Kira Disapproves

This will be my last post of the day, and a quick one. I’m trying to post more, because final paper writing time is EXACTLY the time to start posting more. I will also be posting about one of my final projects, the Peter Pan Project, for those who are already involved.

These are cookies my Mom used to make with me for Easter. She made them with adorable licorice whip handles, but I was too lazy for that. I did make my own icing…

Step One: Bake circles of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough pressed in to a mini muffin pan. They’ll come out something like this…

Step Two: Fill the “baskets” with icing Easter grass using a pastry bag with a star tip.

Step Three: Press Cadbury Robin’s Eggs in to the icing. If you want, you can also add the licorice handles at this point by anchoring them in the frosting. I did not, so at Sunday dinner everyone thought they were bird nests until I informed them of my concept.

I had a bit of what I’m going to call an out of body experience tonight. I was driving over to the Clarimont Campus to go to the gym, and it was only as I pulled in to the parking garage that I really realized that I had lost the fight I had been having with myself about how I didn’t want to go to the gym, maybe I didn’t need to go to the gym, after all I danced for about 30 pretty energetic seconds on monday, and my feet hurt . . . *poof* GYM.

Writing is often like that, too.

Anyways, there is a reason it’s a good thing I ended up at the gym. Last saturday, I gave a paper in my philosophy class (a seminar on William James), and it was about James and Fechner. Fechner was a psychologist, as was James, so I feel all warm and fuzzy about him, and I opened the paper by saying that I have always associated Fechner with cupcakes. Because a lot of psychologists consider Fechner to be the founder of the modern discipline, and he pinpoints his epiphany to a specific day (October 22nd, 1850 to be exact.) Voila! Psychology birthday! (There are an awful lot of onomatopeia type magic words in this post, I realize.)

I’ve been doing a lot of food and kid-themed school projects lately.

Nikki is becoming concerned that I am regressing.

Eden says, “When are you not regressing?”

[At this point my computer froze because Wordpress is apparently having issues including links in blog posts. You have thus been saved about three paragraphs of witty cupcake repartee and I now commence with the cupcake pictures with little comment. Lucky you.]

Cookie Dough Cupcakes by The Cake Mix Doctor

(http://www.cakemixdoctor.com/recipes/what_kind/cupcakes/cookie_dough_cupcakes_as_seen.php)

Here is the bright yellow batter. That I did not spill…

Here they are ready to go in the oven…

Here they are just out of the oven. Some of them collapsed and had to be doctored with chocolate icing…

Here’s the gooey cookie dough center…

And the final product!!

They were such a hit that I made a double batch for Lizzy’s birthday party. It turned out they were fairly unnecessary because Lizzy, awesomest party hoster ever, had candy or derbs (I don’t feel like looking up how to spell that word corrrectly. You of course know what I mean.)

Lizzy was surprised there was cookie dough in the cupcakes!

No one in this picture is named Sarah.

Everyone loves cupcakes.

Look at JP smirking behind his drink.

He’s not immune.

He would later enjoy a cupcake.

Elizabeth is rarely this cheerful.

For those of you who are particularly stalker-y (or just interested), Pam has blog enteries about my Portland visit here and here and here AND here. Click the third “here” if you just want to jump right to the shower picture…

For the bulk of this blog, bear with me. This is my first time trying to incorporate Flickr pictures without them being all tiny and weird…

So, Aimi and I made these awesome Champagne-Pear cupcakes today.  We used Bosch pears (I think.Whatever ones have the kind of brown skin.) I didn’t think to take pics of the batter-making process. Baby steps. But here they are pre-frosting:

Here, with frosting:

Here again:

They were AWESOME. There is still some champagne left, and I think I may have to buy more butter and sugar (because these used almost all I had) and make them over again tomorrow for Sunday dinner, but with strawberries.

We’ll see. I have yet to do homework this weekend, or to finish my writing goals.

*Thanks to Pam for the photo tutorial!! (There, I linked to you FIVE times in this blog to thank you.)

Did you know that bread comes in other ways than those squishy packages at the supermarket? I did, in an intellectual sense, but I always thought it must be difficult to do. Well, me and my impatience and minor baking skills have proved that it is not. Now it’s my new favorite procrastination activity! hobby!

The first bread I made was on Pam’s recommendation, “Speedy No-Kneed Bread.” I’m not sure where the specific recipe she sent me is from, so I won’t post it. Pretty much it’s just yeast, flour, water and a little bit of waiting. It came out great! I did have to make it in two batches because I didn’t have a big enough Pyrex to bake it all at once.

My next adventure was Amish White Bread from allrecipes.com. This one required kneeding, which actually was pretty fun. I just sang show tunes at the top of my lungs (tracks 2-4 of the Mamma Mia soundtrack) and that seemed to be enough time to get all the bubbles out or whatever.

I will do a few things differently next time. I will definitely cut the sugar about 1/3 of a cup, because it was a little too sweet. Also, I’ll cook it a little longer because there is this weird doughy patch in the upper lefthand corner of the loaf. I was scared I would burn it. Finally, I think I will add an egg and a little milk, per the comments on the site, to make it stick together and slice more easily for sandwiches.

Tomorrow I’m making another batch of “Speedy” to have with Black Bean Soup for dinner. This weekend I’ll try the white bread again. I am also going to take Cyd’s suggestion and get a spray bottle to spray into the oven. It’s suppoused to make the bread rise better. Either way, I get to use a nifty spray bottle.

Like, for example, Krispy Kreme elitism. Yes, Krispy Kreme makes a darn good donut. They definitely have the market cornered when it comes to the original glazed, doubly so, because a hot now original glazed is a whole different experience than a regular (cool?) original glazed.

However, Krispy Kreme is just not the be-all, end-all of donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts is not inferior. It’s just a whole other thing. It’s comparing apples to oranges (assuming that both fruits are battered and deep fried, which probably wouldn’t taste as bad as it first sounds, actually.)

Case in point would be the blueberry donut. At KK, they have blueberry cake, which is one of those twice-fried donuts that is so saturated with yummy oil and sugar that it melts away at the edges. The blueberry cake donut is good, but it is extrememly rich, and not really a great choice for breakfast.

Dunkin’ Donuts, on the other hand, has a blueberry donut that is so unsweet as to be almost bagel-y. It has a thin, hard layer of glaze that is a perfect compliment to the little blue things that make it “blueberry”-y, but the actual donut part is less sweet and dry. Also perfect in munchkin form. And the Dunkin’ Donuts blueberry muffins (not the low fat) are a whole other amazing thing, too.

Of course, that still doesn’t cover everything. There’s Top Pot donuts (now available at Starbucks, but not in Cinnamon Sugar, which is my favorite), Caribou Coffee’s apple fritters, supermarket entities like Entenmann’s, whose chocolate donut with yellow cake is nothing like any chocolate donut from anywhere else…

Yes, this is just a silly post about donuts. But still, it’s important to establish what we’re talking about. Operational definitions, if you will. And with that “Jamesian” link, I have managed to connect this particular navel-gazing, food-oriented, procrastination-themed post to my homework.

Oh, and one more thing!  Did you know that when Krispy Kreme stores with the orange “hot now” sign don’t have their light on, it means they’re making OTHER donuts than original glazed hot now, and that you can request some if you ask very nicely? I know. Awesome.

Joel at Krispy Kreme

Over the holiday, while I was visiting New York, Theresa, Pritpaul, and Tracy and I went to Veniero’s and had coffee and dessert. I re-discovered the Italian rainbow cookie. That — plus the spiked coffees with cool names and of course Tracy, Theresa, and Pritpaul — was one of the major highlights of the break.

When I got back to Atlanta last week, I was feeling like I had alllll this time to get stuff done, and I thought doing a little baking project might be fun. Cyd said she was making calzones (round pizzas in Cyd’s-Grandma-Speak) and I figured rainbow cookies would be the perfect dessert. They looked a little complicated when I looked at recipe online, but somehow when I read the whole thing I still figured it wouldn’t be too bad.

It was so bad.

It took me three entire days from start to finish, from about 2:45 p.m. on Sunday to midnight on Tuesday. Partly, I was distracted by Lila getting sick.

But it was also just a freaking pain. Just in case you didn’t look at the recipe, here’s some highlights:

• Not only do you have to separate the eggs, the you have to add them at completely different times AND whip the egg whites for freaking ever. This involved washing my one and only electric mixer.
• You have to divide the batter into three to get the darn colors right.
• You have to SHRED the almond paste if you do not have a food processer. I do not. Almond paste gets angry when you try to shed it. It melts and just generally freaks out.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details. The plus side was the recipe was pretty easy to follow. And I really appreciate the tips from Theresa’s Italian Mom. They don’t look terribly pretty in the pictures because my attempts at being a food stylist failed. But I swear they are good!

Elizabeth set up a better picture. (Hi, Pam!)

We’re having them this week at Sunday dinner.