February 9th, 2011

Nail Rescue

At the beginning of January I became really obsessed with fake nails. I was buying and applying those Broadway Nails Petites in peach. They're much shorter than your classic fake nails, almost coming across as natural. I had always imagined that I'd immediately break them off - rather like the cheap fake nails you get with Halloween costumes at CVS. These are much nicer. I was blown away by the strength of the nails. Sturdier than my own naturally grown nails. And they stayed in place - which they should since you're using superglue to apply them.

The major drawback that I learned after the fact was that no matter how gentle you are when removing the nails, they will have destroyed your natural nail below. Over a month later, my nails are still, peeling, weak and torn up. There is no going back from this! So I turned to Sally Hansen nail rescue to try to rub some gel-based strength back into them. I don't have high hopes, but I'm willing to try anything at this point.

February 7th, 2011

Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake

The second birthday of the week inspired a new level of cake-making. My very first mousse cake. Mango mousse at that. I've been in love with the mango mousse from the Whole Foods bakery for several years now. It's technically made off-site at a local bakery, but I forget the precise name.

In any case, I went looking for a simple mango cake recipe. Then I realized that I didn't have the beautiful acetate wraps to hole it in place. I did some shopping over the weekend, but couldn't find anything locally. I considered using a clear cellophane used to wrap books or gift baskets, but decided against it in the end. Instead, I went in search of a recipe that was a little sturdier - and fell upon this Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake at the blog Desserts For Breakfasts. The sturdy bottom layer made from a rich mocha topped by a fluffy mango mousse and finished with a sweet espresso jelly, all wrapped and held together in a thin bark of bittersweet chocolate.

The original recipe is designed for 6 small cakes, but I made a 9 inch single cake instead. I was able to bake the cake part in a single pan as a result rather than deal with a baking tray. This made the thin chocolate wrap harder to handle in the end (an extra set of hands would be a lot easier), but I got it on and it turned out brilliantly.

The only bad part of the cake, was the cake-part itself - the chocolate cake was really dense. Again, a density issue with these from-scratch cakes. I was told that it was texturally appealing when eaten in combination with the mango mousse and espresso jelly, however. In the future, I will cut out the cake part altogether though and just make a solid mousse-and-jelly cake. Or do a layered mousse cake with maybe passion fruit, mango and vanilla cream. Yum.

February 6th, 2011

Espresso syrup

I spent the day making more cake. Another multilayered, multi-step baked good that took hours to complete.

This particular shot is the espresso syrup that I used to between the chocolate cake layer and the mango mousse. It was probably the easier part to make out of the entire cake.

February 4th, 2011

Coconut Cream Layer Cake

I have been on a baking binge this winter and the birthdays of coworkers has finally given me a safe outlet. I was chatting with one of the technicians about the project manager who only wears Hawaiian shirts (he's from Hawaii), and mentioned that he was wearing a new shirt today. Last year we came up with this awesome plan to have everyone wear Hawaiian shirts for the day in honor of his birthday. So when the PM walked into the lab, the technician naturally remembered to ask when his birthday was. "Tomorrow."

Woah. We had no time! So we immediately send out an e-mail to everyone to get them in on the last-minute Hawaiian shirt-wearing theme. Then began to plan our Hawaiian-themed party. Really this just involved someone maybe picking up some leis and me agreeing to make a cake. So I went with coconut, since I love coconut.

I chose Alton Brown's Coconut Cake by way of this really delicious baking blog. It would be one of my first traditional cakes from scratch. What I mean by traditional is that I really love cake mix with added pudding. I will jazz up the mix, go to down on shapes and frosting - but the base cake is never my own creation when it comes to fluffy, cakey cake. This is kind of a daunting recipe. Four layers, filling, 7-minute frosting, and 5 different types of coconut products.

I managed to get the four layers baked, filling, frosted and topped, following instructions to the t, but mine really wasn't quite as lovely looking as the recipe blog photos. I used pre-separated egg whites for the batter, which immediately fell after I reached stiff peaks. So they weren't as fluffy as they were supposed to be. this resulted in a more dense, drier cake. However, the coconut water-soak saved the day to make it ultra moist. The 7-minute frosting was also less fluffy than it was supposed to be, which I'm sure was a temperature thing that I didn't notice. You can tell that its sort of glassy.

Overall everyone loved the cake - its richly sweet with every kind of coconut you can think of - coconut cream, coconut water, coconut milk, coconut extract, coconut shavings. I ended up cracking a coconut on my front stoop in like 20 degree weather with a hammer because I having issues cracking indoors. A man was walking by with his Pomeranian who really, really wanted some coconut. It was an odd scene between us.

This image was captured last minute on the travel tray right before we cut into it. Poor lighting. I would like a prettier cake holder with a 9-inch base rather than 8 inch, but this old Tupperware one that my mom gave me has the most secure handle/locking mechanism on the market. The new ones are all really sketch.

February 3rd, 2011

Relax Cool Red Wine

My favorite wine comes in a sweet red in addition to the original riesling.

February 2nd, 2011

Maverick Square Mural
East Boston, MA

I was waiting for my bus in Maverick Square, when I looked up to notice this mural overlooking the streets. As I tried to find a decent angle, an older gentleman started chatting with me. He introduced himself by way of explaining that he has a copy of that mural, which was actually painted from a turn-of-the-century postcard.

It turns out that he was an East Boston native, up visiting his daughter from Florida with his wife. He explained that there is an entire set of East Boston postcards from that era, which can often be found at local fleamarkets. He gave me some tips on where to find fleamarkets, and chatted a bit more about how the face of the square had changed over the years. He and his wife took off on the 116 bus a few minutes later and I was left wondering how hard it would be to locate one of these postcards when fleamarket attendees hardly have business pages documenting the goods they have for sale.

February 1st, 2011

Never ending snow
East Boston, MA

It's very difficult for me to snap photos on week days. The fact is, I'm usually in such a rush to get to work in the morning, that any am photography will have to take place between my kitchen and the train station. I am a creature of habit who takes nearly the same route each day, so I am not offered a variety of brilliant photographic moments.

Then I labor indoors at work all day. When I emerge, it is dark! I am again confined to photographing things at the gym, the supermarket or on my dark commute. Also a bit limited.

So this leaves me with photographs like this one, where I just demonstrate on how tedious all this snow is getting to be with a general, poorly lit image of the freshly cleared sidewalk. This will not be the last, I'm sure.