schneefink | Entries tagged with baking

I've mostly made muffins and cupcakes for so long that I forgot how annoying it is trying to find cake recipes that are slightly fancy but not too complicated. LB's birthday party is tomorrow, and he wants something with chocolate. Usually I like experimenting with new cakes, but this time I might just make a cake I already made once. (I think it was two years ago though so it'll be fine.)
I'm invited to his birthday party even though I know very few people who will be there. Half of his friends are mathematicians and half of them are musicians. So when he decided he wanted to do a quiz, he made up questions that are half math/half music knowledge, some of them I don't even understand. I'm curious to see how that will go ^^

I got my Yuletide assignment! It's a prompt I'd been thinking of writing a treat for anyway :) Not that I ever managed to write a treat before. This year there are a few letters I like, so maybe I'll manage at least one or two?
For my assignment I already have a (very rough) outline. Though now that I think about it, it maybe kiiiinda skirts close to one of their DNWs. (A matter of definition, really.) I'll have to revise it a bit.

Sidney Crosby has another concussion -.- Sucks. Hopefully it's not severe.
The season hasn't even started yet and I already am reminded why I watch less TV in winter: just keeping up with hockey news takes a lot of time. It's fun too though. Pens season opener on Thursday, middle of the night but I'll stay up for that one. Pens-Caps is always great :) (though it would be more fun if Sid were playing...)

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/178136.html

Friday was the last ice hockey practice this season :( Our coach said that maybe he'll try to organize roller hockey in the spring, that might be interesting, not sure yet. No goal for me this time, and I didn't play that well, but I was knocked down three times, one of them a pretty bad helmet-on-helmet-collision. Ouch. Took a minute or two until my head stopped ringing.

Things I got a bit better at this season: handling the puck and awareness where the other players are. Areas where I wasn't satisfied with my progress: skating (turns, speed, backwards, edgework etc.), and I flinch too much when other players/sticks/pucks come near. I should just try to skate through it (though granted that's probably easier when the other players don't have half my weight on me.) I also lose almost every puck battle, not strong enough on my stick yet.
I started cursing a lot more on the ice, when I'm angry it feels good.
Most importantly, I had fun :)

I cooked a few times this week, after a long time of barely any cooking, that was fun. Making pizza is very easy. Friday I tried out a cupcake recipe from the book I got for Christmas for the first time. Making the topping was a pain, partly because we didn't have enough suitable bowls. The cupcakes turned out very well, vegan hazelnut with chocolate-vanilla topping. I'm going to enjoy going through all the recipes.
( pic )

Friday evening was my second time playing Dungeons&Dragons. Friends have been trying to persuade me to join their group for ages, but I never felt like I had the time. Now I do, and they just started a new campaign, so I joined. It's fun! We're statues come to life, amnesiac anthropomorphic entities associated with a dead god, in a city in a huge tower. The first time we escaped from the burning temple (half of the party gave me grief for staying inside and exploring and almost getting killed when the burning roof fell down, but I'm the one who got info and money and a weapon, so there) and found people who could explain a little bit of the world's background. Yesterday we explored the sewers, met ghost monsters and a friendly waternymph from another plane, added a member to our party, got dropped on top of the tower and are currently hiding on a terrace disguised as, well, statues.

Today I wanted to meet up with DD to watch The 100 and maybe hockey, but I'm falling sick -.- I noticed yesterday that I was tired and had a headache, but I thought that was from the hit during the hockey game. Today my throat hurts, and I barely have the energy to get up and make myself tea. Bad combination.
At least LB will be happy that I have more cupcakes left over to bring for lunch with my parents tomorrow.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/155086.html

Today LB and I made our first Christmas cookies of the year. A new recipe, coconut macaroons with chocolate filling, they are not excellent but they are good.
Dad made roast pork <3 With bread dumplings and sauerkraut (not exactly sauerkraut but translating kitchen words is hard.) He's already an expert at roast pork and gets better every time.

A third of my choir visited the already much smaller refugee camp at Vienna's central train station and we sang a few songs from last year (this year's songs aren't good enough yet.) It was nice, I'm pretty sure they enjoyed it.

I started playing Flight Rising, because pretty dragons! At first it was a bit confusing, but fortunately

myrdschaem and

forests_of_fire helped me out and then I discovered that Wind Flight is amazingly helpful and generous.
My first association with "dragon clan" were the Pit Dragon chronicles by Jane Yolen, where humans breed dragons, so it took me a few days to go from that to independent sapient dragon clans in my head. (Breeding for specific genes still feels a bit weird in this context, eh, handwaving.)
I already have several very pretty dragons in my lair. I can't not make up stories about them, and it's fun. Maybe one day I'll write more about my dragon stories, or actually write my dragon stories, but I wanted to post today because the twins grow up tomorrow. I have two beautiful blue male Skydancer babies from my second nest and I want to show them off :)
( pics )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/146153.html

I changed the lightbulb in my room. This is more impressive if you know that my ceiling is 3.50m high, the ladder I had is and looks old, and I'm afraid of heights. But I managed! Then I found out that I should have got the brighter one after all and I'll have to change it.

Instead of pictures of my flat, which I'm still too lazy to take & upload (I also haven't posted the ad for a third roommate yet, which I really should do soon), have pics of muffins. I tried out my oven this week and the muffin recipe book I got from my aunt. Usually I make chocolate muffins, but this time I made blueberry and nectarine muffins. They were good :) ( Pictures )

Yesterday wasn't a good day, but at least I finally ate a proper meal around 10pm, and I convinced DD to watch Killjoys. I also finally watched "Big Hero 6." I liked it, especially the first half. ( Spoilers )

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/132324.html

Yesterday was LB's birthday, so I made him a Triple-Layer Blueberry Lemon Cake. Of course it's not as pretty as in the recipe, but it tasted quite good.( pictures ) He invited 12 people for fondue and they all liked it :) And I still have self-made lemon curd left over, yum. And over a third of the cake - good thing we like our neighbours *g*
Basically all I did yesterday was go grocery shopping, bake, cook, and clean up. And eat, of course, and we played two rounds of werewolf.

Yesterday was also Coming Out Day. I came out as bi to my mom about a year and a half ago, spontaneously, it was nerve-wracking but ok. I still haven't told my dad because he has very conservative views in that regard (though I think he might be getting better? maybe? at least he says less stupid stuff when I can hear it now, but maybe just because I'm not discussing it with him anymore), but recently mom told LB and me that we can love whoever we want at the dinner table and dad didn't say anything, so I think it wouldn't be bad.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/71598.html

I made a cake today for my parents's anniversay. A 20x16x13 cm cake, with 14 eggs, 900g butter, 1 kg sugar, and other stuff. Rich Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream, and you could underline the "rich" twice. I couldn't even finish half a slice, maybe because I tasted so much during baking, and half a slice was enough for dinner for the rest of my family. But it looked very pretty! The chocolate cake wasn't as dark as in the photographs there, but it tasted delicious. I hadn't thought that a cake could taste that decadent. Mum already gave some to the neighbours and I'm still not sure how we'll eat it all...

In other news, I finally signed up for a driving license course, but I still haven't even started preparing for this university semester. (Other than sending the application for the additional course program I want to do, which was harder than I thought - I forgot how difficult motivation letters are!) Stop being so lazy, self. At least I made cake?

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/46930.html

About two weeks ago I made my first cupcakes: Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes with Nutella Cloud Frosting. They were delicious and not even that difficult to make (putting the frosting on top was very messy, but I did not mind cleaning up all the chocolate that escaped from the bag at all.)

This weekend I made another batch, Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Frosting. The frosting was much too sweet even though I had reduced the amount of sugar almost by half, but they were good and looked very cute with the colourful sprinkles. And I found out that cupcakes are the perfect food for studying: one small cupcake after each major chapter is a good reward to look forward to. I have to remember that for my next exams.
Do you have any favorite cupcake recipes?

In other news, my debate partner and I placed a close 4th in our club's internal tournament, and afterwards we talked in Russian. Success!
At the moment I'm between panic phases because of the exams on Wednesday. But I'm out of cupcakes :(

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/40630.html

...even if I´m not that good at it yet. So.
About a week ago

ribbon_purple posted photographs of cakes she had invented herself which is ridiculously awesome. The second one looked especially good and I asked for the recipe. Which I got, because she is great. Then, after I figured out the measurements, I tried baking today. And it was... an adventure.
First of all, we didn´t have any baking soda. We ALWAYS have baking soda. Just not when I need it. So I went to my neighbours and promised them a large piece of cake for their last baking soda. (That was the... third? fourth? time I gave them cake for ingredients. Why can´t the kitchen be more organized? On the other hand, I like the feedback.)
Then it turned out my father needed the oven for lunch = chicken. Fortunately it turned out that the chicken fit into the microwave.
By the way, the only brown sugar we had was rock candy/candy sugar (not even dictionaries are sure what the correct translation for big sugar lumps is). Naive as I am, I thought that it would make no difference. Well, the cake is a bit crunchier, what with all the tiny crystals.
The two round baking pans we have aren´t exactly the same size. I just put more icing and coconut on top, you can hardly see it.
And I guess that Americans are used to much, much sweeter cakes than I am because I didn´t even use half the amount of sugar recommended and it was still very sweet for me.
Enough talk, I present: the cake.

ribbon_purple called it a "Banana Cake with Sour Cream Coconut Icing", I´ll just call it "Banana Cake (Sweet Coconut Icing)" in my mind since I couldn´t taste the Sour Cream. What we´ll actually call it is "the other banana cake". The other and always first one is the one with apricot jam, chocolate pudding and chocolat icing on top. Mmmm.

As you can see, it´s not as nice to look at as the original, but I found that enough coconut on top can disguise a lot.
Mmmm, cake.
(My parents liked it, too. I´m still waiting what the neighbours will say.)

212 as last week´s average. And only because of Sunday. And only because stupid me had to read all the Iowa-stories again. I´m afraid of November 12th.

On the other hand, I made cake again.

It´s a chocolate-raspberry cake and the first time I tried this recipe (naturally I had to add many notes). The cake was quite good, even though it won´t become one of my favourites. But looking through our recipe map I found not enough cake recipes - that needs to be corrected.

The white stuff on top isn´t coco, it´s white chocolate crumbles.

LET´S HAVE CAKE!

(That´s supposed to be my brother´s birthday cake, or a proxy, since he is in New Zealand. He got a chocolate cake instead. And yes, of course I made this one myself!

Today I went to my first lectures and started to read the (many many and very thick) books and found my lecture hall in the (extremely large) university and I didnt get bored (except of a tiny little bit while waiting) and I got the book I needed from the library (it was the next to last copy) and then I got home and had CAKE and life is great!
Tomorrow I have a lecture at 8:30 which is admittedly not ideal but not too bad, either.
AND I wrote drabbles about university!, about real stuff, I didn´t even have to invent anything. (In German, though.) I think I´ll do a small series.

YAY! MORE CAKE!