Bloom

How can it be the last week of August? This summer has flown by. I guess that's what happens when you're done with coursework, and you just have to keep writing and researching during the summer.

Since I last wrote, John and I attended a wedding, and spent about 10 days in Bloomington. My parents moved there in the beginning of August, so we went down to help them get settled.

Let's start with a single pic from the wedding. Our friends got married in Port Stanley, and the bride's daughter baked these fun, beachy cupcakes. Each of those shells is actually a chocolate truffle.

The day after the wedding, we drove down to Bloomington, where I took about 5 random photos.
My parents' new house is in the southern part of town, with lots of green spaces and big, shady trees. That landscape has proven to be too appealing for the large deer population in the area. This buck belonged to a whole deer family we found munching on the neighbors' foliage, and licking their mailbox. They were seriously everywhere, and it was a little disconcerting to see how unafraid they are of people and cars.

As promised, John took me to FARM for brunch on my birthday. We've recently been making things out of one of the FARM cookbooks, so I was especially excited to try the restaurant.

Above: John enjoying his mocha, served in a Guinness glass. Below: my very spicy Bloody Mary. I love the little tomatoes they used as a garden! This was a great drink.

 

John had an omelette, and I chose baked eggs with the sausage omitted: eggs, potatoes, roasted tomatoes, and lots of parm on top. It was delicious, and I took half of it home. Before the entrees, we shared the Biscuit Basket - which was maybe my favorite part of the meal. The biscuits were HUGE, flaky, and came with apple butter that reminded me of taking trips to Little Nashville with Kelly.

So far my dad's favorite retirement activity seems to be finding new places to walk the dogs. We explored Olcott Park, as well as the near-by Jackson Creek Trail. It's kind of a perfect place to run.* Dad and I took the dogs over to the Hoosier National Forest and hiked around on the trails for a little while. Tobey has had an especially difficult time with the move - so much change in such a short time seems to have heightened his anxiety. But as you can see, all the walks in new, exciting places help wear him out.

I wasn't able to get a lot of pictures of all the time we spent with friends who still live in Bloomington. John and I visited Mark often, and went out to a couple of bars that have opened since I left town. Places like Atlas, the Root Cellar, and the Bishop seemed to have a slightly older crowd, and appeal more to graduate students. Back when I lived there, I spent a lot of time at the Vid, and at Bears, but I don't feel like we had anything quite like those newer bars, and it was fun to try them out.

And, of course, any late night bar adventure should conclude with a trip to our favorite 24-hour spot, Crescent Donut. John and I are still trying to figure out a way to work Crescent Donut into our post-wedding-reception plans, since it's the kind of place that's best to visit after you've already been to party. They tend to give away donuts at that time of night, and we always have the counter to ourselves.

So here's to the end of summer! Even though it went by quickly, I'm ready for the new semester to begin, and for fall to arrive. Today I had to restrain myself from buying a pumpkin scented candle. I have to wait until September for pumpkin-anything, since I want to savor the end of the summer before I start to savor fall. If I "start" fall at the end of august, then I'll have an even harder time waiting to "start" Christmas until after Halloween.

I hope your summer ended as well as ours did!





*I need to write a separate post about running, since I've been doing so much of it lately! Our first half marathon will be Sept. 29th, and I have some other fall races planned. 

Dave and Carla's Visit: A Photostudy in Food and Drinks

Dave and Carla's trip was mostly a beer and food festival at our house.

One night, Dave made a delicious almond cake.

After our second morning run in a row, I made a simple brunch out of tomato rosemary scones (Vegan Brunch), scrambled eggs, and melon. I love these scones! Tomato sauce, olive oil, and rosemary are a great combination.

I made the potato-based cookie dough dip from Oh She Glows, to mixed reviews. Personally, I think it tastes awesome. The likeness to cookie dough is uncanny! Others thought it tasted faintly of potato. But for the nutritional make up, you can't go wrong. It's basically potato, cashew butter, and honey.


 








 I added a few chocolate chips before chilling it so that it had a faint chocolate swirl.


 






One night, we made flatbread pizzas with dough from the PPK, and topped them with shaved asparagus and mozzerella, based on a recipe from Smitten Kitchen that Dave and Carla had tried. I loved it! We will definitely make this again.










And we drank it with a bottle of Strewn (Niagara) wine that we had been saving to share with them.












On Saturday, I went with Carla and John on a five-mile run. When we arrived home, Dave had already gone to the store for supplies and was making BRUNCH! I told him he could move right in.

 He made a fantastic egg/potato/fake sausage casserole.

Abby: I'm so touched that you bought vegetarian sausage!
Dave: Oh good, it was my goal to touch you with sausage. 










He also made pancakes so that we could have Pancake Friday (Observed).










Here are pictures of everything else we drank that I managed to take photos of.


A cucumber-melon-gin cocktail that I saw on No Meat Athlete, forever ago. The thyme syrup was an interesting touch! These would be good on a very hot day. But I didn't like it enough to want to make it again and again.










This Kentucky Ale is aged in bourbon barrels and it's delicious! I think it was my favorite of the whole week. It was one of the beers that Carla and Dave graciously brought to celebrate Beer Friday. We pretty much observed Beer Friday for 5 days straight. But we also consumed a lot of these tasting-style, where we each took a small portion of the same bottle. It was fun to try so many beers without having to drink an entire bottle of each in one sitting.

The Yazoo Sue. This stout is especially smokey, and when I sniffed it, I got a distinct whiff of S'nausages (as in, dog treats). But it was nice to have a small taste.

 The Southern Tier Double Milk Stout we'd had before, but it's still a very good one.

Dave and Carla also brought this Lychee-flavored sour beer from New Belgium, part of the beer-heaven where they live in Colorado. It was extremely flavorful, what with the fruit and sour flavors. Tasty, though I don't know if I'd order or buy it myself.

Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. I didn't try this, but John enjoyed it.

Here's the final picture of them all. We made a trip down to St. Thomas, ON for the Railway City Brewery, and took home a few of their Iron Spike beers. John and I also bought some beers from Grand River Brewing in Cambridge, ON, most of which he really likes so far (more on those later).

 

And now I'm going to enjoy a week of non-alcoholic, non-dessert, non-cheese cleansing, to detox from a very delicious visit.

Fourth of July

Today I realized that July is almost over and I still have an old post from the Fourth. So here we go!
Three years ago (!!!) on the Fourth of July, I went with John, Mark, and Sarah up to Fort Wayne.

We went to the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.

Here we are in the Australian part.















My parents took us to an IPFW donor cookout to watch the fireworks.




















This year John and I went with my parents to the same cook out (and I missed Mark and Sarah a lot!).
They had some lovely desserts:


S'more-filled cupcake. A+.



















Strawberry shortcake. A. Not bad, but not as outstanding as the s'more cupcake.





























Dad decided he should try on John's new hat.








































































































I think Dad briefly considered permanently taking the new hat from John.


















Sort of distinguished, right?

Then he did his Australian accent for us, and I laughed 'till I cried. That's definitely my dad's hidden talent. It involved a lot of sounds like "Oooooi!"

Easter Brunch for Dinner: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

A few weeks ago John and I had a small Easter potluck with some friends. He and I made two quiches (one of which you can find here - I LOVE this recipe), since pie crust comes in 2-packs, and I just don't bother to make my own. Other people brought mimosas, fruit salad, and a hash brown casserole (yum! I ate so much of it).






















And we also made dessert. This is Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake.





















Ugh. This cake. It's unbelievably good. Let me give you the run down: sour-cream-chocolate cake, with cream-cheese-peanut-butter frosting, layered between the cakes and the outside. Also, check out that fabulous frosting job John did. That's right - John iced this cake! And I think he's pretty good at it.

Still, the thing that takes this cake from a good idea to unbelievable is the peanut butter-chocolate glaze.





















Full disclosure: that's only half a cake! We ate the first half at the party, and I put the other half back in the fridge for leftovers. As much as I would have loved to just eat the entire thing myself, we knew we had to get rid of it. So John brought the cake to the other TAs he had to grade tests with, and we passed off the rest to other friends. It's so rich that after a pretty thin piece my stomach said, "that was amazing, but please stop." Still, I'm so glad we made it! It's heaven for someone who loves the peanut-butter-chocolate combination like me. It's a little time intensive, but so are most cakes like this. Definitely worth having for a party, and dangerous without one.

Red Velvet Cake Balls

Last weekend my parents came to visit. It was a pretty chill weekend, just a lot of hanging out, and studying in between the hanging out. The Tim Horton's 2011 Brier was taking place, which is apparently a curling championship. The tickets start at $14, and had that not been the case, I'm pretty sure we would have gone, just to check it out. Unfortunately, I don't think my attention would have lasted for $14 worth of the competition.

Instead, I had the official Tim Horton's donut of the brier.




Check out those maple leaf shaped sprinkles. You can buy them at Bulk Barn!













My mom's birthday was just after their visit, so we celebrated it one of the nights they were here. I tried to think of a chocolately dessert, and after considering several recipes, I decided on red velvet cake balls.


























The only pictures I have of these are pretty blurry, but I think you get the idea. Here's how it works:

- Make a cake (red velvet in this case).
- Make cream cheese frosting for the cake.
- Crumble the cake and mix the frosting into it.
- Shape that mixture into balls and dip them in chocolate.

I used bittersweet chocolate because I wanted the chocolate flavor to be really intense. But I think semi-sweet would have been better (they were almost too intense).
I only made half the recipe - one 9" cake round and half the icing - and it made a HUGE amount of balls. Unless you're feeding, like, 20 people, I'd say halving it is definitely the way to go. I probably had 3 dozen; we sent some home with my parents and I brought the rest to school on Monday. They taste amazing - kind of like a moist, cakey truffle. I would definitely make them again!

There are lots of recipes for these on the internet. Here's the site I used:

Red Velvet Cake Balls from Gonna Want Seconds.

Eggnog Cake

Last week was the week of potlucks. I tried to think of something different to bring to each one (fancy salad, muffins, cookies), and for the finale, we made an eggnog cake.




















One of the people who ate it said it was just like her mom's "hot milk cake," which apparently involves heating milk on the stove before mixing it into the batter. This cake works the same way, with eggnog and butter heated on the stove.


















This is one of the recipes we will probably make on Christmas. The dry-run went fairly well, but I think I'd rather take it out of the oven near the minimum baking time. We gave it a couple extra minutes and I thought it was a little dry. One of the things I liked about this recipe is that it only makes one 9" cake, instead of a layer cake that usually makes to 9" cake rounds. The big issue was the icing - we used some leftover butter cream that I had in the fridge. The recipe calls for frosting made with cream cheese and bourbon. The butter cream was way to sweet and the flavor almost totally overpowered the eggnog. So for Christmas we'll use the boozy icing, and I think it'll be great!

Eggnog Cake
from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup egg nog
1 TBSP butter
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 325F.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until very thick; the batter should fall from the beaters in a thick ribbon. Add the vanilla and stir to combine.
While beating the eggs and sugar, heat the eggnog and butter in a small saucepan just until simmering. Add the hot eggnog to the egg mixture in a slow, steady stream as you continue beating. This will keep you from cooking the eggs.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring until they’re just combined.
Pour the batter into a lightly greased 9 inch cake round.* Bake for 50 minutes, or until the cake is a deep golden brown and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan. Remove the cake from the oven and cool it in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Run a knife around the sides of the pan.

Bourbon Cream Cheese Frosting
3 1/2 TBSP bourbon
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4cup butter, at room temperature
4-5 cups powdered sugar (will depend on how thick you like your frosting)

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter until soft.
Add the powdered sugar and beat to combine.
Add the bourbon and beat to combine.

*I greased and floured mine. Next time I will also add a ring of parchment around the bottom of the pan to help it come out more smoothly.

Cake Decorating

**Note:** this post is pretty much about cake decorating. I wrote it partly to share with you, and partly for myself, to have a record of a cake that went right. If you have no interest in cake decorating, you may want to come back later.


This week my church choir had a party and we were instructed to bring either dessert or a salad.
While I feel like I've learned to love salad in a new way since leaning vegetarian, I can't pass up the chance to make dessert - especially when it's going to leave my house. I cut up the left overs and put them on other people's plates so we didn't take any home.


Exhibit A.
This is a "pink" velvet cake, pink because I was out of red food coloring. The recipe (found here)was from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I've used it to make two 9" round cakes in the past, which is why I did that again. I'm not sure that every recipe works this way, but I trust this one as cupcakes or cakes.
When we cut into it, the color was so dark that it looked red anyways, and people asked me if it was strawberry. Like cornbread, red velvet cake seems like one of those things some Canadians know all about while others have never heard of it. The reviews were positive, and I think I spread the good news of red velvet cake to a few people.



















I wanted to share a couple of things I've learned about cake decorating over the past year. My knowledge is by no means extensive, but I've got a few tips for people who can't bake like Brown Eyed Baker but still want to make a nice looking cake.

Returning to Exhibit A, the icing still has a few uneven spots in it, and you can kind of see the lines from where I moved the spatula around. That said, it's pretty smooth, and those lines are a lot less noticeable to the naked eye. To make the cake smooth, I used these:



















#1. An off-set spatula. This guy is good for smoothing out smaller areas and for the sides of this two-layer cake, since it's taller than the cake itself. I especially find this one helpful when I'm working on the edges along the top of the cake.












Note: clean enough to see my camera in its reflection.
















#2. A bigger icing spatula. I've looked on the internet for its proper name, but "icing spatula" is what I've come up with so far. This guy is good for getting a massive amount of icing on the cake at once and for making big passes over the top of it, with as few lines as possible.


Speaking of icing, I have learned a couple of things that are helpful here.

First, make sure the cake has cooled completely. Like, really cooled. Once in the fall I was pressed for time and the whole was ruined because I tried to start icing it too soon. To expedite that process, stick the layers in the fridge. In general, another rule I've learned is that the fridge is your friend.

The next idea is from smittenkitchen.com. She recommends putting on a "crumb" layer of icing first. This isn't a neat looking layer, just a thin amount of icing to keep all the crumbs in place. Once that layer is on, put the whole thing back in the fridge for 10 or 15 minutes. Then, when you take it out, it's much easier to spread the room-temperature icing over it and make the whole thing smoother.


The last stage of decorating this behemoth was the piping. I'm not exactly a piping whiz or anything (see also, here), but it's something I've learned to do over time from watching other people.* My approach to this cake was "keep it simple," since once piping seems to be going well, I tend to go over board and pipe myself crazy.
Part of the purpose of the piping here was to clean up the edges of the cake and the rim on the bottom. I just added a wavy shape to the bottom and little star shapes to the top, both with the same tip.
























I used this piping bag (above) from the Martha Stewart kit I have. You can buy this type of thing at most craft stores, Bulk Barn, or do it the Alton Brown way and just cut a hole in a ziplock bag (though the environment won't thank you). My only tip here is to roll down the sides of the bag so that you can put the icing in as close to the tip as possible. Now that I know to do that it seems extremely obvious, but it took me a long time to get here. The story of my life.






















I chose this tip because of the similar shape it had to one in the Martha Stewart Cupcake book. In the back of the book she included this helpful page:





















The tips don't match exactly to those in the kit, but it's close enough to be helpful.

And so, the finished product, Exhibit B.




















The rings of piping are a little inconsistent, but it's way better than my previous two attempts.



















As you can see, I had enough time on my hands this week to bake a fairly large, elaborate cake, and then write a long blog post about it. Our summer reading club starts this week, and my weird class scheduling situation for the fall mandates that I get a lot of reading done this summer. So who knows if there will be more fancy cakes. That's kind of the great thing about summer, though - you can study for three or four hours and still have a lot of the day left to bake cakes or go to the beach, instead of doing more homework or grading papers.




*TV.