Posted by Angela on March 23rd, 2008 in Holidays
·
I have baked a lot, but usually it’s pretty hard to make something really cute, let alone anything fancy. This year was different, I’ve been learning a lot about baking techniques so I wanted to make a 3D cake. Everything I found was for making big cakes (2-4 cake mix boxes) and I don’t know anyone who really wants/needs to eat that much cake. So I was armed with just the basic understanding of piecing together these kind of cakes and half an idea of how to do it on a much smaller scale with cupcakes.
The baking was easy enough, following the directions on the cake box I made 24 cupcakes and had enough batter leftover to make a small loaf of cake about 1 in x 3 in. Cupcakes was a wonderful idea because they’re small so if I mess up I have a lot to work with, and those suckers were room temperature in like 10 mins. I usually don’t have the patience to let my cakes cool enough before trying to get creative.
My first attempt is the flat bunny to the left, which is really just a cupcake made with cupcake parts put together, not really anything cake about it. The next attempt is the bunny in the middle (not a mouse, a bunny ^_^) That one is 2 cupcakes for the legs, 1 for the body and little pieces for the ears. Everything is held together with frosting and toothpicks, and can stand up on its own. The last thing in the picture is just a cupcake easter basket.
This guy is my pride and joy, it’s a loop eared rabbit, the kind with massive floppy ears. Each ear is half a cupcake, the body is the small bread loaf, and both back legs are about 2/3 of a cupcake each. The tail is a marshmallow, in both pictures the candies are jelly beans and the garnish is green dyed coconut. This one I could see on the shelf of a bakery.
One of the great things about getting into how to make special food is being able to put together this kind of stuff. And my masterful training came from watching Food Network!
This article has
Posted by Angela on March 22nd, 2008 in Snacks
·
Just like when I was little, the holidays bring to mind holiday food. While most holidays have associated candy, for some reason I hold Easter candy to a higher quality then the rest. Have you ever had a chocolate bunny made of crappy chocolate? It’s like a crime against taste buds!
Now for this unusual cookie/candy thing. The wrapper picture shows round cookies, or flying saucers, the art is weird. But instead of cookies, out came 4 rectangular chocolate squares with big chunks of chocolate and vanilla pieces. The chocolate bar part is about 1/4 inch thick and sweet, and melts in your mouth. The cookie crumbs have a mixture vanilla, milk chocolate and dark chocolate pieces. While the chunks are tasty and the different colors have different flavors is great, I can’t help be distracted by the ‘density’ of the chunks. Density is a weird term but it’s hard to describe how hard the cookie chunks are. They’re more like hard candy then cookie crumbs, I can feel them in every bite. But then again, if they weren’t so hard they would probably get crumbled during shipping and leave a powder in the wrapper.
Despite the extra crunchiness, I can see this being part of a special Easter basket. There’s good quality chocolate, with different flavored chocolate and vanilla bits and it’s unique appearance would make an excellent gift. And if you kept the chocolate side up, then no one would suspect the crumbs on the bottom.
I give Herberts Cookies and Chips candy bar a 4 out of 5!
This article has
Posted by Angela on March 20th, 2008 in Snacks
·
Gum comes in tons of flavors, but I was still surprised to see melon and mint in the same flavor. The melon is subtle, like honeydew and the mint tastes a lot like candy canes. This gum is really refreshing, just like drinking a cup of juice. Even though the flavor sounds weird and exotic it could seriously become a conventional flavor.
This article has
Posted by Angela on March 3rd, 2008 in Food
·
What should you do when it’s snowing and the winds are gusting up to 30 mph in Texas? Drive out and get some pizza! We picked this bad boy up at Kroger during just such a storm and barely made it back home with our lives! lol
I love garlic and I love pizza so this made perfect sense. The cheeses are asiago, mozzarella, parmesan and romano. The hard cheeses had a strong, robust flavor that had a duel with the garlic in my mouth. Who won? The herbs that are sprinkled on the crust and had also migrated to the whole underside of the pizza. Normally when stuff shifts on a frozen pizza it screws the pizza up, but this time the combination herbs and garlic allowed me to enjoy the cheese without wishing there was meat all over it.
A snow storm in Texas may sound like a lie but it isn’t and neither is the pizza. Unfortunately, the snow didn’t stay on the ground 
This article has
Posted by Angela on February 27th, 2008 in Food and Snacks
·
I picked this treat up at the local grocery store in the yogurt section. Its in an unsuspecting box of individual packets like Go-Gurt but Fizzix is a yogurt with the fun twist of fizziness, like Pop Rocks or carbonation.
Even the smallest amount fizzes on my tongue and it doesn’t loose intensity if I take awhile to eat it. There are 2 different flavor combinations, and I picked up the strawberry lemonade jolt and wild cherry zinger. The yogurt’s flavors are pretty strong and the fizziness makes everything a little tart.
Unfortunately there is a down side, that I didn’t notice until almost too late. On the yogurt package it warns that “tubes expand at room temperature”. Of course, I didn’t read that until after leaving it in my bag at work and forgetting about it. I did get to it before any explosion but it that plastic tube was nearly rock solid. That would’ve been a tasty clean up.
This article has
Posted by Angela on February 21st, 2008 in Snacks
·
Wow, these things look like little bombs and they’re really flavorful! It’s a simple concept: jelly beans with a crunchy nerd shell. I picked these guys up at Wallgreens so I bet gas stations and drug stores have them.
Now, i love Wonka’s Nerds (little rock candy with something done to it) and I like Jelly Belly Jelly beans, but not regular jelly beans. ButI think they used above average jelly beans because instead of being chewy with a dash a flavor, the candy has almost of kick of sweet/tartness. What’s great is that the different colors have distinct, rich flavors.
The best places to get random candy is still the drug store/corner gas station. The next big candy season has started, and I’m looking forward to the weirdness.
This article has
Posted by Angela on February 20th, 2008 in Drinks
·
In the spirit of tests I also tried out a new energy drink, this one a coffee variety on the Monster energy drinks. I’ve tried many different energy drinks and some canned coffees from the Asian grocery stores, all of which are useful but not something I’d pick up to enjoy the flavor, but I think Monster’s new Java line is on to something.
Monster’s Chai Hai was a thick, creamy mouthful of newness. It has all the typical energizing ingredients but the only thing I could taste was all the complex spices that make up chai. Chai is basically a black tea, sugar, milk or cream, and spices. There are different recipes that people use, but some of the common spices are cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, peppercorns, cardamoms and fennel seeds. It could be just me, but the main flavors are usually cinnamon and nutmeg. Now, I know some people are very particular about the authenticity of their chai, but I can say that this drink does have the depth and flavor combination of real chai I’ve had before.
This article has
Posted by Angela on February 18th, 2008 in Drinks
·
A&W’s my favorite root beer so I was excited to try their new ready-made ice cream float! I picked up a bottle at a convenience store nearby. It was unexpectedly creamy and tastes like they bottled it after all the ice cream melted. Which actually would make sense because at that point the pop would’ve lost most of it’s carbonation and the bottled stuff tastes only lightly carbonated.
It was definitely tasty, but I don’t think they quite hit the “just like the real thing” meter. I think it was the “artificial ice cream flavor”, which I’m pretty sure is just vanilla extract laid on thickly. There’s also an after taste, that’s some mix of vanilla extract and cream. I bet that’s supposed to be the foam from a real float, but then again it also reminds me of Yoo-Hoo which is a step in a random direction.
Overall I call it a yummy, creamy drink in it’s own right, but it really isn’t very float-like.
This article has