea, I decided it was time to try another cake pops related craft.  Since this one involved chocolate, I assumed it would be easier to trick people into eating it.

First saw the idea on Bakerella's site, but Google spits out a few other versions.

What you need:

• Package of Store brand chocolate sandwich cookies (unless you've got Oreos money)
• 8 oz of Neufchatel cheese (I figured it'd be okay to use instead of cream cheese since there was a picture of cheesecake on the box), softened
• Chocolate candy melts
• Wax paper
• Mixing bowl
• Large ziploc bag and rolling pin

All the other recipes seem to assume that everybody has a food processor.  Well, I don't live in The Sims, John D. Rockefeller!  For the rest of us poor bastards, put the cookies in the ziploc bag and crush them with the rolling pin.  You can also try hitting them or hand crushing them.  After they're in chunks you can kind of use a potato masher for further mashing.  Apparently you're supposed to set aside 7-9 cookies, but I assume that's only if you want to eat them.

Once the cookies are crushed into a fine powder (or, you know, close enough), add in the Neufchatel/cream cheese.  Attempt to stir it with a spoon, then a knife, then just use your hands.  Ideally you put wax paper on a flat, movable surface (like a cookie sheet) before you shoved your hands in the mixing bowl.  When your heart tells you it's ready, roll the dough into little balls and place them on your flat, movable surface.  Put your balls in the fridge and have some wine.  Let chill until you're slightly buzzed.

Melt the chocolate--if it's Wilton Candy Melts or the kind they sell at Ben Franklin, 45 seconds for the first time through the microwave, stir, then 30 seconds each time until they're melted.

I found it much easier to take a spoonful of chocolate and drip it/smooth it over my balls.  You don't get full coverage, but...well, the chum bucket was the result of dipping.

After coating your balls in chocolate, put them back in the fridge.  Have some more wine--you've earned it.  After the chocolate hardens, you can move your balls if your flat, movable surface takes up too much space.

How thou art fallen from Heaven, O Cake of the Morning

The Rapture's this weekend.  Fortunately my friend's throwing a party so we can all make sure we don't have to go anywhere.  And instead of spending my final moments on Earth in prayer and sincere repentance, I'm making cupcakes.  Devil's Food cupcakes, the most sinful of cakes.  Because I assume that before turning against Cake God in Dessert Heaven, Devil's Food cake was Angel Food cake.

This particular Wilton's icing color (Red-Red. the concentrated gel so nice they named it twice) claims it has no taste, but you really have to dump it in there to get a decent baboon's ass red.

The horns are similar to the Duke Blue Devil Cupcakes I made for Kristen's graduation except Ben Franklin just has bags of Artificially Flavored Cherry Slices Candies.  Two bags is not quite enough to make 24 devil cupcakes, but that does mean two leftover cupcakes that will not require the following explanation: "Uh, well, you know how it was supposed to be the Rapture this weekend?  Well..."

Having looked at the technique for the Duke Devil's Food Cupcakes, I'm now bitterly wishing I'd remembered that I'd used chocolate chips for eyes.

Black cookie icing is a real pain in the ass for super-important detail work.

Some of the devils have red, white, and blue stars on their paper wrappers.  I felt this would represent the status of America as the Great Satan.  Also, Ben Franklin doesn't sell red cupcake wrappers, and Wall-E or Disney Princesses just wouldn't make any sense.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

The problem with Mardi Gras is that it's always on a Tuesday.  Maybe people in New Orleans can skip work/class the next day, but...actually, it might be easier to pull off in the 804 where Mardi Gras isn't really a thing.

But my better solution: Vendredi Gras, Mardi Gras on Friday!  And it would not be a Lent-violating extension without some king cake (Recipe here).

Kids, do you know what it is that makes like worth living?  Is it friendship?  Rainbows?  Kindness?  No, it's fermentation, the process that turns useless sugars into delicious alcohol!  Oh, and makes bread bigger and your kitchen smell like beer when you're making a king cake.

If I'd had a more leisurely week, king cake would've been a perfect Simonsen recipe.  Mix yeast, water, and sugar, go watch TV.  Mix some stuff, ignore it for a few hours.  Roll it out, fill it, shape it, let it sit for another hour.  But having work and class and karate, Thursday night king caking was kind of frantic.

Once the dough's risen for two hours, you punch it.  After punching it, in theory you split it in half.  Whenever I've made this, I split the dough up to make three king cakes.  Roll out one section and "sprinkle" your filling inside.  What this actually means it "attempt to use a spoon to neatly spread filling before giving up and using your fingers."  Other people on AllRecipes.com have used different fillings; I used the brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans version for all three cakes.  Because pecans are awesome.

After shaping the cake and spending way too much time trying to keep the ends together, you're supposed to cut vent holes.  That probably represents something European and/or Catholic.  Or maybe the whole thing would explode it the oven if you didn't.  (A special Jupiter Star Power prize for our first reader to explode a holiday themed pastry in the oven!)

Things I've learned from rushed king cake making: you can totally use the slightly less rock hard brown sugar you find in the back of the cupboard, and if you  hastily add your filling without thoroughly mixing, it starts oozing out your linked cake-ends.

Part of the king cake tradition is shoving a plastic baby inside.  According to Wikipedia, this is a Southern US tradition (those losers in France and Spain use beans), and all your jerks who've found babies would owe me cake if I trusted you to make/obtain one.

Do not even consider putting the baby inside the cake before baking it.

After all the rising and the slicing, your deliciously filled king cake has the perfect opportunity to look like it's puking up brown sugar or oozing from its multiple wounds.

Even if you're in a hurry after 4+ hours of preparing/baking, you still need to take the time to decorate your king cake.  Which you can definitely rush because a properly decorated king cake looks like you were already drunk and had access to sprinkles.  Or get some kids to do it.  Kids love pouring sprinkles on things.

The frosting is confectioner's sugar and water.  Since this was the next day, I put the cakes back in the oven for a few minutes on 200-250 to warm them up a little.  Don't even bother with a knife; just spoon your frosting on and scoop up whatever tries to get away.

If I were smart, I would've remembered to shove the babies inside before covering the cakes with sticky stuff.

Cupcakes, cupcakes, sweet cakes for all!

Part of becoming an adult is realizing that certain holidays are terrible and only exist to make you spend money and feel bad about yourself.  Valentine's Day is so crappy I'm already sick of Anti-Valentine's Day celebrations. This year I actually seem to have bewitched somebody with my feminine wiles, and I still have no Valentine's Day enthusiasm.  Hopeless romantic that I am, I've made sure to mention that I don't like chocolate or stupid teddy bears (which makes one wonder if one is being presumptuous or pushy, but then one remembers that is basically how one rolls).  I have much more enthusiasm about buying cheap classroom Valentines, taping Dum-Dums to them, and changing the caption to "Happy Valentine's Day, Sucker!" or "Happy Valentine's Day, Dum-Dum!"

But if there are seasonal muffin cups and Funfetti frosting, I will make dessert items for it.  If we had but world enough and time, I would probably be making this stupid cake.  Of course, I would never be able to get the overlapping thing right and my handwriting is abysmal.  And apparently fondant tastes bad, and I have no strategy for getting rid of this hypothetical cake.

Given my inability to figure out that typically cakes are consumed, it probably won't surprise you to know that I managed to acquire four boxes of cake mix.  (If you're wondering how to tell if the Food Addict or the Food Pusher is doing the baking, count how many boxes of cake mix are on hand.  If the answer is more than 1, it's the Food Pusher)

Obviously that means it's time to bring Valentine's cupcakes to people.  Not because I feel anything for them, but because I have too many damn boxes of cake mix.  And I may have bought both large and small cupcake wrappers.

Here's the group that went to karate class on Monday night, sitting in my new Wilton cupcake carrier.  Notice the time taken to melt the frosting in the microwave and to draw hearts on some of them with writing icing.

Another group went to classes on Tuesday.  That was how I learned that the cupcake carrier must remain completely level at all times or the cupcakes will fall over.  Hungry grad students will eat them anyway.

The Monday/Tuesday cupcakes were all lemon cake with vanilla frosting.  By Thursday I decided that frosting took too much effort.  As did cleaning the frosting and sprinkle encrusted cupcake carrier.

If you bring starving grad students and karate scholars unfrosted cupcakes, they'll eat those too.

One box of cake mix will make at least 72 mini cupcakes.  I could probably have made a few more, but ditched the last of the batter.  Which is wasteful, but in my defense, I already had 72 cupcakes.

Your Pal Kate's XTREME Xmas Potatoes

This recipe is dedicated to my dear sister who, by not arriving until tomorrow, made it possible to make it.

What you need:

Red potatoes
Portabella mushroom caps
Scallions/green onions
Milk
Butter
Garlic
White wine (you can use cooking wine, but you're not supposed to drink that.  Unless you're out of regular wine)

Cut up your potatoes into quarters or, for those of you who are bad at math, pieces that could be quarters.  Look, if God wanted you to be precise, He would've made uniform potatoes.  Boil the potatoes until you can easily pierce them with your stabbin' fork.

While potatoes are cooking, cut up mushrooms and scallions.  Combine mushrooms, scallions, about a tablespoon of butter, and some wine in a pot.  Add as much damn garlic as you want.  Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently.  If the spirit moves you, add some more wine.  If it's been one of those Christmases, add some wine to yourself.  You've earned it.

Drain and mash the potatoes (you know that weird thing that looks like a branding iron or some sort of Medieval torture device?  That's a potato masher!)  Add a modest amount of milk--how much depends on how much liquid there still is in the wine/butter/mushrooms/scallions mixture.  Add that in with the potatoes and continue mashing.  The potatoes should be creamy, but not diluted.  If this doesn't happen, apply wine to yourself until you no longer care about the potatoes.

Black velvet if you don't please

Monday I was baking more cookies and making sure my hands were too covered in food dye to work on people's Christmas presents.

The only flaw in my ingenious plan to make more red velvet cookies was that I'd used up all the red food coloring to make the last batch of red velvet cookies.  So, looking at the available Wilton concentrated icing colors, I decided on purple.  I like purple, and one of the advent candles is purple for some reason.

I should've known better than to listen to the person who keeps giggling moronically because the directions say to shape the dough into one inch balls.

Plan B: black velvet.  Because that's a song.  And I briefly thought it was also a story about a horse until I realized I was conflating Black Beauty and National Velvet.  (If you ever need to explain your pal Kate to someone, just say that I have a big vocabulary and sometimes spend hours saying, "One inch balls" and laughing.)

He only pretends to like you because you give him food

 So, I've been busy trying to be a grad student.  Which, for the savvy academic, includes holiday bribes.

As you may know, my insensitive, egomaniacal nature has been considered "caustic" or "utterly intolerable". That's why I try to trick people into liking me by giving them food!  Horrible food, like candy coated Oreos!

 I also decided that, for students, the true meaning of Christmas is bribing your professors.

Having a lollipop mold that matched the gift boxes was a happy coincidence.

I really hope giving a Milton professor a tiny Satan doesn't backfire somehow.  Like losing points for not giving him wings.

I bought Creepy Cute back when I first started krocheting, and all I've done is make devils.  I haven't even used my smarts to make those bootleg Catwoman dolls I thought I could maybe, somehow figure out.  Maybe after the Xmas Sweatshop shuts down for the year.

Let Mortal Kombat Begin

Ninja cookie cutters are sort of ridiculously expensive for what they are (plastic outlines of ninjas), but can you really put a price on cookies shaped like ninjas?  Yes, and it's $12.95 at World of Mirth.

I haven't been inside World of Mirth for years, and going there again reminded me why: I'm poor.  Because I keep buying things like $13 ninja cookie cutters.  Also, I had to use a calculator to figure out the price per ninja since I am only smart enough to figure out that it'd be somewhere between $3 and $10.  Which is not very smart at all.

Anyway, this afternoon: ninjas!  From another classic Simonsen recipe: tube of dough and lots of flour.  Cover your hands in flour, spread some flour on the wax paper (once you have some), flour up the rolling pin, giggle inanely about the similarity between flouring up the rolling pin and other actions, and put some flour on your ball of cookie dough.

As a creative person, I don't really like "rolling dough to 1/4" thick" or "at least roll it out evenly."  Don't stifle me, basic cut-out cookies procedure!

I know that Scorpion doesn't really have yellow eyes, but I don't have any white icing.  Obviously I need to do something about this.

I'm using those tubes of cookie icing for the black.  As promised, it dries quickly, and Kroger ended up giving me one tube for free (I went back in when I noticed one of them had rung up full price, and I wasn't going to make trouble when the woman at customer service did a refund and dropped the icing tube back in the bag).  The details are writing icing, which also dries quickly.  If you have to stack cookies, don't use writing gel because it stays tacky and only ends in tears.

Here's two of the cookies that went into my karate teacher's Christmas gift/bribe.  There was some sort of epic battle in transit, so one of them ended up with no legs and the other one was somehow decapitated. But what really matters is that the bribe worked.

Shortbread Cookies

Here's an actual Simonsen recipe for all you young go-getters out there.  Or rather, a Simonsen recipe that involves some bare minimum of effort.  Also by Simonsen recipe I mean I got it off the internet.

Ingredients/Tools

• 1 1/2 cups of flour
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar (the powdery kind)
• 2 sticks of softened butter
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• chocolate chips, nuts, and/or mini-M&M's
• electric mixer because you've got shit to do

1. Leave your two sticks of butter on the counter and go watch TV or something.  Putting butter in the microwave to try to soften it up faster will probably end in tears.
2. Mix butter and confectioners sugar in the electric mixer.  Practice delegating authority by leaving the mixer to do its job while you look up super important things on the internet.  The end result is smooth and fluffy.
3. Sift together flour and cornstarch.  Like in Little House on the Prairie times.  I like to split up the flour and put the cornstarch in the middle so it feels like this is actually accomplishing something.  You want to sift into a small, separate bowl or you'll completely ruin everything forever.
4. Gradually add flour/cornstarch mixture to butter/sugar (See, this is why you should've paid attention to #3).  Start by adding in small amounts at first, then get impatient and add the rest of the damn thing in.  Remember that your mixer has already proven itself and can be trusted to handle mixing while you check your email.
5. If you're getting dough stuck on the sides or to the beaters, turn off the mixer and use a spatula to push it back down/get the dough off the beaters.
6. Add in chocolate chips or nuts.  Walnuts and macademia nuts are really good with the shortbread.  I was going to try pecans, but I ended up pouring them in my mouth by mistake.  The person I stole this recipe actually, like, measured the chocolate chips, but you can't let people boss you around for the rest of your life.
7. Shape dough into little balls.  Sometimes the dough will be very sticky and sometimes it won't.  Seriously, I have no idea what makes it act differently.  Place balls on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for ~20 minutes at 325° F (No, not those balls).
8. Allow cookies to cool before removing from cookie sheet, otherwise they might crumble (some of them might do that anyway.  Give failure cookies to appease hovering family members).

You can use food coloring to make the dough exciting, festive colors.  Darker colors (red, blue, purple) work better since having to pour a buttload of food coloring in can mess up the texture.  The taste was fine, but...well, you can at least call the green ones Grinch Testicles for extra holiday cheer.

   

Another traditional Simonsen recipe

It's Christmas food pushing baking season, so I've already got ~30 shortbread cookies in the freezer and a three pack of Pillsbury Place and Bake Christmas cookies in the fridge.  Pillsbury Place and Bake cookies are probably about the laziest things ever, since you only need to be able to turn on an oven and remember to both put the cookies in the oven and take them out again, but people really like them.  And they're good for making ridiculous cookie sandwiches!

Excessive Cookie Sandwiches


Ingredients: Pillsbury Place and Bake Holiday cookies, frosting, sprinkles, maybe some food coloring

1. Place and bake cookies according to package instructions.  I don't remember what the package actually says, but cooking time is much closer to 10 minutes (especially if the oven's been on for awhile)
2. Allow cookies to cool, then frost wrong side of cookie and stick another cookie on it
3. Pour sprinkles into small dish, roll frosting center in sprinkles until you have a needless, diabetic-killing sprinkle ring around your cookie sandwich
4. Defensively inform those who suggest there is too much sugar involved that they don't have to eat any cookies

And since place and bake cookies require no effort, that leaves me time to ponder if I totally need Ninjabread Men cookie cutters.  Naturally this only requires limited pondering.

This year I've had a hard time of finding those pre-made sheets of sugar cookie dough.  Yes, they make those for people too lazy to buy the tube of sugar cookie dough and roll it out to the appropriate length.  I want you to know that I am completely okay with only caring about decorating the cookies.  Rolling cookie dough is a pain in the ass.  And how am I supposed to figure out arcane things like some fraction of an inch thick?  I'm not Einstein, damn it.

BATS--The big, bug scourge of the skies!

Friday was this month's Movable Feast, so I decided to be nice and bring in food.  And by "be nice", I own too much Halloween themed baking shit, and I'm probably not going to have a party this year.  Also, I assume "bring in food" is roughly equivalent to "donate money for all the free wine I intend to guzzle".

I assume we all have fond memories of ghost cakes from Halloween Past.  The only thing to say is that trying to find the pan instructions on the Wilton website is a pain in the ass.  Seriously, why do I get Spooky Cinnamon Rolls before I get "here is how to bake things in this pan"?  Wilton's instructions also assume I have the fortitude to bake 18-20 ghost cakes, which would require washing the pan multiple times during baking rather than putting it in the sink and waiting for the mythical Brownies to clean it.  (IMPORTANT: Do not say any stupid poems and look in a reflective surface or you will learn an important lesson about performing household drudgery.)

I have no idea why I don't remember to always just put melt the frosting (especially if the structural integrity of your cake surface is less than ideal).  Take the top off, make sure there's no foil on the can, and stick it in the microwave for 30.  Stir, and enjoy a smooth, glossy texture.

The tormented souls doomed to wander the Earth on the right have melted frosting.  Those miserable spirits trapped between worlds on the left have room temperature frosting.

If you're not going to let some baking goods company boss you around and are only capable of enough motivation to make 6 ghosts, you'll have enough cake batter left to make 12+ cupcakes.

I'm not really happy with the purple frosting.  It's paler than I'd hoped, and I want you to know that I was most generous with the concentrated "violet" icing color.

Wilton started selling molds for candy picks for those of you who feel that a single serving of frosted cake does not provide enough sugar.  And for jerks like me.

And they've got bats.  I could bake cupcakes in bat-baking cups and then put bat-candies on top of them!  And then after Halloween, I can just make non-holiday themed Bat-cupcakes!

Unfortunately, the Bat Candypick Mold does not come with the Dark Knight's tactical mind or even the Dominoed Daredoll's shopping abilities because it turned out that I had just enough orange candy melts to make 7 bat-candies.  There are 12 11 cupcakes.  I'm not so good with the math, but I suspect that 7 is not 12 11.

Today's candy-related blonde moment: I have red candy melts and yellow candy melts.  Red and yellow make orange.  There must be some way to turn this to my advantage...

(The candy mixing reminds me of my grandfather's Kodak retirement party)

When you're making orange, you generally want to use more yellow than red.  However, it is possible to mix red candy melts with yellow candy melts to make orange candies.  The message here is that arts education is important and is useful in the real world.

Although a bigger problem for me seems to be remembering not to fill the entire candy mold when I only need 5 4 stupid candy picks.  Damn it, I really am horrible at math.

Bootleg Orange is a little bit darker than Licensed Orange (and it's just now occurred to me that I'm not actually using Wilton Brand Candy Melts, but their Ben Franklin cousin.  Fortunately, I enjoy verbally undermining copyrights).  I assume this is the sort of thing that nobody cares about.

  Next super-important problem to solve: what does one do with spare candypicks?  The options are either bring them tonight or chuck them in with the candy-coated cookies I'm definitely not going to forget to bring to karate again.

 I did think about bringing the cookies with me tonight, but I figure there's a difference between my definition of nice and the sad, desperate girl with no friends who bakes all day.

612 Wharf Avenue

Have I complained about Blogger's new photo uploader?  Because I should.  But I'm going to complain about other, epically important things instead.

It's Halloween season, which means it's once again time for candy-covered Oreos!  Well, candy-covered Store Brand Chocolate Sandwich Cookies because I'm not made of money.  You're looking at basically an entire package of Store Brand Chocolate Sandwich Cookies that have been pressed into sweet, sweet candy.

There was some confusion about the candy making process in Modernist Literature, so, here's Kate's Old Fashioned Candy Recipe:

1. Buy a package of candy melts.  Prepare delicious,
2.  "homemade" candy by opening the package.
3. Pour candy into bowl and melt in microwave
4. Spoon candy into plastic tray shaped like things
5. Tap tray against counter as if this will actually remove the air bubbles
6. Press Store Brand Chocolate Sandwich Cookies into candy
7. More tapping
8. Place tray in refrigerator to set candy
9. Go watch TV
10. Remove cookies from tray, using hand or knife to remove any excess candy around the edges (if you are Kate, do not use a knife because you will probably injure yourself and then feel compelled to tell everyone the real, idiotic story rather than making up something with slightly more dignity)
11. Shamelessly accept compliments on delicious, "handmade" treats

Mixed in among the cookies are skulls.  

I was really excited to find the candy skull mode.  Most of you will assume that this is my usual, world-hating cynicism, but the depressing thing is that I was briefly capable of genuine happiness when I thought about making candy skulls.

What I didn't realize was that the 3-D Candy Skull Mold has 8 cavities, but each skull has two pieces (don't ask me how I interpreted "3-D" when I thought I could make 8 skulls at once.  I don't know either).

This means you can only make 4 skulls at a time.  Another issue is that you put candy in the mold, put it in the fridge to set, and then paint melted candy on the back of one skull piece to "glue" the pieces together.  

Fun fact: the melted candy sets in the fridge, but it will also harden at room temperature  [inappropriate joke]. So, by the time your skull pieces are ready for assembly, you need to melt a small amount of candy.  There's also the issue of whether or not your front and your back will be perfectly flat (Spoiler Warning: They won't be) and getting them to fit together.

They look really good, and if I needed some mindless repetitive task to put off reading British literature, I'd probably get into full sweatshop mode on these...except I think the shape/design of the human skull makes it unable to stay upright in all of its 3-D candy glory.  Once again, I think Wilton is just giving me these impossibly awesome looking pictures so I can be taunted by my candy crafting inadequacies (See also "Painting Candy Details")

The Kitchen of Tomorrow

I think everything I've recently finished/am working on is a present for someone else, so maybe it's time to talk about my spite-present from Kristen.

When I first heard about the The Star Trek Cookbook, I was like, "Making food I have no intention of eating but want to bully others into consuming?  And Star Trek?  I am all about this!"  And then I saw that it involved Neelix.  For those of you who actually go outside and have friends, Neelix is the worst Star Trek character ever.  He is the Snarf of Star Trek.  And based on what I've learned from The Star Trek Cookbook, he is also a teetotaler:

If you're serving this dish to your family, however, and are not out in one of the great national parks on Earth, you probably won't want to include the booze--nor should you--but you can add a down-home Smoky Mountain taste with a product called liquid smoke.

And then there's three different non-alcoholic versions of a drink "reputed to have the devastating impact of a photon torpedo".  None of which look like they'd be anywhere close to the color shown on screen.  (Which seems like an incredibly nerdy objection, but I don't think it's possible to be "jiggy with it", as the kids say, while getting cocktail recipes out of The Star Trek Cookbook.) I assume that, as usual, the answer is vodka and food coloring.

In the spirit of spite, I decided my first Star Trek cooking project should be full of two things Kristen hates: Voyager and mushrooms.  Jeri Ryan's Wild Mushroom Soup is good, but not actually a meal unless you're contractually obligated to stuff yourself into a Borg catsuit.

Food to assimilate:

• 1 pound assorted mushrooms, chopped into bite sized pieces
• 1 large russet potato, diced into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1 1/2-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 quart chicken stock, defatted
• salt and pepper to taste  for chumps to add to their own damn soup later

I feel there can always be more potatoes, so I grabbed a few red ones instead of one large russet.  I still have absolutely no idea what it means to "defat" chicken stock or how exactly that happens.  Also, you can buy jars of pre-minced garlic.  If this has any effect on the taste, I just want to remind you that there are few things more delicious than laziness.

Sauté the mushrooms, onion, and garlic in 1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil (or, my preferred technique, what looks like an appropriate amount) until tender, then add the remaining ingredients.  This is possibly missing a step if you're using bouillon cubes to make your stock (1 cup of water for each cube, 4 cups in a quart)--I sauted the vegetables in a smaller pot while making the stock in a larger one.

The recipe says to let the whole thing simmer on medium-low for about twenty minutes, but the potatoes are still going to be fairly firm (especially if you are an individual and thus incapable of precision dicing).  Put them in the soup while you're sautéing everything else.         

It's-a me!

All of the pictures of my finished costume are on Kristen's camera, so here's the food I brought to Kendra's party.

Since Kendra is gay for Sonic the Hedgehog, I decided I was going to make Mario themed desserts.  And cupcakes are vaguely mushroom shaped.  Well, no, not really, but people like cupcakes, and I had green food coloring.

After using concentrated food dyes for some projects, going back to the liquid grocery store kind is miserable.  I need to just invest in a set of Wilton icing colors or start picking them up by the project.

This green is the result of mixing Regular Green and Neon Green food coloring until it looked right.  (Dying frosting is not really an exact science, no matter what the back of the food coloring box says about "parts" and Arabic numerals)

With one tube of Betty Crocker Writing Gel, you can decorate 12 1-Up mushrooms.  And after you've exhausted your one tube of white writing gel, you can turn to fun and exciting things like "rolling little balls of icing with that old tube you found in the cupboard.  And then, once you realize that Plan B is kind of awful, there's sprinkles!

My other vision was to make round sugar cookies into Mario coins.

Here's Kate's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookie Recipe:

• Buy Place and Bake sugar cookies--not Slice and Bake.  You don't have time for that bullshit.
• Drive home.
• Open package.
• Place cookies on cookie sheet.
• Cook for 10 minutes at 350 degrees

Baking the cookies went well.  Coloring the frosting went well (mostly yellow with a little bit of red to get a golden color).  Making the cookies look like coins led to the sort of results I wish I could blame on a child because then it would be adorable.

So, naturally I made one Batman cookie and then decided that decorating cookies was for chumps.

Gonna dig me a hole (gonna dig me a hole), Gonna put a nerd in it

Yesterday:

Todays activities: baking a cake and planting more flowers.

The cake is butter pecan with vanilla frosting, both from box/can because I'm super important.  I need to do super important things like go to Home Depot and impulse buy flowers.

I forgot how frosting works, but nothing says Happy Father's Day quite like "I was too stupid to think of buying back up frosting when I went to Kroger's earlier today, and going to Wal-Mart could interfere with digging holes in the yard."

I did manage to buy a big ass bag of pecans to put on the parts of the cake that were actually frosted.  The fact that I could stuff my mouth with any pecans that I did not deem cake quality was not a factor in my decision to decorate the cake with exactly the type of nuts I enjoy stuffing in my mouth (hurr hurr).

This is probably the gayest Father's Day cake ever, but I didn't know if I'd have time to pull off anything awesome.  And without karate to bring leftover desserts to, cupcakes wouldn't be practical.  (I did consider the lazy, store bought route, but finding James Bond cake toppers is, as always, a challenge.)

And then it was time to dig holes in the ground and stuff plants in them.

The new rose bush really makes the little surviving one look like a piece of crap.  But I'm sure given enough time we'll break this one too.

Have I mentioned yet how much I hate annuals?  And our horrible dirt?  And digging in our horrible dirt to plant annuals?

I picked up two Tiny Skyline Lilies that have promised to come back year after year, assuming no one becomes over-enthusiastic and digs them up to put in more god damn annuals.  Once they bloom they're going to be a bright orange.  Just like today's gardening ensemble: my orange sneakers, my orange shorts, and my orange sports bra.  I ain't classy, but at least I'm color coordinated.  I'm what happened after Lala Orange left the Color Kids to move back in with her parents in the suburbs.

I think it's super important that you know that, after finishing this project, I was covered in dirt, purloined suntan lotion, bug spray, and sweat.  Lots and lots of sweat.  We Simonsens are notorious sweaters, and apparently after twenty minutes tilling the soil and being abused by Angry Sun, my stomach gleams with the sweat of an honest day's complaining.

Today

The rose bush already has several new blooms and lots of little buds.  More of the Tiny Skylines look like they're ready to go.

In celebration of Father's Day and to get ready for the Daddy Daughter Henrico County Landfill Visit, I've been picking up glass.  Because we couldn't live in a house that was built on an ancient Indian burial ground--we had to live over a reclaimed garbage dump.  Except the garbage is pretty much all shards of glass.  (Because I am the coolest kid you know, I have been silently singing "Walking on Broken Glass" to myself during this super-awesome activity.)

I also decided it was time to dig the suet cage out of the front bushes and accept that the squirrels won't let me have nice bird feeders.

While there I moved some earthworms off the front walkway to flower plots (like I said, coolest kid you know) and found a tiny little snail.  And, quite conveniently, a paper clip for helping with size comparisons.

I don't think I've ever seen snails out here.  One time when Mike and I were in LA, a lot of them came out on his patio after it rained, but I can't remember seeing any Virginia snails before.  Definitely slugs and a lot of those little pill bugs as the old man and I have been digging shit up and killing grass, but no snails.

Yes, part of the recent gardening project has involved killing the grass.  We attempted to suffocate it under garbage bags, and then got tired of waiting and just dug and tore it up.  You may be interested to know that this grass was doing much better than the rest of the lawn.