February 28th, 2011

Orange Olive Oil Cake

Orange Olive Oil Cake

This recipe is actually from Smitten Kitten, and was originally made with blood oranges. I feel the blood oranges are far too precious to bake with, so I substituted naval oranges. In the end, I believe this was the correct choice. The bread itself is incredibly sweet, so a sweet citrus like blood orange would only make it nauseatingly sweet in my opinion. The naval orange had a delicious tart flavor that complimented the cake. And it was chalk-full of orange chunks.

Big hit at the coffee machine at work. Gone within an hour. If you notice, I only bake for my coworkers. It's too dangerous to keep this kind of stuff in my house.

February 27th, 2011

Naval oranges

These were a part of my Orange Olive Cake preparation. Three oranges go into this cake, which is more like a sweet bread. Perfect for breakfast, delicious with tea.

The process of actually cutting up these oranges, however, is elaborate. First you chop off the tops and bottoms like shown in this photo. then you use a knife to remove the rest of the peel and pith from the sides. Then comes the annoying part: You cut each section out individually so as to end up with only the juicy flesh and not the skin separating the sections.

I do have detailed step-by-step photos of this process, but I'm limited to one per day on here. I like to abide by my own arbitrarily made rules. The end product is tomorrow's photo.

February 25th, 2011

1.5 liters of Relaxation

I was just bragging that I found this in a 1.5L bottle. This is fabulous, easy to go down wine. I'm pretty sure they should sell it in boxes, just so I can have 4L in the fridge and handy at all times. It would be so much easier for parties.

February 22nd, 2011

Yellow poms, this week's flowers

This week's flowers are Poms! So simply, but sturdy and colorful during this drab time of year.

I would like to buy tulips since they're in-season, but tulip stems tend to outgrow their leaves and looks like weird long-necked adolescents after an awkward growth spurt. Then they flop over. It's a sad process. So I don't buy them.

February 20th, 2011

Graffiti on the bus stop bench
Everett, MA

Saturday mornings I like to do errand-based destination runs. One of my favorites, and perfect given my current short-distance minimalist running, is Target. It's approximately 4 miles away with limited traffic to dodge through.

This day had a vicious wind. It was only in the 20s, but the wind. Wow. I got an ice cream headache just walking through the parking lot. Internal pain-inducing wind is not cool, especially when you're underdressed and soaked in sweat. Half the time I do this, I buy sweatpants or something at Target. It's sad.

This shot was taken while I was waiting for the bus to take me home. Random drawing/graffiti on the bench.

February 18th, 2011

Lemon Meringue Tart
Beacon Hill Bistro
Boston, MA

Changing things up at lunch today, we made a reservation at Beacon Hill Bistro. A little fancier than our usual fare and also further down Charles Street.

Funny story. Everyone was gathering to depart at 12:10pm. My test wasn't complete. I had 3-4 minutes left of run time. I told one of the girls to not wait, since it was going to be a little while, everyone walks really slowly anyway and I'd catch up. She says okay and they head off.

I finish my test and head down the slowest elevators ever - the elevators that visitors take. So busy and confusing. I never thought they were coming, but when they did it was a surprisingly short trip down. I booked it out of the building and down Charles Street to the restaurant. I arrive, say I'm with the party of eight -- and they say I'm the first to arrive.

Really? The first? When I left like 8 minutes after they did for a 5 minute walk?

I take a seat in the waiting area and few a minutes later they arrive. They looked surprised. I inwardly roll my eyes, and say to the girl I told to go ahead with me: "I told you they way insanely slow." But given that we took the same exact route I'm still baffled as to how they managed to both end up behind me and not see me pass.

In any case, my meal was delicious. I had a butternut squash sandwich - which was sweet and savory all at once in a toasted bread. Perfect. I didn't eat the fries - why do restaurants still put fries with meals? Ew. This isn't McDonalds. Dessert, however, was this delicious lemon meringue tart. The lemon curd was ultra sweet, but the meringue and crust offset it with buttery, creamy goodness. The touch of caramel also went well with the sweet-tart lemon.

Yum. Totally lavish for a workday lunch.

February 16th, 2011

Coconut Cream Cupcakes

Coconut cupcakes Part 2 starts here. I frosted the tops of the cupcakes with the same coconut frosting, then rolled them in toasted sweetened coconut flakes.

As you can tell, this was like semi-homemade since I used the box cake and bought sweetened coconut flakes. My previous coconut cake from two weeks ago was far more advanced with every last thing from scratch - coconut cracking fresh.

But these were a lot more moist than all of my from-scratch cakes, so I fell back on the box after several disappointing cake textures. Everyone loved these and they disappeared almost immediately. Sweet decadence. I can still smell the sugar coconut in the air.

This was a request by the way, from a coconut loving birthday coworker.