Blue Velvet Cake

Strictly speaking, decorating this cake was a major disaster.

Protips: don’t roast vegetables in the same room while you’re trying to whip cream cheese frosting. Don’t decorate a cake in that room either. Don’t be too prideful to cut off the tops of your cakes to make them even – people do that for a reason. Namely, so that their cake doesn’t come out totally lopsided.

Not my best effort. I set this cake goal hoping I’d learn something about baking and decorating cakes, and I think after lots of near-disasters, I have learned a few things. Basically, I have learned how to problem-solve in the face of panic.

This cake is “blue velvet” because the white frosting was just not working out. I was running back and forth between my living room and the fridge to make this cake chill out, and the frosting was pulling up crumbs like it was its day job. So the white icing was looking decidedly sloppy, to say the least. I just decided – heck, let’s dye it! I was out of red food colouring, so I tinted it blue and just dealt with it. I originally piped icing roses onto the top of the cake, and then spent a good ten minutes laughing out loud at how ridiculous it looked. Wanna see?

In retrospect…NEVERMIND I STILL HATE IT. At this point, I was laughing and saying “YOLO” to myself. Life’s short, it’s cake, whatever. Besides, the recipient of this cake is a wonderful person and I know he wouldn’t have minded if it stayed looking exactly as it did in the above photo.

In the end, I just spread that blue icing all around, tried for an ombre effect, and ultimately just tried to make sure the frosting was smooth and not showing crumbs and then called it a day.

This is a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, because it’s my go-to book for amazing, moist cake that always come out of the pan easily. The recipe for their Crimson Velveteen cupcakes is here – I doubled the recipe to make 2 8-inch cakes. I made the cream cheese icing recipe in Joy the Baker’s cookbook, but I was sad that it didn’t come out. I followed her instructions as closely as possible, leaving the butter and cream cheese out until they were approximately the right temperatures, then doing each of the steps carefully. But my frosting came out runny, not at all like the photo of thick, spreadable frosting in her book. And even after adding more than the recommended amount of icing sugar, it stayed melty and drippy. I was very disappointed, and am still stumped as to why it didn’t work! Her recipes are usually right on. A similar recipe to what I used is here.

Wanna know the best part? It turned out to be, by definition, a blue red-velvet cake. Or, you could call it a  blue velvet cake. The person I made the cake for? Blue Velvet is a movie by one of his favourite directors. I only wish I’d actually planned that..I would have been so fly!

So. It’s not going to win any prizes for looks: it’s lopsided and blue and hilarious in many ways. But it “has character”, and was made with the best intentions and a full heart. So that’s gotta count for something, right? Right?? Plus, it tastes good, if I do say so myself.

Striped Circle Scarf

So, yesterday I was so excited to try this scarf on that I pulled out my winter jacket just to see how it would look. This is significant, because if you know me at all, you know that it takes a very good reason for me to go anywhere near my winter things – I spend most of my time in denial that winter exists. But I was so excited about this scarf that I made in two days in a fit of creative frustration that the winter jacket had to come out for modelling purposes.

I was inspired by Elise’s cowl and was more than happy to follow her simple approach. I tried making a complicated mini herringbone scarf a few weeks ago, and although it was a beautiful pattern, I kept messing it up. I was happy to make something with plain old knitting stitches. This was the perfect project at the perfect time – I had both colours of yarn left over from other projects, had the right sized needles, it was easy. I basically just went with it, figuring out things like switching colours every row by watching videos and by trial and error. Turns out I accidentally joined in the round while some stitches were twisted the wrong way, so my cowl has a permanent twist in it. For my purposes that works just fine (because I am looping it around my neck anyways) but I was really careful about joining in the round so I’m not sure how it happened. I’m blaming my midnight knitting start-time.

 None of my projects ever turn out the way I expect them to, but I always end up appreciating them for what they are. I can’t stand how this cowl is always curling in on itself (that’s the price I pay for knitting the whole thing), and it’s a bit smaller than I thought it would be so it’s a bit tighter around my neck twice. It also looks stupid when it’s not looped. But looped around twice? I love it.

I cast on just over a hundred stitches on 24-inch circular needles. In retrospect, I would have done more like 150-200 stitches. I joined in the round and then knitted every row, switching colours each row. I used the tips in Elise’s post, and this video was totally crucial – I watched it around 4 times.

This project was totally the result of me needing to make something with my hands. It’s (I guess) winter, so knitting feels comforting again. I might try my hand at making some socks. I only wish I had access to better, nicer yarns! Oh well. Now that I’m finished my midterms, I hope to use my time to create some more handmade happiness.

Happy Monday!

Read This Book: Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

The simple fact that we’ve done book club more than once means that I’m calling the endeavour a huge success. Neither time were we more than 4 people, but I’m going to go with the old adage “quality over quantity” on this one. Both our discussions were very interesting, and totally different, since the two books we’ve read so far have very little in common. And this second one, I can safely say it’s far and away my favourite of the two.

How to describe this book? It’s poignant. That’s the word that kept coming up in our discussion. Someone mentioned that the whole book is about grief – it sometimes barely feels that way when you’re reading it, but looking back at it, it’s very, very sad. But it seems also to have a strange glow about it, it’s somehow whimsical and special and happy in its own little way.

The story is about a girl, mid-twenties I’d say, named Audrey, who has a tortoise and lives alone, far from her home, in Oregon. She hears that her father has passed away, and flies home, leaving the tortoise with friends. When she gets back to St. John’s, Newfoundland, she has to cope with his death, and the sadness of both herself and her Uncle Thoby who has always lived with them. It’s incredibly difficult to explain the plot, since there are several flashbacks to her childhood and it’s mainly character-driven. But suffice to say that I didn’t find it boring in the slightest.

The writing is wonderful. As one of our book clubbers pointed out, each last sentence of a chapter is very beautiful and, well, poignant. The writing can at times seem very blunt and straightforward: there are no quotation marks for dialogue, nor exclamation/question marks. Our whole book club, I think, felt that this made you have to engage a lot more with the writing, sometimes having to re-read a sentence to see what sense it’s meant to be read in. And I love the style of writing, because it seems so honest, and while reading you feel as though you’re inside her head (or inside the head of her tortoise Winnifred, whose narrative is both entertaining and touching).

I can’t really pinpoint what makes this book so good. Would it help if I said I nearly cried a couple times, and actually cried at the very end? (I rarely cry at books). Or that Audrey’s sometimes child-like way of looking at the world is so endearing and, at times, relatable? Or that it makes you want to move to a small town and have a Great Safe Adventure with a few special people that you love very much? Or that although it’s sad, it’s also very funny?

For all those reasons, and many more, I adored this book. A review can’t do it justice, but rest assured it’s quite wonderful. If you don’t believe me, know also that it’s won awards and has great reviews. I really hope you give it a chance, it’s a lovely book.

Happy Monday everyone!

September + October

Since I’ve had slightly more free time the last few days, post-midterm, I finally got my act together editing the video for the past two months. Sadly, it had to be one of those doubled-up videos, because heading back-to-school meant a lot less fun activities and a lot more sitting around in apartments studying and occasionally drinking some wine.

I’m pretty thrilled that I’ve kept this project up. Even though this is only a 2 minute video, and lots of events from the month didn’t make it in, it’s still a visual memory of this time in my life, and for that it’s important. This was never going to be a perfect project, it can’t ever capture everything. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important to me!

The idea for making the monthly videos came to me randomly, it wasn’t on any list of goals or New Year’s Resolutions. Yet it’s probably my favourite project of 2012. I enjoy making them because watching the people I care about laughing and smiling and dancing makes me happy.

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