Chocolate Rose Birthday Cupcakes

Yesterday was Kª’s birthday (otherwise known as The Lady Downstairs).  She’s now 19, or somewhere close to that .  She’s also the mother of two very energetic young boys, and if you include her husband, she’s outnumbered in the house by males 3 to 1.  So I thought that for her birthday I’d give her something incredibly girly — a flowered cupcake.  The recipe is Martha Stewart and I got the idea for the flower from here.  The decoration part is really time consuming (at least, with my amateur skills) but so totally worth it.

This recipe makes 24 large cupcakes.

First, preheat your oven to 350°F and line two muffin tins with paper liners.

In a bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon baking soda and give that a stir.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, plop in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) cocoa powder and 6 tablespoons hot water and mix them into a paste.  Apparently this helps to intensify the chocolate flavour.  I found I had to add an additional 4 tablespoons of water in order to get a paste, so keep that in mind.

Add in 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) buttermilk (or soured milk), 6 tablespoons melted butter, and 2 whole eggs plus 2 egg whites and whisk until combined.

Gradually add your bowl of flour and sugar and whisk until smooth.

Scoop the batter into your liners and bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the middle cupcake comes out clean.  Place the muffin tins on racks and allow the cupcakes to cool completely.

While they’re cooling, plop a 250g package of plain cream cheese in a mixer together wtih about 2 cups icing sugar.  Whip that up until it’s smooth and creamy.  This is your icing.

Frost your cooled cupcakes generously.

Here’s where the ridiculous part comes in.  You’re going to need several packages of Fruit by the Foot, or some kind of store-brand equivalent.  I haven’t had this stuff since I was a kid.  The Pie was thrilled and went off in the throes of nostalgia, an extra candy sticking out of his mouth.

You will need 12 strawberry flavoured ones (red) and at least 1 apple-flavoured one (green).  I could only get these variety packs, so I had to cut the green bits from the multi-coloured ones, and I ended up with some purple roses.

Unroll one of your red strips and use a knife to cut a sine wave down the middle of it lengthwise.  Don’t worry about being perfect — it will look fine no matter what.

Take one of the halves and, starting from the end, tightly roll it up for about five inches.  This is your “bud.”

Take the bud and plop it in the centre of one of your frosted cupcakes.  Carefully drape the rest of the candy around the bud, tapping it into the frosting to anchor it.  I find it helps if I sort of let it feed through my fingers on one hand and use the other hand to rotate the cupcake.

Then cut out two small leaves from the green stuff and tuck them into the frosting under the flower you have created.

And so you are done.

Now you just have 23 more to go.  And actually the purple ones are kind of nice, I think …

Sweet Bread Pudding with Squash and Tres Leches Sauce

Second bread pudding of the week.  And this one is also made of squash.  But here’s the kicker: this one is a sweet one, a bread pudding you can have for dessert or even breakfast.  A very rich breakfast.  When the Pie and I ate this dish last Sunday morning we had to go and have a nap afterwards.  But it was worth it.

There’s a bunch of this that you can do the day before, to save yourself time.

First,  you roast a butternut squash at 400°F until it’s all tender and squishy, about 30-45 minutes.

If that doesn’t do the trick you can always put it in the microwave.

Cut up a baguette into chunks and leave it overnight to go stale.  If you’ve already got a stale one then you don’t have to wait for it, obviously.

Now the tres leches sauce takes about 45 minutes to make so you will probably want to do this the night before.

In a medium saucepan, bring a 12oz can of evaporated milk (I actually used coconut milk because that’s what I had on hand) and 6 tablespoons granulated sugar to a boil.

See how it’s all nice and foamy.

Dissolve 1/8 teaspoon baking soda in 2 teaspoons warm water and chuck that in as well.  Be wary of the foaming milk.  Keep stirring.

Reduce the heat to medium and keep it simmering.  Stir it frequently while it cooks, for about 30 minutes, until it’s significantly reduced and a light caramel in colour.

Add in 1 can sweetened condensed milk and 1 cup whipping cream and stir it around until it’s all warm and thoroughly mixed.

Now let it cool until it’s just warm and then you can serve it.  Or bung it into the fridge overnight.

So onto the bread pudding.  Set your oven at 350°F and butter a large casserole dish.

Take half your squash and plop it in a blender with 1/2 cup granulated sugar.

Add in 1 1/2 cups half-and-half milk (or use regular low-fat milk mixed with your preferred amount of cream), some freshly grated nutmeg, a pinch or two of garam masala, and a shake of cinnamon.

Give that whirl, then add 5 large eggs and whirl it again until just combined.

As for the other half of your squash, use a fork to roughly mash it up with 1/2 cup brown sugar.

Plop your stale bread chunks in a large bowl and add in the milk/squash mixture as well as the rest of your half-and-half.  Let that sit for a few minutes.

Dump in the rest of the squash and stir it around.

Pour it into the casserole dish and bake it for 30 minutes, until it’s all solid and browned.

Serve hot, either as a breakfast or as a dessert.

Drizzled with tres leches sauce it’s not a healthy breakfast but it sure is good.

Savoury Bread Pudding with Squash

So I have here two squash(es?).

And a loaf and a half of stale bread.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Probably not.

But for the sake of argument let’s make a couple of puddings.

The first one we’ll make with the wee buttercup squash there.  Chop up both squashes and roast them at 400°F until they are tender.  It will depend on your squash, but it should take about 30 minutes or so.

Reduce the heat of your oven to 350°F and spray a casserole dish.

Take half a stale baguette and chop that up.  Whoever says you can’t use stale bread after a week is wrong.

While you’re at it, chop up an onion and chuck it in a pan with some minced garlic and some olive oil.  Cook that up for a bit until the onion is tender.

When that is cooking away, why not grate up some cheese?  Parmesan, asiago, whatever floats your boat.  About a cup of it.

Peel the roasted squash, cube it up, and add it to the pan.

In a large bowl, whisk up 3 large eggs.

Add in 2 cups milk.

Then half the cheese.

Some nutmeg, salt, pepper.

Chuck in your cooked onions and squash.

Then your bread.  Give that a right good stirring and let it sit for a few minutes.

Plop all that goodness into your casserole dish and sprinkle it with the remainder of your cheese.

Let that puppy bake for about 45 minutes, until everything is solid and the cheese is melted.

Serve it up, with some nice spring vegetables on the side perhaps?  Maybe a meat dish.  Whatever you like.

Stay tuned on Wednesday for YET ANOTHER bread pudding with squash.

Handy Items: My Steamy Companions, Continued

Howdy.

If you tuned in on Wednesday you know that I splurged a little at Canadian Tire last weekend and ended up with two steam appliances.  The one I’d like to show you today is the Shark Steam Blaster.  I’ve wanted this thing for months, but I was hoping it would go on sale.  It never did, and I figured now was as good a time as any.  Both sets of parents are coming to stay this summer and I want to make sure the house is as shipshape as possible before they get here.

This machine has some amazing potential.  I’ve only used it twice so far, but the possibilities for it continue to reveal themselves.  The day I got it I waged war on the mildew and weird orange goo and dusty grouting in my bathroom and I’m still reveling in the glorious cleanliness of it all.

The rest of my house?  Well …

I live in an old house.  So the paint is crumbling, and everything has a rough edge, and dusty in all the corners.  All those witchy little corners you can never quite get clean — UNTIL NOW.

Brace yourself.  I’m about to let you in on how grossly filthy my house actually is.

This is the line around my ancient stained ceramic sink.  It’s filled with unidentifiable goo my sponge won’t reach.

This is the godlike cleanliness of my sink edge after I blasted it with some steam.  The whole thing is still scratched and ugly and whatever, but it FEELS clean.  It’s amazing,

When I was looking at purchasing this machine, I read all the reviews.  Most of the negative ones surrounded the fact that the steam blaster isn’t also a vacuum — it just blasts the crap out of stuff and usually spits it somewhere else.  This is kind of gross, as you can see when I used the brush attachment on my stovetop burner rings.

But a quick swipe with a soft cloth and you are left with this gorgeousness. And I didn’t even have to scrub!

I mopped my floor, as well.  This is a floor I’d actually cleaned recently.  You can’t really tell, because the linoleum tiles are ancient and stained and never look clean.  But clean or no, this was the mop head after I’d gone over it once.  I don’t even know where that piece of kibble embedded in the cloth came from.

Then I flipped it over and did it again.  And I’m still picking up goo.  But I would probably eat off that floor now.

There’s even a squeegee so you can do your windows.  It’s pretty neat, though a bit awkward to hold when you get to the bottom of the window.  But still pretty neat.

Remember that this is a machine that shoots out pressurized high temperature steam when you hit a button.  And I haven’t burnt myself yet.  That’s amazing in itself.

Something I want to try is to clean my oven with the steam blaster.  If you know me, you’ll know I am a huge slob when it comes to the inside of my oven.  I started to run out of steam (both literally and figuratively) about an hour into blasting the crap out of my kitchen, but I took a minute to give my oven door a swab with the brush feature.

There wasn’t a lot of pressure behind it, but even so I was amazed at what I could wipe off afterwards with a flannel cloth.

One gross item in my house did manage to defeat it, and that is my scratched up ceramic sink. I have to bleach it on occasion because the staining gets so bad. But you can see the steam did make a few dents in the dingy.

I’m definitely going to use this sucker on the grime of a million past tenants in my place, especially on my fireplace, and the residue of winter all over my stairs.  I’m also going to pry up the burner rings and have at them as well.

I just can’t get over how clean everything FEELS when you’re done wiping it up.  And with very little effort on your own part. AND WITH NO CHEMICALS!

Enough product-plugging from me. Back to the regular crafty, cookie posts on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Handy Items: My Steamy Companions

It was a steamy weekend here on Elizabeth.  Not because of romance or anything like that (well, there was some of that but I won’t bother you with that), but because of two purchases I made while out with Fussellette on Saturday.

They are the Shark Steam Blaster steam cleaning system, and the Shark Garment Steamer (which was 50% off!) and I got them both from Canadian Tire.

I’m not going to give you specific brand-related product reviews for these things, but I do want to show you a few things that make these appliances very handy items to have around the home.

Let’s look at the garment steamer first, shall we?

I hate ironing.  With the passion of a thousand suns.  With this gadget the only time I need to bust out my ancient ironing board is when I’m doing something crafty and need the flattening power an iron can offer.

I’m assuming all these rigs are easy to assemble and use. There’s only one button, for turning it on and off. Obviously you need to be careful when you are operating this sort of machine, because it is shooting hot steam out of one end.

One of the best things about the steamer is its portability. I can pick it off the stand and carry it about to the extent of its power cord, or an extension cord if necessary. So I can use it on my curtains, which I usually hang while they are wet, so they don’t get seriously wrinkled. But of course there are still a few bumps and dents that require steaming out. The bristle attachment on the steamer head makes it easier to work with thicker fabrics and denser materials.

A few quick swipes of the curtains and not only are they wrinkle-free, they are also completely scent-free as well. This is a handy item indeed if you have a smoker in your house and you find all your porous materials collect the smell of smoke. Or garlic, or other cooking smells.

For us, we just have the dog, so pet odours are our main issue, but fortunately they are limited to the items he can touch, and he is too short to reach the curtains. But I can just run this over our bedspread and now there is no scent of dog on it. There’s no scent at all, in fact.

Very handy for removing odors of smoke, sweat, stale perfume or deodorant, pet smells, you name it. It works well for clothing that you can only dry clean or you don’t want to wash too often. And left behind is the scent of nothing, which in this day and age is the best scent of all.

You can also use it to refresh some of your other cloth treasures. My grandfather gave me this polar bear when I was around two and I don’t care that I’m thirty — I’m never getting rid of it.

And of course this machine is designed to get rid of the wrinkles in fabric. If you take off the bristle attachment it is remarkably good for smoothing out my more delicate dresses, like this one of chiffon silk (which would be ruined with an iron).

Just see what it can do to this faux-pashmina scarf, which you can see got all wrinkled in the washing machine.

A few passes later and you can’t even tell that it (or half of it) was ever wrinkly.

Definitely something worth having on hand. And so much easier to use than an iron, where you have to worry about getting the pleats sorted or the seams lined up …

Now I think in the interests of space I’ll leave off showing you what the Steam Blaster can do until Friday. Stay tuned!

Cream of Broccoli Soup

I was talking to Cait over GoogleChat the other day and she was scarfing down some cream of broccoli soup, a dish I adore.  She rubbed it in a little bit that she had some and I didn’t.  So I figured I’d blend myself up a batch.  And I thought that you could, too, if you wanted to.

Start with some onions.  Dice them up pretty finely.

Chuck them in a large pot with some garlic and a bit of olive oil and butter.  Let that cook on medium-high heat until the onions are translucent.

While that’s going on, you can start on your broccoli.  I used three heads of broccoli, chopped up, including the stems.  Use a vegetable peeler to get rid of the tough skin.

Then I also sliced up about two stalks of celery.

And cubed up several small potatoes. I leave the skins on for texture and vitamins but that’s up to you if you want to remove them.

Those go in the pot too, as well as about 4 cups chicken broth (you can use vegetable broth if you are feeling vegetarian).

Cover that and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes, until everything, including the potatoes, is tender and squishable.

Then remove it from the heat and use an immersion blender or a food processor to blend the soup to your ideal of smoothness.  I like mine a little chunky.

Then you can add in your flavourings.  The first is obviously some form of cream or milk.  You can use sour cream or yogurt or coconut milk or soy milk or whatever you like.  I’m going to go traditional here and use some heavy cream.  We keep it in a small Nalgene bottle because then we can see how much we have left and we don’t have to deal with the cream crusties on the mouth of the carton.

Dijon mustard is also a popular addition to this soup.  The Pie hates mustard but as long as I use it in moderation in things he doesn’t mind.  It definitely adds to the taste.

And finally, you are going to need a shot or two of Worcestershire sauce.  That goes without saying.

So add in whatever you like.  Feel free to adjust to your personal taste.

Give it a stir so it’s all nicely mixed in.

And serve.  With crusty bread on the side and chives to top, or, if you are a real cream of broccoli fan, more grated cheddar cheese than is really sane.

That’s it, that’s all.  Easy, huh?

Improvised Ginger Tea

Blech.

I wish I could say something more inspirational.  Yesterday was, after all, the two-year anniversary of the inaugural post on this amazing thing we call Ali Does It Herself.  We should celebrate.

But no.

Instead, I’ve been fighting off some ill-begotten form of the plague, and my stomach and I have not had kind words for each other for some time.  Hence the dearth of thick rich foods on the blog as of late.

Anyway, one night, it was particularly bad, and I had nothing on hand that I could take or do that would make me feel better.  So I thought, why not make some ginger tea?  Not that I had any fresh ginger on hand, either, but I can MacGuyver things when I need to.  So I used bottled minced ginger.  It has a dollop or two of canola oil in it, but otherwise it’s just ginger.

And if I put it in a tea infuser I suspected it would suit my purposes quite well.

You can tell I'm sick because I'm wearing my husband's sweatshirt.

So the secret to ginger tea is in boiling ginger (preferably thin slices of the fresh stuff if you have it) in water.  That’s it.  The longer you boil it, the stronger it will be.

I went with ten minutes, because that seemed reasonable.

Then you dump a crapload of honey (or agave) and lime juice into it.  Like a CRAPLOAD.

Then you chug it down.  Works remarkably well.

Inviting Inspiration: Vintage Postage Stamps

I have here an envelope.

Inside this envelope are a bunch of old postage stamps.  Each one is valued at 5 cents.

Each one is from Canada.  And I’m assuming most of them date from the late 1950s through the 1960s.

I want to do something awesome with them, so maybe you can help me come up with some ideas.  I’ve seen a lot of things on the internet that are postage-stamp inspired, but the three most common projects that seem to turn up using the actual stamps themselves are these:

I’m not that into découpage, but this stamped table is intriguing (though I don’t have a small table at the moment).

This postage stamp monogram is also interesting, and the Pie and I do share the same first initial (heck, I could probably do ALL of the Pie’s initials with the amount of stamps I have — and he has two middle names).

I also really like the collage of postage stamps, framed and based on colour.  Though I feel like this might be better suited for a collection of stamps from all over the world, or one where I don’t have so many stamps of the same design.  But we shall see.

This one is my particular favourite, from 1956.  I kind of want to blow this one up to poster size and frame it.

Please let me know if you have any ideas!

Orange Coconut Scones

I had a bad experience making (read: burning) scones when I was a kid and haven’t tried them since.  But our receptionist at work made these for the Sweet Treats club (seriously, the best idea I have EVER had) two weeks ago and I thought I would share with you the awesomeness.  If you think something is awesome in Newfoundland, you say that it’s “best kind.”  Not THE best kind.  Just best kind.  And these are best kind.

Preheat your oven to 400°F and line two baking sheets (or three, depending on the size of your scones) with parchment paper.

Stir together 4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and the zest of 2 oranges in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Dice up 3/4 cup cold butter and add that in, mixing on the lowest speed until the butter pieces are all pea-sized.

Lightly beat 4 eggs and pour in 1 cup cold heavy cream.  Give that a stir then add it to the mixing bowl and mix until just blended.

Combine 1 cup shredded coconut with 1/4 cup flour and add that in as well.  I found I had to stop the mixer at this point and manipulate it in with my cold hands, as it slowed the machine down quite a bit.

Dump the dough onto a floured surface and knead it into a ball.

Flour a rolling pin and flatten the stuff out until it’s about 3/4″ thick. Use a cutter or a knife to cut your scones from the dough.  When you run out of room, squish up the scraps and roll them out again.

The scones will expand upwards while they cook, not sideways, so you can crowd them pretty close on the baking sheet.

Bake the scones for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are browned and the insides are baked all the way through.  They will be firm to the touch, not sticky.

Let them cool for about fifteen minutes, and while they’re doing that, mix together 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar (icing sugar), 4 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice, and the zest of 1 orange.

Drizzle the glaze over the still-warm scones.

Serve right away, with honey and butter.  Or secretly leave half the batch on your neighbour’s doorstep.

Moving Closets

Two posts about my closet in a week.  I’m sorry about this.  I’m not really feeling that creative lately, but I do have an overwhelming urge to organize the crap out of everything.  So unfortunately that’s what you get from me this week.  Sorry again.

If you are lucky and live in a utopia where there is plenty of storage, then you probably won’t find this post interesting at all.  If, however, you are a normal person with the normal amount of crap that people accumulate, you might find this helpful.

We have six closets in our house.  I suppose that makes us lucky.  But they’re a little limiting.  One closet houses our hot water heater, so it’s a write-off for storage.  Another holds our coats, shopping bags, and boots.  Another gives a place for our power tools and place settings and dog-related equipment.  Another is the linen closet I featured on Monday, which also stores our luggage, toilet paper, facial tissue, and paper towel.

I recently moved into my husband’s closet.  Previously, I put all my girl clothes in the closet in my office, which is also where we store our camping equipment, Hallowe’en decorations, Christmas decorations, fabric, yarn, and an ever-growing collection of flattened cardboard boxes that await our eventual move back to the mainland.

Space is at a premium in this closet, and lately, the things (stacked neatly) on the floor of the closet started to interfere with the things (hung neatly) on the pole.  Mostly it was the scads of empty boxes.  So I had to move.  Fortunately, I don’t own too many girly clothes that require hanging up, so my husband will barely notice that I’m there (mine is the stuff to the left of the white fabric shelving). Of course, his closet is where we store all our miscellaneous technical equipment: coaxial cables, pieces of computer, boxes and cases for PS3s and Wiis and whatnot.  Baseball gear.  Our vacuum.  Miscellaneous unidentifiable items that the Pie won’t let me throw away.

To save space, I have hung my dresses on stacked trouser hangers.  This means that the dresses themselves don’t hang so low in the closet that their bottoms get dusty and wrinkled dangling amidst all the other crazy things.  So I simply folded them in half and draped them from the waistline on these hangers, which you can get anywhere.

In addition to keeping the hems out of harm’s way, it also takes the pressure of gravity off some of the more delicate straps and hanging loops, all of which tend to stretch and mis-shape your dresses if you leave them hanging like that for too long. Having the dresses securely folded across these hangers (which have non-slip coatings on them) also means that I won’t be searching for something else and accidentally knock a dress or two to the floor, where it will be smushed into the chaos in the bottom of the closet.

That also frees up a bunch of hanger space.  And I realized that I had over a hundred of these babies that we were never going to use.  I find it hard to believe that we used to have enough clothes to fill all of these things!