We had a good weekend. For me it was pretty baking-intensive, as I had set myself up with three different projects.
My first project was making Chocolate-Chocolate cupcakes from Dorie Greenspan's
Baking cookbook. The un-critical me says: "these were yummy, and the recipe is a total keeper." The critical me says: "you fool! You slightly overcooked these because you couldn't believe that they would be that squishy when it was time to come out. Follow the directions next time." Here's a picture that some other enterprising baker took of her cupcakes. Taking pictures, um, didn't occur to me with a plateful of cupcakes before me.
My second project was a cake for a co-worker that had a baby recently. Since this person isn't a very adventurous eater, I went with a plain pound cake. This cake, though, had a twist: it was leavened with
7-Up. The link there is to something similar, but I actually used a recipe from Mike's family that someone gave us at our wedding shower. The cake was sweet and citrus-y. I glazed it with a little lemon glaze. Pretty good for a pound cake. Again, no time for images of my own, but here's a picture of a similar-looking item.
My third project was an apple cake. I struggled with the skill known as "following the directions" on this one. As it turns out, it is not a good idea to add one more apple and 2 more ounces of cream cheese than the recipe calls for. This will make your cake dense and doughy. Luckily, Mike was able hop in and make a second apple cake (this one more closely guided by the convention known as a recipe). His cake was a total hit! Again, we didn't do the picture thing, but here's really, truly exactly what it looked like (even though this comes from a
magazine).
[And now for those that might worry about our waistlines: the cupcakes were made for an event on Saturday, and we shared them. There were no lingering leftovers. 95% of the pound cake was given away. And the apple cake went to dinner at someone's house, but didn't make it home, so no potential snacks there. we're doing just fine, thankyouverymuch]
In other Texas news, it was finally cool enough that we slept with the a/c off and the windows open last night. All this because of a cool front that has our temperatures down to 85 during the day.
Also, we saw a snake tonight. It was small and harmless. But slithery.
Also, Texas has earthquakes. Who knew?
[the robot costumes were supposed to read "robot love", but whatever. . . .]
Houston itself was, um, kind of, well, exactly what I expected. Which is to say: not good. There was much sprawl and many freeways.
(please be a sport and try to think of this last one as artsy, not, um, poorly lit and me as too lazy to fix it with the photo editor)
Here are some pics of our friends:
And then on Sunday we had a homestudy visit from the Lab adoption group. We passed! The next step is for us to start meeting some dogs. Hooray!
Third, we finally framed and hung the last pictures in the living room. This was a bit of a tricky hanging job, since this was a set of four pictures that had to be spaced exactly right on the wall and in relationship to each other. Mike did a super job!
Fourth, I ran across the remainder of the cream cheese from last week's apple cake. It was exactly the right amount to make a small batch of sugar cookies. So I did. We intended to share some of them with our friends who shared their organic veggies with us, but then we forgot. Hopefully, Mike can track them down on campus tomorrow.
What we didn't do this weekend was adopt a dog. We'd found a dog we liked, but she was adopted before we had a chance to get to the shelter to get her. I'm feeling a little dog-disappointed and a little dog-burned. I want a dog, I just don't want the heartache of the process of adopting a dog. We've also filled out an application with a lab rescue organization. This is a good deal since the dogs from the rescue group come house-broken, crate-trained, spayed/neutered, with all their shots, and have been living in foster families with other dogs and kids. But the wait can be as long as five months. So we'll see.
My second project was a cake for a co-worker that had a baby recently. Since this person isn't a very adventurous eater, I went with a plain pound cake. This cake, though, had a twist: it was leavened with 7-Up. The link there is to something similar, but I actually used a recipe from Mike's family that someone gave us at our wedding shower. The cake was sweet and citrus-y. I glazed it with a little lemon glaze. Pretty good for a pound cake. Again, no time for images of my own, but here's a picture of a similar-looking item.
My third project was an apple cake. I struggled with the skill known as "following the directions" on this one. As it turns out, it is not a good idea to add one more apple and 2 more ounces of cream cheese than the recipe calls for. This will make your cake dense and doughy. Luckily, Mike was able hop in and make a second apple cake (this one more closely guided by the convention known as a recipe). His cake was a total hit! Again, we didn't do the picture thing, but here's really, truly exactly what it looked like (even though this comes from a magazine).
[And now for those that might worry about our waistlines: the cupcakes were made for an event on Saturday, and we shared them. There were no lingering leftovers. 95% of the pound cake was given away. And the apple cake went to dinner at someone's house, but didn't make it home, so no potential snacks there. we're doing just fine, thankyouverymuch]
