I don't know if all that many people would agree with me on this one, but summer has arrived.
How can I tell? When I walked out of the store I work in yesterday it was sprinkling a little, not pouring down rain, but a soft kind of rain. Not unpleasant in general unless you've had a crappy day already and the rain is just one more thing on top of it. I put my coat on, figuring it'd be chilly out, and... it wasn't. It was a 65 degrees outside. And humid. The humidity is back. I am not excited about that.
But, on the upside, if summer really is right around the corner, then that means I don't have to worry about missing a run because of a blizzard again. And I'll be able to plant flowers soon. I've been itching to get out and try to create a garden in front of our house. I have no idea how well that's going to work, but I'm going to try. I'm tired of being just another ugly gray house on the street. I want SOMETHING to set us apart!
As for running, I'm starting week three of the Couch to 5k program today. I've done the program once before and it worked really well for me, though unfortunately life circumstances had me sidelined not long after I finished it. This time around I've got a plan for continuing afterward, since the half-marathon is my goal. The first time through I used Robert Ullrey's C25K Podcasts and while they worked, he and I obviously have completely different tastes in music. I used it for the first 5 weeks or so until I was getting into longer stretches of running, then I switched to just my iPod and my watch. This time, I found Chris' Christian Indie C25k Running Tracks. The quality of the music varies, as you usually expect with Indie stuff. There are some songs that I can't wait to get through until the next week because I won't have to hear them anymore, but there have also been a few gems. Run by After the Chase might be one of my new favorite running songs ever. Unfortunately, it was only in week 1, but I can add it to my own running mix and run to it after I get done with the C25k program.
I have today off and I think it might be another day of baking adventures since it's still raining out. We're supposed to get some thunderstorms later, and I'm really hoping for some good thunder though. I miss the thunderstorms of the South. But it does mean that yard work is not on the top of my list. I've got a couple things that I want to play with today, but we'll see how it goes. Right now I'm just enjoying spending the morning hanging out on the couch with my dogs and not having anywhere I need to be!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Lemond Drop cupcakes = Epic Fail
Okay, that might be a bit of hyperbole there. I wouldn't really say they're an EPIC fail, but a fail none the less. Which is sad. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, but I hate it when something that I'm baking doesn't turn out. I don't get so upset when something I'm cooking doesn't turn out, because I'm not a very good cook. Baking is a different thing though. I'm generally good at it, so it makes me mad when it doesn't do what I wanted it to, i.e. be delicious.
I got the recipe for these out of Better Homes and Gardens most recent cupcake issue. They sounded amazing and looked even classier. With a big glazed lemon wheel garnishing the top of the artfully done cakes, I was so excited about these cupcakes. You can see the picture and get the recipe here: Lemond Drop Cupcakes
Alas, my cupcakes didn't look like that at all.
Here's how it happened.
First off, my mistakes. I didn't use Limoncello because I didn't want to hunt around the local liquor stores for it, and since The Gamer doesn't drink at all and I rarely do, I didn't really figure I wanted a bottle sit around for the next four or five years until I got around to using it in enough things. I suppose there is a chance that I might someday have guests over that like to drink (most of my friends do) but that's beyond the point. I used milk instead and tossed some of the crushed lemondrops in it to try to give it some lemony flavor.
Next, the recipe in the magazine was not very well written. It left out the step at the end of the online one where you roll the finished cupcake in the crushed candies. Or how they could be replaced with those pretty lemon slices. They were right smack-dab in the middle of the recipe. "That's odd" I thought. "Oh well, lets just toss them in and see what happens." This was not the smartest thing I've ever done.
I also don't really have any kitchen implements that are appropriate to crushing hard candies. I put the candies in plastic bad and pounded on them with a hammer until they were mostly crushed. This worked okay, but there were still some pretty big chunks. I thought it might add some texture, so I left it.
I also over-filled the cupcake wrappers my first batch. Second came out better, and you can see a marked difference between the two.
First batch is on the left, second is on the right. They're much nicer. I also might have overbaked the first batch because I was waiting for them to spring up when I touched them, as cupcakes are supposed to do. The time given in the recipe was woefully short (granted, my oven runs cool) and even the good ones had the toothpick coming clean closer to 22 minutes than 18.
The biggest disappointment with these though, is that rather than baking into the cake and giving wonderful nuggets of awesome in the center, the lemon candies sunk to the bottom and melted onto the wrapper. Making it nearly impossible to pull the wrapper off without ripping off the bottom half of the cupcake. Which was very very sad.
I will say that the overall flavor of the cupcakes was nice and light and lemony, although I added about 2 Tbs. of lemon juice on top of the original recipe because the batter just wasn't tasting like I wanted it to. They were very light, almost too light to the point of being crumbly and hard to eat.
The lemon buttercream was also very tasty. Very strong lemon flavor without being too sweet or too tart, but very very rich. That's why I tried to give it a thinner coating with a smaller icing tip, because I thought a big ol' cupcake swirl would be too much and overpower the cupcake. Even trying to go light on the icing, I ran out about 3/4 through.
The biggest fail though, was the glazed lemon slices. Take another look at the ones from the recipe: lemon drop cupcakes
Okay, here's how mine turned out.
To put it mildly, not well.
I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong, other than obviously burning the sugar instead of glazing them. I'm going to blame it the fact that they were cooked on top of the stove instead of inside the oven. As I mentioned before, I'm not much of a cook.
So there you have it. My first cupcake failure. We're all human I guess, and I'm still looking for a rocking lemon cupcake recipe. If you know of one, leave it in the comments, I'd really appreciate it!
I got the recipe for these out of Better Homes and Gardens most recent cupcake issue. They sounded amazing and looked even classier. With a big glazed lemon wheel garnishing the top of the artfully done cakes, I was so excited about these cupcakes. You can see the picture and get the recipe here: Lemond Drop Cupcakes
Alas, my cupcakes didn't look like that at all.
Here's how it happened.
First off, my mistakes. I didn't use Limoncello because I didn't want to hunt around the local liquor stores for it, and since The Gamer doesn't drink at all and I rarely do, I didn't really figure I wanted a bottle sit around for the next four or five years until I got around to using it in enough things. I suppose there is a chance that I might someday have guests over that like to drink (most of my friends do) but that's beyond the point. I used milk instead and tossed some of the crushed lemondrops in it to try to give it some lemony flavor.
Next, the recipe in the magazine was not very well written. It left out the step at the end of the online one where you roll the finished cupcake in the crushed candies. Or how they could be replaced with those pretty lemon slices. They were right smack-dab in the middle of the recipe. "That's odd" I thought. "Oh well, lets just toss them in and see what happens." This was not the smartest thing I've ever done.
I also don't really have any kitchen implements that are appropriate to crushing hard candies. I put the candies in plastic bad and pounded on them with a hammer until they were mostly crushed. This worked okay, but there were still some pretty big chunks. I thought it might add some texture, so I left it.
I also over-filled the cupcake wrappers my first batch. Second came out better, and you can see a marked difference between the two.
First batch is on the left, second is on the right. They're much nicer. I also might have overbaked the first batch because I was waiting for them to spring up when I touched them, as cupcakes are supposed to do. The time given in the recipe was woefully short (granted, my oven runs cool) and even the good ones had the toothpick coming clean closer to 22 minutes than 18.
The biggest disappointment with these though, is that rather than baking into the cake and giving wonderful nuggets of awesome in the center, the lemon candies sunk to the bottom and melted onto the wrapper. Making it nearly impossible to pull the wrapper off without ripping off the bottom half of the cupcake. Which was very very sad.
I will say that the overall flavor of the cupcakes was nice and light and lemony, although I added about 2 Tbs. of lemon juice on top of the original recipe because the batter just wasn't tasting like I wanted it to. They were very light, almost too light to the point of being crumbly and hard to eat.
The lemon buttercream was also very tasty. Very strong lemon flavor without being too sweet or too tart, but very very rich. That's why I tried to give it a thinner coating with a smaller icing tip, because I thought a big ol' cupcake swirl would be too much and overpower the cupcake. Even trying to go light on the icing, I ran out about 3/4 through.
The biggest fail though, was the glazed lemon slices. Take another look at the ones from the recipe: lemon drop cupcakes
Okay, here's how mine turned out.
To put it mildly, not well.
I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong, other than obviously burning the sugar instead of glazing them. I'm going to blame it the fact that they were cooked on top of the stove instead of inside the oven. As I mentioned before, I'm not much of a cook.
So there you have it. My first cupcake failure. We're all human I guess, and I'm still looking for a rocking lemon cupcake recipe. If you know of one, leave it in the comments, I'd really appreciate it!
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