Mysterious Red Eggs...

I went to a baby shower of sorts this weekend. Traditionally you have a party or bbq one month after the baby is born. My second cousin(?) Courtenay had Isaac about a month ago. A bouncing baby boy...and a big one at that, over 9lbs at birth.

The party was lovely. Saw a lot of family I hadn't seen in a long time. I couldn't even remember all of their names. It was nice to see everyone and catch up...and learn some of their names again. The whole time I kept looking for the red eggs. There was lasagna, roast beef, potatoes, spinach dip, chicken wings and a huge table of desserts, but no red eggs. I finally inquired and was told that our family isn't that traditional. It seemed like a decent enough answer, I wasn't planning on eating one anyhow. I just figured they would be there because it was a Red Egg Party for the baby. The name sort of implies....

After I had my fill of dinner and treats, I started making the goodbye rounds. Easier said than done, it took about an hour. How come the second you decide to leave people find a million things to talk to you about? I mean I was there for three hours...



Finally, I got to the door and there were colourful Chinese take out boxes. I was instructed to take two because there were so many. They had filled them with extra lemon squares and such...sort of the last thing I needed after eating for a solid three hours. But I took two and went on my way. I had another function that night so I just left them on the counter...afterall, they were just desserts.

The next afternoon, feeling a little peckish, I opened one up to grab a treat. And then I found the egg...


Hidden beneath a tasty treat was a little psychedelic red, hard boiled egg. It looked psychedelic, almost tie-dyed.

I threw it out....hard boiled eggs shouldn't be left on the counter all night and who knows where they had been hiding during the party....


-Bean

It's so true....

I stumbled upon this picture last week. It kind of made me sad, like someone had taken one of my deepest, most personal thoughts and spray painted it on the side of a building....



Then I stumbled onto this story, it made me laugh out loud, so I sent it to a bunch of people at work to share in my good times. After all, no one likes to laugh alone. It's from mylifeisaverage.com.

"Today, I came home to my mom scowling, my dad smirking, and my little sister grinning. Apparently, my sister got into a fight with a fellow 5th grader, saying that the Beatles pwned the Jonas Brothers. My sister and the girl argued until my sister tackled her while yelling, "I am the walrus! Goo goo g'joob!" I have never before felt like such a positive influence to my siblings. MLIA"

Awesome...

PS. That picture is now my desktop background.


-Bean

It makes me think...

True words may not be pleasant, pleasant words may not be true....


Hum.....


-Bean

Baking 102...

September is a popular month for birthdays....3 in less than a week.

It was pretty hard to top the rainbow cupcake success from yesterday, but I think I managed okay. I used the same recipe as before, but didn't use food colouring in the batter. Today's creation was all about the coloured icing. Once again, you can't make red with your basic food colouring. I'm lead to believe that you need something special from a store called Michael's. I don't have time to shop there because I'm too busy making desserts!


I started with a basic white cupcake (eggless, of course). I didn't use cupcake liners and used about 2/3 the amount of batter per cupcake. I also had to reduce the baking time from 18 minutes to 14 minutes. After cooling, I cut the tops off all of them.



I then used a light yellow frosting on the bottom half. Just enough to make it sticky to hold onto the next part.






The next step was crucial. I used a chocolate version of the recipe to make a giant flat cake, about 1/2" high. I used a cookie cutter to cut out 24 little circles.







One chocolate patty on top of the yellow icing, which is now obviously representing mustard.

I think you can see where I'm going with this now...









With two more coloured sections, I create Ketchup and a thin ring of lettuce. I only piped the green because I didn't want the cupcake to be overloaded with the butter frosting. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much icing!




With a fourth colour (I like to call it bun-taupe), I frosted the top, placed it ontop of my lettuce and ketchup and sprinkled it with a few star candies to simulate sesame seeds. And Voila! My burger-cupcakes are complete. I hope they taste as good as they look!

Mini Burger Cupcakes

BUNS:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cup white sugar
• 8 tablespoons custard powder
  
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoon vinegar
• 2/3 cuup melted butter or margarine
  
• 2 cup water

1. Sift all dry ingredients together and make three wells in the bowl.
2. Add the wet ingredients and mix well.
3. Fill cupcake pans 2/3 full, bake at 350° for approx. 14min.
4. Allow cupcakes to cool, then slice in half.

BURGERS:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 6 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
  
• 1 cup water

1. Same directions as above, steps 1 & 2
2. Line a jelly roll sheet with parchment paper
3. Pour all the batter onto the parchment paper and spread evenly.
4. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes.
5. Using a small, round cookie cutter, cut out as many patties as you can.

BUTTER FROSTING:

• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups sifted confectioners sugar
• 3 to 4 tablespoons milk
• Food colouring

Baking 101....

We had a birthday this past weekend at work, so I decided to bake something special. Ok, it was cupcakes, not so special, but they were rainbow coloured, with pink icing AND they were egg free for those coworkers that can't eat eggs: VERY special. And for a very special lady!


Making rainbow cupcakes is no easy task. I'd have to say that they took about 4X as long as just plain old boring cupcakes. I had to divide the batter into 6 bowls, notice how many different sized bowls I have? It was pretty ridiculous.

Colours you can't really make well with cake batter: Green, blue, purple, orange and red. In fact, the only colour that worked out well was the yellow, probably because the batter was already yellow. Instead of bright, bold colours, I ended up with this collection of pastels.

Now came the time consuming part....layering each colour in as per the rainbow. 24 cupcakes x 6 colours = 144 teaspoons, one at a time. A tedious process, but Kat is worth it.





Into the oven, 18 minutes of aging at 350° and the cupcakes were ready. By ready, I mean ready to cool off for another 30 minutes before I could ice them. I burned my fingertips on one because I wanted to see how the colours turned out. The layers worked pretty well, but the like colours blended a bit.







This picture here was just a few random cupcakes I did with the remaining batter I had. It sort of looks like someone threw up colour on them. After baking, the purple was light brown on the outside, but purple in the middle. And some of the blue worked it's way up to the top, through all the other colours. Cupcake physics must be amazing!

VOILA!

The end result - totally worth it. My taste-testers agreed. Although they didn't like the star sprinkles....of course I had already put them on ALL the cupcakes.

Happy Belated Birthday Kat! Enjoy!

Cheesy Marketing Gimmicks.....

I've bean caught in the act of falling for marketing gimmicks....

I'm currently house-sitting and have found myself without Q-tips. There were Q-tips here when I first got here, but the owner came home for a week and made off with them upon departure. So, my main purpose for today was to buy more. I can't live with wet ears any longer. I know you aren't supposed to use them in your ears, but I don't care. They work and I haven't punctured an eardrum yet.

Q-tips come in two different sized tubs: 170 pcs and 400 pcs. Normally, I would just buy the smaller of the two. 400 Q-tips? That could last years! I really only needed the small one. Then, I see this:



Bonus?!?! Before I've even picked it up, I'm sold. Not only do I need 230 more Q-tips, but I can't live without that travel case! Perfect size for Q-tips (obviously). Especially since I travel all the time. How have I survived so long without this brilliant case? Suddenly it seemed foolish to buy the 170 pack that did not come with a bonus carrying case. So, I now have 400 Q-tips and will probably need to buy more sometime around 2012.

In the end, I didn't need 400 Q-tips and I certainly didn't need a bonus case. I gave into this simple marketing ploy. I disappoint myself sometimes....

Here is my bonus carrying case, filled with 30 of my 400 Q-tips....

And so it begins....

I've pained myself for months debating how to start off this blog. It's been a long time since I've written anything and an even longer time since I've written anything I know people might read. It's a bit nerve-racking...to say the least. So, finally, I choose a path. You, as the reader, get to follow me, Bean, caught up in life as it happens....