February 24 - Turkish delight cupcakes (kinda)

I love you, Kitchen Aid.

These cupcakes were brought to you by my beautiful new hand mixer. Let me just say this: in a cagematch knockdown-dragout-fight to the death between Kitchen Aid and Black & Decker, Kitchen Aid kicks Black & Decker in the balls.

I decided I wanted to try to make Turkish Delight themed cupcakes - a rosewater flavored cake with pistachio frosting. Why would I do this? To utilize my other new toy, of course! Food processor power!!

So first: the rosewater cake.

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch Kosher salt
3 eggs (room temp)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp rosewater (I would use more next time)
6 tbsp unsalted butter (melted)
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together. Beat eggs until homogeneous, add sugar and beat until mixture lightens. Bring rosewater and milk to a boil in a small pan. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture, mix until just incorporated then add hot liquid in a steady stream. Stir in butter and vanilla. Fill cups just past half full, bake 17 minutes or until tops are springy to the touch and toothpick comes out clean.

Spring has sprung! Into my cupcake pan!

My rosewater flavor didn't come out as much as I would have liked, but the flavor was still nice. Like a lightly sweet yellow cake. The texture was also a bit tough, but I suspect I may have over mixed the batter after I added the flour. I was probably a little overexcited about my new handmixer. And who wouldn't be? It's beautiful!

Quite a nice rise, I think.

Ok, now for the frosting:

1 1/4 cups half and half
3/4 cup unsalted pistachio nuts (more on that later)
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks (room temp)
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
1/3 (ish) cup confectioner's sugar

Bring half and half and pistachios to a boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand one hour. Beat sugar, yolks, and flour until light yellow and well mixed. Bring half and half mixture back to a simmer and gradually incorporate hot mixture into yolk mixture. Return all to saucepan and put over medium heat until mixture bubbles thickly. Transfer to food processor, add vanilla, and process until pistachios are finely chopped. Refrigerate for two hours. Beat butter in large bowl until light and fluffy, then gradually incorporate pistachio cream. Add confectioner's sugar until desired sweetness is reached.

Like a pistachio hot tub.

Apparently it's unheard of to want unsalted pistachios. Why wouldn't you want salt? Salt is so delicious! Sigh. So after scouring the grocery store, I settled on a bag of shelled, roasted, salted pistachio nuts. And I rinsed them off. Yes, it's ghetto. I know. But you know what? It worked. So shut up.

I heart food processor.

The frosting turned out beautifully, really. The pistachio flavor was great, and it wasn't crunchy at all. The sweetness was there, but subtly so. I felt it was a very sophisticated cupcake. If such a thing exists.

For some reason I thought they'd be green.

While the Turkish Delight thing didn't really come through, the cakes were certainly tasty and somewhat unique. I think people were surprised at the flavor and mild sweetness of the frosting. I wouldn't change a thing about the frosting. More rosewater next time. The end!

February 20 - French food, processed food

So beautiful.

Happy! I've taken another step towards becoming a decent home cook - I've gotten myself a shiny new food processor. It's a thing of beauty, to be sure. It came with 2 work bowls and a ton of attachments. It's my new favorite toy. Thank you, Macy's, for putting it on sale at a questionably low price.

You can imagine how difficult it was for me to make it through my work day while dreaming of my new food processor. I was counting down the hours until I could go home and play with it. Lucky for me, Ron and I had plans to head to Belle Epicurean for lunch.

I should have had one of each.

I'd been hearing about this little French patisserie/cafe for a while, and was pretty excited to try it out. Fighting my urge to just order a bunch of pastries and gorge, I perused the lunch menu and decided on something sensible. Well, sensible for French food.

I went with the ham feuillette, which is basically a brioche cup filled with ham and gruyere cheese, mingling with an herbed bechamel sauce. Translation: butter butter ham butter cheese butter and butter. It was delicious.

Don't let the salad fool you.
This is not a healthy lunch.

Ron went with something ever so slightly less buttercentric. The fool. I guess it still looked good: a deviled egg salad on a croissant with a side of the house mushroom soup. I was kind of bummed that it's the only soup they offer, since mushrooms taste like dirt to me, but I got over it. The salad was fresh and tasty, and I pretended not to notice the pleasure with which Ron slurped his soup.

Better than the egg salad in your lunchbox.

Feeling that I had not quite tripled my suggested butter intake for the day, I got a berry. . . pastry. . . thing. I don't remember what it's called. I just know that it was delicious when I got to eat it at work later. My cubicle buddy was, undoubtedly, green with envy. And I didn't share even a little bit.

Making the office just a bit more bearable.

At long last - food processing time! I decided to take full advantage and process some onions - which usually make me cry like a neglected child of divorce. It worked like a dream.

You'll best me no longer, onion fumes!

I decided to make ground pork patties - something my parents used to make with rice noodles and lettuce for family lunches. I took about a pound and a half of boneless pork ribs and sliced em up good.

Pork: food of the gods.

Then the cool part: I dropped them into my shiny new food processor and the came out lookin like this:

Minced meat!

I then put my freshly savaged pork in a bowl with my processed red onion, some salt, pepper, msg, and fish sauce, and squished it all around. I shaped this squish into patties and tossed them into a pan on medium heat.

Mmmm. Char.

Ideally, I would have had rice noodles and lettuce to eat these little guys with, but I didn't plan this very well. I opted instead to serve them up with rice and cucumber, as well as the secret sauce. You want secret sauce? Fine

1/2 cup plus a bit more fish sauce
1/2 cup white distilled vinegar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
squeeze lemon juice
chiles to taste

Mix it all up. It's delicious with lots of stuff. Like this for instance.

Ignore the magnetic ribbons.

Focus on the food.

It was equally tasty in my bento box the next day.

February 17 - Envy, failure, and devil's food

Is lusting after kitchen appliances wrong?

As an urban dweller, there are many things I appreciate about my nearly adult lifestyle. My proximity to shopping, drinking, dancing, and varied and delicious foods is fantastic. This is why I've compromised a bit on the square footage of my hip Capitol Hill pad. Most noticeably in the bathroom and the kitchen. My kitchen storage space is nearly nonexistent. I have therefore been unable to possess the object of my desire: a stand mixer.

I could write poems about its beauty.

So when my friend Diane asks if we can bake together, I say, "hell yeah!" Why would I pack up and leave my familiar (if cramped) kitchen to bake across town? Well, the lovely company is one element, but my beautiful friend Diane also owns a fire-red super-sexy stand mixer.

Beat that batter. Beat it hard.
Yeah. . . that's right.

So I decided to try making devil's food cupcakes - a recipe I've never tried out before.

2 cups flour (I used self-rising, but I think next time I'll use cake)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened (Dutch process) cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda (maybe less next time - not sure)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs (room temp)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and sugar. Add all other ingredients except for eggs, mix on high for two minutes. Add eggs one at a time, mix batter until just incorporated. Fill cups halfway, bake about 18 minutes or until tops spring back when touched and toothpick comes out clean.

I'm used to filling cups 2/3 to 3/4 full, and having them rise in nice domes. This recipe behaved much differently than the others I've recently tried - when we filled them 2/3ish they waaaay overflowed their paper confines.

Oh no! Too full!

The tops ended up spreading out like cookies, and being just as flat. The cakes themselves were incredibly light. I am thinking I over chemically-leavened. Apparently self-rising flour is not for every recipe. Sigh.

Fallen. Just like my dreams.

After the first batch puffed and fell, we wised up and filled only halfway, resulting in properly sized cupcakes.

That's better! I guess.

I decided to go with a mint buttercream on top of these cakes - kind of like a baked hockey night. Or. . . . girlscout thin mints. Or ande's mints. Or that stuff that my dentist used to polish the plaque off my teeth.

Ah, the possibilities of mint-chocolate!

1 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/8 tsp peppermint extract

Beat butter until light and fluffy. Add 3 cups sugar in batches, alternated with milk/extract mixture. Add the rest of the sugar until desired texture/sweetness is achieved.

Look into the frosting. You'll see your future.

I would have added a teensy bit of green food coloring to make things pretty, but we didn't have any on hand.

So these were a bit of a disappointment. The flavor was great - dark and chocolately - but the consistency was all off. Waaaay too light, but at least they were moist. I also didn't add enough sugar to my frosting, I think, but again - the flavor was there. I would totally do this again, with a few adjustments.

Use your imagination.

But just imagine how cute these would have been with green pastel frosting and those little edible silver beads - French dragees. Those things are awesome.

February 15th - Hot Dogs, Hip Hop, and Sushi

Crafty temptress!

I have to confess to something very un-American: I don't like hot dogs. Don't get them. Historically, the only time I've eaten and enjoyed a hot dog is while camping, and that's only because I go into survival mode and feel that I should eat anything foodlike to keep up my strength. I'm not very good at camping, really. Not much of an outdoorsman. Anyway.

I work in downtown Seattle, right by Westlake Center, and Dog In The Park is right outside the door to my office. Every time I walk outside, the scent of sizzling beef/pork/meatlike tubes is wafting about, mingled with caramelized onions and boredom. Well, that last part is probably my job, but after three months of being scent-assaulted by these dogs, I decided I would eat one.

Apparently the secret is slicing then in half.
Shhhh.

I ordered a Spicy Louisiana Dog - it was. . . okay. The spicy was good, the toasty from maximum grill exposure was good, the caramelized onions and various condiments were good but. . . . it was still a hot dog. And I still don't really like hot dogs. Sigh. Hopefully I can remember that in the future when I have to walk by the delicious (in theory) dogs.

It's a dog.

That night was a special one - I had an RSVP to a Yelp Elite Event at the Moore Theatre. It began with a cocktail party and ended with a hip-hop choreography show featuring Kriss Kross. Yes, the Kriss Kross. Backwards clothing and everything. It was kind of awesome. Unfortunately, I have no picture of the awesome. As our tickets were free, they were also in the nosebleed section. Plus, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to have cameras. So here's a picture of the preceding cocktail party.

Charlie and Tommy. They suspect me.

After we got served, we headed over to Kisaku to get some delicious raw fishes.

We started out with what I usually very much enjoy with my sushis: sunomono. I didn't enjoy this one as much as the one I'm used to (from my fav neighborhood sushi joint, Sushi Maki, consisting of cucumber and octopus only). I don't generally like seaweed in salads, and the dressing on this wasn't bright enough for me. The octopus was good, though.

Octo-pie!

The rest of the meal was fish-tastic. We got a seared fatty tuna with mushroom stuff. The tuna was amazingly tender. Perhaps due to the fatty.

Tuna, vegetable, and mashed potatoes?

David and Diane insisted upon the next dish - sauteed geoduck. It was rich and briney and chewy-licious.

It's not jee-oh-duck.

The sushi itself was pretty delicious. We got a few nigiri: amber jack (don't remember that one), squid (didn't try it, but it looked. . . shiny), flounder (mild and sweet, quite tasty), wild sockeye salmon (I LUVS THE SALMON), and yellowtail (mmm). I also didn't try the spicy tuna roll, but it looked huge and big.

MONSTER ROLLS!!!

After shoving all that raw fish in my face, I could scarcely stand the thought of dessert. So we ordered some.

We got some kind of panna cotta with a passion fruit syrup and chopped strawberries. It was smooth and creamy and mildly delicious.

Little. Yellow. Different.

The other one was a house specialty - Kisaku potato. Potato dessert? Sounds like my dream! And it was. . . . pretty good. Sweet potato in a crispy shell dusted with powdered sugar, accompanied by ice cream, red bean, and strawberry. The presentation was lovely, but I actually thought the potato innards were a bit lacking in flavor. And I was expecting them to be purple, but that's not really their fault.

Aww. . . so pretty!

Overactive evening - leading to a weekend of unsuccess. I may or may not post my semi-fail devil's food cupcakes with mint buttercream frosting. Time will tell.

February 14 - Of romance and anti-romance

Will anybody have a PBR light? Anybody?

Happy Valentine's day!

I've never been big on couple-y celebration of Valentine's day. It's an excuse for restaurants to double their prices and make you wait for a table. Blah. I'll skip it, thanks.

But I did go out for lunch - to Matt's in the Market. It's a very popular little spot overlooking Pike Place Market. I've been warned many times of how irritating the wait for a table is, so we went in after the lunch rush on a weekday to avoid waiting list-induced rage.

Oyster sandwich: squishable!

Moos went for the fried oyster sandwich. I thought it was a strange concept, but I guess it's a southern thing. Go figure. He said it was tasty, but as far as texture goes, a conceptual fail. Squishy oysters on soft bread just doesn't make for a successful sandwich. I'm not a big oyster fan, so it failed even more to impress me.

We both went with the seafood chowder. A solid salmon-filled soup, but it pales in comparison to Pike Place Chowder's offerings.

Grilled pork sandwich: craveable!

What did impress me was my sandwich - the grilled pork tenderloin sandwich. It did seem sad to go to Matt's and not get something from the sea, but frankly their lunch menu is a little lackluster in terms of seafood. And I'm glad I went with the pork. It was tender and spicy, with melty mild Oaxacan cheese on delightfully toasty bread. It is a masterful sandwich - one to rival Paseo. Well, maybe not rival, but it's a good downtown alternative.

On to the evening's festivities!

Featuring the gayest DJ in the world.

In the spirit of V-D, we went to The Stranger's Valentine's Day Bash. The concept: people bring in mementos of failed relationships and have them destroyed on stage. Catharsis for all people. People like Sean.

Closure: simmer for 4-6 hours and serve.

Sean's ex-girlfriend brought this crock pot to his house one night. He made her dinner in it and then she broke up with him. What better way to bid her adieu than to allow Dan Savage to smash this symbol of her wenchery with a sledgehammer?

Why did we break up?
She was a c***!

Sean told his story on stage, to many a sympathetic ear. And then. . .

To smithereens!

Take that!

While the evening was fun, all the stories of love lost began to wear on us. So after nearly being beheaded by a flying, liquid nitrogen-soaked, stuffed lamb, we made a break for The Viking.

All in the wrist. . .

Where I learned that I suck at shuffleboard. Like every other bar sport. But with a belly full of cheesy gordita crunch and Tom Collins, I gave it my all.

The face of a loser's partner.

And dragged my partner down in a bitter 20-9 defeat. Sorry, Ian. Ah well, there's always next time.

And next year! Maybe I could find something in my lovelorn past that's just begging to be dismembered by a machete-wielding Dan Savage.

Machete Valentine 2: The Reckoning.

February 12 - For the haters and for SFA

I don't know what issues you people have with trust, but fine. Here. I had two people I'm not even remotely related to taste my latest culinary experiment: the banana peanut butter cupcakes with brown sugar marshmallow frosting.

Urge to vomit? No. . . .

And after Monique managed to keep hers down, Kris sampled my wares.

I guess she didn't vomit. . .

Happy? I assure you, nobody vomited.

Jeez.

Ok, now STFU.

So after my neighbors enjoyed the cupcakes I'd baked, we headed off to see Holy Fuck and Super Furry Animals. While I hadn't heard of the first band before, I've been a big fan of SFA since I was in high school. Their songs make me happy. I was pretty pleased to finally have a chance to see them live.

But first - Holy Fuck!

Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

No, really, that's the name of the band. And I don't feel it really fits their music. Not that I could suggest a better name, I'm just sayin. I'm can't tell my grandmother how much I like them, you know?

But if I could, I'd tell her how much I like that Holy Fuck brought out a melodica. Damn I love melodicas.

Who doesn't love a melodica??

And here's something else I'd discuss: WTF was that thing the keyboard player on the left kept messing with? It looked like he was pulling film out of a projector. Does that make noise?

Now how are we going to learn

about mitosis?

And after he pulled the filmstrip out, he'd mess with these little toggles on the side of the apparatus. Does that make noise?

Spin it! Pull it! Bop it!

If anyone can tell me what he was up to here, please do. I've included a video for your review:

Mystery machine.

And then Super Furry Animals came out and rocked my world.

No, really, it sounds better this way.

So I really liked them. Their songs are so lovely . . . and their live performance felt really sincere. Like - hey guys, what's up. We're here to be subtly awesome. While wearing Power Ranger helmets.

Go Go SFA!!

I also got to play around more with my new camera. I took more pictures, but damn if this thing doesn't have a lot of buttons. It's so confusing. So very confusing. . .

My God. These carrots are delicious.

My only disappointment is that they didn't play Fire In My Heart, but I got over it quickly. I love that song, but I also love their other songs. Especially the ones in Welch, which is just a neat language. I once learned how to say, "Could I have a cup of tea?" in Welch, but it's gone the way of the state capitols and subjunctive tense.

Dyma ein hawr.

Beautiful.

I'll leave you with this photo I took of a roasted sucking pig. My favorite Asian BBQ place in ID was selling it by the pound for Tet. It was like tasting pork nirvana. You're jealous, admit it.

Take that, year of the pig!

Go to hell, Black and Decker

I hate Black and Decker.

I decided to try something a little more childish in my cupcake makings. I've been aiming for fancy lately, and I thought it would be fun to do something I would've wanted when I was a kid. And what's more childish than. . . peanut butter! Delicious!

My plan was to do a peanut butter and banana cake and make a honey frosting to go on top. Something light to balance what I figured would be a pretty heavy cake.

Here we go!

Cake Recipe:

1 3/4 cups self-rising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup (2 large) very rip bananas

Preheat oven to 350, whisk dry ingredients together. Cream butter and sugar, beat until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then peanut butter, bananas, milk, and vanilla. Mix until fairly smooth, banana chunks are okay. Slowly add flour mixture, mix until just incorporated. Fill cups about 2/3, bake 16-18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

I neglected to go shopping ahead of time for this project and my bananas were a far cry from ripe. So I thought I would cook the banana to bring out the flavor. Why did I think that? I don't know. It didn't work. It did, however, make the bananas and peanut butter very hot.

It sounded like Mac N Cheese.

It was pretty sweet, because halfway through making the batter my handmixer died. It died a loud and annoying death, leaving me in the lurch. Stupid thing. Let it be known that Black and Decker makes the world's worst handmixers. It only had 2 speeds: stupid fast and dangerous fast. Butter was everywhere. This may have been why my batter turned out so thick - kind of like oatmeal. But really thick oatmeal.

This is gonna be good. I hope.

They came out alright - more like muffins than cake, really. They domed really nicely in the oven, the were just very dense.

Muffins! Wait, that's not right. . .

Frosting time.

So I had to change my plan mid-project due to my SUPER CRAPPY handmixer's failure to not suck big time. After a bit of research, I settled on a marshmallow frosting, which didn't seem to require high speed mixing to reach a frosting-y consistency. Recipe:

2 cups mini-marshmallows
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter

Stir together brown sugar and milk over low heat until dissolved. Cover and let cook 3 minutes, then uncover and turn to high heat until mixture reaches 238 degrees. Careful, that's effing hot. Remove from heat and add butter and marshmallows, stirring until smooth. Continue to stir away from heat until mixture cools down and thickens. It's a fine line between overly syrupy and impossible to spread, so exercise caution.

Cheese curds n gravy! Wait, that's not right. . .

Everything turned out mostly okay, I think. That frosting's pretty touchy when it cools, so I'd just say frost your cakes quickly. The cakes themselves were, as I said, dense, and the banana flavor wasn't so awesome. Still, everything together was pretty good. I'd give it a rating of 87% intense. Do they go there? Yeah, sure. Especially with dinosaur sprinkles. Sweet!

Prehistorically delicious!

February 3 - Tet festival day 2: Kung Fu and catwalks

Pay attention or it'll eat you.
I'm serious.

We headed out early to the second day of Tet because we'd heard tell of a martial arts exhibition.
Kick ass.

I was previously unaware that my people commanded martial arts. I knew the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean did martial arts, but as far as I knew all the Vietnamese did was manicures.

As it turns out, we just stole some Kung Fu from the Chinese, but I'm okay with that. And the exhibition was not only entertaining, but informative. For instance, I learned that. . .

Boys fight with swords.

Manly.

Girls fight with fans.

Girly.

And grownups fight with. . .

Wait, is that. . . ?
Hey, that looks like a. . .
HOLY SHIT IT'S AN A-K!

I 'm not sure what message they were trying to send, but I certainly wouldn't mess with them.

After the intimidation tactics, it was time for. . .

FASHION!!

Turn to the left!

I've been enthralled for some time now with Vietnamese fashion. The traditional dress is called an Ao Dai. It's basically a very fitted, long-sleeved dress over pants. It sounds nerdy but it's actually quite beautiful. On very skinny women. So basically I'd have to drop 20 pounds to pull one off. But I still want one.

I'd never seen Vietnamese culture represented in modern fashion, so I was very interested to see what the designer, Thai Nguyen, had to present.

In my opinion, his designs are pretty, but the pieces I liked the most were the ones that resembled more traditional-looking Ao Dai. And I really liked how the models struck a pose after their runway walk:

Ta-da!

The designer came out after the runway show to talk about his designs. In Vietnamese. So while I didn't understand it, what I gathered was that he's very gay. And short. Even by Asian standards.

What an accomplishment for me!

And he seems very excited to bring Vietnamese culture to the forefront of the fashion world. And more power to him. I'd love to see more Vietnamese-inspired designs in the market - as far as I know I'd have to get anything along those lines custom made and flown in to me. And they really are lovely outfits.

Well, that's it for the celebration. Tet is actually officially tomorrow. Good luck to everyone in the new year - we're all going to need it.

February 2nd - Tet festival day 1: Apartment Band, Paseo, crazy hat.

Rowr!

One of the things I've decided to do this year is embrace my cultural heritage. Well, the Asian part of it anyway. Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year, is coming up on Thursday. Seattle Tet Festival took place last weekend at Seattle Center - I decided to go this year. I figured it would be a good chance to test out the new camera and culturally enrich myself.

They opened the festival with the lion dance - these little 2 person dragonish things that that dance around. They're pretty sweet looking. I used to love them when I was a kid. What I did not love were the creepy dudes who dance around them, taunting them with fans. I guess they're buddhas, but they seriously freaked me out when I was little. The dragons are cool, though.

Look out!

The opening gave way to a bunch of very serious things, including singing the Vietnamese national anthem, paying respects to those lost in political conflict, and a prayer to our Vietnamese ancestors. I only have one Vietnamese relative I've lost, but I kept her in mind. It was all very calming.

Incense ceremony.

And then this guy beat the hell out of a drum.

Take that!

After the ceremony we headed over to Paseo, in Fremont, to join Matt for his birthday/groundhog's day luncheon.

Truncheon!

For those not in the know, Paseo is a tiny shack of a Cuban restaurant, specializing in sandwiches. Not your average sandwiches, but glorious, magical, massive taste sensations that I dream about on cold winter nights. These are the sandwiches they serve in heaven. The heaven you go to if you're feisty.


The problem with this tiny slice of paradise is that it's getting to be a less well-kept secret, so you're guaranteed at least a 20 minute wait to order, and you'll likely have to eat it in your car since the 4 tables are usually pretty occupied. This was not the case for us, however, as Matt R and the rest of the Yelp squad had the biggest table staked out for us by the time we got their. Kickass!

I ordered what has to be the greatest sandwich on earth: the Cuban roast. It's pieces of slow-roasted pork shoulder slathered in the house Cuban marinade, topped with cilantro, pickled jalapeños, lettuce, garlic aioli, and the most fabulous grilled onions in the world. All of this goodness pressed into a crunchy, crusty baguette equals me with my hands messy, my mouth full, and tummy happy. Don't even try to talk to me when I'm working on one of these.

Before I figured out what macro mode is.
Forgive the fuzzy.

After stuffing our faces with succulent, porky goodness, we headed back to the festival. I wanted to get back in time for the talent showcase, and thank god I did. I wouldn't have wanted to miss this:

Clap ya hands everybod-ay.

What's going on here? Well, let's go back a couple minutes. The girl in pink came out and sang a traditional Vietnamese song. It was beautiful, and a lot of the people in the audience knew it, too. It was very folksy and pretty. And then she turned to the band, and they broke into. . .

4 Non Blondes. What? No really. That "What's Up" song, you know: Hey-ey-ey. I said Hey. What's going on?

That's what I was thinking. I did not see that coming. Then they played their next song, and suddenly it made sense. They needed a segue to this:

Who am I to disagree?

Wow. We needed a little something after that - so we headed to the fooderies lining the hall, and snacked on some pastry meat things that I didn't remember to take pictures of before we snarfed. I did take a picture of this cup-o-dessert. It was green with jelly stuff, coconut stuff, and beans. It was delicious.

Beans!

We then got to watch the Vietnamese Clay Aiken.

Asexual!

And a woman in a crazy hat introduced a bunch of kids in animal suits.

It's not a lampshade!

Scoopin up the field mice and boppin em on the head.

We ended our day with a film - The Story of Pao.

Pao: total bitch.

From what I gathered, Pao is a young girl coming of age in rural Vietnam. When Pao's parents were young, her mother was unable to have children. So, instead of dealing with the situation or sending her back to her parents, Pao's father went out and got a woman to have his babies. In most stories like this, the man's barren wife would fall to the wayside while the childbearing mistress was showered with affection over her fertile loins. In this story, however, the family takes the baby popped out by the mistress and treats her like a complete burden and eventually drives her away with their harsh silence. This is bad enough, but then the mistress comes back and does it again. Why? If they took her first baby and drove her away, I'm not certain why she thought they'd be any more gracious over future babies.

So the kids grow up and occasionally tolerate visits from "Mother Sia," the mistress and their biological mom. Every time she tries to show affection to the kids, the parents freak out and Pao kicks her. Pao is a bitch. This drives away birth mom. She steals the family cow and never comes back. Then Pao's mom (the barren one) kills herself and her dad gets really sick. Pao figures the only thing to do is bring back birth mom to take care of their ailing father. Because she really owes them a favor after all the good times they've had.

At this point we left. I wasn't understanding who I was supposed to be sympathetic to, and Pao's bitchy nature was really getting to me. Up next: Tet day 2.

Happy Nutella Day!

Money shot.

My inaugural "official blog" post will be my entry for International Day of Nutella, which happens to be February 5th. Delightful!




I've been experimenting with cupcakes of late, because they're delicious and cute, and people love them. But mostly because they can be made singly if I'm uncertain of the effects of some of my ideas, and ruining one cupcake sucks a lot less than ruining an entire cake. Which I've done.

So in the spirit of Nutella Day, I thought I'd do a Nutella themed cupcake. Plus it gave me an excuse (as if I needed one) to go out and restock my Nutella supply. It never seems to stay in my kitchen for long. . .

My plan was to make a hazelnut cupcake and frost with a buttercream featuring the chocolate-hazelnut flavored Nutella. However. Hazelnut extract has proven extremely difficult to find, and I don't have a proper food processor to dustify actual hazelnuts for a batter, so I switched to an almond-flavored cake. Like it mattered. These cupcakes are basically a vessel for the frosting. Here we go!

The Cake Part:
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons milk

I started with all of my ingredients measured out. This is how adults cook. I learned it last month.

My Mise for this project.

Next I creamed my butter and sugar and incorporated my eggs. Batter is forming. More so after the addition of the dry and wet ingredients.

Locked and loaded.

So far so good. I filled the cups about 3/4 and tossed them carelessly in the oven. I'm a badass like that.

Perfectly measured.

I pulled them a couple of minutes early, my oven tends to cook a bit more quickly than recipes would like it to. I think I made the right call. Alton Brown would describe these cupcake tops as "GBD." I'm not going to tell you what he would mean by that.

Poof!

The Frosting Part:
3/4 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
3 cups confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup very soft Nutella

Here we go with the Nutella! I used a half cup of the good stuff. Then I ate the rest with a spoon. Just kidding. Or am I?

Pants zipped? Good, let's get at it.

The frosting was just a standard chocolate buttercream recipe with Nutella substituting for the standard melted chocolate. It worked out pretty well - fresh Nutella has about the consistency of melted room-temperature chocolate.

Nutella at 50% intensity!

The Results:

The recipe turned out really well. It rose pretty much perfectly, so I'm glad I used self-rising flour instead of AP. The cake was really light and fluffy, with a tight crumb and tender consistency. I made the right call pulling them a bit early, they were moist and the tops were a lovely bit of crunch on top.

I gave them over to my quality assurance engineer.

Game face!

ZOMG!
You can cook!

I'm pretty pleased with how this project turned out. I'll definitely use both the cake and the frosting recipes again - they were easy and tasty. I also have a ton of leftover frosting, despite my best efforts to push maximum capacity per cupcake. I'll leave my comment section open to suggestions as to what I should do with the rest. . .

Success!