AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

too hot to bake

Saturday was baking day.  Friends were going to Houghton's Pond for barbeque goodness and I was bringing pasta salad and dessert.  Last year, I brought vegan cupcakes (some spicy with habanero!) and an ice cream-like dessert that died in the cooler.

I've wanted to make Bakerella's cupcake balls since I saw them months ago, so I bought a bread mix (because I only wanted to follow the idea of the recipe) and some lemon marmalade and made two batches of cupcake balls.

The ones coated in dark chocolate were made with a white cake mix and about half a jar of lemon marmalade.  I coated them in a mixture of bittersweet and semisweet chocolate (though by the end it was mostly semisweet).  The result was a moist, slightly dense sweet with just a hint of lemon flavor.

The graham cracker coated ones were made with a pumpkin bread mix and a can of the new(er?) whipped cream cheese frosting.  I probably could have gone lighter on the frosting.  I doctored the bread mix with extra cloves, nutmeg and black pepper.  My favorite pumpkin pie recipe uses black pepper to give the mix a little heat, and it worked fine here too.  Though I think I could have added a little scotch bonnet to this as well.

Of course, this isn't a baking blog, and I did do some knitting this weekend.  On Friday, I finished my latest pair of socks (though I wove in the ends on Sunday) and I started another pair.  I decided I wanted to try my hand at a pair of picot socks, so I made a picot hem.  Probably not the best option for socks, but I figured that if I thought it looked bad that I could undo the knitting from the top down and use the yarn to make a different look on top.  I'm using the picot hem method a la Claudia, though I didn't realize it at the time.  I think I just expected a picot hem for a sock to be different from a picot hem for a sweater.  Go figure!  But there will be more pictures later in the week to go with the fact that there is actual knitting happening over here (and that I sprained my ankle so it is video games and knitting for me instead of running in the mornings).

wanna cook something

I'm whiling away the time looking at food blogs and information on molecular gastronomy.  I blame L'Epicerie and the Green Matcha Sweets for reviving some of my interest in the kitchen (I lose interest when the kitchen is a mess).  Well, L'Epicerie and Julie's Kitchen.

Barring knowing what to cook and having the ingredients to make what is in my head, I'll have to settle tonight for going to Falafel King!

Falafel King is still the best, well, falafel I've had in Boston, and they are definitely better than mine.  So, I'll trundle down the street, pick up falafel (how many times can I use that word in one post?) and something to drink and make my way to my friends' apartment where I will knit until our Friday plans go underway (it's a role playing game, so our plans range from saving the world to trying to make sure to survive... lately it has been a lot more survive than save).

Maybe I'll make red bean ravioli this weekend.  I have most of the ingredients I need for that, and while I might not have super-duper 00 flour, I can make do.

proof that I knit, even if I don't photograph

Happy 4th of July!   The fireworks will be on in an hour or so, and then, hopefully, it will be the New England Revolution kicking LA's butt all over the place!  Soccer knitting is at least as much fun as movie knitting!

Today I finished making my ice cream experiment.  Initial thoughts:  could have used that pinch of salt and probably a mix of fat-free half and half and regular.  It's not really ice cream at less than 2 grams of fat per serving (more like a sherbet), and it needs to be out either at room temperature or defrosted in the microwave to make it scoopable.  I'm pretty sure that next time I'll add one more tablespoon of tequila to the mix (I think a fair amount of the alcohol was cooked out of the bananas).  Hopefully that will make a more ice cream-like concoction.

So, earlier this week I decided that I couldn't sew up Vestish while watching something, so I started a pair of socks.  I didn't get very far that first night, but I'm making decent progress!

I'm about 2 inches away from the heel, and then I'll get into the more interesting lace portion. My feet are a little longer than the 8 inches that is the small size for the pattern, but the larger one would make socks that are too wide for my feet so hopefully I'll have a happy medium and not run out of yarn before they get as long as I want them to be.

90 minutes of soccer should get me firmly into the heel turning, and plenty of commuting time should be enough to get me to the lace (and maybe finished? they feel like they're pretty fast, but probably not that fast).  Tomorrow is the Aquarium, where I will look at the fishies and the pengies and generally be happy and mentally about 5.  Or 15 if there is a huge bout of "panguin wrassling" like there was last time I went.  Yeah!

movie knitting

Yesterday, I watched March of the Penguins (again... I love this movie and I love adding silly dialog to the different penguins even if whole scenes are just penguins saying, Food?  Food?), when I sort of ran out of knitting.

Vestish is done with the main knitting portion.  I need to sew up the sides, so I can do the edging.  I didn't do it today, and I certainly wasn't doing it during the movie.  Instead, I started a new project.

I'm working on the little shells socks (I think that was what it was called, but I am way too lazy to check) from The Knitters Book of Yarn.  It's so far looking like a good fit for my last 2 skeins of Dorchester Farms sock yarn, and the start for these socks isn't very fiddly feeling for toe ups.  I'm speeding my way to the heel, and hope to get to the lace portion sometime this weekend.

I'm embarking on a new ice cream experiment.  I made tequila sautéed bananas in the slow cooker, which I'm planning on pureeing with lime zest and lime juice to make a tropical margarita ice cream.  That will be finished tomorrow.  I needed the bananas to finish cooling before I added anything to the ice cream maker.  I've made banana 'ice cream' before, so this should work at least as well as that recipe (which is pretty much take 4 ripe bananas, puree them and then toss the puree into an ice cream maker... really cheap dessert).  We'll see.  I am a little behind on my ice cream making for the summer, so maybe I'll make another one this weekend as well.  It's either that or go to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream sometime when I'm in Boston.

Maybe I'll do both.

not as good as the original

Yesterday, I made the Matcha Cookies that Mariko posted about last month.  I went to Kotobukiya for matcha, and kind of had a bust moment.  Plenty of green tea but all of the matcha was instant.  Not the pure matcha I really needed for the recipe.  I bought some anyway (though I think I might be willing to fork over the more $20 for pure matcha during ice cream season), and made the cookies.

As I expected, my cookies were pale, lightly flavored imitations of her rich green cookies.  But they're still tasty, just not GREEN TEA flavored.  more like green tea...

Counting the hours in the day

I really want to go to the Yarn Harlot's signing at Webs.  I want hang out with other knitting folks (something I haven't really done in far too long), look at gorgeous yarn, read a new book, re-meet the Harlot, and have an excuse to start something new or at least put aside the large muppet shrug I've been working on.  However, I don't drive.  I'm pretty happy about the not driving thing, though it makes things like this a bit more problematic.  I'm happy to pay gas and tolls to get there, but that was a level of preplanning on my part that just didn't happen.

Why?

Because I'm working on the muppet shrug.  I haven't managed to work on it every night this week, but fairly close.  I have about 10 more short rows to do and then 5 rows of ribbing and binding off.  Sixteen rows shouldn't take too long, and if I am dedicated Saturday night then I could probably finish it and block it that night or Sunday morning.  For the record, I did about 2.6 rows over my lunch break today, meaning each row is probably taking me about 15 minutes. 

So, instead of going to see knitter peeps, I will be eating a giant pixie stick(s) and working on Convertible.  At least as soon as I have finished the muppet shrug!

Homemade ice cream

Part of me wants to call myself an indifferent cook.  I love baking, making desserts and cooking large meals (like for a party), but am really bad at the meals for 2-4 people.  Of my favorite desserts to make, I love to make ice cream.  Late last week, I made a batch of strawberry daiquiri sorbet and swirled it with homemade vanilla ice cream.

I have one of the Cuisinart canister ice cream makers (with the extra canister), so I am able to make batches of ice cream like this fairly readily.  I am relatively careful about making sure there is always enough space for the canisters in the freezer.  That small amount of planning means I can nearly always put together a batch of ice cream.  My favorite cookbooks for ice cream are The Perfect Scoop and the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream cookbook.  One of the ice cream bases in the B&J cookbook uses sweetened condensed milk.  I usually buy fat-free and store it in the freezer or refrigerator, and then make up the base with whatever milk or cream I have on hand (this base is very flexible, doesn't involve heating and then chilling the base and doesn't involve raw eggs).  This batch was extra soft because I used whipping cream instead of skim milk.  Most of the time my ice creams are much closer to ice milk in texture and flavor, though they are still really tasty.

The best thing about this ice cream?  OK, second best thing. (The third best thing is that we can use our monkey bowls for dessert.)

Aren't these colors just great for a yarn colorway?

Candy!

As a treat for giving blood today, I went to my local chocolate shoppe (Au Chocolat), and found these little gummy pandas.

The flavor I bought is pomegranate and white tea, though next time I need a bit of a sweet I'll probably try the blueberry with acai fruit.

I love their little round red bodies, and they are both sweet and slightly tart with the taste of tea.  Like the Tootsie Roll Pop, I keep trying to figure out how long I can make one last and instead I start chewing them up. 

These are organic and wheat and gluten free, which makes me feel like this is almost healthy.  All those "frees" don't really mean anything, because this is still candy and is only something I should be eating in small doses.  But I have more than half a bag left, so I'm doing pretty good!

Life isn't all just candy.  I finished a little something over the weekend, and then did some sleuthing on Etsy.  If it blocks out as nicely as it looks now, then it is a real candidate for my first product in my Etsy store!

Bluer than velvet was the night

Red velvet cake is wonderfully vibrant against a simple white frosting, but I had never really thought to make one.  I mean, I hadn't really wanted to eat any.  I just didn't know what the flavor was.  Was it fruity?  Buttery?  Vanilla?  The coloring meant I had assumed that it was strawberry or raspberry flavored, and that wasn't enough for me to want to make one.

Then I thought about making it blue.  Blue velvet cake.  I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com, and used most of the modifications mentioned in the comments (oil instead of shortening, higher sugar content, etc.).  Of course, I didn't have 2 ounces of blue food coloring, so I took my little food coloring bottles and squeezed them into my smallest measuring cup, and filled it up to the 2 ounce mark.  I then made up the rest with about a teaspoon of Wilton Royal Blue cake gel.  Those colors are powerful enough that they are what I prefer to use for dying yarn (some day I will buy actual dyes rather than using cake gels and a goodly amount of vinegar and heat). 

The mixture was a beautiful dark blue with the smallest hints of a tealy green (one of the bottles of food coloring was neon blue).  If I was smart I would have taken a picture of that, but even though I love the work of food stylists I never think of trying to do more than photograph the finished product.

And the taste?  With the cocoa powder that helps deepen the color and the quality of the frosting, it kind of tastes like a whoopee pie.  (The cake is a lot bluer than it looks in the photo.)

It's Pi Day!

It's Pi Day, so get yourself a fantabulous slice of pie!

It's March 14th (all day long), so today at 1:59 pm is the Pi Minute.  My hubby reminded me that today was going to be Pi Day earlier in the week, and there is pie left over for it.  But I might not be home quite in time to partake of homemade pie, so I'm thinking about all of the delicious places to get pie in the Boston area.

I'm thinking of stopping by Marathon Sports in Cambridge (It's between Porter Square and Harvard Square) to see if they have any little runner's pouches.  I want something to carry the essentials when I run a race: keys, money, identification.  It doesn't sound like much, but most of my running gear doesn't have any pockets.  But if I go to Cambridge via Harvard Square, I can get a piece of pie at Finale.  There are a lot of good places for dessert in the Boston area.  I wonder if Kickass Cupcakes will have a "pie" cupcake.