Baking Roses from Bacon

1. Cut Bacon strips into thin strips (usually a standard Bacon strip in half).  
2. And roll it up.  
3. Cut out some leaf shapes
4. Bake

You can build a whole bouquet out of this technique for your Bacon loving hunny.

Coffee Wood Stain

Want to give your wood projects some carmel goodness.  Dunk it some coffee for a few hours :)

Tip of the Day: Cheese Crust

Try shredded cheese as a Breading Substitute for your baked or pan fried goods

Human Made versus Nature Made ColoUrs - Butter

Just like Chedder cheese, I wonder why human production purposefully over fakes the coloUring of the man made versions.  Individual slices of margarine and butter served at a cafeteria.

Inspriation Photo - Grocery Store

I happened to be on the second level looking down into a grocery store and I was just mesmerized.

How to Dismantle a Pineapple

This might seem like a daunting task to many people so I wanted to show people how easy this process actually is.  If you are willing to peel and slice an apple, than you can do the same to it's piney counterpart.

Let's start off with the knife.  Use a serrated knife (one with teeth).  I'm using a bread knife here, works wonderful.

Cut off the Top and Bottom so that you can give it a flat surface to sit on.  Rolling around is not good.

Start peeling the pineapple by slicing down the side of the pineapple.  Yes it will not be round, it won't matter later on.  Yes there will be excess, you will need to trim thicker because of the unevenness of the peel, don't worry cost wise you aren't wasting that much.

Now like a peel apple or a pizza, slice out your wedges.

Like an apple, cut out the core.  Actually you can eat the core, but like an orange peel, people have been trained that eating a pineapple core is not correct.  Yes there are people in the world who eat citrus peels; it's dried then use it in soup, teas, and candies.  The Pineapple core is a lot more woodier so some people don't' like the texture, but that doesn't stop me, I just think "yum more fiber".  If you have a juicer, this is a great time to use it.

Cut to desired size

YAY, giant bowl of pineapples!

This probably took me twice the amount of time I would use to cut an apple, but I got three times more fruit out of this adventure.

Reasons I prefer to to cut my own pineapple 

• fresh is always better than canned
• cutting your own is much cheaper than purchasing pre-cut from the produce section of a grocery store
• A single pineapple may seem expensive, but when you measure your end quantity against the same amount of apple or orange it's pretty much in range in cost.
• control of cut sizes.  Great for leaving long wedges for the BBQ grill

Chocolate Truffle Class

Oh those online deals are so addictive!  Me and my friend Liz went to Dawn's Candy and Cake to take a chocolate truffle making class

We filled chocolate shells with chocolate ganache that we flavored with essential oils, fruit purees, nut butters, and liqure. The combinations I picked where

• Hasetlenut and Chilli
• Lemon and cheesecake
• tequila and lime
• brandy
• passionfruit

 We were hoping to learn to roll out our own balls, but with the time constraint this was much easier.

Here we're melting chocolate for the coating. 

They taught us about tempering chocolate and how we could skip a lot of the hard work by using an existing piece of tempered chocolate as a starter.

~Stir stir stir~

We had to seal off our chocolate shells with a harden coating of chocolate so our ganache doesn't spill out.  ~dabbing with melted chocolate~ which sets really quickly.

We were taught to THROW our chocolate balls  into the melted chocolates, making a "plooop" sound as we did it.

Fishing them out with a special fork so it can slide off without any finger prints created.

The melted chocolate sets in about a minute so while it's still liquidy we put on little decorations like sprinkles or crushed nutz.  Great tip they taught us is to use a decoration pattern to determine which chocolate you are eating.

Yay, here are my chocolates

Stuffed Carrot

I was invited to a Super Hero Murder Mystery party for a friend's birthday. I was suppose to be some Rabbit super hero with a giant carrot. So I quickly sewed this stuff carrot. It's pretty cute. It's about a foot and half long.

Materials

• Orange and Green Cloth
• cotton stuffing material.

How to?
1) Sew the two sides of a triange shape for the carrot root
2) sew several smaller versions of the green fabric for the leaves
3) stuff with filling
4) hand sewing the openings shut and together to hide the seams

-smallrinilady

Pumpkin Pie (Fixed itself)

I tried to make a store bought frozen pumpkin pie for thanksgiving one year. Something happened though. While I was traveling to my mom's place (2 hour drive away) it had melted.  And when I put it back into the freezer, I didn't know all the pie inside has spilled all over inside the box.  When I took out of the box I had to scope out the overflowed pieces and pile them onto the pie.


But look how it turned out.  It's like magic

Plush Dim Sum

I couldn't sleep one night so I pulled out a project that I bought stuff for but never started. 

The dimsum stuffing I used circles of fleece to create a shape and stuffed more cotton in just as I would for a dumpling.  Than I covered it with a large pink circle and sewed in the pleates. 

I used some orange glass seed beads I had and "sprinkled" on the egg roe. 

Ok I really sewed them on.

Whoops the picture is side ways

Look you can pick it up with chopsticks.

The dimsum basket I actually got at a Japanese Two Dollar store in Vancouver BC.

Seattle Chocolate Salon

The Seattle Chocolate Salon is basically a small sampling festival of fine chocolates.  Although it's small, there is still too much chocolate for one person to consume.  There were many artisan chocolates, chocolate wine stall, and some random Yelp and Olive Oil & Balsamic vinegar, and tea stand (with no chocolate).  I was a little disappointed that there weren't any coffee or savory dishes presented.  Oh well, on to some pretty pictures 

 Karen here makes these beautifle Chocolate Tulips, great gift that I bought for my boyfriend for only $2.  Unfortunatly they were pretty fragile. 

Vibrant Chocolate was very pretty and really tasty as well.  They tempered their chocolate to give it that shine.

Taza Chocolate wasn't about looks, but about tradition and texture.  Their Mexcian chocolate is processed using stone mills so it's still gritty.  Suprisingly people really enjoyed it because of its rustic nature.

Purple Pancakes

Pancake mix? Check. Frozen berries? Check. Hungry? HECK YEAH.

Blueberry pancakes are a thing of the past. Purple pancakes are much more exciting.

I started with a bag of frozen berries (blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries) and a bag of pancake mix, both of which I purchased from Costco. (These instructions are for making 5 small pancakes.)

First, you need to micro-zap a handful of berries for a minute in a bowl so they aren't frozen. Next, use a fork to mush them up a bit so you don't have just whole berries and liquid, it should be closer to syrup. Mix in a couple of pinches of sugar. Then mix in water and pancake mix (I used 1/2 cup of mix and 3/8 cup of water, plus an extra half-tablespoon of mix). Use the same ratio as the mix calls for, but assume the berry juice is replacing some of the water. Whip it all up with a fork to make sure everything is mixed together thoroughly.

Transfer the mix into a 2-cup measuring cup or small pitcher you can pour from. Melt a little bit of butter in a frying pan on low-to-medium heat and then pour the mix into the pan to create a few individual pancakes.

Wait (about half a minute) until the pancakes are bubbling and the edges seem to creep in a bit and you can get a flipper spatula underneath, then flip them over. Wait a few seconds for the other side to brown, then flip them onto a plate.

Enjoy your purple pancakes!

They are so tastey you don't even need to add more butter or whipped cream. But you could add whipped cream on top if you really wanted to.

Purple pancakes pair well with a glass of non-fat organic milk.

(Sorry about the fuzzy photo, I was hungry and taking a steady photo with my cell phone wasn't high on my priority list.)

Nom nom nom...

Easter Cupcakes

This is the story of my weekend adventure, culminating in the eventual consumption of cupcakes.

It all started when I went grocery shopping and saw the cake mix on sale at Safeway. I purchased one box of white cake mix and a little tub of white buttercream frosting. (This is the part where you figure out this blog post is not going to be an instructional recipe on how to make cupcakes.)

When I got home that evening, I mixed up the cake mix, recalling from previous experience that I should mix the liquids together first, then slowly stir in the cake mix and only reach for the blender once every bit of powder has been mixed in with liquids so as not to end up with powder all over the kitchen. Shortly thereafter, my cupcakes were in the oven.

I removed them from the oven, let them cool, then covered them in plastic wrap and then proceeded to play Lord of the Rings Online, achieving level 20 on my Warden named Eivalyn. I figured I could wait until Saturday to frost the cupcakes.

On Saturday I managed to score a nice new dining set on Craiglist for an unbelievably low price which could be equivalent to 95% off retail. Craigslist is the way to go if you know a nice guy with a truck.

How does this fit in with the cupcake story? Well, obviously I need somewhere to put my cupcakes and a nice new dining table is the perfect place to sit down and do some frosting.

I found a "Neon" food coloring set, which was perfect for Easter colors.

I split the buttercream frosting into a few bowls and put different colors in each. I had a lot of pale blue candy sprinkles left from baby shower cupcakes so I put those on top!

The End!

Too Many Candles

I made this cake for my friends, cause 4 of them have birthdays in the same month. Thus the number of candles on this cake is equivilent to the total value of their ages all combined.


The smoke detector did go off . . . .


How did i light this? I used fireplace matches. The are really long, so it's not like my hand is always in fire.


The cake itself is a combination of a Russian Nepolean and French Nepolean cake. Meaning two different types of cake are layered together. And the inside filling cream and the outside frosting are also different. This was hella yummy.

Non Stick pans are Gyoza's best friend.

I had a craving for Gyoza/Potstickers/Pan Fried Dumplings.

So first you start with boiling the dumplings. This just helps them cook throughly. Then you drain and you pan fry them with a ton of oil. Good and bad. Bad is pretty obvious, oil means fat. Oil is good because it helps create this nice sear, without it's basically cooked to burned with a 15 second window. So Oil is a create controller of browning/crisping, what we love about pan frying.

So I start frying. Ok time to flip, but what? It's stuck, no it's REALLY stuck, even though it's completely covered in oil, all lubercated and fatty, it's just stuck. Ok let's bring out the metal spoon and let's see if we can scrap. Oh crap, so I kinda get it off, but not in one piece. The seared pieces are still stuck to the pan, there is a giant rip or hole in all the dumplings. This is not the perfect gyoza. This makes me sad. No this makes me very sad. I'm almost about to cry. Ok so not THAT sad.

But I am really disspointed, and confused. Confused because last time I made them (from the same grocery store freezer pack) of dumplings they came out perfect. Rotated several times to be perfectly seared on three sides. Crispy on all sides that aren't on the bottom of the plate (where condensation softens the crisp texture.

What was the difference? THe Non stick pan? NO way. But then I tried it. I poured in a little oil and started frying. SUprisingly they got brown and crispy (thanks to the oil) and slid around the pan. Turn 2 more times. Aww perfect.

Now I need to get a bigger pan, you can only fry so many at a time in a 6 inch skillet

-smallrinilady