Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Mother's day was brunch and father's day was carrot cake cupcakes. I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen and you can get it here. I can't actually tell you if they were any good, because I'm not the biggest fan of carrot cake, but my parents ate them all up and said they were really good. Though my parents would probably tell me anything I make tastes good.

Here are all the ingredients before the mixing. I actually only made half a batch and was grating my carrots super fine, but then got tired of it and used the next grater size up after that.


The batter! I didn't use the kitchen aid to mix it because of all the "chunks" aka the carrots, walnuts and raisins


Cupcake with frosting. I didn't use Smitten Kitchen's frosting recipe totally. It is a maple cream cheese frosting, but I didn't use butter and not as much sugar. I also used the fake kind of maple syrup and it tasted fine.


~emy

Brunch Cookin'

My poor neglected blog. It's been such a busy few months with a new job, school and life in general.

This is from awhile back, when I put together a nice spread for a Mother's Day Brunch:


Bagels from a local shop with cream cheese, lox, tomatoes, red onion and cucumbers for the fixings. Cinnamon rolls from a recipe that I don't remember where I got from, but I didn't pack the brown sugar that much because the time they were made before they were way too sweet.

And then there were the avocado and bacon deviled eggs (on the square plate in the above picture)

Pretty simple recipe I don't actually measure either:

• Hard boil 6 eggs
• Cut in half and scoop out the yolks.
• Add in half an avocado (diced), about 2 tablespoons of mayo, paprika and garlic powder to taste.
• Mix/Mash - then scoop filling back into the white of the eggs.
• In this case I added in cooked bacon on top as a garnish, but the next time I made them I actually crumbled in about 5 strips of bacon into the filling. It ended up being easier to eat it that way

hmm now I really want to make some of those eggs...

~emy

Twin's Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

Another birthday means another cake! This one with the theme of Hello Kitty because she's just so cute and Twin loves her.

I always forget to take enough pictures when I'm doing this, but here are the ones I remembered to do:

Top layer of funfetti cake carved in the shape of Hello Kitty's head


Frosted with butter cream with marshmallow fluff fondant rolled out next to it


The covered and trimmed layer - it actually got stuck to the plate, (I was holding it vertical and it wouldn't budge) so thanks to the boyfriend for getting it off with a spatula


Finished cake - the base cake is actually 2 layers of funfetti - one was dyed purple because I was thinking about attempting a checkerboard cake but didn't end up doing it. I also didn't get any picture of the cake after it was cut to see the layers :(


It didn't look as good from this angle - I think I should have tried to use the cake edge instead of cutting the cake from the center because it made it more lumpy and hard to cover on the sides


With a flash! I think it looks better because you can't tell that the left ear collapsed as much


~emy

People Say - by Portugal. The Man

Good song - weird music video:



~emy

Google Autocompleter Job

So Google has a posting for Autocompleter Jobs - it pops up in the section of the autocomplete:


It's kinda hard to see, in this shot - but it's on the bottom right hand corner.
The main skill you need to be an autocompleter is to be able to type really fast - around 34,000wpm. Check out the whole posting here, complete with interview from a current autocompleter, which follows for your viewing convenience.


~emy

A Container Contest...

So I'm reading me normal blogs and I come across this post about Dekalb Market having Not Just A Container: A contest! Basically they're going to have an outdoor market where every vendor is housed in a standard steel shipping container - It's actually pretty amazing some of the stuff they make out of these containers, check some shipping container houses here. The contest is to design any container you want with the guidelines of creativity, sustainability, design and community impact. If you win, you actually get to build it. So I had recently downloaded Google Sketch Up and decided to give it a shot - unfortunately the results are poor at best:

The idea was a bouldering cave/sitting area in the container, because I imagined that outdoor market type people would also like climbing and sitting. I think it might have went better if I watched more than just the intro vids for Sketch Up - oh well

Here's the frame - in my mind it was sustainable because recycled wood - or some other green material would have been used to make it.



This is when all the framing would be walled in


That's part of the wall being having the holds and a couch for sitting. It was actually pretty hard to make all the holds, which is why only one section is covered. It might look better in this pic because it's so small, but seeing the CAD drawing they are really nothing like really rock climbing gym holds. The couch looks super good because it's one of the objects that comes with Sketch Up - I just made it purple.


So looks like I won't be winning any design contests, but doing this sure ate up some of the time I was super bored.

~emy

Sarah's Wedding Bouquet

My friend Sarah's wedding came around pretty quickly because her fiance (now husband) is getting deployed in the spring. The ceremony was only immediate family and a few friends so she didn't want to go all out this time since they are going to have a bigger reception when he's back from overseas. So flashback to my Eco-Friendly Bouquet post, and the issue of what flowers to get was solved.

Now I can honestly say that I understand why you might pay $300+ for someone else on Etsy to create one of these bouquets for you, because it was a ton of work - and I didn't even help her to the final product! The day we started the project we probably spent 5-6 hours on it and only go to this point:

Though I feel like half the reason it took so much time was because we were trying to recreate something from a photo, and there was a lot of trial and error. Here's what some of the struggles were:

• Trying to figure out what size squares to use to get a certain sized flower
• Cutting out all the squares of magazine paper - The wedding colors were white, black and red so we were trying to cut squares with only those colors on them. Also we didn't have a paper cutter so every one was by hand
• Figuring out what size Styrofoam ball to use as the center. The original one was way too big , but we lucked out because when we tried to carve down the big ball there were 2 smaller ones inside!
• Arranging the actual flowers, they kind popped up on the sticks so you had to keep on pushing them down

Sarah ended up finishing the project with her mom, gluing black rhinestones to the exposed skewer end and adding floral tape and ribbon. It came out slightly larger and rounder than expected, but I'm pretty sure that's due to the spherical center. They also made boutineers! Check it out:

I don't know what the final cost was, but I do know it's way under $300 if you're willing to do the work youself. Another good thing about these flowers is that you don't need to dry them to save them as a keepsake!

~emy

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I finally finished reading Steig Larsson's 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and I just don't see why it's a best seller.

Maybe there was just too much hype - for the past year I feel like every time I'm at a coffee shop, airport or beach I saw someone reading that book. It's also been in the front displays of all the major bookstores and is a New York Times best seller. Perhaps I just noticed it more because of it's easy to recognize neon green and yellow book cover (image via Amazon)



Here's what I thought about the book:

• Super boring beginning: I probably started the book 4 different times unable to get past page 50, until the 5th try.
  
• Un-intriguing mystery: I never really cared about who committed the murder, it wasn't a page turner like a traditional murder mystery, it was just dull
• Mystery solved, but ending not in sight: you find out the resolution to the mystery, but there's a 100 pages left in the book still! 100 pages of stuff that I didn't care about at all and didn't really add much to the plot at all, since it already peaked
• Too much violence: It was graphic violence - I'm pretty surprised they made a movie out of it already and are going to make an American version of it as well

Overall - not worth the time to read, unless you're bored out of your mind and there are no other books around because you're trapped in the house due to a natural disaster. Equally bad books that were best-sellers and did not live up to the hype The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time.

~emy