Guinness Cake

In the theme of Irish foods: how about a beer cake?

Here are a couple of recipes to use as a guide, one with sour cream and one with coffee. I didn't add either, so it was essentially a chocolate cake with a bottle of Guinness instead of the water you'd normally use.


The rather disappointing thing is, it doesn't taste like beer at all. It's a great cake, but I was kind of hoping for a unique flavor. Mint flavored frosting, though.

The decoration was a very cute idea stolen from Martha Stewart. I drew a clover on a sheet of paper, cut it out, and laid the paper on top of the cake. It helps if you press it down a little, so the sugar doesn't get under the template. And stick with a simpler design; the clover might have been a little detailed.

Given the meh results, I may or may not be interested in trying the diet Coke cake any more.

MLB All Star 5k

For all of you who ask, "how do you cook so much and stay thin?" Well, here's how. I don't.

Running in the new neighborhood (which isn't so new anymore, really) isn't as convenient as the old neighborhood. There are hills. And traffic. So I stopped running as often, and what happened from there should be pretty obvious.

First, I caved and bought Jillian Michael's 30 day shred. It's 100% gimmicky but I've heard so much about it, I figured for a few bucks I'd try it. Have I mentioned how much I do not like her? Or the Biggest Loser? I only watched it once but ... we'll, I'll elaborate if you want some other time. Suffice it to say, do not like. New arch nemesis.

Sad to say, it really does work. I haven't done a consistent 30 days because I can't. I hurt so much the next day that I can barely walk, much less do it again or go running. And I fancy myself a fairly fit person.

But this was supposed to be about the MLB All Star game 5k event. They really made this game into a week-long deal. Anyway, I dragged my poor husband at the crack of dawn on a Sunday out to Angels Stadium in Anaheim for the race.

What can I say? The course was nice. It was reminiscent of that-we-can't-talk-about-this-year
and my arch nemesis was there to kick things off. Ugh.

But guess what?


Super PR!! When I saw the clock at 28 minutes, I threw myself a big cheering party across the timing mats. Did I look insane? Probably. Whatever.

And for new runners, or people who are just curious: this is the first race I've run the whole way through, without walking. That obviously contributed to my time, but I wasn't doing poorly walking either. So, don't worry if you have to walk every now and then. You'll get there!

Irish Soda Bread

So let's try again.

Remember when I graduated from school and said I was going to sleep for a month? I may or may not have done that. And then everything was supposed to be all easy and fun.
Instead all this other stuff happened. I was blogging and that was kind of fun, but I never really advertised it because I really don't like attention (true story). But here's the other part of the story: there's a whooooole lot of life outside my kitchen. Plus most of my work is sitting on the computer, so guess what I don't want to do when I get home? There's this huge world of stuff to see and do and being on a computer all the time = not fun for me.

Not to mention the pressure. I cook a lot, and the photos are a pain to edit and upload and all that garbage (I don't like to read blogs without photos). So those add up. Maybe I got burned out on cooking, too, since I felt like I always had to make something new and exciting. Dumb, I know.

But people see my pictures on facebook. Actually, lots of people. So maybe they're not interested in a blog about how to actually make the stuff, but it sure does help me - I make the same thing over and over again if it's good, and every time I make it I think "ooh, next time, I'll do this!" And promptly forget.

Here's the deal: I'll do 50% catch up, and 50% new stuff. Here's catch up #1:

Irish Soda Bread.

Around St. Patrick's Day (MARCH, people), the internet was all about making Irish foods. I resisted, because this must have been around the time that I was getting a little burned out. But then at the last minute, I really, really wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

Hence, the Irish soda bread, which was what I could make late on St. Patrick's Day with stuff on hand. It came out ugly, but so good. There's about 1,000 recipes, but this one worked just fine.

Stick around and if you're nice, I'll let you in on the other good stuff I've been cooking.

It's looking at me.

One day I came home from work, and wanted a snack. Specifically, bread and butter. Most people would probably just get a slice of bread and eat that but me? I have to make some skillet bread.

Everything was going fine until I flipped it onto a plate ...



I ate it anyway.

Depression Cake

No, I'm not depressed. But if, say, you were depressed, a chocolate cake would surely cure it, right? As the story goes, during the depression eggs and butter were hard to get, so people figured out how to make a chocolate cake without them. Of course, I want to try!

The vinegar in the recipe was kind of a turn off, though. It's just there for the chemical reaction, but doesn't it sound gross?


(Sorry for posting giant pictures of delicious cake.)

This was probably the densest, moist chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Almost like the cake you'd get at a restaurant. Which makes me wonder - do they not use eggs or butter in their cakes either? I could see that being a sweet cost-cutting trick.


I tried making Martha Stewart's champagne truffles a while back, and it didn't go so well. So I melted down the leftovers and poured it over the whole cake. It eventually hardened to a fudge-like consistency. Yum.

Pi Day

Did you know that March 14 is Pi Day? Probably, if you're reading my blog. If not, I'm not making it up. I put it on the calendar and everything.

The only question is: what kind of pie to make?

Years ago, when I first started collecting recipes off the internet, I printed instructions to make hand pies. The recipe was specifically for blackberries, but I had blueberries. Same difference, if you ask me.

Since there's no link to be found, here's what I did:

Blueberry Hand Pies

For the filling:

• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 tbs cinnamon
• 1/4 cup sugar

Boil these all together until it gets thick and syrupy. It should only take a few minutes, and the thicker the better so the filling doesn't run all over your crusts.

For the crust:

• 1 & 1/4 cup flour
• 6 tbs butter
• 3 tbs water
  
• a little salt

Mix these together until it gets crumbly. I did it in my mixer, but I know some people do it with a food processor or by hand. Whichever you like, just make it doughy. Depending on how you mixed it, you should probably throw it back in the refrigerator to get the dough stiffer. I went straight to the rolling out, since the mixer doesn't really heat up the dough at all.

Roll the dough out pretty thin - it will get a little thicker once baked. I used a mini tart pan (about 4-5" wide) to cut out pretty ruffly circles. Put each cutout on a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop a spoonful of filling onto one side of the circle. Fold the dough over in half, and seal them with either a little water, extra dough, or a fork.


Bake for 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

My circles were on the bigger side, so I only got five out of this recipe. But oh, they were good. The perfect size for just a little pie, and not overwhelming with blueberries.

Oh, and I entered the nutritional information into a calculator for you, if you're interested. You're welcome.

Carpeting

Remember how I said I had my "I am woman, hear me roar" moment? Here it is.

Houses around here have all different laundry configurations: upstairs, downstairs, garage. Our laundry is in the garage. It's neither here nor there to me; it's not like the house is so massive it's a pain to run a load downstairs. And it's not like we're waiting two weeks in between laundry loads any more. Have I mentioned I love having my own machines at my disposal? I do.

Anyway, the only downside is the garage is concrete, and has two concrete steps down. And it's nasty to step barefoot on cold, cold concrete. We put a big piece of carpet scrap down in front of the machines, but it's old and nasty and dirty. And you still have to travel down those cold steps.

Plus, two cars barely fit despite being a two-car garage. It's not like it's full of stuff either (so don't bother coming to rob the garage). The steps are in just the right spot to block your car door, if you pull in far enough.

Obviously the solution is to carpet the steps. And DIY, not actually pay a professional. Duh.

We bought some relatively inexpensive carpet from Home Depot on a trip (long, long ago - the Christmas overhaul in which I did not participate really wore me out). It was less than $1 per square foot. I measured six ways until Sunday, and we over-bought. I think, in total, $30. Seriously, I only used about half.

I measured each cut about three times, marking the back with a sharpie, then cutting a little with tin snips. Measure, mark, measure, snip, measure, mark, measure, snip. The sides required more cutting, but were actually easier to cut; the smaller pieces were a little more wieldy than the long strip down the face of the steps.

We bought a little tub of carpet adhesive based on the Home Depot guy's recommendation of what would stick to concrete. The alternative was a giant tub. I used the whole thing, without even a little to spare. It was a lot like frosting a cake! There were some bubbles and I was afraid it wasn't going to stick (although I got some on my fingers and then couldn't get anything not to stick) so I set random junk around the garage on top. See what I mean about robbing our garage?


I'm pretty happy with the results! It's not perfect or professional, but it's cushy and not cold when you step out to do a load of laundry.


The remnant will probably go to replace the beige remnant that's already in front of the machines. I think there's enough left over to almost cover between the steps and the door.

Maybe one of these days we'll do a project inside the house!