I don't even know what the last title was

Dear Nick Nolte,

Learn to enunciate. Also, how did you just meet someone when you didn't exchange names?

Ahurm. Sorry, watching Hulk in the background. I eagerly await the smashing, but I know it won't come.

ANYHOO.

I had promised my parents that I'd update the blog more in the New Year, so almost 3 months later, I'm trying to make good on that promise. So yeah, what have I been up to.

What indeed!

I'm of course still in Charleston (since I'll be around here for the proverbial duration), and still plodding along in the usual endeavors. OH NOES SINISTER POODLE (Sorry another Hulk interlude). Apparently, my comma use has turned to shit. Whoopsie daisy.

I haven't been baking nearly as much as I ought to, but I'm trying to change that with Lent. I failed pretty miserably on my New Year's resolutions, in that I didn't really make any. So I guess that means that I succeeded admirably. Hooray for me! But Lent, well. That's another story.

Here's what's up with ol' Rob/Young Master Cameron for Lent.

(OH SHOOT TIME FOR FANCY BULLETS)

• No more TV Tropes (because it will ruin your life and what is this business that Nick Nolte is doing. Near as I can tell, he just decided that Eric Bana is his son because he read 4 bases on a DNA sequence. Nick Nolte, in addition to enunciating, please take a basic sciencce course.)
• I'm going to start baking again, with one item each week. Speaking of, I need to make muffins. Specifically, strawberry muffins. For kids with cancer. (Okay, fine it's a bake sale for the cancer center here.) But still. That's some bar-worthy gab there.
• No more snooze button. Oh my God, no snooze button. It's pretty much degraded into "Well, I'm not using the Snooze button if I set an alarm on my phone. Or a second alarm on my phone." I blame the fact that since I've started Lent, I've had varous things keeping me from getting a full night's sleep. Most recently, paintball wrecking my quads and my back (not from the pellets, just the running AKA the first running I've done since... November maybe?) Also, OH MY GOD NICK NOLTE YOU SOUND LIKE A BUCKET OF GRAVEL THAT THINKS IT'S PEOPLE. SOMEONE DO THE TESTS.
• There's probably more, but let's say no coffee. It worked wonders for me last year, and that was with the delicious French stuff.

Oh, there was probably something about updating the blog more often for the Lent. So, mission accomplished. Where's my friggin' aircraft carrier?

BLOGMAS DAY 7: HOBBLING TOWARDS BUS FOOD

Anyhoo, as I mentioned below, I went ahead and made some cookies today. The few that I've had seem quite delicious. Okay, let's write this. I'm tired.

CHOCOLATE RAIN COOKIES

Yeah fine. I'm tired and not in teh fun and wacky way.Nope, just the bitter and cranky way. Murr. Either way, the cookies are delicious. You should have some. But you'd have to find me first! Bwahaha.

Anyhoo.

I LOOK AWAY FROM THE CAMERA WHEN I GET INGREDIENTS

So for these cookies you'll need:

1 stick (~125 g) butter
275 g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
40ish g cocoa powder
250 g flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
70 g white sugar
70 g confectioner's sugar
Cinnamon

Yeah, that's right. Not 1 tsp cinnamon. Not 80 tonnes cinnamon. Just "Cinnamon." I don't know how much I put in. Wanna make something of it? I will straight up take you down right now. By which I mean I will fall asleep and you'll be all, "Aw that's adorable, maybe I should take a nap too," and just like that I've snatched a draw from the jaws of victory. That's how I roll.

SOME STAY DRY

So the first thing you're going to do is measure out your sugar- I didn't have tightly packed brown sugar, so I measured the same volume as 300 g sugar. Clearly I am the paragon of science, because there's no way I could have added the incorrect volume like that, right? Anyhoo, you mix in your butter and vanilla until it's reasonably smooth- you can probably do better with an electric mixer than I could with my wooden spatula.

After that, you're going to beat in the eggs one at a time. This is going to leave you a really soupy batter, but it won't stay that way for long. Oh boy will it not stay that way for long. And I'll try to fill some space for the next picture rather than actually do something sensible like adjusting the size of the soupy picture. That would just be absurd, am I right? Of course I am, I'm writing the blog I MAKE THE RULES I AM THE LAW. LAAAWWWWW.

Ahem. And now back to the recipe.

See, you're going to combine the rest of your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda) and then add them to this soupiness. I overestimated the soupiness and threw it all in at once. I would recommend doing it gradually just for the sake of ease. Because damn is cocoa dry. That stuff was a pain to mix in. And that's around when I threw in the fabled Cinnamon. How much? Uhhh two or three puffs from the can thing? I don't know. I could have added more, I could have added less. Stir it some more once you add however much I didn't say to add. And now here comes the hard part.

Are you ready?

You put it in the fridge (covered) for a few hours. THE HORRORS!

No seriously. The horrors. That's what's about to happen.

BUT OTHERS FEEL THE PAIN

You may notice the difference in the quality across these
balls. Well, once they start getting warmer, they get a whole
lot gooeyer (gooier?) more gooey, and as such much harder
to handle.

See, after you take it out of the fridge, you need to roll the dough into balls a bit more than an inch across. This goes pretty well at first because the dough is cold. And then you start running into visceral horror. Your hands are covered in batter. You try to do something to get it off but it keeps spreading. Soon it's enveloped you and you've become one of the chocolate people I mean what no that's ridiculous there's no such thing as chocolate people and this recipe is TOTALLY SAFE AND YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT ANY SPORES OR SUCH THINGS. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED AND DELICIOULATED. Either way, keep on making those balls. Once you're done, put them back in the fridge while you get ready for the next step.

Measure about 60-70 g white sugar into a shallow bowl or some other surface/receptacle. Now, take the balls and roll them in the sugar. The problem I had here was finding space for all my balls. There were just too many and they were too big for me to fit on the plate that I had, and things got a bit dicey for a bit. Thankfully things came out just fine. And now, put them back in the fridge.

Now measure out about the same amount of confectioner's sugar as you did white sugar. I tried to sift mine, but failed for about half of it, so do as you like I guess. Also prep a cookie sheet with some butcher paper or some such. Anyhoo, now roll the balls in the confectioner's sugar and maybe pat off the excess sugar before putting it on the cookie sheet. Set your oven for 375 F/T6/190 C, wait for it to heat, and cook these bad boys for about 8 minutes. Mine came out with rather soft and chewy centers, which I like. Plus they just looked good to begin with.

Going in!

So far I haven't tasted too much of the cinnamon- maybe it got concentrated in one dose somewhere. Also, the recipe I had said it would make 36 cookies. Considering how much of the dough I ate before it hit the pan, it really makes like 72 cookies at least. And that's with a smaller (half) amount of butter than it technically called for. Not that I'm complaining- I needs food for the bus ride to Belgrade. (Note: These cookies were ALMOST called the Belgrade Bus Bombers, but I thought that might be in questionable taste/tempting fate a bit much for my liking.)

Coming out!

BLOGMAS: DAY 2, PART 2: FLESH AND BLOG AND STEPHEN COFFEE CAKETAT

Yeah, that was a reach on the title. Come and see it. It's quite incredible. You've got to see it.

I could have put a picture of Angel Bob from Doctor Who to better explain the title and that reference, but you're on your own there.Good times.

ANYHOO. I mildly like the name for the coffee cake, and can't think of a better one. Besides, strawberries remind me of Daleks right now. Or just Doctor Who in general. They're a very Doctor Who kind of fruit, don't you think?

I've only seen about 3 or 5 episodes of Doctor Who, by the way. I really have no place making these comments, but this is my blog, SO I DO WHAT I WANT.

Ahem.

On to the recipe.

STEPHEN MOFFTAT STRAWBERRY COFFEE CAKETAT

Okay, so before I start, this is a bit more complicated because I did the two parts (which will be revealed shortly) more or less in tandem. So things might get a bit dicey.

Anyhoo, I also just found out his name is Stephen Moffat. Oh well, now he won't be able to get me for libel or anything, given my extremely libelous comments that I've made thus far.

Additionally! Bev and Elmo are yelling. What else is new. Okay for serious let's get to the actual recipe, because this is freaking ridiculous.

Wow, I can't think of a good subject for the ingredients, and this is freaking me out something fierce.

Okay, here's a lame-ish one.

THE MIGHTY SONTARAN INGREDIENTS

For THE MIGHTY SONTARAN BATTER you will need:

250 g flour
80 g brown sugar
70 g white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp cinnamon
115 g butter
7 "large-ish" (good Lord how did I make it as a chemist) strawberries, plus a lot more
1 egg
Around 250 mL milk
2 tsp vanilla

THE SOMEWHAT LESS MIGHTY THAN THE BATTER BUT STILL FORMIDABLE SONTARAN STREUSEL

30 g flour
70 g white sugar
70 g brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
55 g butter

EXTERMIBAKE

Going for the gusto.

So, for the batter, you'll want to start out by combining your flour, sugars, baking soda, and salt using a wooden spoon. I went for the gusto (you know, smoking and eating nibblies on the couch) by adding a tablespoon of cinnamon, and it didn't go badly. In tandem, I threw in the flour, sugar, and cinnamon for the streusel, because I wanted to cut in the butter all at the same time.

In retrospect, I should have left the butter in the fridge while doing so. It's hard to cube and cut in warmish butter, and for those of you who remember the repeated lessons in context clues that you likely got in public schools/standardized test prep, you've probably guessed that you have to cube and cut in that butter. It's a long process, but you can do it. Once it's in, you stir the mixtures (separately, of course) until they resemble coarse crumbs.

Now then, I know it's delicious (partly because I ate it already, since I made it a couple of weeks ago), set the streusel aside. It's better on the cake.

Take your strawberries, and sliver them. Make yourself feel like a man. Cut them nice and fine. Now stir them into the batter. It looks delicious, doesn't it? Keep working!

Now, crack an egg into a measuring cup (I know, it's weird, but bear with me). Add milk until the volume is about 1/4 L, so about (if I remember my conversions right) 1 cup of milk. Stir that over the crumbs until they're moistened. Take that business, and spread it into a greased cake pan nice and evenly.

At this point, you should still have a lot of strawberries, unless you're like me and were eating them along the way because you probably didn't eat breakfast or lunch or something like that. I'M NOT ANOREXIC I JUST CAN SAVE MONEY ON FOOD THIS WAY. Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyway, take those strawberries and cut them into rounds. Now put those rounds atop your cofee cake. Heck, I'll even put this into a chronology to torture you with how good it looks. Look at me, being all sadistic. I guess you could say I'm the happiest sadist, and if you said that it was an oxymoron I would ask where the hell you learned how to pronounce words, Madeleine L'Engle? And then I'd probably slap you, because seriously, that's not how you pronounce "sadist."

dunn dunnn dunnn

DUNN DUNN (BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM)

NO. DO NOT EAT THE STREUSEL. BAD. PUT THAT BOWL BACK DOWN.

Now take the strawberry topped deliciousness and put it in an oven heated to T5-T6, which I guess is like 300-350 F. Depends on your oven I suppose. Anyhoo, leave it in for like 15 minutes.

Poison dart frog of the baking kingdom, I tell you.

Now take it out. See how it jiggles? That's baked goods' way of saying "IF YOU EAT ME I WILL BURN THE BAJEEPERS OUT OF YOUR TONGUE." As with many animals, we take these warnings as a sign to hug/cuddle/pet/lick/eat these things. Do not do so. Instead, offer your streusel as a delicious topping for your cake. Now put it back in the oven for another 25ish minutes or (of course) until it's done.







ANYTHING THAT HOLDS THE IMAGE OF A DELICIOUS CAKE WELL IT DOESN'T BECOME A DELICIOUS CAKE BUT IT'S STILL REALLY DELICIOUS LOOKING

I was pretty happy with how this whole thing turned out. The strawberries didn't manifest as much as I'd like, but it stayed really moist and was just really good for quite some time. My parents even got to try it, and they regaléd (unless they were doing the whole parental lying thing); Bev of course thought it was too heavy and insists that I should make something light. I maintain that she's missing the point of desserts and baking. Agree to disagree. But meanwhile, have some pictures of the finished cake!

I'd let it displace me in time. Wouldn't you?

The larynx thing would be a bit much though.

Seriously, I should stop referencing Doctor Who when I've seen so few episodes. BELIEVE THAT I'M A GEEK DANGIT.

ON THE FIRST DAY OF BLOGMAS I YELLED ABOUT BROWNIES...

... AND THEN I STOPPED MY YELLING.

Okay, so before I start talking about brownies, let me go through my brainwave that I just had. So I've had a couple of glasses of (oldish) wine, which will of course drop inhibitions and all that. I went down to use the little boys' STRONG AND BURLY AND VIRILE MEEEEEEN'S room, and realized that I have some pretty good wine autopilot. Which led to me making the mental typo of autopilate, which led to what would happen if there were a Transformer's recreation of the Bible. AUTO PONTIUS PILATE DUDES.

Aherm. On to loftier subjects.

Namely, brownies.

THE DA BROWNIE CODE

Here's what you'll need to recreate (which I don't necessarily recommend- more on that in a bit) my brownies.

225 g butter
170 g cocoa powder
400 g white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
125 g flour

Which is much shorter than my usual list of business, am I right? Of course I am. I'M THE AUTHOR. WHAT I SAY GOES, AND NO AMOUNT OF FANFIC CAN CHANGE THAT FACT. Unless I'm Rob Liefeld, in which case Peter David can totally make Shatterstar gay and WOW was that a wacky tangent, and BACK TO THE SHOW.

I MELT IT GOOD/JUST LIKE I KNEW THAT I WOULD NOW

First off, you're going to melt all that butter over a low heat. You want to keep it low, because you don't want to have the butter oxidize and have some butyric acid or any of that business. Besides, you know how it goes when you overheat butter. Not well, that's how. Anyway, once you've got it melted, add in your cocoa powder. You'll want to stir it in and take it off the heat QUICKLY. Otherwise you end up with burny chocolate, and nobody likes that.

Around now, you should have a nice brown and bitter mixture. Brownies, not being bitter, need something else in them. If you said babies, shame on you (but seriously, meet me out back in a little bit because I may have um a something that needs babies). If you said sugar, congrats! You read the ingredients and then got sassed by a blog writer. Hooray for Internet anonymity. You're going to take your sugar and stir it into the chocolate. This will leave you with a brown mix that, strangely enough, tastes like brownie mix, and is extremely grainy.

Around now, I greased a receptacle. You can do it before, or later. It's really whatever; I just had time around now. You may also want to heat your oven to T5, which is around 150 C or 300 F. Of course, you know me- bake to whatever temperature gets the job done without burnage. One day, maybe I'll compress that into a legit adage, but NOT TONIGHT. BLOGMAS MUST GO ON.

Anyhoo, beat in and stir 2 eggs, one at a time. This would be where I messed up, but more on that later.

Next, combine your salt and flour and add that into the mix. Finally, add your vanilla and taste it. If it doesn't taste right, add some more sugar or salt until it tastes right. If you don't know what right tastes like, I can't help you, but maybe someone out there can. May God have mercy on your poor, poor, brownieless soul.

Man this entry has gotten grim. But there are brownies, which make everything better, right? Right.

Anyhoo, spread that business into a cake pan and cook for about 30 minutes, or more importantly, until a toothpick/knife/whatever comes out clean from the center. Let it cool in the pan.

Somehow I want to say something about a Reeve's wife and some guy named Absalon...

Now then, as for how I screwed up. Well, 2 eggs... probably isn't enough. The recipe I was using as a blueprint had a lot of comments regarding how there were too many eggs, resulting in a very cakelike result. I like my brownies like my fudge- fudgelike. As a result, I dropped the eggs from the recipe's 5 and the comments' 3 or 4 down to 2. This meant that my brownies, while delicious (despite Bev thinking they were too sugary- my friends thought they were great), were somewhat bricklike. This is something I should have anticipated given the granular character of the batter, but I have learned. So boom. Add another egg. See what happens.

Delicious, but basically a brick.

Yeah, there wasn't too much to have diverse subject headings. It's a quick enough recipe, and it gives you brownies, man.

And thus endeth the first day of Blogmas. Or the first post, rather. Tomorrow, maybe I'll catch up with the strawberry coffee cake! Or maybe I'll keep the suspense alive.

Warm and Fuzzies

Well, I figure that having eaten and having had a glass of wine, I should tell you about what I had for dessert, because blogs are all about oversharing and then apologizing for not updating enough. And having apologized in the last post, I figure it's overshare time.

Anyway, it's almost Mardi Gras! Yaaay! (Also I'm going to Nice for Carnaval this weekend. Mmmm Nice.) But the point of me saying it's almost Mardi Gras boils down to the fact that I wanted to make something at least mildly seasonal. I didn't want to deal with king cake or anything like that, so I went with...

BREAAAAD PUDDING!

Yeah, I should have a cleverer name for this. Did my other foods have cleverer names? Let's find out.

Nope! Hurrah. But that DOES mean I need some clever captions. Also, as forewarning, remember how for the cheesecake I did a terrible job recording what I was doing in my recipe notebook? Well, this time I did a terrible job of taking pictures. Yeah. This may be a bit... texty.

Anyway, off we go!

OH WHEN THE BREAD/GOES MARCHING IN

No recipe would be complete without ingredients! Well, except... Wait, no. Can't think of any exceptions this time. Clearly I'm tired if I can't be contrarian properly.

Anyway, you need:

1 (500 g) loaf white bread
3ish cups hot milk
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
100 g brown sugar
100 g white sugar
70ish g butter
1ish tsp Salt
1 green apple

Basically, this is about the simplest thing I've made. I worked across about 4 recipes to figure out proportions and ingredients and tips, and I still underestimated some stuff. If you're making this stateside, go with a pound loaf and you'll be fine. I should have gone with one more egg to properly drench the bread, but it still tastes delicious. But I digress!

LAISSEZ LES BONS TEMPS COUPER

So first things first, you're going to grease a baking pan. Surprisingly enough, mine was big enough this time. I was quite worried, but it held up like a champ.

Next, you're going to take that loaf of bread and cut it into small pieces. I used a loaf of white "pain de mie" (AKA sammich bread) and cut each slice into 16 to 20 cube-like things. Then, you dice yourself that green apple. Smaller slices were better for me, but as I've said before (look at Rob getting all fancy and self-referential), chopping things more finely makes me feel like more of a man. Plus, you want it to mix well with the bread. Which is, coincidentally enough (or is it? Maybe I did learn something from all those 31b's in Ms. Pullen's class. Note: 31b was Ms. Pullen's code for "Insufficient transition." It was the bane of our class.), is what you'll do next. Then you add a bit of cinnamon (around 1 tbsp), and mix that a bit maybe. Now, you take that butter and you melt it. Melt it all thorough-like, and then pour it over the bread and mix that around a bit. And then you'll put all that bread into the baking pan.

I'D MAKE A BOURBON ST. REFERENCE, BUT BOURBON WOULD HAVE PROBABLY BEEN REALLY GOOD IN THIS

Next, you're going to take that bowl you were using to hold the bread. What, you weren't using a bowl to hold the bread?

Siiiigh.

Okay, get a nice sized bowl. Now crack open those eggs... and BEAT THEM sparkle sparkle sparkle. Throw in the white sugar, the brown sugar, the vanilla, and the salt, and sure a bit of cinnamon for good measure. Now mix that around until the sugar dissolves. Slowly mix in the hot milk.

And sure, add in some more cinnamon if you feel like it.

WHEN THE LEVEE BAKES



Also, top it with some nutmeg and cinnamon.

 Now, pour that milky eggy mix over the bread. I spooned it over because I figured there was no way I'd get it all covered otherwise (again, should have used another egg and maybe a bit more milk). And now, this (I think?) is important, do NOT put it in the oven. Let it sit for about 10 or 15 minutes. I used this time to pre-heat the oven to T5 (around 160 F or 300 F or so?).

Did you wait? Good. NOW stick it in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Really, just do the knife test. It's more reliable, especially since ovens are tricky creatures. Jackals of the kitchen, they.





Fresh out of the oven...

 Once it's out of the oven, I strongly recommend eating it. It seemed to not really need much in terms of time to set (of course, I finished making and eating dinner before I ate any, so I may be wrong). It's amazing hot. It's amazing cold. It's generally amazing, but moreso if you pour milk on top of it.

...but it didn't last long.

All in all, I think that this is the recipe I'm most excited about having learned. It's quick, it's easy, it's versatile, and it's delicious. Seriously. I knocked out about a quarter of this thing within 24 hours. I've exercised some SERIOUS restraint and have it down to a bit less than half. And of course, it's too heavy for Bev's taste (or so she says), so more for me.








And as a parting shot, be jealous.

Pure dagnasty goodness.

Yes, I'm a terrible person.

Yes, I'm sorry. I did a terrible job of keeping up with the blog in February. I'd say that there were other factors (which there certainly were- I came down with a wicked cold and had a wrecked sleep schedule that made me lose any motivation to post up and down and all around, which was followed by a school break during which I was too busy/exhausted to post), but they really do a poor job of excusing my lack of presence out here. So I'm going to TRY to get a couple of regalia posts up, along with maybe a run on what I've been up to and such. So, without further ado, off we go to our first regalia!

(NOTE: Be warned. I'm dangerously sober right now.)

Okay, le tme dig around to find this darned notebook so I can recipe it up and all (think of it like ruh-sipe rather than reh-si-pee). Also that typo is just DARING me to correct it, but I won't. This time.

Oh good Lord I did a terrible job of putting together this recipe. But here goes an attempt on chronologizing all the shenanigans that occurred on THAT FATEFUL DAY.

That's right. We're doing...

CTHULHU CHEESECAKE

It took me a while to come up with that name, but it became really evident once I saw what I had wrought. It's pretty much a chocolate berry cheesecake that I tried to layer into a chocolate and non-chocolate part. It was... stressful. I was also doing this rather late at night, which only exacerbated things. But anyway!

ASSEMBLING THE VASSALS

Good lord is that a lot of stuff. And that
doesn't even have the berries and eggs. My God.

So here are all the things you'll need to make your very own Eldritch abomination cake.

250 g chocolate covered graham crackers (I used chocolate covered Petit Beurre, because there are no graham crackers in Combs la Ville)
60 g butter, melted
720 g cream cheese (again, used Petit Suisse because no real cream cheese in Combs)
100 g white sugar, plus extra (yeah, I did an absolutely TERRIBLE job of chronicling this)
3 tbsp flour
2-3 tbsp confectioner's sugar
Some undefined amount of eggs (4 sounds right)
60 mL whipping cream
120 g cocoa powder
Milk
Vanilla
Lemon juice
750 g frozen berry mix

Yeah, you can tell this is about to get stressful.

CRUSTY OLD ABOMINATIONS

This part's simple enough- you crush all those graham crackers. Then, you pour the melted butter over all that. You mix that around all nice-like, and then you press it into a greased pie pan.

Of course, this would be simple if you weren't me. Yeah, I maybe should have thought about some of the omens I was looking at getting started on this thing. Such as Bev taking forever in the grocery store (she had given me a ride over there, which was nice of her, but she took about 45 minutes longer than she said she would), meaning I got started later. And then the fact that the pack of things I had bought would not cover the bottom of my pie pan, forcing me to go get more while my hands were all covered in chocolate. Fine, I washed off the chocolate first, but it was stressful.

But you finish and you get a nice looking crust, like so:

STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER (Okay, fine, there were no frozen strawberries, so I used mixed berries. Doesn't have the same ring to it.)

First off, you thaw those berries. You throw in 2 tbsp flour, 2-3 tbsp confectioner's sugar to sweeten it (just go to taste I guess), add some water, and crush the berries. The recipe I stole totally did not steal from at all had some complicated business about dividing up the berries and all. I was having none of it. You want to boil it to get things a bit juicier and nice and fun. Like the blood of a thousand virgins, or something gothy and Lovecraftian like that.

The finished first layer.

Meanwhile, you take a nice sized bowl and beat 360 g cream cheese until it's "fluffy." I have trouble imagining cream cheese being fluffy, so I just guessed. Then, as I wrote in my notebook, "Add some vanilla for kicks." Then throw in a bit of lemon juice and 2 eggs. Beat it until it's JUST smooth. If you beat it more, Cthulhu will crack your cheesecake even more than he did with mine. Also add 50 g sugar and I guess beat that in too? Terrible lab notebook here.

Also cool that berry mix.

Then, let's move onwards to...

COUNT CHOCULA DUDE

First, beat that cream cheese until smooth. (Wow, this is a violent recipe. No wonder it's Cthulhu cheesecake.) Combine 50 g sugar with 1 tbsp flour, and beat that into the cheese until it's smooth.

Now things get REALLY unexact. Throw some butter into a saucepan. Don't make the mistake I did and add the cocoa to the butter while it's still cold. Add some sugar, some more butter, and some milk to taste. You'll want it dark, so think melted chocolate chips. That's right. I made my own freaking chocolate-ish thing here. Anyway, make sure it's smooth and melty. Let it cool.

Now, stir in the vanilla (eyeball it), and 60 mL whipping cream into the cheese mix. And now stir in the chocolate. Add two eggs and beat until smooth.

Teaching it to mock me was a mistake.

A DARK ASSEMBLY

Okay, so that crust? You remember that? Take that crust. Good.

Pour in your berry (white) cheesecake batter. Spoon some of that berry mix on top. Having done this, I would recommend doing so liberally and covering the layer with it to give better separation, but you don't want it so thick that it'll make things fall apart. Don't use all the berries yet. I did like teaspoonish drops to keep from disrupting the batter toooo much and because I didn't think I'd need more.

Also, use a bigger pan than I did.

Now, put on the chocolate layer. See, the problem with these layers is that the chocolate will tend to seep down into the white layer. Maybe. It ended up being very uneven, but I had a substantially greater volume of the chocolate stuff, so maybe it didn't mix at all. Anyhoo, now you want to add on more of that berry mix to make some pretty designs if you want. I did, and they got a bit crispy, so be careful. Also, you may want to hold onto extra berry stuff as a sauce for later, maybe with some more confectioner's sugar and cream cheese.

[Aside: Oh, of course there's yelling now. Thanks Bev!]

You'll want to throw it into the oven on T5, which is like 160 C, so about 300 F, for a while. I gave up on time for this one and just waited for a knife to come out with only the berries (since they'll juice up).

This is why it got the name. Look at the eeeyeesss. It also
MADLY deflated.

Of course, the oven I was using was a bit too hot, and the cheesecake showed that. Also, the pan I used was far too shallow, which resulted in more problems, especially in cooling. As for cooling, do it slowly. Duh. I think I left it in the oven for a while and moved it to the fridge like the next morning maybe? Wait, no. I didn't wait that long. Should have, though.

Despite the prevalence of burny and its general and generally horrific appearance, it was quite delicious.

In hindsight, here's how I could have made things better:

1. Used another back of stuff for crust maybe.
2. Cooked it on a lower heat for longer.
3. Actually written the recipe a bit instead of all this vagueness.
4. Used a deeper pan.

Regardless, now I know, and I won't do another cheesecake when I'm that tired and stressed. But hey! Here are pictures of the finished product!

Okay, so the designs kiiinda worked. Would have worked better with less burning of course. And hey, massive deflation, but minimal cracking!

Cthulhu omflgathn?

Yeah, look at that beast. King of R'yleh, that one.

Anyhoo, I'ma go eat, and then hopefully be back with bread pudding. Which was a far happier experience than Cthulhu up there.

Some things you just do not mess with

You may think this is an Oh, Bev post. You know, based on the vaguely confrtontational title. But you'd be wrong.

This is about Rob baking. And following (more or less) a recipe. Because some things are sacred. Not in the "Hey it's a cathedral/mosque/synagogue/other place of worship and we should maybe respect that faith's religious beliefs while inside" sort of way. No, the flippant sort of sacred that I tend to use a lot more.

I am talking, of course, about Toll House cookies.

For those of you unfamiliar with this recipe, I'm sorry for your wasted childhood/allergy to one of the included ingredients. I've been eating these since I was a wee lad and making them since I was a slightly less wee lad. I almost considered doing something different with it this time (adding ingredients, things like that), but I wisely changed my mind and just followed the damned recipe (with obligatory adjustments, mainly involving vanilla and salt). So, for your viewing pleasure, here we go.

THE SACRAMENTS

So, here's what I used for this round of cookies. You can see the stuff wherever I put the pictures this time.

250 g butter, softened
310 g flour
1 tsp and change salt
1 tsp baking soda
150 g white sugar
~165 g brown sugar
Vanilla (Lots)
2 eggs
400 g dark chocolate (70%)

Don't add tomatoes. That's just a bad idea.

Yeah, they don't exactly sell semi-sweet chocolate chips out here, so I went with a few bars of dark chocolate. Between chopping and tasting, I'd say 380-390 g of the stuff actually made it into the dough. I probably chopped it a bit too finely, but this is manly baking time (more on that later).









WE THREE BOWLS

First off, I cut the butter into cubey things to let it soften a bit more quickly. You know how I am with stirring in butter. Not great, that's how. Meanwhile, I combined the flour, salt, and baking soda in a small bowl (or tried- it was almost too much for the small bowl). This gave a nice little photo opportunity with the chocolate.

Say cheese! But seriously. Don't add cheese either. That's also a bad idea.

COMMUNING WITH THE DOUGH

And at this point, I started making the actual dough. I went ahead and combined the two sugars, the vanilla, and the butter, slowly adding the butter (1 cube at a time) and trying to stir it as much as possible. Around this time, Bev decided to enter. She advised that I mix the dough with my hands to get the butter in there even better/more easily, as I was using a wooden spoon. I prefer to do these things the way I've done them (since that's worked in the past and I have no reason to think they won't keep working), but she certainly didn't help her case by adding something along the lines of, "It makes it much more sensual that way."

What. No. I'm not wasting dough on my hands unless I'm trying to get it onto cookie sheets or I'm cleaning the bowl. Also, sensual is not a term I like to associate with baking. Apt though it may be, just no. She also proceeded to add something about how much fun it was to lick your fingers afterwards. No, Bev. Again, not wasting dough, and second, I don't want to hear you talking about sensual and licking, because that makes me want to throw bleach onto my brain. Whatever hallucinations the lesions that produces will be a long respite from the mental image you just had to give me there.

Let's temper that with an image of the dough, post egg.

What do you know, it did become a bit of an Oh, Bev post.













Anyway, I got the butter in pretty well (without resorting to my hands) and proceeded to add the eggs one at a time, stirring as I went. This makes the dough look kinda ooky, but that's why we don't stop here. That and it's bat country.

Then I gradually stirred in the flour mixture, which gets tough because good Lord does the dough thicken. But that's part of the greatness. One reason that I don't want to waste the dough on my hands earlier is because (despite what I literally just said) it's delicious on its own. Salmonella be damned. I've yet to have that problem, and even if I did, it'd be a small price to pay for the deliciousness of Toll House cookie dough. It's even fine without the chocolate.

So thick. So delicious. Marry me, Toll House.

After the flour went in, I added the bajeepers out of that chocolate. And lo, a terrible beauty was born.

Terribly DELICIOUS.

BAKING THE FLOCK

Before

And now's around where things supposedly get really easy. I say supposedly, because like everything that's theoretically easy (pasta, rice, etc.), I always manage to screw it up somehow. Basically, instructions are to throw the oven to 375 F/190 C/T6/460 K and bake the cookies (put in tablespoon sized globs) for 9-11 minutes or until they're cooked.

And around now, you're probably saying, "Gosh, Rob, how could someone as handsome and intelligent and incredibly modest as you screw something like that up? The instructions are incredibly clear!"

And I reply with, "Oh you. Yes, those instructions seem clear, but you really want to use a teaspoon, NOT a tablespoon, to get the right volume and spacing and such. And also, ovens lie to you. They lie something fierce."

But Toll House cookies aren't about uniformity. They're about delicious. Yes, some got a bit burny on the bottom. Yes, some are a bit bigger than others. Yes, some got a bit conjoined. But they're still phenomenal. If I could change anything in how I did this one, I'd throw in more baking soda- these came out a bit flatter than what I'm used to getting, and I think it comes from the extra sugar (the American recipe calls for 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar I believe (maybe it's 1/4 cup of both), but I clearly added more brown sugar) and the extra chocolate (336 g corresponds to the actual pack of chocolate chips you get from Nestle). But regardless of the "goût particulier" that Bev somewhat complained about from (she claims) the baking soda, they were still well received by Bev and Elmo, and the teachers at my school ate them up. I also got a comment from the directeur (read: principal) about how this sort of thing helps with the ladies.

Cue knowing nod. Not that I have any ulterior motives with this New Year's Resolution or anything.

Now if you'll pardon me, I'ma have one more before I go to sleep.