Oh Fudge!! The results!

This is one serving size, right?

Sexy!

So mostly a success! The fudge should have been cut while it was still soft so it crumbled a bit when I cut it up. Perhaps in my panic I beat up the fudge a bit too much. The recipe is super easy, I'd definitely make this one again. I give myself a B+.

Hooray! No more Flubber!

Oh Fudge!!

I am a lover of fudge. Of any kind really. When I went back to Banff the first thing I wanted to do was go to the fudge store. They have at least 25 different kinds of fudge. I remember my Grandpa making it when I was a kid. I think it was the only time he actually did anything in the kitchen. That and maybe open some cans of tuna for the cats. I prefer fudge when it's smooth, not granular. The smoothness gives it an extra little oomph.
All this to say, I suck at making fudge. The few times I have tried, it's been a disaster. Shouldn't I have some sort of fudge making gene from my Grandpa, or is it recessive? The last time, it was just plain nasty. I don't know what I did wrong but it wasn't quite solid, not quite liquid either. Flubber! That's exactly what it was. Tasty flubber fudge that was good for spreading on toast.
My friend gave me an easy fudge recipe. It's good, but it's got the granular thing going for it. That and I don't think fudge is supposed to have icing sugar in it.

My husband, the geek, after trying the Flubber Fudge sent me this, the science of fudge:



I chuckled at first but then when I actually watched the video it was quite helpful. I know where I went wrong last time. So, I made fudge tonight. I think I may have succeeded too! I've been typing this as I let it cool, then went back to it to stir it up. The recipe says to beat the mixture for a few minutes and that it will go from glossy to opaque and thicken up. At first I'm whipping it into a frenzy and nothing is happening. Oh crap! Was I supposed to use an electric mixer? I debate taking out the mixer and risking waking Alex up, but I check the recipe again. Hmm nothing about mixer speed. It must be by hand. I go back to the bowl and start mixing again. You guys, it was magical. I could see it starting to crystalize and become opaque. Suddenly it was the consistency of peanut butter cookie batter. Did I really get the fudge to work?

I'll post the results later, when it cools. For now here's the recipe for Incredible Brown Sugar Fudge.

NaBloPoMo Report card and a recipe for Rum Balls....

a.k.a All this writing has driven me to drink...

So I ended up with 24/30 days of posts. Not bad, some days were harder than others. I have come to the conclusion that whoever thought up this NaBloPoMo idea does not have a life. Some times I was just to tired or brain dead to come up with a post. It definitely got me thinking again though. So there is that. I'm hoping to keep up my momentum.

Ok, now for the good stuff.

My Christmas baking itinerary always includes these delectible little alcohol-imbibed treats (except for the past couple of years where I was too queasy/spent to even think about baking)

Rum Balls (makes about 3-4 dozen depending on the size of your balls...hey oh!)

6oz (185 ml) of chocolate chips
1/2 cup of sugar
3 tbsp corn syrup
1/2 cup dark rum
2 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1 cup of fine chopped walnuts
a small bowl of sugar for coating

Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Take it off the heat and mix in the sugar and the corn syrup. Then add the rum. Add this mixture to the graham crackers and walnuts in a bowl. Roll into small balls. Coat the ball in the sugar.

Tips

• You'll need to compress the ball before you roll them in your palm otherwise they fall apart.
• It's easy to make but the balls take some time to roll (a batch and a half took an hour to roll)
• Your palms with get very sticky, it's actually easier to continue rolling if you don't wash your hands in between
• You will want to eat some as you make them. DON'T. Seriously. You'll taste it and say this was totally not worth the effort. They need to ripen at least overnight in the fridge.
• They keep well in the fridge or freezer.
• They are not for kids, obviously. (A friend once left them out on the counter with all the other Christmas cookies she had made and didn't warn her 14 year old. The girl popped it into her mouth, thinking it was a Timbit*. She bit into it and thought it was rancid. Snort.)

*donut hole for you Americans

Oh and it takes about 18 of them to equal one ounce of rum so go easy on them and so don't ball and drive.

Hello, my Precious.

Voila! Le Gateau!

Oh my gosh! It's done! This was seriously a marathon in cake making. It was fun, but I put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel like I've accomplished something. I'm productive and capable! I would say this badboy took me about 10 hours to make over the course of a week. See? I told you I lost my mind. Ah!

Here's the progress of the cake (minus the cake and frosting making part, pretty boring, so I'm skipping to the juicy parts):

Oval Cake with a notch cut out for the small round cake

Cutting the second oval for the wings

I goofed on the shape of the wing so I needed to add an extra piece for the other wing

Chocolate frosting in between all the layers

Crumb coat, kind of melty in the heat, continued to frost the next day

Finished cake at the restaurant!

My sad attempt at a sunflower for Alex's smash cake. Too melty!

Interested....

Diving in (almost frozen from the restaurant's fridge)

CAAAAAAAAAKE!

Lessons learned:

• It was easier than I thought it would be (the planning helped)
• Cake batter from scratch is way tastier than any cake mix batter (um, not that I eat cake batter)
• Butter makes everything better
• Frosting can cover all sorts of mistakes, screw something up? Slap more frosting on the problem
• I had carefully measured that the cake would fit in the cake caddy. Then I frosted the cake and didn't account for the extra girth (see above lesson)
• I need a bigger fridge
• Popping the cake back in the fridge during this heat wave was a neccessity

More about the party next time...Must go to bed, no more cake making until midnight.

Almost done! (otherwise known as Martha Stewart stole my brain)

So I got it into my pea brain that I wanted to make a fun cake for Alex's birthday. Nothing commercial, he's too young for Lighting McQueen or even Elmo (I hope he never does get into that kind of thing!). I chose a bee because of his bee hat. that I loved so much I bought it in the next size up too. The mascot of our university is a bee (Go Stingers!). Yeah, we're dorks.

So I've been planning out this cake, getting cake decorating tools, made a test cake (never buy baking soda from a corner store) and have been watching youtube videos on cake decorating. Did I mention I'm a planner? I even got my husband in on it. He used his professional engineering software to come up with a plan for the cake based on the pans I have and the cake carrier it's going in.

He asked if I wanted a finite element analysis on the cake. Umm, noooo, that would be ridiculous!

So I've been slowly working on the cake for almost a week. Baked one layer, then another day baked the second. My freezer is filled with cake parts. Made the chocolate frosting on Thursday and the vanilla frosting this morning.

I just want to make a nice cake and not have it look like this:

But it doesn't need to be as fancy as this cake I like to call the Louis Beeton:

I found this image that matches perfectly the shape of the cake I'm going for (see above engineered bee shape):

This is doable...I think.

Next up, cake assembly and decorating. I feel like I've been studying for a history final. I know my material, it's just not my strongest subject.

You don't win friends with salad!

I was thinking yesterday that I need to eat more vegetables and fruits. More salads. And then this popped into my head.

Any quick and easy tips to get more veggies into me? I'm having a hard time eating a balanced diet when I'm alone with Alex all day (including dinners lately).

It's a good thing.

My husband handed in his paper on Monday after this drama. He already got his paper graded. He passed! He got a B+! So he finally gets to graduate! Hooray! He can officially put B.Eng after his name.
Now he just needs to find a job.

Alex has been sleeping better, some nights a 5 hour stretch in a row (much better than waking every hour). He's eating a little better too. Behold, the first time Alex ate chicken:

Yes, that's a whole drumstick in his hand. He does better with finger foods instead of purees so I thought I'd try it. He didn't eat much, but hey it's a start!

Ok, I'm still doing some purees. This was a new one though. Spinach, broccoli, and ricotta cheese. He squawked for more! Oh and yes, he doesn't have a bib on. I dare you to find a bib he'll keep on.

One more thing made me happy this week. For fun I decided to check the university libary, to see my thesis entry. Someone had taken out a copy! Wow, someone other than a family member or my research supervisor read it. How cool is that? I'm still amazed I have a Master's degree. I was always an average student (at a school for overachievers...15% of my graduating class are doctors). I never really thought of myself as smart enough. So it's HUGE that someone bundled up, trekked to the library, signed away their first born, risked late fees to read what I've written. They might even quote me.

This little piggy went to market!

I couldn't have picked a better day to trek to Atwater market. It's one of four farmer's markets in the city, open year round. I say trek but really it's 20-25 minutes door to door using the metro and a bit of a walk on each end. It's a fun place for people watching in the summer. I went looking for nothing in particular, so of course I came home with too much! Alex always gets so many compliments on his stylin' hat. Sometimes he actually smiles at people. So I bought a can of maple syrup, old cheddar (older than Alex), some gouda, frozen cinnamon rolls to bake, sausages for supper (spicy Cajun for husband and maple pecan for me), a raspberry lattice pastry, some lamb to make a stew, blueberries, green beans, new potatoes and a little sushi for lunch. I told you I over did it, especially since I had Alex in the carrier too.

In the background is the market building. These bikes are BIXI bikes that you can rent for a couple of hours or for the day. There's tons of stands like this in the city, so you could borrow one here, and return the bike across town. Very cool.

Ah flowers! I know nothing about what to plant where, but they are pretty!

This covered area has all the fruit and vegetable stands. On the left are cheese shops, fish markets, and the liquor store. Oh and the maple vendor right now.

Inside the market there's the bakery and all the butcher shops.

 Bonjour les croissants!

All marketed out. Alex fell asleep about 30 seconds after this was taken.