Going Domestic

my little cupcake

I was very happy to discover that mixing the frosting by hand wasn't a big deal at all! The cream cheese needed to be worked a bit to soften up, but once I added the melted butter, it didn't take long at all to achieve the proper texture for cream cheese frosting.  I also can't believe that I hadn't used a pastry bag to frost cupcakes before! The first two that I piped last night were a little rough, but swirling on the frosting ended up being a lot of fun! Maybe I ought to make cupcakes more often ...

In the end, I don't know if Madeline was aware that her mom baked and decorated her birthday treat, but she seemed rather excited to dig into a cupcake this morning. Then again, maybe she was just exciting about using her new cutlery :)

accepting no substitutes

I didn't pack my Kitchen-Aid when we moved to St. John's, so I decided that I'd buy a container of cream cheese frosting for Madeline's cupcakes instead of trying to make it from scratch and having to mix and fluff it by hand. I tested out my new decorating tips last night on two "test cupcakes" and the tub of cream cheese Betty Crocker frosting. Texture-wise, the frosting worked really well. Taste-wise, well, let's just say that it turns out that "cream cheese" isn't anywhere in the ingredient listing (insert audible groan here).

Off to purchase a package of Philly later today ...

one of my prized possessions

Light Hummingbird Cake

1. Sift together the following ingredients:

• 3 cups flour (cake flour works well)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

When finished, add

• 1 cup of chopped pecans (optional - I've never added nuts)

In another bowl, combine

• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup organic applesauce
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup crushed pineapple
• 2 cups chopped bananas

2. Stir all together by hand (do not use a mixer) until well-mixed. Again, do not beat. Fold liquid mixture into dry mixture until well-blended.

3. Divide mixture into three 9-inch pans that have been greased and covered with a fine layer of bread crumbs. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes, or until set in the centre. Make sure not to overbake.

4. Cool cakes, and then ice with

• 8 ounces of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 lbs of confectioners sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

So, that's the recipe. I found it on Oprah.com many years ago, back when Art Smith was her personal chef.  I have never followed the instructions exactly. I regularly substitute olive oil for the canola oil, because all we ever have in our home is olive oil. I also like to use pineapple tidbits instead of crushed pineapple. And is anyone going to know if the applesauce isn't organic?  Also, I don't use that particular recipe for cream cheese frosting. Seriously, 1.5 lbs of confectioner's sugar? I usually use about 1/2 cup to 16 oz. of cream cheese, but I don't like it too sweet.

I made a half-recipe last night, and it yielded enough batter for a dozen cupcakes. I didn't need to adjust the baking time.

Also, my sister is right - she did ice Madeline's birthday cupcakes last year! Now I remember asking her to do that as I had lent her all of my cake decorating supplies. This year, she couldn't be here in person to help me out, so instead she sent me an awesome stash of new decorating supplies!

hope in a pastry bag

I decided many months ago that I'd bake cupcakes for Madeline's second birthday, and I've spent the last week trying to decide what kind to make. My first thought was either carrot cake or pumpkin, figuring that there would be at least a teensy-tiny bit of nutrition in them, but in the end, I'm making hummingbird cupcakes. I love my hummingbird cake recipe, and need an excuse to have it at least once a year!  And it's full of pineapple, banana, and applesauce, so it also meets my must-have-an-ingredient-other-than-sugar criteria as well.  I didn't have enough ripe bananas on hand, so I tried out the trick I'd about for ripening bananas by sticking them in a brown paper bag with an apple, but the three bananas that I tried that with didn't seem to progress any faster than the rest of the bunch that I'd left out on the counter. I still think they'll be ready for baking by tomorrow.

Frosting the cupcakes is another story. I got drawn into the realm of wanting to be able to produce pretty cupcakes after making a couple of trips to Crave back when we were still in Calgary, and also from following Not Martha's experiments in cupcaking (is cupcaking a word?). Discovering the Cupcake Bakeshop site a few months was just the icing on the cake, so to speak :) I'll have to go through the archives in the next few days to see if there are any tips and tricks. Last year, I merely smeared the frosting on Madeline's b-day cupcakes. I'm aiming higher this time.

i don't think we're in calgary anymore

Yesterday, on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic in the vicinity of the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. It was a humpback.

cover up

   

Did everyone but me know that this is what blackout fabric looks like? Before I went to Fabricville, I knew it by reputation only, so I was somewhat relieved to immediately notice a bolt of this on the shelf! I was expecting it to be kind of plastic-y, but it isn't at all. I needed the fabric to sew a little curtain for Madeline's bedroom here in St. John's. The sun rises at 4:30 am these days, and I'd like her to sleep longer than that. Her room has wooden blinds on the window, but they don't keep much of the light out. For the last couple of months, she's had rectangles of construction paper taped directly onto her window in an effort to make her room a little darker. It looked really pretty; kind of like stained glass! But the construction paper was a permanent fixture, and it's nice to have the curtain in there now so that we can open it and  she can enjoy the natural light during the day.

I didn't bring my cutting mat with me to St. John's, and I rather missed using it and my T-square to even out the dimensions of the curtain! I also left my Bernina back in Calgary, so all of the sewing had to be done with my serger. I'd never tried using it for a chain stitch before, but it worked quite will. The one thing that I would change if I did this project over again would be to use a smaller needle. I think that would have reduced the snags in the blackout fabric!

Open Letter

Dear People Who Own the House We Rent:

Firstly, may I commend you on your excellent choice of neighbourhood? It's lovely to be able to stroll down to the lake with my toddler, and to have that lovely view of the ocean out the dining area window. I understand that this is to be your retirement home, and I think it shall do nicely. However, the reason why I am writing concerns some glaring omissions in what this furnished home is equipped with.

There is no teapot! There's a tea kettle. I cannot imagine why you would provide us with a kettle and yet no pot in which to add the boiling water to brew tea. Is the kettle there so that we can make endless batches of Jello, maybe?

Also kitchen related, there is no blender. I could understand not having a blender if there was an immersion wand, or maybe a food processor, as those all can perform some of the same functions in the kitchen.

I am also surprised that you don't have a lawnmower, even one of those manual push-type ones that I think are really cool. How are we supposed to maintain the new lawn? Does a flock of sheep regularly stroll past and help themselves?

My biggest gripe? Where are we supposed to keep the garden hose? There is no rack for it nailed to either the house or the deck in the back. Perhaps you ought to have invested in one of those hose storage gizmos like most of your neighbours have ...

Anyway, that's all for now ...

Sincerely,

One of the Tenants

PS I think I'm going to buy some pots of flowers for the front step this week.

where, oh where, has my dvd gone

We've been happy subscribers to Rogers Direct (which is Netflix-esque) since arriving in St. John's and discovering that the closest place to rent a DVD to watch was no way within walking distance. Normally, new DVDs arrive in our mailbox within 2 days of receiving a notification message in my inbox, which I thought was fabulous. That's why I'm a little worried that we haven't received the copy of Six Feet Under: Season Five that was supposed to have been put in the mail for us on June 2. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow, and I can put all thoughts of being throttled out of my head!

i used to be a better student

Before we embarked on our temporary relocation to Newfoundland, I decided that there were three things that I wanted to do while we're here:

1. Learn to knit
2. Take a photography class
3. Learn to speak conversational French

I had thought that I'd have crossed two of those items off my list back in March. Afterall, I was giving a how-to book on knitting for my birthday, with an IOU for the basic knitting supplies, but I haven't managed to acquire them yet (sorry, Jane)!  Then, I was all set to take the Digital Camera Workshop at The Studio, but the class was cancelled due to one of those lovely snowstorms that come pretty close to shutting the entire city down.

But the digital camera class finally went ahead last weekend (yay!) and it was really good! True, there were some ladies in the class who spent ten minutes marveling that the memory card for their particular camera could look so different than the memory cards of the students sitting on either side of them, but I think I finally understand the links between shutter speed, aperature, and f-stops, and I learned that I really ought to stop capturing my images as jpeg files as the file compression is doing nothing for the lovely photos of my daughter that I aspire to take. Definitely worth the investment!

As for the knitting, well, it's a good thing that classes are offered here fairly frequently! Now I just have to research my options for French lessons, and maybe then we'll plan a trip to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon :)