Personal Pies

There's something to be said about me and fall. As soon as the light changes a little bit and (oh, right, I'm in deciduous tree territory again!) the leaves start to get crispy, I make for the pumpkin/apple/spice rack like a rat from a sinking ship. Except the thing about moving constantly for work is that you don't exactly have an abundance of space, or stomachs if it comes to that. Enter the slightly sad, slightly ridiculous, probably not one bit healthier desserts-for-one industry. Now, as someone who for some reason can never get a mug cake to work (Better with ovens than with microwaves? Who knows?), I was duly appreciative of this pumpkin pie for one recipe that came out in Bustle recently. I happen to have both 5-inch Pyrexes and ramekins in ample supply, so obviously I needed to make one.

Well, sort of....

Some days you make personal pan pumpkin pie 'cause there was a recipe. Except you say fuck that and alter the hell out of the recipe. This is that pie.

Using the ingredients available in my fridge/pantry and my own kick-ass pie crust making skills, I made this instead (note, you may use a blender/mixer, but...why?):

Crust:
6 tbsp flour
2 tbsp butter
approx. 1 tbsp water
pinch of sugar
pinch of cardamom
pinch of sea salt

Filling:
1 egg, lightly beaten
4 tbsp sugar
6 tbsp pumpkin puree
6 tbsp nonfat yogurt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
smithereens from 3 cloves

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 5-inch ramekin. Mix the flour, sugar, cardamom, and salt together, then cut in butter and work until mixture resembles buttery crumbs. Mix in water a little at a time until dough just comes together. Press into bottom of ramekin, lay ramekin on a baking sheet, toss in oven and bake for about 10 minutes.

Mix together eggs, sugar, pumpkin, yogurt, and spices until a thick, almost smooth liquid forms. Pour into baked crust inside ramekin. Pop back in oven and bake for 45 minutes or until the top just sets.

You may serve this in the ramekin, but if you want to take it out for display like I did, make sure to cool the damn thing thoroughly or else it will fall apart on you. When it seems sufficiently cool, run a small knife around the edges (all the way to the bottom), invert pie onto your hand if you like to live dangerously, and then immediately transfer to a waiting plate. Serve immediately if you like, or chilled, and/or topped with whipped cream or what have you (I have not). If anybody asks, I'll be off in a corner, finishing my pie.

More green, less glowing

Hello, and welcome to the ______ post, wherein I show off pictures of ALL OF THE THINGS which have been languishing in the pile of wool I call my brain. And also some actual piles of wool. Or are these wool? I actually don't remember the fiber content of this shawl, but it consists of two contrasting skeins of Yarn Love: Marie Antoinette in the Paper Flowers colorway and Mr. Darcy in the Vitner Green colorway. I picked these up on an impulse shopping trip at the Renegrade Craft Fair almost exactly a year ago, as I recall, intending to make this pattern. And then, well, stuff happened. Like knit-300s and such. Even the short rows were...not short. So after a lot of being intimidated and whining and moaning and knitting a glow-in-the-dark beret, it was finally back to this.

To celebrate, I decided to recreate a melon bar. Just kidding. Except really, I decided to recreate a melon bar.

See, I'm in the midst of moving almost all the way back east for work, and to do a sort of cross-taper between leases I put my crap in storage, bundled up the cat and a few weeks' worth of supplies, and dropped in on Mad Scientist Boyfriend. His kitchen is...interestingly stocked (read: what is this flavoring and is it even edible?). While snooping around, I came upon a vial of melon flavoring that smelled just like the melon bars of my youth, and a challenge was born. Probably best not to leave me alone too long...

Now, for those of you who don't know what a melon bar is (um...it's not technically whitesplaining if I'm Asian, is it?), it's basically like a very dense and buttery Fig Newton flavored and filled with some sort of green melon confection. Like most sweet things I grew up with, it ain't very. Feeding it to my American friends was basically playing food roulette.

Not wanting to mess up a perfect re-creation, I decided to go the homage route.

For the cake, I wanted something relatively dense and buttery but not terribly sweet, so my immediate thought was Victoria sponge. Actually my immediate thought was "what are those Victorian tea sandwich cake thingies that you spread jam between the layers and I tried to make one once and ran out of cake pan?" I chose Mary Berry's Perfect Victoria Sandwich recipe because the name says it all. Except who the crap keeps self-rising flour around so I substituted AP flour and added the requisite 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt per approximately 6 oz of flour, taking the grand baking powder total to (gasp!) just over 4 tsp (trust me on this one, it works!). It took approximately 20 drops of melon flavoring folded into the batter to achieve that perfect green buttery flavor, but I had to restrain myself from licking the bowl, so that's good, I guess? Also, the batter is incredibly scary-thick (think more like Creature from the Black Lagoon meets cookie dough), so imagine my surprise when 5 minutes into the baking I had two tins of the most gorgeously rising cakes! P.S. They come off the edges nicely if you remember to butter said tins, so cleanup is surprisingly painless.

For the filling, I decided to improvise a honeydew melon jam. Now, have I ever made jam from scratch before? Nope. Do I have a clue how to use pectin? Also nope. So a quick intarwebs search turned up tips for how to make your own pectin-less preserves and I went for it. Hint: it involves a metric crap ton of the ingredient I don't like to overindulge in. Ever. One plastic tub of honeydew chunks (chopped to within an inch of its life), a half tablespoon of white vinegar, and 3/4 of a cup of sugar later, and I had a saucepan of low-boiling green goo. Speaking of lagoon creatures, amirite? Spike in as much Midori as you dare without messing with the texture, ladle your sweet sweet slime into a refrigerator-safe container, cover, and let chill until assembly. It might be alive come show time.

For the cream, I splashed about a tablespoon of Midori into 300ml of heavy whipping cream and gave my arms a workout. Now, you may ask, "why the crap does this cake have a cream top? No self-respecting Victoria sandwich has a cream top!" My friends, that is because I am a blithering idiot. Not having a wire rack to cool my cakes on, I decided to cool mine, FACE-DOWN (*facepalms*) on sheets of wax paper. Goes to peel off wax paper, strips off top of cake. Never fear, we'll just use a bit of cream to fence in the jam in the middle, and then use the remaining cream to cover our mistakes. Everybody likes a foam top on a naked Victoria sandwich, right? Right??? That's not sun tea in the jar behind the cake: why are you asking?

Still, Mad Scientist Boyfriend informs me that not everyone can make a Midori-spiked honeydew melon jam with no pectin on their first try, so at least I did that right! I give you a few moments to admire my layers. Behold them! Be-hold them!

In other news, there were frozen cranberries and pecans in the freezer this morning and I wanted to get some more baking out of my system, so I made a giant muffin. Alternatively it's a baked Christmas pudding. Either way, perhaps it's time to put a loaf pan in this place.

Until the next time, when stir-craziness sets in and I (finally) decide to revisit another yarn project!

All Things Green and Glowing

This is unfortunately a very short and disjointed post. Bear with me. There was simply too much cool stuff going on and not enough time/motivation to blog it all.

That and...one day I'll finish this hat. Attempt #1 was simply way too big and was going to run me out of yarn, so I had to frog it. But without further ado, and only a whole month late, this was how I spent my St. Patrick's Day weekend.

Take UV light source (like, say, the sun, or a light box if you happen to be in someone else's lab at the moment).
Shine onto glow-in-dark yarn.
Bring project into dark room (like, say, a microscope room), and watch it morph into a deep sea anemone.
Actually, I'm not sure deep sea anemones are this badass.

Follow up this performance by making Guinness chocolate cake with whiskey-infused cream cheese frosting. Variations of the recipe can be found all over the intarwebs, apparently, but I personally like putting booze in baked goods in such a way that it doesn't all cook off. I think this was supposed to be a foam top-like frosting, but I had so much fun frosting the cake that I covered the whole thing instead (in other words, I love baking but hate decorating and wish someone would make my cakes pretty for me, but alas mad scientist boyfriend doesn't seem all that interested in the decorating part either...).

Also I'm making it my life's goal to convert people to the gospel of the Meyer lemon. But that's a story for another day. Maybe in less than a few months' time, even.

You'll Never Shine If You Don't Glow?

To be honest I haven't had a lot to blog about lately. Well, not as far as my usual blog fare goes, in any case. If you've been to my oh-so-exciting Ravelry page, you've probably noticed my totally unchanging "wip" status on Baridee shawl dating back to some heat wave or another. Yep, it's still on the needles. Nope, I have no idea when I'm going to work up the gumption to get it off the needles. The medical profession, my friends, is an abusive husband, and a one-year fellowship is no exception to that rule.

Which is not to say that there haven't been a few pie experiments, a boozy cream puff or two dozen, some truffle disasters, and a whole lot of shenanigans in the process. Just...maybe not exactly Pinterest-level results. Unless "nailed it!" counts...? Witness "chess pie." This was a joint venture that will eventually need to be repeated. If for no other reason than to preserve the dignity of both parties involved in the concoction of such a diabolically bad pun.

But we were speaking of glowing. Well, I was. You'll just have to keep up.

Part of my Christmabirthdaykah present from mad scientist boyfriend* was glowing yarn. No, seriously. It. Glows. In. The. Dark.

There appears to be a sort of worsted-to-aran weight and a sort of fingering-to-sport weight. The Red Heart will probably have to get incorporated into something practical, like a hat band or mitts so caution-tapey that they can even tell Southern California drivers in a rainstorm to please, for the love of all things holy, DO NOT RUN OVER THIS PEDESTRIAN!!! The lighter stuff, though...


My first thought was hair accessory, since there isn't that much of it (somewhat less than 200 yards, I think). Basically a miniature triangular or rectangular shawl. But then, a miniature shawl would last about 20 seconds in my hair and end up in a grubby blob on the floor thereafter. So while a glow-in-the-dark-not-a-wedding-veil was an appealing idea on paper, let's get real here. Let's talk lace hat/snood things.

Remember Blackberrying? I almost didn't because I lost the actual beret at Banc restaurant/bar in Kips Bay/Murray Hill during an office holiday party. Looking back over my "pattern," I think it's time for a rewrite. With actual instructions. Which I will actually follow this time. Since we're talking a finer-gauge yarn, the weave should be considerably more open to give it that lacy not-a-veil effect to go with the eerie green glow.

I had so many other project ideas in my head when I first moved out here, but somehow this is what stuck? Oh well. I blame the chicory-blended coffee that was also part of Christmabirthdaykah present. The way to a girl's attention span. Besides, who doesn't want glow-in-the-dark clothing and accessories?

And here concludes my first piece of "creative" prose writing in an extremely, unconscionably long time. Till the next time, which should be sooner, I sincerely hope....

*darling, if you're reading this, I've finally updated my blog!

#impulsecaramel

Herein I attempt to recreate a Wednesday night post-work recipe for coconut milk caramels.

Why post-work? Because I realized our international fellows were finishing their rotations and the next day was their last day on duty.

Why coconut milk? Because that was possibly the only thing left in my fridge. The Silk "original" sweetened version because it's the only one I can find at the Korean grocery store down the block.

Added bonus: this recipe is what I like to call "fail-safe." Because you don't need a candy thermometer, just a good eye and a lot of patience. I suspect you can even make it while nursing a glass of wine, though 1) not me, I'd end up coated in kitchen napalm, and 2) I think I was motivated by sheer desperation, which is the true mother of invention, rather than alcohol.

What you will need:
2 heavy-bottomed saucepans, small to medium sized
1 loaf pan, lined with parchment paper
1 cup coconut milk
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup light corn (Karo) syrup
1 tsp sea salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water

Line your loaf pan with parchment paper and set aside.

In one of your pans, bring coconut milk, butter, corn syrup, and sea salt to a low boil and stir until dissolved. Keep over low heat while you do your napalm-making.

To your other pan, add sugar and water and turn up the heat to about medium. Cook until the mixture turns thickened and bubbly and dark amber in color, occasionally scraping it off the sides of the pan with a silicone spatula if you value your pan.

Add your sugar mixture to your milk mixture, stirring constantly, and bring up to medium heat. Yes, you will form lumps. Yes, they will dissolve.

Continue to cook your caramel, stirring constantly, until it boils, thickens, and coats your spatula. Once it reaches the consistency of a thin custard (strings, rather than straight-up drips, off the spatula), cook another 1-2 minutes and then remove from heat.

Pour slowly into prepared loaf pan. Slowly to avoid napalming yourself, and also to allow the bubbles to settle.

Allow to cool to room temperature in a relatively non-humid place if possible. Because caramel is "approximately <5% water and extremely hygroscopic" (credit for that quote goes to my mad scientist boyfriend), it will act like a sponge on steroids. I used my (very much turned off!) oven since we're in the middle of a heat wave, but having cooled caramel on the kitchen counter in New York, I suspect most normal room climates should be reasonable.

When your caramel block reaches room temperature or you're really itching to go to bed because it's 11PM on a school night, stick it in the fridge to chill overnight (or at least 2 hours).

The next day, break out the cutting board and a greased knife (any oil will do, including olive which is what I usually have lying around), cut a shit-ton of wax paper squares for wrapping, and then remove your caramel from the fridge and part it from the parchment paper.

Working quickly (mine started to get goopy at the 15-minute mark in 80+ degree Fahrenheit temperatures and 80% humidity so plan accordingly), cut candies into approximately 1-inch by 2-inch rectangles and wrap them in wax paper.

Serve to your favorite departing international fellows as a token of appreciation, along with the giant potluck feast resulting from EVERYONE deciding to bring food.

Makes approximately 40 candies. I think. One of these days I'll actually count it.

So, I never said I dress like a normal person

Well, I mean, I never said I didn't either, but I've never had a great grasp of what constitutes normal. Which is where items such as the one pictured here come from:

I forgot to mention the LA Fabric District is friggin' awesome. Fabric on sale by the pound? Yes, please! After splurging about 20 bucks on laceweight yarn at the shop across the street, I happened upon this blue stripy number. Maybe about a couple yards' worth (who knows, I didn't measure it, just plopped it...on...a...scale...). I wrapped it around my torso like a towel and reveled in it for a while. The damage came out to something like $2.50. It had to become a dress.

So, what does a dress in blue stripy lightweight knit fabric look like? In my mind (and in a mini Moleskine travel notebook) I sketched out all kinds of drapes and sleeves and ties and in the end just couldn't be bothered. My excuse was a dire need to let the fabric shine through. Whatever, lazy girl dress with pockets!

The initial cutouts were something like this:

I did a very thin strip of interfacing at the collar and armholes in the same fabric. The pockets were also made of leftover dress fabric. Because I went through my linings and said, "eh..." It's got a very comfy drape to it, and because I couldn't be bothered with zippers and buttons and all that nonsense, it's a dress I can pull over my head and forget about. Did I mention it has pockets???

The only problem is figuring out where to wear it. I mean, I work in a lab. I'm dating a guy who works in a lab. My family doesn't want me wearing my handmade confections anywhere within a 20 mile radius of them. I'm pretty sure they have a restraining order after I wore my blue Marilyn Monroe "Seven-Year-Itch" dress to a family friend's wedding. So...if anyone can name an occasion (besides lounging around the apartment with a glass of wine and pincurls setting in my hair), I'd love to hear it.

Rosy

Some days you make a hat, and some days you play with DNA.

I happen to do both, incidentally, though not...as commonly as that statement might lead you to believe. I did however absolutely gush and rave over the GENEie hat pattern as it made its way through Ravelry. Not being possessed of an infinite range of solid colored soft worsted, however, I opted for the cabled version in a metallic gray, and, this being around the time of the March for Science, pinned my favorite Etsy pin to it for extra badassery.

Unfortunately, as my luck would have it, in April I happened to go on an away rotation halfway across the country, with Raiden in tow, and somewhere between the security line at JFK and the airport gate, the hat--with pin--disappeared into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again. Well, by me at least. One can only hope someone equally geeky picked it up and is now enjoying the spoils.

Never mind the loss of the Rebel Alliance pin (I have a different one attached to a suit jacket so not all is lost), I happened to have a small hank of the soft gray worsted left, so in the midst of moving all the way across the country I decided to make another hat...only to realize there was no way in hell that would be enough yarn.

Never one to be daunted by a yarn shortage, however, I devised my own way out. Not enough mathematical sense to be an engineer IRL, but enough to turn GENEie's DNA cable on its edge, work it back and forth on two needles, graft ends together, and voila headband! In this version, garter stitch (like you would use to edge a shawl) takes the place of ribbed edges, and the stand-alone double helix shares the spotlight with nobody ever. Because it is lovingly ripped off of another science-lover's hard work, however, I wasn't about to make an official PDF masterpiece of it. It does lend a bit of credence to the name I've given it, though.

Rosalind Franklin, disparagingly referred to as "Rosy" by Watson and Crick, was the one who, along with her colleague Maurice Wilkins, used X-ray crystallography to capture the structure of DNA. Her now-iconic X-shaped black-and-white photograph of the double helix in cross section almost surely had some influence on the boys' even more iconic 3-D model. Unfortunately for Franklin, she never received the same recognition as her colleagues: since the Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously, Wilkins shared the award with Watson and Crick when their work was duly toasted and immortalized. So in the spirit of scientific discovery--and all the drama that might entail--I give you Rosy!

Rosy (A Sideways Variation on GENEie)

Pattern notes:

Since this is an adaptation of an existing pattern rather than a new pattern, I did not do a gauge square or any of the usual preparation. That said, your gauge is whatever is sufficient to make 4 repeats of the 26-row double helix stretch comfortably around your noggin. The piece starts with a provisional cast-on (I'm a fan of the one-step Purl Soho version myself) and is worked back and forth to the desired length and the edges grafted together with kitchener stitch (again, plug for the Purl Soho instructions--I don't work for them, just bought some delicious yarn from them once when I still lived in New York). Use extreme caution when putting your provisional edge on a needle--I lost 2 stitches and had to improvise them back in. You may block or not, but personally I used acrylic yarn and ain't nobody got time for trying to make that do any bidding but its own. Chart only, because I'm too lazy to bother writing out a pattern, so don't go looking too hard.

 

Materials:

1 pair US size 8 knitting needles

Loops & Threads Soft & Shiny Solids (311 yd/284 m per 170 gm), Gray, somewhat <100 yd

Cable or tapestry needle for cables (and tapestry needle for grafting and finishing)

Crochet hook if desired for provisional cast-on of choice

Getting started:

Using waste yarn and provisional cast-on of choice, cast on 23 stitches. Knit 1 row. This will become your provisional edge that you will thread onto a new needle, because you really need to start the cables on your working yarn not your waste yarn.

Work that chart:

Starting with Row 1 (RS row), begin working chart from bottom to top, going from right to left on odd (RS) rows and left to right on even (WS) rows. The 5 stitches on each side form your garter "rib" border. Work chart 4 times or however many full times it takes to fit comfortably around your head.

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					knit on RS; purl on WS
		●			purl on RS; knit on WS
		◊			knit through back loop RS; purl through back loop WS
		/	/		C1: on RS hold stitch in back, knit next stitch, knit held stitch; on WS hold stitch in back, purl next stitch, purl held stitch
		\	\		C2: on RS hold stitch in front, knit next stitch, knit held stitch; on WS hold stitch in front, purl next stitch, purl held stitch
		●/	/		C3: on both sides hold stitch in back, knit next stitch, purl held stitch
		\	\●		C4: on both sides hold stitch in front, purl next stitch, knit held stitch

Pull it together:

With right sides facing inward (remember, your background is a wrong-sided stockinette panel so you want kind of the opposite of what you'd do in a stockinette situation), graft ends together with kitchener stitch.

Weave in ends, block if desired, and wear to your next lab meeting 'cause you know they keep it cold as the Ninth Ring of Dante's Inferno in that place!

Bonus: If you've held on this long, have a poem from my (probably never to be published 'cause I can't be bothered) "A Theory of Space and Time" collection...

Masters of the Universe

“Now see here, gents,

we shall have it all

one day: the key

to the kingdom,

I say of life,

and you fine gentlemen

of the universe,

God be our witness –

Rosy, dear, well done,

we'll take it from here.

Show the boys your toy

and how to take

such pretty pictures –

smile, don't be shrill –

we all want the same

as you, don't we lads? –

there's a good girl,

a fine help, almost

as good as a man.”

In her darkened corner

the crystals radiate

like microscopic stars,

etch perfect X formations

neither male nor female

at this magnitude,

but simply perfect,

pinned in a particle beam

like those that powered

hot dark beginnings

and quarks full of God,

set primordial pools brewing

a potion that dreams

of roles and genders

and writes the code

of its own destruction,

the seeds already germinating

somewhere she can feel,

taunting to be caught.