Cakes I

I was asked to post some baking blogs.  Never one to turn down a follower’s request, I’m going to start with the extremes: the hardest and easiest cakes.  Here are two of my favorite cakes, that took about  8 hours each:

I’m not sure what was inside.  Usually, I make a yellow cake with fruit paste or custard filling.  Both were butter cream frosting with royal icing flowers made ahead of time.  TIP: You can’t see it so well in these photos , but tops of all the rose cakes, as well as the entire morning glory cake, is covered in finely drizzled icing.  You don’t strictly even need a decorator tip for this (although a #1 or #2 tip is recommended.)  Just cut the tinniest tip off the end of a disposable pastry bag (or even a sturdy baggie).  Also make sure your icing is of medium to loose consistency (the peaks should quickly fold over all the way when a spoon , etc is lifted out of the icing.  Decide whether you  want lots of little loops,  or no loops at all.  Personally, I like no loops (the lines of frosting weave around each other, but never cross), which gives a nice lacey pattern called Cornelli. With loops is called Sotas, similar to what you can more clearly see drizzled down the side of the rose cake, but in 2-D, not just lines.  Anyway, this can all be done with minimal equipment, and really gives a very professional look.  BUT it does take forever to do a really nice job, and even with a wrist bandage, expect numb or sore fingers and wrist for the next day or so. 

Surprisingly, the easiest dessert is the same cake, same butter cream frosting, but toned down design.  The easiest recipe is the one you know so well, you could make it in your sleep, and I really think this will just be different for everyone.   First of all, find a recipe that works well, that tastes good, and uses  ingredients that you always have on hand (If you always have Nepalese fermented yak’s whey in your cabinet, and you like that in your cake, then there is nothing wrong with that.  I like lekvar and cardamom in my cakes, as well as in other dishes, so  I always have them at home.) Make that recipe until you have it memorized, and really understand how it works.  It is then easy to modify and adapt it when you  want some variation.  As you get familiar with cakes this way, you will recognize your “standard cake” in other recipes.  Most cakes are dressed up pound cakes, chiffons, medieras, or sponge / angel food cakes.  I’m sure I’m missing some other general cakes, but you get the idea.  I would suggest a nice yellow cake, a good all-purpose  recipe, easy to make in larger or smaller batches.  I love the Lady Baltimore recipe in the Joy of Cooking (my copy is several additions back, I don’t know exactly what’s in the newest addition).  Very easy, very all-purpose, easy to modify.  And  then there is always Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines - whatever floats your boat, I’m not judging, but it still comes down to : is this always in your pantry, and do you like it?  If it becomes a pain to run out to the store for mix, or you just don’t like it to the point where you are always trying to dress it up, then it is not easiest. 

So you’ve got your cake, and you have icing (I will hopefully talk about icing in a future blog).  Slather on the icing, making a nice wavy pattern if you don’t want to go the extra of making it smooth (also a future blog).  Then using that pastry bag or sturdy baggie, you can make an easy drizzle or simple pattern with matching or contrasting colored icing.  And that really is what I do when I need something in a hurry. 

This Ledgend of ZeldaÓ birthday cake is somewhere in between.  The cake was my standard yellow cake, minus about 2/5 the sugar, swirled with a brownie mix to get an incredibly moist marble cake, that  can still handle the extra sweetness of the frosting.  The sweetness of the frosting was also cut slightly by using double the salt, and lemon juice  instead of vanilla or any other flavoring additive.  I added a reverse shell border along the top, and a star-puff border along the bottom , which requires a star tip (#16 in this case).  But otherwise, all decoration, besides the fondant and jelly bean treasure chest, was done with a #2 tip or no tip at all as described above.  Link was traced from a promotional brochure.  I unfortunately don't have a good photo of the fondant and jelly bean treasure chest added at the end.  Oh, and I painted the face on with food coloring.  The whole thing, including baking, but not cleanup, probably took about 3.0 hours. 

Games, Forbidden Island

Hey, I have time for a quick blog. 
Got a new game, Forbidden Island, at the cool-O toy store yesterday, Rhinocerous Toys in Jenkintown.  It's more of a multi-player puzzler than a traditional game.  BTW, this is a tile and card based game, not electronic, which for me is a definite plus.  2-4 player, you have work together to collect treasure and get off a sinking island. The boys and I played on the novice level.  We sank.  This game is super cool, BUT only play with people you don't really care about OR love so much you will be able to weather yelling and name-calling.

Harry Potter Review II : the books and elsewhere

I don't really have all that much to say without starting a headlong ramble into minutia.  I started reading the books after Goblet of Fire came out, and quickly became a big fan.  Goblet of Fire was my favorite, and I think the books went downhill from there, possibly because the desire for secrecy before publishing dates may have meant less outside editing.  I still cried at the end of Half Blood Prince, but I was fairly dissapointed when I finished Deathly Hallows.  So many, many hints and good story avenues, just abandoned.  After all, wasn't that what the fans loved, looking for the hints, guessing where we would go next.
I never really became involved in the Harry Potter chat rooms, but I did become a follower of one particular site, http://redhen-publications.com/Potterfics.html .  I was highly influenced by these articles; most of the theories are bang-on, and the ones that are not should be, they would have made a better story.  I also particularly liked one of the fan-fiction stories at http://redhen-publications.com/files_to_post/Publications/GoldenAge.pdf .  Light reading, provacative ideas.  But it heavily skews the way I look at the story now.  I really felt its influence as I watched the latest movie, found several "honorable" characters as fairly repulsive.
 I pretty much put away the Harry Potter books after the final  installment, not least of all because of the strong christian narative in the sagas ending.  This was not a total surprise.  Ms. Rowling had said that the story was a christian story, and commentators such as Rev. John Granger had found considerable of christian symbolism in with obvious alchemy lesson.  But Deathly Hallows was just too much for me.  So Harry Potter went the way of the Narnia books when I was little.  Yes, I did go to the midnight opening of the movie.  So sue me, I'm weak.  I would probably go to the Narnia movies too if they were any good.

Let's play pretend

I'm here at work, because I seeded a new cell line, and it has to be babied.  Don't worry about what that means specifically.  The point is, I'm looking out my window of beautiful snowflakes (a nice surprise for Thanksgiving day in my region), and wondering, "How in the world did I end up in molecular biology?"  In the proper alternate universe, I am a performer, whose creativity, joy and talent are shared with the world.
I guess it's possible that everyone has this dream.  Although, my boss told me she wanted to be an astronaut.  But her mother did not think that was a sensible career choice, and so she is now a biophysicist / cancer researcher.  And I'm a lab mitschlepper.
So where to go from here?  Well, I do have several viable paths at the moment.  I have been learning tribal belly dance for over three years, and the studio has many performance opportunities throughout the year.  But for a couple of reasons, including modesty and scheduling, this does not seem like the best option.  Still, I do love being able to dance with friends once a week, so in a way, this is already a performance outlet of a limited nature.
Another vehicle is guitar, but this is still in the works, since all I can play right now is "Ode to Joy", "Minuet in G" (first half) and "This Land is Your Land".  I am very close to having "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", and can kinda play the the Harry Potter theme and the chords to Beatles' "Your Mother Should Know".  I have been learning along with a child who is taking real lessons.  I would really like to be able to play stuff for friends in my living room, and have them sing along.  One hundred years ago it was expected that people would use their talents to entertain others in their loving rooms.  I went to a college with a well-respected conservatory, and there were students playing music all the time, in scheduled performances, as well as just impromptu sessions in the dorms, out on the grass, etc.  A visiting friend once said "It's like Fame." That was an overstatement, but still I think of just taking out a musical instrument and playing as totally normal.   Alas, I was too sort-sighted to actually take any music classes myself.
I gave a couple cake-decorating lessons a few years back.  That was immensely enjoyable.  I know it doesn't seem like performance art, but it was to me.  The obstacle here is the great deal of preparation, mainly all by myself, and I just don't have the time or energy at this moment.
When I was in junior high, it seems we would spend whole afternoons together putting on silly little skits.This was definitely one of my favorite activities.  By high school, playing skits was less acceptable, but going to the mall with my best friend and modeling all the prom gowns was a hit.  I think at this stage, finding some like minded friends and saying "Hey Judy and Mickey, lets clean out your garage and put on a show!" is the least realistic option.  Slightly ahead of that may be trying to arrange a standing role-playing game, but only slightly, as I have never heard any of my circle mention any desire for such a thing.  Am I wrong?  If anyone would like to come on over to play pretend, or dance or sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, or listen to me recite Lady Macbeth's soliloquy, stop on by, the door is always open, even if I have to pry it open.

Harry Potter, Reveiw I: Deathly Hallows, the movie

I went to an opening midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" with my best HP buddy.   We had great fun. We were both big fans of the books, less so of the movies, especially critical of the later ones.  Being with a good movie companion, added to a full, enthusiastic and engrossed theater, probably makes the experience at least 5x better. Our general consensus was that this movie was about middling for its overall cinematic quality and for its ability to convey the Harry Potter story. It was much better than that clunker Goblet of Fire, and compares reasonably with the last two movies.  So if you just want to know whether or not to see it: if you are at all a fan of the books or movies, or if you are into big screen extravaganzas, yeah, go. If you have no special affection for HP...eh, you could wait for the video if you don't want to spend the $10 per person.

Now for a more in-depth critique, with these caveats:
1) SPOILER WARNING. I don't know how much I'm actually giving away, but I'm certainly not holding back.
2) I'm a harsh critic, so it may sound like I hated the movie. But as I said, overall I liked the movie and thought it was a lot of fun.

I seem to disagree with most people by preferring the first three movies to the later ones, with the forth, GoF, being my absolute least favorite, I thought it was a complete bomb.  The early movies made the best use of the human talent, even if the kids were pushed to the ridiculous a couple times.  They were full of characters that were really great to watch.  By GoF, the director seems to have forgotten they even bothered to hire actors, and consequently dropped the idea of developing interesting characters (Fleur doesn't even get any lines!), preferring to rely completely on special effects (with some teenage goo-goo eyes thrown in to fill a little more time.) Ironically, they drop Dobby, handing over his part to Neville, for some reason deciding the CG elf was too hard or just not worth recreating.???

Before taking out the scalpel, let me point out a couple things I (we) really liked in DH.  There were a few scene I especially remember. The early Harry, Ron, Hermione on the run made a sweet allusion to the first boo with Ron's line, "I always liked those little fires Hermione makes in the jars."  And my companion liked when, a moment later, Harry turned that "little flame" into a jet of fire; "No Hemione, nothing's going on in here."  I appreciated the Harry/Hermione dance scene, even though it was not in the book.  It helped create the sense of a long, difficult, lonely autumn on the run.

The Horcrux Harry/Hermione scene was quite derivative of the "All Powerful Galadriel" scene in Lord of the Rings.  But I don't say this as a critisism.  It was the right effect, and gave a properly ethereal feel to the phantom lovers.

We were both impressed with the actors who portrayed the polyjuiced Harry, Ron, Hermione in the ministry. They did a wonderful job of mimicking Radcliff, Grint and Watson, while bringing a freshness to the characters.  I'm afraid this may indeed be a critisism of the original actors and/or the way the y are directed, that has left their portrayals of the trio feeling old and flat.

Overall, I got the feeling that the movie makers were trying to translate the book onto the screen rather then reinvent the story as in the previous movies. This pleased me, and probably many, many other fans who had such affection for the original series.  It felt that the producer/ director/ screen writer/ whoever also had an affinity for the books.

I suppose its no mystery why the movies were so light on the character development and plot nuances. In a world where the book fans are a guaranteed audience and an average 400 has to be fit in under 130 minutes, the producers will go for glitz to attract the widest possible audience. The mystery to me is why they decided to cheat themselves out of the glitz as well. By ebbing away from the magical costumes, enchanted oddities and mystical glamour, they are left with a pathetically mundane world. Even Bill's and Fleur's wedding looked like a bit of a dump full of muggle ragamuffins.

I think the fate of the house elves epitomizes the downfall of the movies. It's "common knowledge" that the director wanted to cut house elves entirely for Order of the Phoenix, but this idea was nixed by Ms. Rowling. who informed him that the characters would be essential in the final book. In fact, the house elves have two of the most passionate parts in the book, with Kreacher's redemption and Dobby's death. But adequately evoking that passion with these "special effects" was so difficult that the first event is almost completely skimmed over and for the second I believe they substituted a puppet to provide a mediocre rendition. (my buddy says "she's wrong wrong wrong") Can someone confirm or disprove this? Character expression is sacrificed to special effects and everyone loses.

Finally, I don't see how anyone who has not had the benefit of already learning the plot could possibly follow the movie.  As just one example:  do any neophytes understand what's with that glass shard Harry keeps waving around?  But I hope I'm wrong, and you are all loving the movie.

Coming next: critique of the books. (please, come back it'll be shorter! maybe.)

(and my buddy may be join in to give you the truth. To see more of the truth check out his vlog www.youtube.com/ultimatewhodat. "I might start posting to it again. If I get enough hits. Click subscribe to get a free email signed by ultimatewhodat. I'm legally required to state that the opinions stated here are the opinions of individuals and do not necessarily represent the views of Sweet Profusion, J. K. Rowling or WB Films.")

I really like BEN FM, the philly "we play whatever we feel like station".  There, I admit it. Of course, it occasionally bothers how blatantly false their catch phase is, unless their play-list is arranged by someone with the musical awareness of a 10-year-old.  But still, they do have a wide array of fun tune for the average commercial radio station.  So, the other night they were playing a lot of eighties' tunes, and I'm thinking that I should go out and buy some of these albums already. Somehow, I never learned the normal teenage skill of accumulating  pop-culture knowledge.  Sure, I watched a lot of TV,  but I didn't listen to the radio much, and most of my movie information came from MAD magazine.  I bought almost no albums, probably had about 30-40 cassettes, mostly from the record club offers in the newspaper.  But I comforted myself with the idea that when I was an adult, I would be able to arrange my life better, so that I would know all the popular songs and movies, along with the names of their performers and actors, etc.  But then when I got a little older, I worried over the great amount of  recorded music and films from the past that I probably would never be aware of, much less see.  Block Buster only carried so many titles, and where could one find vast music repositories?  At some point in college, I became more encouraged, realizing that yes, there are music repositories, and theaters that show old movies.  I still had a chance, as an adult, to grab my fill of music and movies.  Well, now it's now, and there is new music and video spewing from every direction, and I feel like I'm in a snow-cut on a valley railroad track that just keeps getting deeper and deeper with every day's new snow.  We have no internet access at home, I have no time at work, and there are not even any more Block Busters or Tower Records around anymore.  I'm never gonna dig my way outa' this snow ditch.
I have an extremely strong memory from childhood, I suppose early teens, of being in the car with my significantly older cousins.  Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" came on the radio (already an "oldies classic"). Someone in the car says, "Come on, we all know the words," and they all sing along with Carly.  I thought that was just the coolest thing ever, and really looked forward to the day I could do that. Now when Beatles or Billy Joel or Smoky Robinson comes on the radio, my husband and I sing along.  But I know the kids are not thinking "that's the coolest thing ever." I now have a teenager, but he likes the "classic rock stations" that play eighties' hard rock that I already know or never really liked anyhow.  But one of the great moments of my life was we were in the car, and he started,  out of the blue,  humming "clap clap stomp, clap clap stomp".  And I was able to pull out the Queen CD I had just bought, on a whim,  just days before, and blast out "CLAP CLAP STOMP.  CLAP CLAP STOMP."  And sing along.