Bonus Weekly Recipe - Buttery Yellow Cake

This is a delicious all purpose yellow cake

Ingredients
12 3/8 oz Cake flour
2 1/2 tsp Baking powder
3/4 tsp Salt
16 tbsp unsalted butter
11 2/3 oz granulated sugar
4 large eggs (room temperature)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup whole mile (room temperature)

Equipment
2 8" or 9" round cake pans (or a 9"x13" cake pan)
Vegetable cooking spray
Parchment paper
Electric mixer
Rubber spatula

Directions

1. Heat over to 350 degrees
2. Coat pans with cooking spray and place parchment over the bottom
3. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and set aside
4. Beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy (usually 3-6 minutes)
5. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated, scraping down the bowl and beaters as needed.
6. Beat in the vanilla
7. Reduce mixer speed to low and beat in 1/3 of flour mixture until combined
8. Add 1/2 of the milk and beat until combines
9. Add second 1/3 of flour mixture and beat until combined
10. Add second 1/2 of the milk and beat until combined
11. Add the final portion of the flour and beat until combined
12. Give the batter a final stir with a rubber spatula to make sure that it is thoroughly combined
13. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and shake to level and smooth the top
14. Bake about 20-25 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out with only a few crumbs (rotate the pans half way through cooking)
15. Let the cakes cool in the pans for ten minutes on wire racks
16. Run a knife around the edge and then flip out onto the racks, remove parchment and flip the cakes upright
17. Cool 1 to 2 hours before icing

Weekly Recipe - Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are so easy to make that a 3 year old can do most of the work.

Ingredients
14 tbsp     Butter
1/2 cup     Sugar
3/4 cup     Brown Sugar
2 tbsp       Vanilla Extract
8 3/4 oz    AP Flour
1 tsp         Salt
1              Eggs
1              Egg Yolk
1/2 tsp     Baking soda
8.5 oz      Ghirardelli bitter sweet chips


Equipment
Small light colored skillet
2 glass bowls
kitchen scale
whisk
#24 scoop
measuring cups and spoons
1/2 sheet pan
Cooling racks
Parchment paper




Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Melt 10 tbsp of butter is the light colored skillet and continue to cook for 1-3 minutes until lightly browned.
3.  Place remaining 4 tbsp of butter into a heat resistant bowl, pour in hot melted butter and whisk until melted.
4. Add sugars to butter mixture and whisk  
5. Add salt, vanilla extract and eggs.  Whisk until combined.
6. Allow mixture to sit for three minutes and whisk again (repeat three more times)
7. In a separate bowl combine flour and baking soda
8. Slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir to combine. 
9. Add chocolate chips and mix to distribute evenly through dough.
10. Scoop eight 3 tbsp cookies (#24 scoop) onto half sheet pan lines with parchment paper
11. Bake for roughly 11-14 minutes until the cookies are just brown on the edges.
12. Allow to sit on sheet pan for 2 minutes and then transfer to cooling rack.

Weekly Recipe - Crème Brûlée

I thought I would start something new on my blog so I am going to try and post one of my favorite recipes along with some of the background on how it evolved to what it is. Many of the recipes that I use regularly started out pretty different from their current form. Often I start with something out of my library of cookbooks and I make little changes over time (either by necessity because I didn't have an ingredient on hand, or on a whim because I think it will make it better). Others I happened upon and loved so much that I kept making them.


I absolutely LOVE Crème Brûlée. It is hands down my favorite dessert. Too often I will order it at a restaurant only to be utterly disappointed. Usually it is because the chef doesn't actually know what a Crème Brûlée is and ends up serving a Creme Carmel/Flan or just did a really poor job making the custard.

The first time I made it I was so scared that I was going to mess it up but it turns out that it is really easy to make. So easy that I can make it with my 3 year old 'helping.'


Ingredients
4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 pinch salt
1 Vanilla bean*
10 Large egg yolks
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (i.e. sugar in the raw)

Equipment
Large roasting pan
Dish towel
8 six oz ramekins
Kettle of boiling water
Medium non-stick saucepan
Silicone whisk
Large measuring cup or pitcher
Tong with rubber bands wrapped around the tips
Cooling rack

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to the lower middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cover the bottom of a roasting pan with dish towel.
3. Arrange eight 6oz ramekins in the pan making sure they don’t touch.
4. Bring kettle of water to a boil.
5. Combine 2 cups of cream, granulated sugar and salt in a medium saucepan
6. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add it to the pan along with the pod.
7. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
8. Remove from heat, cover and let steep for 15 minutes.
9. Place egg yolks in a large bowl and whisk.
10. Stir the remaining 2 cups of cream into the hot mixture.
11. Slowly add in 1 cup of the cream mixture whisking constantly until smooth.
12. Whisk in the remaining cream until thoroughly combined.
13. Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a large measuring cup or pitcher.
14. Pour the custard evenly into the ramekins
15. Put pan in the oven and pour boiling water to 2/3 up the sides of the ramekins.
16. Bake until the custards are barely set and are no longer sloshy (30-35 minutes or 25-30 for shallow or fluted dishes).
17. Transfer the ramekins to a wire rack and allow to cool for 2 hours.
18. Set on baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap & refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
19. Just before serving uncover the ramekin and blot the top dry with a paper towel.
20. Sprinkle the top with turbinado sugar and shake to distribute evenly.
21. Ignite torch and caramelize the sugar. (Keep flame 2in above ramekin move in a sweeping motion from the perimeter to towards the middle until the sugar is bubbling and deep golden brown.

Helpful Hints #1: You have to use heavy cream. There is no way to make this dish low or lower fat.
Helpful Hint #2: You really need to use a vanilla bean. It is impossible to get the wonderful vanilla flavor with the extract. If you plan ahead there are great places to get vanilla beans online for way cheaper than $5 each that you pay at the grocery.
Helpful Hint #3: If you get the packets of turbinado a single one is the perfect amount for the top of one ramekin.
Helpful Hint #4: I am a big fan of Oxo tongs. The large rubber bands that come on fresh broccoli work great to help the tips grip the ramekins. All other methods I have tried of extracting the ramekins from the water bath have failed miserably.
Helpful Hint #5: Don't spend the extra money on one of the specialty kitchen torches. Just get a butane torch from your local hardware store or at a garage sale for a $1 like I did.

So Much More

It has been just over a week since my grandmother died and only I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how she impacted my life and how things will be different now that she is gone.

From her I learned the joys of being woken up by a song.


I learned the importance of telling, and more importantly showing, people that you love and care for them and that hugs and kisses are important even when you are angry.

I learned to love the awesomeness of nature. She made everything interesting, from the tiniest detail on a flower petal to the vastness of an old gnarly oak. She taught me to love the fierceness of torrential rain, the harshness of rolling thunder and the beauty of the jagged bolts of lightning all while snuggling together on a screened porch in a hammock.

She was the person who taught me to be adventurous and that is okay to take the long way or even the wrong way just to see something new.

She was a gateway into world of creation. Mostly through painting and photography but she also helped me to see how I could used my more orderly mind to be creative as well.

She transformed by hatred of writing and horrid penmanship by teaching me to draw my letter. I loved to watch her write using calligraphy pens and my love of fountain pens grew from that.

She was my cheerleader, my teacher, my sounding board, a comfort when the world was harsh and a dear friend.

She was my grandmother, but also so much more.

Shopping Rant

About a year ago, we purchased a compact, portable booster seat to use at the grandparents house or when we travel other places. It was a generic kind of seat, it was made by a recognizable but smaller brand but it had all the features we were looking for. We paid about $15 for it.

Fast forward to yesterday. Brian and I decided that we wanted to put away the highchair and get a booster chair for the house. Since the other one worked so well and had really held up to the abuse I went back to ToysRUs to buy another one. I was browsing the selection and found the exact same seat, no changes or upgrades of any kind, but with a Fisher Price label slapped on it and the price tag was jacked up to $25.

It totally sucks that Fisher Price thinks that their name means so much that they can buy someone's product, make no changes except putting their tag on it, and price it for 66% more.

I took the time to read the recent New Yorker article on the head of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins. It was very interesting to learn of his unusual upbringing and his progression from, as he puts it, a fundamentalist atheist to a devotee of the Christian faith. The path started with an encounter with an dying patient who asked what he believed in. He felt uncomfortable that he did not have an answer and decided to research to "affirm his atheism." Part of this quest involved a discussion over a golf game with the pastor of the church is wife attended which ended with Collins writing on the score card -

"When God knocks on my door, in a way that I—not my wife or pastor, but I—know that it’s God who’s knocking on my door, I will then accept Jesus Christ."

He then gave it to the pastor and who signed it and the contract was sealed.

After the passage of several months and a hike in the Cascades in which

"...he turned a corner and saw a frozen waterfall, perfectly formed into three separate parts. He took it as a revelation of Trinitarian truth, the sign that he’d contracted for on Sam McMillan’s golf card. The next morning, he vowed to devote his life to the Christian faith."

This seems rather coincidental that he spoke to a Protestant minister and saw what he perceived as sign of the Christian triumvirate. Would he have seen a crescent moon and star if the contract had been with an imam or a star of David if the contract had been with a Rabi? Those would certainly be more spectacular to see a waterfall frozen in the shape of but that probably would have been written off as being created by man and rightly so. Could the symbol of three be the Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone) of the Wiccan religion or the Hindu triumvirate of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu? It is only because of his upbringing and immersion in American society which follows, predominantly, the Abrahamic traditions that he can makes the assumption that the beautiful display of nature is a sign of the Christian God.

The paragraph above is really just an aside, I am more amazed frustrated concerned dismayed that an individual who is so well educated in the scientific method can jump to such a wild conclusion with regards to an easily observable, testable and repeatable natural phenomenon. He seems to think that an appropriate response to a spectacular and seemingly miraculous occurrence, such as water freezing, is to attribute it to a supernatural cause (a la 'God did it') rather than taking the time to research (or even think about for a few minutes) the possible natural ways it could have occurred.

I recognize and applaud all the positive steps he has made in improving the standing of science in the US most importantly his work towards repealing the ban on stem cell research. I continue to give him the benefit of the doubt because he has shown himself a staunch defender of the scientific method in all public domains within his control and of the research that has received funding from the NIH that has drawn criticism because of the oddity of the explanation of the research and the fact that lay people do not understanding its value. But I can help but have the smallest amount of apprehension that the unscientific conclusion jumping will rear it head again but in a way that will effects others and not just what Dr. Collins does with his Sunday mornings.

Read more about Francis Collins in the article in the New Yorker.

Todays disapointment

Since I was old enough I have given blood and/or platelets with the red cross or other blood services. Some time in my early 20s I had to stop donating whole blood because it totally wiped me out and I took ages to get all my red cells back. After that I started donating platelets as often as 2 times a month. I viewed it was a way to give of myself that would not only help others but could save someone life.

When I got pregnant with my son I had to stop donating platelets. It has been over three years since my last donation and I have been preparing myself to start again as my son has been slowly weaning himself. A new hurdle to jump, for anyone who has been pregnant, is an HLA antibody test. They instituted this test because the Red Cross found that there were more transfusion reactions with blood from donors who were HLA positive.

So on Monday I went into the donation center and had them draw a vial of blood for the test. Today I called for the results and, unfortunately, I am positive for the HLA antibody and can no longer donate platelets. I am unable to express how hugely disappointed I am.

Might Does Not Make Right

I was happy to hear that Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that voter approved Proposition 8 was unconstitutional and that it

"fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples"

Although nothing will actually change in California based on this ruling, the judge has also granted a stay until appeals can be completed, this is just another step in removing another form of institutionalized discrimination from our country.

The comments that I see repeatedly from the supporters of Prop 8 have to do with the judge (who stands as a symbol of the elite who are out of touch with the common man) ignoring the voice of the citizens. They seem to think that if they get enough votes then they can ignore the constitution. They want to pretend that "majority rules" is a covenant of our republic. They conveniently ignore the fact that convincing a majority of registered voters to cast a particular vote on a particular issue has nothing to do with the legality or constitutionality of that issue. The Constitution and its amendments are designed to protect the rights of the citizenry from the whims of the majority.

Throughout history of the United States, the voting majority of each time has sought to propagate discrimination on many fronts including denying women and blacks the right to vote and prohibiting the marriage of interracial couples. In turn, each of these were revealed to have no rational basis and that continued support of those ideas were based solely on animus. The same applies to the continued prohibition of same-sex marriages. At its most basic a marriage is a legal contract between two consenting adults. There is no rational or reasonable excuse that two men or two women should not be able to enter in to this contract and receive all the federal, state and local benefits afforded to a male and female entering into the exact same contract.

Shopping Frustration

This past weekend I spent some time looking at clothes and shoes for my 2 year old son. I encountered the same three problems at each store.

1. The toddler boys section is about a quarter the size of the toddler girl section.

2. The sales in the girls section were significantly better than in the boys section (Huge clearance section with 80-90% off in the girls section and the most off in the boys section was 50%).

3. There are very few shirts and shoes that don't have some kind of print or logo. Everything from the cutesy 'little slugger' type things to huge brand logos and TV characters to ridiculous plaids and strips.

I would like some nice quality solid color shirts, tennis shoes without mass marketed characters on them and some cute summer waterproof sandals but I guess that is just too much to ask for.

"Never-Out" my a**

About 3 years ago, Brian and I purchased a pre-lit artificial Christmas tree. We decided on getting an artificial tree because we decided that we did not want to continue killing a tree every year to celebrate this holiday. The choice of a pre-lit tree was done for convenience. However, even with our extensive research to ensure that we got the best tree that we could (75-A Martha Stewart), it has turned out to be anything but convenient.

The first year we had the tree it worked beautifully until the a couple of days after Christmas when a single strand of lights on the very bottom when out. Since it was after Christmas and we were about to take it down we decided to deal with the lights when we put it up next year. It was not put up last year because of space constraints but when we put it up this year we discovered that nearly the entire bottom section was out along with a small portion of the middle section. For several days we made multiple attempts to repair the sections that were not lit. We even bought a Light Keeper Pro which helped us to repair several other stands of lights but would/could not fix any of those on the tree.

Eventually we started going bulb by bulb to find the problem. What we discovered was that in each section of lights that were about 99 lights that could be replace and a single bulb that could not. In ever strand that was out this 'keystone' bulb was blown and there was nothing that could be done to revive that strand. This type of planned obsolesence really pisses me off. So finally out of desperation I purchased several new strands of lights and strung them on the unlit portions of the tree and commenced with decorating. Over the 2 weeks leading to Christmas the the remaining strands on the bottom and middle sections failed and the day after Christmas the entire top section when out.

So utterly frustrated, today I proceeded to removed 600 lights the three sections of our tree. This task took the better part of 5 hours to complete and made the tips of my fingers raw from removing the clips that held each one of those 600 lights to the branches. We purchased some LED lights to string on it next year and hopefully we will have better luck with these.

My advice to anyone thinking about purchasing a pre-lit tree is...DON'T. Find a nice looking artificial tree, several good quality strings of lights and clips to hold the lights to the branches and hang the lights on each section independently so that you can pack it away with the lights on. So the first year you will have to do a little more work but hopefully the lights you put on will hold up better and you will have your pre-lit tree for many year hence.