All right, I'm not going to name fingers or point names, but I recently found a recipe for white chocolate lemon lava cakes on someone's blog and they were awful. Since a) today is my husband's birthday and b) he loves white chocolate and lemon, I thought I'd whip up a batch of these cakes to serve after our pot roast dinner (which, by the way, smells amazing. Never sit at home when you're cooking something in a crockpot).
I knew there was going to be trouble when the recipe called for the addition of one cup of powdered sugar to my butter and chocolate mixture, and the chocolate seized. I had a bowl full of white paste with a glistening yellow liquid on top. Already, this recipe sucked! Sighing, I plowed forward through the recipe. After I whisked in the eggs, the mixture came back together, with the addition of flour thickening it up nicely. The batter had a really nice lemon yellow color, but almost no lemon flavor. I had to use the zest of an entire lemon, rather than the measly 1/2 tsp. called for in the recipe. It still had a weak flavor, sort of like when Niles Crane orders a latte with "the faintest whisper of cinnamon."
I heavy-handedly buttered four custard cups. Sensing the cakes might not turn out well, I only filled one of the cups with batter. I baked it for 15 minutes, per the recipe's instructions, and the cake was a thin, goopy mess. So, I baked it a little longer. The center started to set up, but by that point, the outside of the cake turned into a yellow kitchen sponge.
I then tried a different tack. I filled another custard cup with batter, placed it in a larger dish, and poured water into said dish until it was halfway up the side of the cup. I had another lava cake recipe that called for this method and those had turned out flawlessly, so I figured it might work for the new recipe. Wrong again. I baked it for 23 minutes, until the top turned a medium golden brown. The entire cake was still liquid under the crust, literally making these into liquid hot magma cakes. I'm sure the mantle would have been delicious, but it was not what I was looking for. I took the custard cup out of the water bath, placed it on a cookie sheet, and baked it for another couple minutes. This turned out fairly well, though the cake still looked like I had baked SpongeBob Squarepants.
Now it's T-minus 4.5 hours until my husband gets home from work, I'm out of eggs, and there is a greasy muffin tin full of yellow batter sitting in the fridge. I plan to drench the cakes in raspberry sauce and hope he doesn't mind my utter failure of a dessert.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Like Charlie Sheen, I'm winning
The lovely Julie from the eponymous The Daily Julie informed me yesterday that I won her Amrita Singh giveaway! Soon to be in my possession is the Ray Cuff:
Hopefully, this looks as nice in person as it does online. I won something else from Amrita Singh a while back and it was just god awful (*cough*Chinolli necklace*cough*). Sorry, Amrita, but not everything you design looks good on a "skinny white girl" (as my brother is fond of calling me).
Hopefully, this looks as nice in person as it does online. I won something else from Amrita Singh a while back and it was just god awful (*cough*Chinolli necklace*cough*). Sorry, Amrita, but not everything you design looks good on a "skinny white girl" (as my brother is fond of calling me).
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Why, helloooo Daarling
I found these shoes at SteveMadden.com and I'm having a bit of a "not sure if want" moment:
They're cute, but I'm at a loss for what to wear them with. I don't own a single pair of shorts, crops, capris, highwaters, floods, or otherwise truncated pants, which sort of eliminates, oh, pretty much any outfit I could incorporate these heels into. Also, I hate skinny jeans because they make me look like an ice cream cone. Unfortunately, the black and natural versions of this shoe are very "meh"; not to mention, I already own about 8 million pairs of shoes like that.
They're currently on sale for $29.99, with the code "SALE50" netting you an additional 50% off.
They're cute, but I'm at a loss for what to wear them with. I don't own a single pair of shorts, crops, capris, highwaters, floods, or otherwise truncated pants, which sort of eliminates, oh, pretty much any outfit I could incorporate these heels into. Also, I hate skinny jeans because they make me look like an ice cream cone. Unfortunately, the black and natural versions of this shoe are very "meh"; not to mention, I already own about 8 million pairs of shoes like that.
They're currently on sale for $29.99, with the code "SALE50" netting you an additional 50% off.
The disintegration of Charlie Sheen
Yesterday, my husband got his renewed driver's license in the mail. 
He opened the envelope and shied away from me when I asked to see his picture. I asked, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" He turned to me and exclaimed, "I LOOK LIKE CHARLIE SHEEN!" I looked at his card and holy crap, he was right. He looks like Charlie Sheen. I wish I could post the picture here, but that's just wouldn't be kosher. So, I'll post a picture of Charlie Sheen and let you draw your own conclusions.
Heck, we've got booze in the fridge, a half-smoked cigar on the desk, and more pairs of women's underwear than you can shake a stick at. It does sound like we're living in Charlie Sheen's house.
All joking aside, I have some conflicting feelings about Sheen. On one hand, I feel sorry for him: everyone on Earth except the man himself can see that he's suffering from some kind of manic delusion that he's a "Vatican assassin warlock" and a "total bitchin' rockstar from Mars" with "Adonis DNA". You can just see him dissolving in front of the whole world. After all this went down, it just makes "Two and a Half Men" read like a documentary of Sheen's life. For all any of us knows, he may have had mental problems his entire life. After all, we only know what the media tell us; we're not privy to his private life, regardless of how many of his coke-fueled sex binges are reported in the news.
On the other hand.... he brought a lot of this on himself. He's a drug addict. He's a sex addict. No one forced him to start "using", a term Sheen decries for its association with the "cult" of Alcoholics Anonymous, and no one forced him to start poking everything with breasts and a pulse. He's irreversibly altered his brain chemistry with the "7 gram rocks [of crack cocaine]" and countless other substances he's smoked, snorted, injected, eaten, and otherwise introduced into his body. He's a hedonist of the highest order.
Maybe the manic persona we're seeing in the myriad interviews is a clean Sheen, the man at his baseline. Maybe he does drugs to keep his "tiger blood" from boiling, or to quiet the Vatican assassin voices in his head. Personally, I think Sheen has always had something wrong with him -- after all, some of the symptoms of (hypo)mania are hypersexuality or engaging in risky sexual behavior, impulsiveness, use of recreational drugs, and squandering of money. He could have been hypomanic his entire life. Whatever the case, I hope Charlie Sheen gets the help he needs.
He opened the envelope and shied away from me when I asked to see his picture. I asked, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" He turned to me and exclaimed, "I LOOK LIKE CHARLIE SHEEN!" I looked at his card and holy crap, he was right. He looks like Charlie Sheen. I wish I could post the picture here, but that's just wouldn't be kosher. So, I'll post a picture of Charlie Sheen and let you draw your own conclusions.Heck, we've got booze in the fridge, a half-smoked cigar on the desk, and more pairs of women's underwear than you can shake a stick at. It does sound like we're living in Charlie Sheen's house.
All joking aside, I have some conflicting feelings about Sheen. On one hand, I feel sorry for him: everyone on Earth except the man himself can see that he's suffering from some kind of manic delusion that he's a "Vatican assassin warlock" and a "total bitchin' rockstar from Mars" with "Adonis DNA". You can just see him dissolving in front of the whole world. After all this went down, it just makes "Two and a Half Men" read like a documentary of Sheen's life. For all any of us knows, he may have had mental problems his entire life. After all, we only know what the media tell us; we're not privy to his private life, regardless of how many of his coke-fueled sex binges are reported in the news.
On the other hand.... he brought a lot of this on himself. He's a drug addict. He's a sex addict. No one forced him to start "using", a term Sheen decries for its association with the "cult" of Alcoholics Anonymous, and no one forced him to start poking everything with breasts and a pulse. He's irreversibly altered his brain chemistry with the "7 gram rocks [of crack cocaine]" and countless other substances he's smoked, snorted, injected, eaten, and otherwise introduced into his body. He's a hedonist of the highest order.
Maybe the manic persona we're seeing in the myriad interviews is a clean Sheen, the man at his baseline. Maybe he does drugs to keep his "tiger blood" from boiling, or to quiet the Vatican assassin voices in his head. Personally, I think Sheen has always had something wrong with him -- after all, some of the symptoms of (hypo)mania are hypersexuality or engaging in risky sexual behavior, impulsiveness, use of recreational drugs, and squandering of money. He could have been hypomanic his entire life. Whatever the case, I hope Charlie Sheen gets the help he needs.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Everybody needs a little weirdness in their life
I just found the website OffBeatTreats.com and had to share a couple of their strange sweets with you guys (even though all 10 people who follow my blog are female, I still call you "guys").
No, these aren't my periodontal disease-ridden teeth.
This... is BUBBA GUM. They also sell a bigga blacka moustache (it's best if you imagine Chico Marx saying that), so you can look like an old-timey villain.
No, these aren't my periodontal disease-ridden teeth.
This... is BUBBA GUM. They also sell a bigga blacka moustache (it's best if you imagine Chico Marx saying that), so you can look like an old-timey villain.
Hey, liquor-filled chocolate bottles! I haven't had these since I was a kid... er... wait a minute.
Stage a delicious, delicious battle with these gummy army men.
This is my rifle, this is my gun! This one's for fighting, these ones... are yum? R. Lee Ermey wouldn't approve, but he'd probably eat these.
That's just a small sampling of the outrageous goodies OffBeatTreats.com sells. They also have face-shrivelingly sour Toxic Waste Candy, a 4.5-inch Marshmallow Hot Dog, and the best-tasting candy urine you'll find anywhere.
Guess what? I wasn't paid, bribed, or otherwise manipulated to write this. I just thought I'd share a neat website with you.
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