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.