Burnt Sugar Cake

Oh man. So I've been on vacation all week (minus the couple of times I had to dash into lab to take care of a timepoint, my cells and a paper I'm reviewing) and enjoyed myself thoroughly. As my final vacation act, I decided to bake a cake. This is one of my favorite cakes because texture-wise it's great, flavor-wise it is perfect: not too sweet but not bland somehow. The recipe is out of Joy of Cooking. Now, even if I was a better photographer, this cake wouldn't really look like much because I like to bake it in a single layer and I eschew all frosting. It's not the simplest cake to make (for me), because first you have to make some caramel-ish thing on the stove and then you have to separate eggs and beat egg whites. I'm kind of lazy so I usually prep everything, beat the egg whites and then beat my butter and sugar and hope the egg whites will still be fluffy when I finally use them. They always flatten out a bit, but it's worth not having to wash my beaters in between steps. Lazy lazy, oh well. Whenever I've made this, I've cut the sugar by 1/4 cup and the time by 5 minutes. And if you will excuse me, I think it's cooled enough to eat!

Pizza Updates!

Since my last pizza post, I've been making more pizzas and experimenting. My first batch of pizzas were pesto, goat cheese and grape tomatoes as toppings (occasionally with some stray olives) and a scattering of cheddar cheese over it all. It was getting to be a bit much to be making pesto all the time though (mostly bc basil just doesn't stay fresh that long in my fridge) so I started experimenting with tomato sauce pizzas. Started with store-bought pizza sauce and then scattered anything from chopped mushrooms to chopped bell peppers to italian sausage crumbles to all of the above. They were pretty heavily laden pizzas and totally tasty. At some point, I started making my own pizza sauce using the recipe I found here and things were good.

Recently, I found myself without pizza sauce or any tomato paste so I decided to experiment with sauce-less pizzas. My first attempt was better in theory than in practice. See below, the apple and zucchini pizza, before cheese and before cooking. Cheese topping was a mix of gruyere and cheddar (leftover from mac n cheese making).

I envisioned a some sort of flatbread-ish affair with sweet bites of crunchy apple. Unfortunately, my golden delicious slices dissolved to practically nothing and I could barely tell they were there. The zucchini slices were good though, but I wished there was more layers. So for my second attempt (each pizza dough recipe makes two pizzas), I added two layers of thinly sliced zucchini, another layer of chopped bell pepper and topped it all with crumbled italian sausage and scattered the gruyere and cheddar. This time, it was just divine. I'm not saying I'll never use sauce again, but it's nice to know that it's not always necessary. (where is the picture of this second pizza you ask? be grateful I had any pictures at all!).

Toor Dal

I've been trying to make this for a while now and have not been super pleased with the results. I threw a few things together today and it wasn't so bad. Enjoyed this with my chicken biryani.

1 cup toor dal, rinsed well

3 cups of water

2 garlic cloves

Cook the above together for a while (20 min?) until soft. Mashed the dal a bit with my spatula and cook the water off until it is creamy-ish. Toward the end, start adding salt and tasting until right (this is always hard for me, I perpetually underseason things).

in a separate little nonstick pan:

1/2 tbs oil (I don't really know how much I put in)

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 small onion, chopped

Heat oil, cook spices, add onion. Cook together until the onion is soft and brown. Add this mix to the dal. Maybe cook another minute together. Eat with some chopped parsley or cilantro on top.

Knitted Tiny Sweaters

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!! Are these not the most adorable things ever? I got the idea from wise craft; she was making a bunch of these to make some kind of christmas wreath. I thought they would be so cute as christmas tree ornaments. When I told Ferret what I was doing, his only response was a confused "why?" Bunny was more receptive, she never questioned why a person might be knitting really small sweaters for a christmas tree. I love her. So, obviously, the embroidered A and T stand for alice and tony. I can't wait until after Thanksgiving when I can get a little tree. This year I'm not going back to California for the holidays so it will be the first one I spend here. These are pretty fun to make so I may continue knitting these throughout the conference next week. We will see...

Fall Domesticity

I've been all over a new blog I stumbled upon recently: wise craft I can't tell you how much I love this blog. I found it when I was looking for quilting ideas and have been spending almost all of my free time reading it. In addition to being well-written and thoughtful, the blog is full of gorgeous pictures and craft ideas. I've been adding links from her posts to my tumblr account so I'll remember later.

Anyway, so I have been feeling inspired to sew and make things again. Part of it is the changing weather I think. Ever since the ORS deadline I've just been settling in and feeling domestic. I started piecing together patches for a summer quilt I am making. I'll take a picture soon, but I'm envisioning a simple blue and white quilt. I've decided to hand quilt it because I think it'll be a fun thing to have in my lap all winter long while I watch movies and such. I always like the tactile experience of working on something with my hands, whether it be knitting or hand-sewing. Speaking of hand-sewing, last night I started making a new set of cloth napkins for myself. I had some pretty green quilting cotton I bought from Joann's ages ago so I sewed one up and did a little embroidery on it.

It was so fun that I made another one this morning while waiting for my upside-down plum cake to bake. (Why was I not at work you ask?? Ek bleh.) The colors are kind of washed out looking, it's actually a brighter green than it looks like. Everyone knows I'm awful at taking pictures and my old camera doesn't help things much. But I love these guys and I can't wait to use them.

I'm planning to make a couple more so I have a set of four. I wish I could say they were all the same size but I'm not terribly consistent about folding under the edges the same amount. Oh well. Still pretty! For the next two, I am thinking of embroidering a snail or butterfly.