Between the Emotion and the Response

Dear cute boy who was at one point texting me for some reason,

There’s a reason I’ve been MIA.

A few weeks ago I was sitting at my computer, composing a blogpost. I wasn’t Supposed To Be writing a blogpost. I was Supposed To Be immersing myself in a doorstop anthology and mulling over the work of someone great and dead. But this blogpost was going to be a good one. The kind of blogpost that, after I tweeted its arrival, my friends would surely retweet it. Some of these friends knit, some have history degrees: so you know the retweeting would come from people of excellent sense and esteem. The blogpost would be relevant, unique, and for once I’d be doing my little part to support and defend the Constitution, as I once swore to do.

It was going to feature a tweet of Noël’s. I even asked permission to use it. I was going to say how, in roller derby, the jam stops and everyone takes a knee when someone gets hurt. I was going to say that, during all that was going on in Ferguson, I was tweeting about cupcakes, and how me tweeting about cupcakes during that time felt odd. It felt like all of Twitterverse had taken a knee and I was still blithely skating around the track, giving no apparent fucks. Then I was going to muse about our responsibilities as citizens and how that overlaps with social media… until you texted me asking for a selfie, and it was all over.

I hadn’t realized that you were flirting with me until then; this milkshake seldom bring boys of your caliber to the yard, you see. So I reacted as would be expected of me. My brain fucking exploded. I abandoned everything, put on my skates, and bolted. It’s a nervous impulse, really. Like in Friends when Joey puts The Shining in the freezer when the book gets too scary for him. I didn’t know what to do, so I left the fucking house with wheels strapped to my feet. Spoiler alert: this isn’t the first time I’ve done this when you’ve texted me because I DON’T FUCKING KNOW HOW TO HANDLE MYSELF WHEN TALL HOT MEN PAY ATTENTION TO ME.

Thus, I was sprinting – I mean sprinting – down the dark suburban streets. Away! Away from my would’ve-been-perfect blogpost! Away from my neglected homework and my messier-than-all-ungodly-hell bedroom! Away from my cell phone (oops)! And since I always street skate at night, I’m not unfamiliar with the phenomenon of tripping over otherwise miniscule and avoidable potholes and pebbles, but I really wasn’t prepared for the sharp metallic clang of my skate striking this particular unseen obstacle in the pitch dark. Nor was I expecting to fly through the fucking air, taking the Lord’s name in vain* as I sailed through the air and plummeted into a heap on the pavement …without much consequence. (That’s why I wear ALL the protective gear. High impact knee guards, wut?!)

A little (more like a lottle) stunned, I breathed, “What the fuck?” only to abruptly realize that I hadn’t said anything at all and the “What the fuck?” had been spoken by a separate but identical voice to my own. It took me a few more seconds to fully process before responding, definitely, this time, my own voice from my own mouth: “Stephanie?!”

My twin sister. The nun. She wasn’t even supposed to be in the area, as she lives in a tent in my bestie’s backyard in Mount Shasta.

“What are you doing here, Stephanie?” I said.

“I’m taking a break.”

“A break from what?”

“From walking in this metal chastity corset. It’s awfully heavy.”

“In the middle of the road?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

She’s said and done weirder, attempted arsonist that she is.

That being said, it didn’t surprise me that Stephanie had been en route to her ex-girlfriend’s house. Stephanie had planned to “nonchalantly” stroll about until “accidentally” running into the much-admired ex. She would make a point to show off the chastity corset, demonstrating the depth of her commitment to her holy orders. “Chicks dig it when you take your shit seriously,” Stephanie explained. “Once she sees that I’m not screwing up my life, she’ll hella take me back, right?”

There are times when I wish I wasn’t related to my sister. But I never wish that I was completely ignorant of her existence. It’s nice to have someone to point to and say, “There’s somebody that does it worse than I do.”

Despite this, I don’t want to see my sister get in any legal trouble, in this case by means of possibly accruing a restraining order, so I lured her away from her original task with the promise of alcohol. I would have bought her a 40 and dumped her at the Amtrak station, but it was too late to catch The One Train That Goes From Here To Dunsmuir. So we ended up at the local gay bar, got sufficiently sloshed, and went home where she slept on my floor. This meant that I didn’t sleep at all, seeing as there’s only room for one person on the floor and the mattress is preoccupied with laundry baskets and roller-skate-size shoeboxes choc full of miscellany that probably have no purpose but haven’t yet been sorted through. I kept myself awake compiling inventories of pink objects and in the morning Stephanie came to school with me. She chain-smoked American Spirit Menthols outside the Humanities building and I got called out for falling asleep in class. It’s as embarrassing as it sounds.

Because alcohol is a depressant, sleep deprivation is a bitch, and I therefore wanted a hug from my best friend, I accompanied Stephanie when she left on that night’s train. We fell asleep in the lounge car where the conductors don’t wake you up when your stop comes along. Therefore, we missed Dunsmuir and were found out and kicked off at Eugene. Stephanie was optimistic about correcting this error via hitchhiking, but we did so in the wrong direction. Now we’re staying at the White Eagle in Portland, and I’m sure once the White Eagle realizes we have insufficient funds to pay our increasing bar tab and lodging fees, we’ll be staying in jail. After little deliberation, Stephanie has concluded that her chastity corset must be worth something and is willing to part with it. If she does manage to sell it, I doubt the sum will cover what we owe, but my blood alcohol level is high enough to negate any will to argue with her.

So, here I sit. On a barstool in a far-enough-away state. Away from most all spheres of responsibilities, in academia, social media, or otherwise. I am not explosive. My arms tingle and refuse to raise themselves to chuck anything that overwhelms me into the freezer. My head is both quiet like suburban nighttime but loud like live music and the sound of my speeding skate against my sister’s strange way of perceiving the world. Away from Where I’m Supposed To Be: that place where staying up all night for the purposes of completing schoolwork is congratulated – yes, good. Good on you. Good on you for whimpering when all you want is a good bang.

We’re all dying, cute boy. It’s all clockwork and propulsion toward our very ends.

…

I’m starting to wonder if alcoholism runs in my family and no one’s cared to tell me about it.

Speaking of, um, clockwork(?), Stephanie borrowed the bartender’s library card so that she could go down to the nearest branch of the Multnomah County Library and check her Facebook. Please forgive me, as this information is coming from my sister and I’m sure she’d doctored a few of the details, but I hear someone threatened to stab you with a knitting needle at a roller derby bout? I know people who knit to be people of excellent sense… so why would they want to stab you? Is there something you’re not telling me? Does that sound too much like victim-blaming?

I now leave you with the Decemberists performing a song about a place in San Francisco. Because that’s how you prove you’re exactly where you say you are.

* Not saying I’m proud of this, btw, I AM a nice Protestant girl. Goddammit.

Nothing Corrodes Skin Like Radioactive Hamster Slime ... Or Sibling Rivalry

Dear cute boy who for whatever reason is at least trying to engage me in light, platonic, but nonetheless nerve-wracking discourse on Facebook,

No, I’m not taking forever to get back to you because my head fucking explodes when I even start to try to figure out how to talk to you, which therefore requires extensive internal persuasion and possible ingestion of illicit substances to get me to accomplish, like, finishing a sentence.

I’m taking forever to get back to you because I’ve been in Aruba. It’s in, um, Russia. I met up with my sister Stephanie there because she’s on a speaking tour for her new book I Became A Nun And All I Got Was This Bag Of Cheetos and she forgot her fake-mink coat at home. Fake-mink is commonly mistaken for real-hamster pelts, but my sister doesn’t think these things through. Being the devoted, dutiful and pathologically passive-aggressive sibling that I am, I went forth posthaste at great inconvenience to fetch it from her tent in Mount Shasta and deliver it to her in Aruba, Russia. I stalled, of course, because (1) Stephanie’s landlord is a bad ass who made Cherry-Chocolate Upside Down Cake, and (2) I didn’t want to miss the roller derby bout that was going down just a block away from their residence.

Yes, being a block away from a venue of roller derby bouts and practices is one of many reasons why I hate Stephanie, but we can’t win them all. (Neither can the derby girls, you should have seen the bruises on them…not that bruises are any indicator of winning or losing.)

Aaaaanyhizzle, after the bout, I took Stephanie’s secret passageway that links her tent to her in-progress mansion in Colorado, for the sole purpose of spray-painting profanity all over her tres chic, hot pink granite paneling. I then hitchhiked to Aruba by means of a large, glow-in-the-dark opposable thumb, which was sighted by a clinically depressed helicopter pilot named 9-Volt Reuben the Third. 9-Volt’s life, allegedly, had no meaning for him anymore now that the local coffee place near his house closed and the only java available to him in the locale were Starbucks and burnt, generic gas station brew. I don’t think Starbucks is bad, but that’s not a bone I was going to pick. This coffee-themed desperation was the reason why he really didn’t mind taking me halfway around the world to see my klepto-nympho narcissist of an identical twin. You know, the kind of twin who wears fake mink even though it looks like hamster pelts and has a history of trying to burn down school libraries.

To pass the time, 9-Volt and I regarded the clouds and told each other what we thought they looked like. One cloud looked like a bruise one of the derby girls had on her thigh. I could see it through her fishnets and it reminded me of a bruise I once had on my hip. I miss that bruise. Putting on my pants has never been the same since it faded away. Another cloud looked like a coffee cup, and 9-Volt started to cry. Then I pointed at another one, said it looked like Prozac, and that 9-Volt should go swallow it. He said I was being a little insensitive, but didn’t follow up on threats to push me out of the helicopter.

No one said anything for a while. Then 9-Volt pointed out a cloud that looked like a guinea pig. “It’s actually a hamster,” I said.

Someone sitting next to me at Stephanie’s Cheeto symposium later asked me how I knew the clouds were hamster shaped and not guinea pig shaped. At which point a shadow serendipitously descended upon them and I pointed to the offending figure and screamed, “BECAUSE THERE’S ONE NOW!” The symposium exploded into chaos, not unlike how I once saw a bowl of cat food explode into maggots. That’s another story. I took pictures, but I’m not going to post them here because I’M A FUCKING LADY.

Anyway, this is the part where my generous jaunt to the other side of the world turned into a touching, Lifetime-channel-esque story, as my sister and I were reunited (like we were united ever in the first place…?) in the cause of saving the world from these giant mutant hamsters, who, as it turns out, wouldn’t have given two shits about the Saint Thecla’s University satellite campus in Aruba, Russia if the leader didn’t mistake Stephanie’s fake mink for his mother’s fur. Despite my sister being a flaming nebbish who no one should miss when she’s gone (did I mention that she once tried to burn down a library?), in that moment we knew there were more important things than age-old family feuds. We knew there was more to life than even Cheetos. We knew that we had to SAVE THE WORLD, and we took those rodent motherfuckers down. Or we thought we did. Despite our delusions of grandeur, most of them got away.

But the cause wasn’t completely lost because the hamsters do spew hyper-acidic slime, so half of my sister’s face did get corroded. She wasn’t super-seriously hurt, only disfigured, so I don’t think I should feel guilty about the billowing sense of satisfaction I get every time I look at her. The sentiment might be ugly, but now her face is uglier. Amirite?

So… that’s why I haven’t responded to your FB message. I would have gotten you a hamster tail as a token of my… what? Hormonal, might-as-well-be-adolescent, terrifying admiration?… but the only hamster who had a tail was the Boss Hamster, and that one got away first.

Which is why I have to end this blogpost – which you will NEVER EVER SEE I HOPE – with a warning that we are looking at a certain hamster apocalypse. What can I say? I tried. When it came down to it, stopping to laugh at my sister’s misfortune (see: her new face) felt far more important than, you know, saving the world. Well, I gotta go beta-read the aforementioned bad ass’s landlord’s novel now (a sequel to this), because it’s a good yarn and I’d like to see it published before we all die.

Catch ya on the whenever-side!

Sushi in Mount Shasta

Sometime when I was in high school, my family started making sushi for Thanksgiving. My parents didn’t like turkey, so our Thanksgivings were more or less being played by ear anyway. It wasn’t a big adjustment, but it was a start of a tradition. When it started I was a vegan, which lasted a little over two years until I went back to lacto-ovo vegetarian, so I have a hard time remembering what fish was present at the table. I know they had tuna. I know they didn’t have cream cheese.

When Sophia and I were brainstorming what to put in our homemade sushi rolls a few weeks ago, she mentioned cream cheese because she was going to pair it with imitation crab, and the way the dominos fell in my head resulted in a declaration that I should make an abomination sushi roll. Because somehow, over the years, I internalized cream cheese being a Western phenomenon and therefore not authentic to the Real Sushi Experience. Moreover, I internalized it as something my parents must frown upon in all its lack of authenticity. But my parents also frown upon cake mixes* and Starbucks (the “foofy” bar drinks are weak with too much milk, etc.)… so… life.

When you buy your produce,
do have your avocados inspected by a two-year-old

The abomination sushi roll originally came in the spirit of haha, I’m going to exploit our shared experience on the internet anyway, so wouldn’t it be funny if I made something that in the context of my upbringing is so outlandishly low brow. (I want bonus points for not being able to bring myself to put in tomatoes or Goldfish crackers.) It ended up being one of the best things I threw caution into the wind for. But we’ll talk about my abomination sushi roll later, after I narrate the Mount Shasta sushi experience.

Okay, first of all, sushi rice is a bitch.

One of the less bitchy steps is rinsing it before you cook it. We (Sophia and I) made sushi again two nights later without rinsing the rice and we think rinsing the rice made a difference. We didn’t soak the rice on either occasion. If you’re making sushi and contemplating whether or not to soak the rice before cooking it, judging by the lost glutinousness of the unrinsed rice, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take the time to soak the rice too. I think the recipe has you do it for, like, thirty minutes.

Once the calrose rice is cooked, it needs to be emptied into a large bowl. This bowl is preferably wooden (my family always uses a huge wooden salad bowl), but porcelain, like we used in Mount Shasta, is fine too. This bowl just can’t be metal. The rice goes into this non-metal bowl and one person takes a rice paddle and carefully, as to not moosh it, tosses the rice. While tossing the rice, a vinegar/sugar solution is drizzled in gradually. Person One keeps tossing not just until the vinegar/sugar solution is evenly distributed, but until the rice is cool. Fact: that takes a while, even with the second person. The second person stands over the bowl and fans the rice while Person One tosses it, which expedites the process, I’m sure, but it still takes forever and everyone’s arms will feel like they’re going to fall off unless they’ve got the upper arm strength of the Hulk (…or someone who makes sushi on a regular basis…) which is no one I know (actually, my brother might suffice, since he joined the army, but I’m realizing now he hasn’t had the opportunity to come home for Thanksgiving since he joined the army) (some people capitalize “army”. I don’t. Sue me).

Where were we?

Oh. That sushi rice is a bitch.

In my family, eventually Person Two is given a Zippi fan to hold over the rice as opposed to manually fanning with a magazine or whatever, but arms still get tired. In Mount Shasta, Sophia, Jeff, and I were making sushi in the summer. It was hot. They were toddler-lagged. I was train-lagged. After starting the tossing process it wasn’t long before I said, “Fuck this,” and, as I am wont to do with most of my problems, stuck it in the refrigerator and hoped it would solve itself.
And nothing bad happened! Mazel tov!

Every fifteen minutes or so, I would open the refrigerator and toss the rice. I don’t know how much of a difference that made for the rice itself, but I think it made one. Maybe the hope that it did comes from an unconscious attempt to alleviate some of the guilt of shirking the regular, more labor-intensive sushi protocol I’m used to.

One of the cool things (ha… temperature) about putting the sushi rice in the refrigerator is that it freed up more hands to prepare ingredients. Due to my vegetarianism and Sophia’s pre-existing condition, no raw fish was prepared. But cream cheese was present (DUN DUN DUN…)

Pacifier: optional.

The other thing to keep in mind about sushi rice being a bitch is that it’s worth it and the rolling is easier. This is true at least judging by my experience, but then again, it’s not like I’ve attempted an inside-out roll.

HOW TO ROLL SUSHI (featuring Sophia’s hands)

1) Lay out a piece of nori on a sushi mat. I think Alton Brown specified glossy side down instead of up, but if you can’t tell which side is the glossy one because you’re drunk, that’s okay. You’re my hero. I’ll see you in the ER.

Um… yeah, piece of nori on the sushi mat. Wet your fingers in a bowl of water, which you have out in front of you because you’re prepared, and gently smoosh rice onto the nori. Not all the way out to the edges. You want maybe ¼ inch margin on all sides.

Sophia wanted me to make sure y’all knew that any dirt or stain you see under
or around her fingernails can be attributed to neglecting to wear gloves during a
tie-dyeing session. When I told her that I couldn’t see anything, she told me she
could also add that she’s crazy.
I’m adding that she’s one of the most non-crazy, level-headed people I know.

2) Arrange what you want in your sushi roll on the edge of the nori that’s closest to you. In Sophia’s case, she had cream cheese, smoked salmon and cucumber. Ultimately, I think she also ended up with avocado. Don’t over stuff it. If you do over stuff it, that’s okay, too. Not because it’s advisable, but because sometimes it’s okay to make mistakes. I dare you to use that in a pickup line.

3) Now that it’s got everything you want on it, carefully roll the nori with your fingers. You want it to be snug, but you also don’t want it to tear.

4) Once the sushi roll is actually rolled, roll it in the mat and give it a gentle squeeze for good measure. This, too, makes a difference.

5) Set the roll on a cutting board. Wet the blade of the knife before slicing it.

6) Now you have sushi. Your life is about to get better. (Or it should.)

At my family Thanksgivings, we made sushi in sort of an assembly line. Two or three of us would make rolls and one person would cut them, then everything would show up at the table on communal serving dishes because that’s how the pilgrims did it. Sophia and Jeff interpreted homemade sushi as more of an individual thing: make your own sushi roll, cut it yourself, eat it on your own plate. This makes sense to me. There’s more latitude to personalize. It’s not like you’d have someone else make your burrito. (Would you? Maybe you would.)

I got the idea from Jeff to bite into my sushi roll without cutting it. It’s not what he ended up doing, but it’s what I did with the first abomination sushi roll. It had basil, cream cheese, clover sprouts, cucumber, green beans, and avocado. Have you ever had cream cheese and sushi rice together?! It’s only kind of EXTREMELY AMAZING.

Like the value of being classically trained, tradition is important. It has its place, but it seems like the best shit that goes down in the kitchen happens after you stop giving a fuck, and selectively retain the parts of your “classical training” or whatever that are gonna make whatever you’re doing amazing. Free to be you and me, bitches.

Also, anti-cake-mix bias or no, it’s pretty damn cool when your family is the kind of family who picks up a kind of tradition like sushi at Thanksgiving.

So amazing that I made another one and cut it that time.

What would you put in an abomination sushi roll?




*Some of the best cupcakes I ever made involved cake mix. I hid it in my room after I brought it home from the store and added it hella on the DL. I brought the mixing bowl into my room when I was making the cupcakes so nobody would see me use the cake mix. They ate the cupcakes later and liked them. Trufax. To keep these fax tru, plz don’t tell my parents that those cupcakes were made from cake mix.

Vegetable Pot Pie Cupcakes

Last time I was in Mount Shasta, I was prattling on to Sophia about all the cupcakes I made recently. When I got to vegetable pot pie cupcakes, Sophia asked what made them cupcakes and not mini pot pies...

...

Because cupcakes go up to eleven.

I first discovered the pot pie cupcakes on Tablespoon. That recipe calls for Pillsbury Grands! biscuits, but I didn’t want to buy dough if I could find all the ingredients around my house already. I had all this fucking leftover buttermilk from the pink lemonade cupcakes, so the obvious choice was making buttermilk biscuits. I used the Brown Eyed Baker’s buttermilk biscuit recipe since I had so much success with her Irish Car Bombs, only I used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose. In the biscuits, not the car bombs (holy shit). Once the biscuit ingredients were Cuisinarted, it went straight from the food processor to a greased muffin tin, where I squished the dough to the bottoms and sides of the cups with my fingers.

Then I stuck the muffin tins in the refrigerator, because we get ants in the summer time and I didn’t want to find out the hard way how quickly they’d discover the dough, and pondered what I’d fill them with.

The original recipe was for chicken pot pie cupcakes. I’m a vegetarian so that wasn’t going to fly (hahaha chickens don’t fly anyway). And don’t get me wrong: I don’t have anything against textured vegetable protein. I totally would have incorporated some soy product parading as chicken flesh. I would have even used chickpeas like Vegan Dad suggested. It’s just that in a world where pajama pants aren’t acceptable public attire (depending on who you ask) and, moreover, roller skates aren’t allowed in grocery stores, I didn’t want to leave the house if I could help it. Therefore I was limited by when I could scavenge from the refrigerator, freezer, and corresponding pantries.

Here’s what I ended up using:

• 1 t thyme
• 1 t oregano
• ¼ t tarragon
• A few shakes of garlic powder
• A generous pinch of salt
• Three egg yolks (a byproduct of the pink lemonade cupcakes, which called for egg whites)
• 1ish cup stock made from vegetable Better Then Bullion
• A cup of nonfat milk
• An onion the size of a baby’s head. (Actually, I only used ¼ of the baby’s head.)

  

  baby head

• 2 smallish potatoes of questionable quality
• 6ish frozen okra

  

  okra

• A little more than 2/3 of a cup of frozen peas
• A little less than 2/3 of a cup of frozen corn
• A little more than ½ of a cup of dehydrated mushrooms

  

  What kind? Beats me.
  But if you stare into it long enough,
  it’ll tell you your future.

• Marinated artichoke hearts (not mixed in with the rest of the ingredients; added one on top of most of them before I put them in the oven)

I prepared and combined the ingredients for the filling and distributed them into the biscuits-cups (which had risen a little while they were sitting in the fridge, but I squished them back down: opposable thumbs are a beautiful thing). I thought I was doing The Right Thing when I added extra filling-liquid to each one, but then after I put them into the oven I smelled something burning and realized I was WAY wrong.

I opened the oven door to see liquid pooling on the surface area of the muffin tins and spilling over the sides, the drips becoming solid when they hit the oven floor. I watched this for a few seconds before putting a cookie sheet underneath the dripping tins. I thought to myself that I’d have to make them more carefully on a later occasion in order to make them all internet-pretty.

The dish has what filling didn’t get used.
Also, in case you were wondering: 425 degrees F for 25-30 minutes.

But in a world where I can’t roller skate in my local grocery store without immediate legal repercussions and pajama pants are only partially socially acceptable public attire: fuck the internet and fuck pretty. These pot pies cupcakes are a good idea. Good enough that I’ll probably remake them on a later occasion. But for now, I’m just going to tell you what I would have done differently and what went up to eleven.

WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY:

• I would have sautéed the onion first. In fact, I would have sautéed the onion with celery.
• I’m pretty sure the potatoes weren’t done.
• I would have used less liquid (½ cup stock, ½ cup milk).
• I would have mixed in some cornstarch for thickening.
• I would have used whole eggs
• I would have tried chickpeas. Because I’m curious.
• I would have roasted one or two whole cloves of garlic in an open fry pan, cut them up and added them. That wouldn’t be a bad idea.

It was right out of the oven, so I guess you could say
it was a “hot mess”.

WHAT WENT/GOES UP TO ELEVEN:

• These cupcakes proved to me that (marinated artichoke hearts) + (the oven) = always a good idea unless it’s, like, cheesecake. I remembered this the next time I made pizza cupcakes, and they were AMAZING.

  

  Pizza cupcakes with artichoke hearts.
  Epic as fuck.

• Peas and corn. Fuck yeah.
• It took some of the buttermilk off of my hands (Brown Eyed Baker rules!).
• Pot pie cupcakes are adjustable. You can put in whatever you want, within reason.

Pot pie cupcakes, awwww yeah...

MORE THINGS THAT GO UP TO ELEVEN:

• Public libraries
• Making lists
• Roller skating in grocery stores (...in theory)
• Roller skating in public libraries
• Opposable thumbs
• Finding the inner cupcake of all things

Lasagna Cupcakes / Taco Cupcakes

I came across lasagna cupcakes and taco cupcakes while perusing Tablespoon. I also saw something to the same effect on Tattooed Martha, so I guess this particular employ of wonton wrappers either is or was in some capacity of “trending”. Taco cupcakes and lasagna cupcakes use wonton wrappers as a layering device, e.g. with lasagna cupcakes, you put a wonton wrapper into one of the cups of the muffin tin and then put pasta sauce, ricotta and mozzarella before putting in another wonton wrapper and adding the same ingredients in again. I forgot to buy ricotta at the store, so my lasagna cupcakes were texturally compromised in that way.

lasagna cupcakes in the oven

After first tasting them, I thought my biggest problem with the lasagna cupcakes had nothing to do with the lasagna cupcakes: like it hadn’t been long enough since the pizza cupcakes for any endeavor of the tomato sauce persuasion to not pale in comparison. With time I realized that wasn’t the case. Wonton wrappers are thinner than lasagna or ravioli dough. I don’t think wonton wrappers are made to be compatible with a pasta-like situation.

lasagna cupcakes

assembling the taco cupcakes

The taco palate was a little more compatible. I was in the unique situation of having savory black bean cupcakes to use up, so I used that and enchilada sauce and jack cheese. In a less unique situation, I’d suggest regular beans (not refried).

taco cupcakes out of the oven

But what I’d suggest even more is Madras Lentils, cheese, enchilada sauce, and sweet potatoes. They were a total afterthought. I combined them together two days later just to get rid of the remaining wonton wrappers and they were great! The starch of the potatoes helped balance out the texture, I think. Keep in mind that the sweet potatoes were already baked when the cupcakes were assembled (chopped up, 425 degrees, 45 minutes)

Madras Lentil/sweet potato

If you clicked on the Tablespoon link or the Tattooed Martha link in the first paragraph of this post, you probably noticed that their cupcakes look like they’ve been in the oven longer. If you’re hoping for the wonton wrappers to come out looking more like theirs than mine, I’d say you should definitely put them in for closer to like, eighteen or nineteen minutes (maybe even longer for the lasagna cupcakes), because mine were in for closer to the minimum time (sixteen minutes).

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

If you want an explanation for why pink lemonade is pink, there are two folkloric options. Both have to do with lemonade vendors at a circus. Option the first involves the vendor needing to resort to using recycled water from a circus star’s laundry to make his lemonade. The hue of the water is attributed to her pink tights. Option the second involves a red candy falling from the vendor’s mouth into the lemonade while the vendor is stirring the batch. Personally, I prefer the pink tights version. Maybe some of you will refuse to play along and insist that you like the unlisted version in which the only things responsible for the lemonade’s pinkness are quaint*, unadulterated raspberries.

It was while I was Googling the reason for why pink lemonade is pink that I came across pink lemonade cupcakes. Because they were pink, I eventually sought to try my hand at them. I used a recipe from a blog called Let Them Eat Cake And Ice Cream, a title I envy so deeply that part of me wishes I thought of it first. The cupcakes themselves are shiny. There’s a bit of sheen on them when they come out of the oven, but the uncooked batter was even shinier. Not a bad thing per se, just something I found to be unusual.

Shiny pink lemonade cupcakes.

Shinier pink lemonade cupcake batter.

Don’t let the sheen stop you from trying them, though. The consistency of the cake was pleasing. I’m at a loss to comment on the actual flavor of the cake, as I found it difficult to detect it in contrast to the overpowering flavor of the frosting. I’ll claim the fault for that. I distinctly remember deviating from the recipe while making the frosting and throwing in more tablespoons of pink lemonade concentrate than was originally called for. However, a friend who I usually refer to as “the Clerk” enjoyed the cupcakes so much that I could persuade her to relieve me of half of the batch.

I made these pink lemonade cupcakes the same day that I made pink champagne cupcakes. I added pink lemonade concentrate to the champagne for a post-baking pick-me-up. It didn’t make the ten dollar champagne I was using taste any more expensive, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Just sayin.

It’s also worth mentioning that these cupcakes do require buttermilk. Sophia later taught me a buttermilk substitution trick that I wish I knew at the time. If you’re not interested in buying a whole damn carton of buttermilk when you need only a cup or less for a recipe, simply take regular milk and add lemon juice, let it sit until it curdles and use that instead. I haven’t tried this yet, seeing as I’m still working through the last carton (not a complete loss: whole wheat buttermilk biscuits used in vegetable pot pies! Post to come!). However, Sophia has enough kitchen expertise that I would trust it.

Yes, those are pink heart cupcake wrappers. Squee!

*For another fun fact, look up the Middle English definition for “quaint” (spelled queynte).

I-Swurr-I-Wasn't-Drunk Pink Champagne Cupcakes

Everything was going fine.

I stood by the mixer, thinking normal baking thoughts, specifically that I may have a new baking hamartia. I used to consider my hamartia to be over-filling cupcake wrappers. I think it may have been replaced by forgetfulness in regards to how little pink dye is required to turn things pink, because the batter in front of me was looking less pink champagne and more Barbie Dream House. (A minor observation, definitely not enough to challenge the fact that everything as going fine.)

I filled the reusable silicone wrappers in the muffin tins, set the tins on the counter and opened the oven.

Halved recipe for the win.

Then it happened.

!?!?!?!

I guess one of the muffin tins wasn’t sitting far enough on the counter, and when I opened the oven door it got knocked from its height and six unbaked cupcakes flopped facedown on my kitchen floor. Of course I freaked out: since picking up my compulsive cupcake habit a few months ago, I’ve freaked out about much lesser matters. These were champagne cupcakes, and I hadn’t even imbibed any of the champagne while I was making them, and they ended up on the floor! What the fuck, people?!

I think the reuseable wrappers helped the salvageablility of the cupcakes. They all went into the oven, as planned. I guess this is the part where I could have dipped into the open champagne bottle, but I don’t have a very high tolerance and I was going to make more cupcakes that day. And I was home alone. If I’m ever in a position to experiment with how my cupcakes come out when I’m under the influence, there should probably be some supervision…*

I cleaned the pink cupcake prints off the floor, expressed my poutrage in a tweet or two and did some dishes. I speculated the “ick” factor of the fallen cupcakes, seeing as they’d made contact with my dirty kitchen floor, and decided that I might eat the fallen ones, but I wouldn’t frost them. Part of the decision to not frost ALL of them had to do with my much-vocalized annoyance with burdensome leftover buttercream.

One of the victories of this batch of cupcakes, then, was that I yielded no extra frosting. I was crazy-careful and made the smallest batch of frosting I’ve ever made: containing only ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar, the most prudently portioned pat of butter, a slight splash of champagne, and an amount of pink dye that as so small, I’m not sure how it even got in there.

Small kitchen catastrophies aside, these cupcakes were delicious: very moist. The flavors are present without being overpowering. I’d recommend them! Here’s where you can find the recipe.

The cupcakes' shape may have also been influenced by the reuseable wrappers.

When’s the last time you baked with booze?
Or the last time your cupcakes fell on the kitchen floor?



* I may not have a drunk kitchen record, but this woman is another story:

 

Further Frivolous Commentary on Pink Roller Skates

Another fresh-meat girl has pink roller skates, too. I noticed this during her first practice while I was skating backwards. I was so entranced that I almost ran into someone behind me. Her wheels are the color of raspberry sorbet. Delicious roller skate wheels, nom nom nom…

Effing Delicious Ginger Cupcakes

I found this recipe for Rose and Ginger Cupcakes on the Martha Stewart website. There was a comment that the cupcake-to-glaze proportions were way off. I was quick to take the comment with NO grains of salt because I still have a massive container of Bailey’s frosting in my freezer from my Irish Car Bomb adventure and I’m pretty sick of amassing seemingly endless leftover frosting/icing. So, of course I halved what I already intended to make of the glaze (I was already halving the recipe overall). And if I made these cupcakes again, I would omit the glaze entirely.

The glaze was pink, so it had that much going for it.

I wouldn’t make it with the glaze at all because these cupcakes are best when plain and warm. They had been out of the oven for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes by the time I had distributed my lacking batch of glaze over maybe half of the cupcakes I made (it fell short) and sunk my teeth into one of the plain ones. As interesting and delectable as I found the rosewater taste to be, there is no replacement for the convergence of warm flavor of ginger and temperature warmth of a baked good fresh out of the oven. Unless you’re someone who doesn’t like ginger, in which case I guess there are plenty of replacements.

In the interest of full disclosure, it’s worth mentioning that slashing the glaze-to-cupcake proportion isn’t the only way I detracted from the original recipe. The original recipe calls for 3 egg whites; I put in 2 eggs. Yolks and whites. Technically, it should have been 1.5 egg whites, but it was after a long day and I was experiencing a small lapse of giving any fucks. I used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour for similar reasons.

I also added more candied ginger than was called for: something I would strongly recommend you do if you like ginger as much as I do. The bag of crystallized ginger chips I was using was already open. When I went to measure out the tablespoon that the recipe prescribed, I reinterpreted the measurement to…the whole bag (because I have boundary issues?). Like I said, the bag was already open, but a good 5 or 6 ounces went tumbling into the bowl of the stand mixer. AND IT TURNED OUT FUCKING DELICIOUS.

The glaze, mind you, wasn’t gross or anything. It tasted interesting, and if you’re going to dismiss my testimonies of the awesomeness that is these cupcakes when they are plain, then do so with the knowledge that you’re not going to want to halve anything. You especially won’t want to halve the batch of glaze if you want it to flush out with the top of the cupcake wrapper like in the picture on the original recipe.

HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS PINK?!

This house in San Francisco is pink!

The laces and the wheels on these roller skates are pink too!

So are these high top Converse!

They may have been pinker at an earlier point in their shoe-lives.

As are these strange pickles occupying my avocado wrap!

And these flower petals that are having a dramatic moment in the sunset!

AND! AND! AND!

The cupcakes on the front of this play-microwave!