From the monthly archives: September 2009
as you may recall from my post of lauren’s gigundo poptart cake, i bake for the birthdays of the team that i manage. for andy’s birthday i decided to ask his girlfriend what he likes and i held my breath in hopes of something i could whip up pretty easily. when she said that he would love a strawberry rhubarb pie i breathed a sigh of relief. i could totally do that. THEN… oh then… friday afternoon i get an instant message that he wants these zombie cupcakes. i am totally up for a challenge, but i checked the halloween section of the few places i buy my candy stuff from and did not seem to be able to find a brain shaped candy mold. i called up candyland crafts (it is like disneyland for candy makers, but with no frills) and it turns out they do have a brain mold but it was hiding in a different section. the good news is that they had it, the bad news is that it was way bigger than cupcake size.
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since i was attempting zombie cupcakes for the birthday boy, i wanted to make something relatively easy as my general baking. everyone had such a rough week last week, i figured chocolate was a wonderful direction to go in. i had made these last winter as a birthday bake for one of the guys on my team and decided to try them again with some more variations.
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like many words, over time aebleskiver has lost its meeting. the definition of aebleskiver is apple slices, however the name refers to these amazing little round pancakes! although i am mostly italian, another part of my heritage that i celebrate is that of the danes. i dont meet people from denmark all that often (prolly because it is so great there that nobody wants to leave), so when i do i am super excited. there are some things about the danes that i just cant stand behind though: they save aebleskiver for christmas time! and they don’t even consider them a breakfast food (they are a snack or dessert)!
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you know how people say “oh, i could do that in my sleep…”? well, i am pretty sure that most of the baking i did this week was actually in my sleep. wait, no. i have barely slept at all this week, so perhaps a trance or a daze would be a better word for it. there are many things in my life that i should be quite proud of, things that truly are impressive, but today… today i am proud that i did not: yell at anyone, punch anyone, rip my hair out, fall down in a fit of tears, fall asleep at my desk, start laughing hysterically for no reason in a meeting with our CEO, or anything else indicative of the mental state i am in. seriously, between not sleeping and some of the people i encountered in my work day (okay, the screaming children at target didn’t help either), i feel like im losing my mind… going bananas, if you will.
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i will be doing this evening’s post in bullet point format in honor of grrrrrrregory, who i was too tired and cranky to hang out with this evening (he would have had to drive over an hour to get here so i would feel really guilty being a major drag and/or falling asleep).
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so, some of you may know that i was vegan for ten years…i still have a number of vegan friends and attend vegan potlucks on a regular basis. it is always a blast– good food, good company, and of course, human pyramids. last night after i finished my marathon baking i was pumped and had literally about 50 ideas of what i wanted to make for tuesday’s dinner. roasted potatoes, lettuce wraps, lo mein, spinach pies, grilled corn, etc…. and i was fairly certain that since i was so excited that stop n shop finally had berries the other day and i bought a ton of them that the dessert i made would be berry-related. in fact, i was pretty sure i would be making berry dumplings.
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i noticed something today: the lighting in my house kinda stinks. if it isnt poor lighting, it is bad shadows. even though i started by 10am, i unfortunately did not finish baking until the sun had already set, so the possibility for natural lighting was out of the question; needless to say, i had to get a little creative with lamps and whatnot. hopefully one of these days i can afford some lighting and lenses to get some better pix up here!
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although baking/cooking is my passion, i make my living by working in corporate america. if i tried to explain to you what the company i work for does, or even what my job is, it would still be unclear after you asked any question you could think of… here is the short answer: companies, schools, governments, etc buy all sorts of computer stuff from us, i manage a team of folks that specialize on a particular product manufacturer and help the sales reps. just like i do something outside of my day job, one of the gentlemen on our help desk does something spectacular in addition to his job at our company: HE PROTECTS OUR FREEDOM AND PUTS HIS LIFE ON THE LINE FOR US! He came back from Iraq a few weeks ago, and will be returning to work this Monday, so a bunch of us ladies are baking as part of the welcome back/thank you efforts.
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so, today i went to what just may be the last of the summer bbqs, and decided that this evening’s selection should be a farewell to summer. when i think of personal pies i think of pizza hut’s personal pan pizzas, but this time the personal pies are an homage to a delicious snapple flavor– raspberry peach! i was going to make blueberry pies, then peach blueberry, but then i remembered the delightful flavor combination of this fine beverage.
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so, this is my first post that is a re-bake… but it needed to be done. not only because the only photo i had was an awful cell phone pic, but because they are amazing cookies! my friend dave (not the same david that bought me the cupcake pan) keeps bugging me to bake him something with peanutbutter and since we have a kickball (woohoo!) game today, i figure cookies are the best way to go: easy to eat, not messy, large quantity, etc.
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