Baking After Midnight: Not quite so crack cake.
So this month is cake month over at Baking After Midnight.
I had two goals.
1) To use the buttermilk I had in the fridge
2)To perhaps make something with berries as I have a small container of blackberries, and a large 4lb container of strawberries.
I succeeded in the first one.
The berries, not so much. None of the recipes for using berries seemed even remotely appealing. All of them in my initial search called for berry flavored jello to be added to the mix.
Sigh. I hate all those midwestern women who think mayo and jello are the hight of gourmet cuisine.
So instead of wading through ten thousand recipes involving jello I decided to scrap the berry idea.
Going with the buttermilk situation, I found a recipe for Crack Cake.
It sounded good, and everyone voted for me to do it on FB. Supposedly it’s such a good cake that you can’t only eat one slice.
I halved the recipe, as I didn’t need a 9×13 coffee cake that you supposedly couldn’t resist sitting around when I’m the only one home.
For me it’s Not Quite So Crack Cake.
Perhaps it was my fault… I made the glaze topping with buttermilk instead of regular milk… but every bite I had of the cake tasted salty.
I’m not entirely sure if it’s just the glaze that tasted salty, or if it’s the entire cake it’s self. I’ll have another bite at some point later and only nom the bottom part to see.
Moving along… I’ve discovered that while knitting late at night, it is not a good idea to watch Ghost Whisperer. Specifically season 4, and even more specifically the second disc of season 4. (meaning episodes 5-8)
You will cry.
It’s very difficult to knit lace while your eyes are filled up with tears. Just sayin’.
And with that, I leave you for now.
Baking after Midnight: Dreaming of Pumpkin Pillows
So, hola chicas.
Last night was Earth Hour, and Mother of Mine and I did in fact turn out all the lights. We had a few candles just for illumination sake, and I will be honest here…. we had the telly on. I know I know… the telly should have been off.. so sue us.
For an hour neither of us did any knitting either… which to be quite honest is a weird thing. Normally one of us is on the laptop, the other is knitting. Yes, that’s how we spend our evenings.
Last night I started a project. And apparently, for ironies sake… I wasn’t the only one who did so. My minion over at Random ramblings of this guy (who shamefully hasn’t blogged about it yet… 
) also started on our little pet project last night as well.
What is it, you might ask?
Baking After Midnight.
Kinda self explanatory right?
Well, it’s still in its infancy, we are still figuring out what we want it to be… But there might be themed months… and I even see a contest or two in the future (that last part is all mah own planning… don’t go asking Minion as he’ll simply say “huh?”).
So the other night after My Minion put up the FB page, I started tinkering around with some artwork. Hope you like the one above. I have another little badge in the works so you can display your baking love.
During many cycles of working night shifts, or late shifts where I was up till the wee hours unwinding, I rather enjoyed baking after midnight.
In the more recent yearly cycles where I was going to bed at 8pm and getting up at 430, this obviously did not lend it’s self for late night baking.
Then when I started this new chapter in my life… I was still going to bed between 9-11 pm, and still getting up between 6-7. I was alright with this.
Then Daylight Savings time happened… I will admit it kicked my ass. I’ve not yet adapted to it even this many days later. I’m sure part of the problem was that the time change happened the morning after the GBS concert. That night, I didn’t even get to bed till 1 am, and so the vicious cycle started of staying up late, and sleeping in all morning.
As I also quit doing my aqua class (headaches from the chlorine), I no longer had any excuse to actually get my ass out of bed for class at 830am.
So I had been feeling very much like a slug as of late.
I do plan on getting back to a more normal 7 am start time with a reasonable bed time… but at the same time part of me thinks that this might be my last chance to have slug times like this for a long time.. so mayhaps I should take advantage of it? We’ll see.
Moving along… the baking!
I discovered an amazing website thanks to the Pioneer Woman. It’s called Tasty Kitchen, and it’s a little place to get together and swap recipes.
I lurve it. Really I do. And woot. I finally spelled recipes correctly. It’s been a plague on me forever, and finally I appear to have gotten it right without having to resort to spell check. This makes me happy.
What did I make for the inaugural run?
Pumpkin Pillows.
Oh yes, you heard me correctly. Little bits of fluffy pumpkin heaven smattered with chocolate chips.
Fresh out of the oven… they were orgasmic.
This morning, in the harsh light of 9am sunlight… they were pretty darn nummy for brekkie.
Forgive my massive bites from it pre photo. I couldn’t help it. It was calling to me. That siren song of pumpkiny goodness.
So if you are inclined to join us in a little Midnight Baking, please feel free to join our little Facebook group here: Baking After Midnight
There isn’t any commitment. The goal is simple. Bake as often or not as you like. But if you happen to do some clandestine moonlit baking… take a photo… blog.. share it with us.
If you have any ideas of what you’d like to see… send a shout to us.
No matter what… Have fun!
Oh, and the recipe for the Pumpkin Pillows can be found here:
As Frankie Said…
I did it my way.
Today was not a good day for the most part. Kept waking up in the middle of the night because my lower back locked up thanks to the joys of having a uterus. So I had weird dreams and thus was cranky in the morning.
I couldn’t even form coherent thoughts until well into the mid part of the day.
I have half a wedding dress.
It started so simply. I needed to go to the post office to mail out a yarn order (woot). While at the post office, I realized I didn’t have my wallet. I prayed that it was simply in my jacket at home, and not some where in the street between Whole Foods and home for the last 24 hours.
Then I needed to go to the library. So, Mother of Mine tagged along as she had a package to send as well.
As we were leaving the library (and me still not coherent yet), Mother of Mine says we are going to go to Mill Outlet. We were going to buy the fabric for my wedding dress as they were having their 45th anniversary sale.
40% off one item, or one cut piece of fabric up to 3 yards. And 5% off the entire order.
Sadly, I needed 6 yards, but for some reason I still got 20% off the other 3 yards of fabric, and then even still got the extra 5% off of that.
We paid 176$ for the fabric, when normally it would be 250$
Last week I bought the under fabric for the dress, and spent…. I wanna say around 45$. So, just over 220$ spent for my wedding dress.
This doesn’t bother me, as yes… I’m sure I could go to one of those 99$ sales…But…
Would I find anything that fit? No.
Would I find anything that looked good? No.
Would I find anything that I could actually wear for more than just my wedding? No.
Would I actually end up paying 99$ No.
I’m not built like most girls. I have very broad shoulders. I also do have an Hourglass figure (though, thats been slightly hidden over the years thanks to working in call centers… it’s still there though.. still an hourglass) So if a dress has any kind of fit in the top, it won’t fit my shoulders, and if it fits my shoulders, it’s generally to big in the waist, or my hips etc etc.
This is why I am having a dress made for me. (Notice I didn’t say “making my own dress”, I’m being honest here.)
I will not look like a giant meringue, I will not look like a bell (and that is not to be confused with “belle”).
I know what shapes work with my body.
I know what length and flow works.
This dress will look good. I hope.
Found my wallet. Had it with us the entire time in the car. Must have fallen out after Whole Foods yesterday. Crisis averted once again.
After that, I was finally awake enough to do what I didn’t do yesterday.
Make homemade ranch dressing.
Which… is mighty tasty if I do say so myself. I didn’t have all the herbs I wanted, so I improvised. It’s not bad. Mine is not your classic Ranch, simply because of the herb change up. But it’s good. Next time, I’ll make sure I have the correct herbs that I want. I’ll keep experimenting till I get it just how I want it.
I used the Pioneer Woman’s recipe for it. You can find it here.
I also made The Best Lasagna … Ever.
Which is also one of PW’s. Here.
Of course this is me… I change things around.
I was short 1 cup of cottage cheese, but I do not feel that took away from the yummy factor.
I used 1 pound 95% lean ground beef and half a pound ground buffalo instead of hot breakfast sausage. What can I say… I’m not fond of spicy hot sausage.
I used the fresh parsley instead of dried, as I conveniently had a bunch of it left over from the ranch dressing.
I also added another layer into the mix.
Artichoke and spinach. Oh yes, I went there. I went there and damn it was good. Wanna know something else? 2 cans. Yes, you heard me. 2 cans of artichoke hearts. Damn I’m good. Damn it was good. You know you love it. Succumb to the the power of the artichoke heart.
Fast forward ohh… about an hour now, and I have a full belly.
The only thing I think I would change would be to reduce the salt. But thats just my own choice, I don’t tend to use much salt in my cooking, and Mother of Mine can’t do the salt. As I was holding measuring the salt out the second time, I actually debated reducing it. But no… I decided to go with Ree on this one this time… that way I would know my own opinion for next time. I think I would reduce it by half through out the entire recipe (if you read the recipe, you’ll see what I mean).
I don’t think that I had a full pound of mozzarella cheese. They were out of the shredded packs at WF, and so I just grabbed a brick and the nice cheese man who had gone to look for the shredded packs, sliced it for me. I think it was closer to just over half a pound of cheese. I did not find the recipe lacking for this fact.
I did not use any tomato paste. Didn’t need it either. Take that lasagna, I made you how I wanted.
For the amount of food this lasagna made… I’d say it was well worth the effort.
The knitting is going well. I’m up to row 61, so I’m very close to where I had to stop on the previous attempt. The cables are going the correct ways, and the only thing that I’m not happy about, will tighten up when I wet block it later. Woot! Only 56 rows to go till I put the body down and start making the sleeves.
The writing is also going well. I’m about to change up my routine so that I get myself to do more writing each day. I’ll tell you about it when I get it to actually work. Might not happen this week though because of the exhaustion factor.
I am debating making some pernicious s’mores for dessert. We’ll see if I’m up to it or not.
