Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Fluttershy Cake
There come times when you simply just want to make a cake.
No other reason: you really just want cake.
So the other night I confessed my desire for confectionery deliciousness to my friend Allie and she too admitted that she wanted cake. And so the great gears of scheming began to turn.
We discussed what type of flavors and ingredients we should use: whether it should be chocolate and fruit flavored or something simple yet very savory. Ultimately we did decide on two things: it should be lemon and there should be strawberry something in it.
So having the day off, I began to plan this confectionery masterpiece: a lemon sponge cake would be good with swirls of strawberry sponge and maybe fresh strawberries in between the layers. But no: that would net us far too much extra batter...although cupcakes could be made with the extra. No no no...must focus on the task at hand.
And then, I had a crazy thought: Why don't you use strawberry rum with the lemon sponge?
No brain! That is far too insane to be effective! The extra liquid would gooefy the whole thing!
Putting the thoughts aside I went to visit Allie at the library where she works and together we planned out our creation while she reshelved her stock.
That is...until she fell silent. "Why don't we use the strawberry rum in the lemon cake?"
There is no way this was not cosmic interference that the two of us should come to the same decision. I immediately drove home to make the preparation while she finished out her day at work and gathered the materials I did not have readily available. She arrived and immediately we set to work.
And because I have all 4 of my loyal readers in mind, I decided to catalog the whole thing with my camera.
So dear readership, I present to you...
Set the oven to 350 degrees and begin mixing the mix, oil, water, eggs and rum.
The batter should be consistently creamy and smell fairly strongly of rum in all of it's sickeningly sweet delicious glory. If you're feeling adventurous (like we were) add in an extra shot of the Dragonberry.
Step 3: Pour it and Bake it
Pour the batter into two pre greased and floured pans...
...and stick those bad boys in the oven. They should bake for about 30 minutes or so: spend your time wisely. We spent our making and eating omelets.
Step 5: Prepare Icing
While the cake bakes, it might be a good idea to prepare your icing. For ours, we used the entire can of plain white diabetes in a can and added in 4 Tbsp of the raspberry syrup and a small dose of red food coloring to get us that nice pastel pink (because without the food coloring it looked like flesh).
Step 6: Trim
After removing the cake from the oven, let sit in pan for at least 15 minutes before transferring it to a wire cooling rack. Once on the rack, slice off the top bubble of cake from the surface so you have a nice, flat surface to work with once you start frosting it.
No other reason: you really just want cake.
So the other night I confessed my desire for confectionery deliciousness to my friend Allie and she too admitted that she wanted cake. And so the great gears of scheming began to turn.
We discussed what type of flavors and ingredients we should use: whether it should be chocolate and fruit flavored or something simple yet very savory. Ultimately we did decide on two things: it should be lemon and there should be strawberry something in it.
So having the day off, I began to plan this confectionery masterpiece: a lemon sponge cake would be good with swirls of strawberry sponge and maybe fresh strawberries in between the layers. But no: that would net us far too much extra batter...although cupcakes could be made with the extra. No no no...must focus on the task at hand.
And then, I had a crazy thought: Why don't you use strawberry rum with the lemon sponge?
No brain! That is far too insane to be effective! The extra liquid would gooefy the whole thing!
Putting the thoughts aside I went to visit Allie at the library where she works and together we planned out our creation while she reshelved her stock.
That is...until she fell silent. "Why don't we use the strawberry rum in the lemon cake?"
There is no way this was not cosmic interference that the two of us should come to the same decision. I immediately drove home to make the preparation while she finished out her day at work and gathered the materials I did not have readily available. She arrived and immediately we set to work.
And because I have all 4 of my loyal readers in mind, I decided to catalog the whole thing with my camera.
So dear readership, I present to you...
Strawberry Rum Lemon Cake with Raspberry Icing
Step 1: Gather the Ingredients
You will need:
- 1 box of Lemon Cake Mix
- 1/3 cup of Vegetable Oil
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup Bacardi Dragonberry Rum
- 1 shot Cruzan's Cherry Rum
- 3 eggs
- 6 Tbsp raspberry syrup
- 1 container white frosting
Set the oven to 350 degrees and begin mixing the mix, oil, water, eggs and rum.
 |
| Dramatic dripping! |
Step 3: Pour it and Bake it
Pour the batter into two pre greased and floured pans...
 |
| Pam Baking: grease and flour in one conveniently lazy spray. |
...and stick those bad boys in the oven. They should bake for about 30 minutes or so: spend your time wisely. We spent our making and eating omelets.
 |
| Oh God...our oven is disgusting... |
While the cake bakes, it might be a good idea to prepare your icing. For ours, we used the entire can of plain white diabetes in a can and added in 4 Tbsp of the raspberry syrup and a small dose of red food coloring to get us that nice pastel pink (because without the food coloring it looked like flesh).
 |
| MORE DRAMATIC DRIPPING! |
Step 6: Trim
After removing the cake from the oven, let sit in pan for at least 15 minutes before transferring it to a wire cooling rack. Once on the rack, slice off the top bubble of cake from the surface so you have a nice, flat surface to work with once you start frosting it.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the cake was still kind of warm when we removed the top layer of sponge, so it kind of looked like something out of CSI. We affectionately named ours "face cake".
Step 7: Frosting
Now comes the fun part. Once the sponge has sufficiently cooled down, place one layer on a plate and cover with a thin layer of icing before stacking on the second layer. Once the top layer is in place, go around the whole cake, liberally applying the icing as you go until you get a nice coverage of the whole cake.
At this point, we had covered the whole cake and looked and gazed upon it with splendor. Then we looked at the bowl of frosting with a small sense of despair because we still had a goodly sized portion of it left and not enough cake to cover it with.
It was then the inspiration hit. I added 2 more Tbsp of the raspberry syrup to the remaining frosting and then a shot of Cruzan's cherry flavored rum. Just to differentiate it from the rest of the icing on the cake already, I added in a not insignificant amount of red food coloring to turn it a bright magenta. This turned the icing very fluid.
...exactly as planned. I then poured the icing right into the center of the cake, and with a little coaxing from a chopstick pushed it down off the edges so it drizzled and ran down the sides.
The result was this:
It may not be entirely pretty to look at, but damn was I proud of it. It was exactly at that moment where I went: "My God...we made Pinkie Pie." My parents were more than just a little confused by this statement until Allie undid her sweater and used her help MLP tee-shirt as a reference. Dad rolled his eyes as per usual while Mom burst out laughing at our childish childish ways.
With great haste we sliced into this cake and lo did the frosting flow. The more fluid magenta icing on the top flowed down into the slices as we made them and melded with the lemon flavored sponge below.
At first bite the flavors all swam together. The sweet tangy lemon danced with the subtle kiss of strawberry on its lips, all the while wearing a delicate pink gown of raspberry with the mildest hint of cherry. It was at that moment we had a realization.
Yellow cake.
Pink frosting flowing gently.
Shy flavors that do a delicate dance of shy wonder.
We hadn't made Pinkie Pie...we had made:
I am damn proud of the cake my friend and I have made. I'd offer you a slice, but you know...it's not like the internet is a series of tubes or anything like that right?
...right?.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Chronicle
So, I went to the movies for the first time since August to see Chronicle with a few friends.
Just walking into the theater reminded me why I started to dislike going to the theaters in the first place: the teenagers who think they're hot shit because they're out by themselves without parental supervision seeing a PG-13 rated movie. I'll admit I was one of them at one point. But here's the key difference: I knew when to shut the fuck up and let people around me watch the movie.
To emphasize-
The kids sitting in front of us were a surly little group of 5 boys, none of them possibly older than 14. One of them kept turning around prior to the credits and asking us questions, which can be fine under the right circumstances. However, when I lean over to my friend and say "I want a slushie, do you guys want anything?" and this little shit turns around and says "Can I come with you?" when you start to head out, that's when it starts to border on creepy. Not seeing any harm in it my friend and I reply "Sure, if you want to." but he remains firmly planted with his shitty friends.
So we go to the concession stand, get our overpriced movie snacks, and head back to the theater and into our seats, only to have the shit in question look back at us and say "Why wouldn't you let me come with you?"- it was at that moment when I knew shit was about to get real.
The entire time during the credits he kept turning around and asking us ridiculous questions, obviously trying to annoy us, but I tried to take it in stride and giving equally as snarky responses in kind. Eventually they turned their attention away from us and started to throw popcorn and Skittles at one another until the original shit stood up in his seat and proceeded to climb over it and into our row, sitting down next to me. He kept leaning over and trying to work our nerves more until I just eventually ignored him. It was only after we were in threat of getting shit thrown in my general vicinity did the child move back to his original seat and calm down a bit.
That is until he turned around and asked us "Do you guys think I'm annoying?" I slowly turned my head toward him and as a group, my friends and I all replied "Yes." to which he obviously got a little shaken and apologized. That is until his next statement.
"I'm in special ed."
Really? Really little shit child? You're going to play that card? ADHD does not qualify sympathy from me.
So I focused on playing the ignoring game as hard as possible until he finally silenced up.
That is until he turned around again saying "Have you seen my wallet? My wallet's missing. Did you take my wallet? Look at me and tell me you didn't take my wallet."
My response:
There was the small sound of one sanity snapping as I fixed my cold stare upon him. "Okay...." and actually fell totally silent and rigid for about 15 minutes.
Right. The movie.
The movie follows a group of teenagers in their senior year of high school: the popular kid, the school president and the misunderstood loner (effectively the main character) as they go to a party, discover some bizarre thing and develop psychic powers. The next hour or so is dedicated to these guys goofing around and developing their strength as they go off and hit the town pranking people with their bizarre abilities.
So pretty much every high school student's dream.
I'm not going to delve any deeper into the plot since today WAS indeed opening night and all 12 of you readers out there might actually go and see it. But what really sets this movie apart is the pseudo first-person camera that has been making a recent uptrend in cinema as of late. I say pseudo because the movie actually references the cameras that are shooting it, starting from the big shoulder mounted camera that the loner starts out with and eventually into the handheld digital camcorder and iPhones/iPads of onlookers later on. It's sort of like the movie is acknowledging that it is indeed a movie, however it almost comes across as slightly more documentary because they literally do at one point go "Alright shut up guys, I want to get this on camera." They even give excuse to the cinematic angles and effects by making it a point to show that psychic loner can telekinetically float the camera over his shoulder.
Unfortunately no images for that yet.
But still, I really think it was a great movie and had several Akira-esque moments and motifs in it (giant mutant baby excluded). Go see it if you can, I know I kind of want to go again myself.
However probably a matinee if anything so as to try and avoid the shitty children.
Just walking into the theater reminded me why I started to dislike going to the theaters in the first place: the teenagers who think they're hot shit because they're out by themselves without parental supervision seeing a PG-13 rated movie. I'll admit I was one of them at one point. But here's the key difference: I knew when to shut the fuck up and let people around me watch the movie.
To emphasize-
The kids sitting in front of us were a surly little group of 5 boys, none of them possibly older than 14. One of them kept turning around prior to the credits and asking us questions, which can be fine under the right circumstances. However, when I lean over to my friend and say "I want a slushie, do you guys want anything?" and this little shit turns around and says "Can I come with you?" when you start to head out, that's when it starts to border on creepy. Not seeing any harm in it my friend and I reply "Sure, if you want to." but he remains firmly planted with his shitty friends.
So we go to the concession stand, get our overpriced movie snacks, and head back to the theater and into our seats, only to have the shit in question look back at us and say "Why wouldn't you let me come with you?"- it was at that moment when I knew shit was about to get real.
The entire time during the credits he kept turning around and asking us ridiculous questions, obviously trying to annoy us, but I tried to take it in stride and giving equally as snarky responses in kind. Eventually they turned their attention away from us and started to throw popcorn and Skittles at one another until the original shit stood up in his seat and proceeded to climb over it and into our row, sitting down next to me. He kept leaning over and trying to work our nerves more until I just eventually ignored him. It was only after we were in threat of getting shit thrown in my general vicinity did the child move back to his original seat and calm down a bit.
That is until he turned around and asked us "Do you guys think I'm annoying?" I slowly turned my head toward him and as a group, my friends and I all replied "Yes." to which he obviously got a little shaken and apologized. That is until his next statement.
"I'm in special ed."
Really? Really little shit child? You're going to play that card? ADHD does not qualify sympathy from me.
So I focused on playing the ignoring game as hard as possible until he finally silenced up.
That is until he turned around again saying "Have you seen my wallet? My wallet's missing. Did you take my wallet? Look at me and tell me you didn't take my wallet."
My response:
 | |
| Because I suddenly became an owl in that moment. |
Right. The movie.
The movie follows a group of teenagers in their senior year of high school: the popular kid, the school president and the misunderstood loner (effectively the main character) as they go to a party, discover some bizarre thing and develop psychic powers. The next hour or so is dedicated to these guys goofing around and developing their strength as they go off and hit the town pranking people with their bizarre abilities.
So pretty much every high school student's dream.
 |
| Bent silverware and all. |
I'm not going to delve any deeper into the plot since today WAS indeed opening night and all 12 of you readers out there might actually go and see it. But what really sets this movie apart is the pseudo first-person camera that has been making a recent uptrend in cinema as of late. I say pseudo because the movie actually references the cameras that are shooting it, starting from the big shoulder mounted camera that the loner starts out with and eventually into the handheld digital camcorder and iPhones/iPads of onlookers later on. It's sort of like the movie is acknowledging that it is indeed a movie, however it almost comes across as slightly more documentary because they literally do at one point go "Alright shut up guys, I want to get this on camera." They even give excuse to the cinematic angles and effects by making it a point to show that psychic loner can telekinetically float the camera over his shoulder.
Unfortunately no images for that yet.
But still, I really think it was a great movie and had several Akira-esque moments and motifs in it (giant mutant baby excluded). Go see it if you can, I know I kind of want to go again myself.
However probably a matinee if anything so as to try and avoid the shitty children.
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