how cute are these kitties*??
*photos courtesy of Jeremy Hancock.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
some linen closet
well that's a mighty messy linen closet. how'd all those towels end up so disheveled and on the floor?
wait, is there something up there??
something ... sleepy, perhaps? something rather ... furry-bottomed and shameless?
ah yes. it's anya. enjoying a nice relaxing nap after wreaking havoc on the linens in a no-holds-barred effort to claw her way to the tippity-top of the closet.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
cupcakes blacker than sin
my fabulous mother-in-law's birthday was this week.
this is me and mother-in-law at a sock hop, circa 2010.
this is mother-in-law using only the powers of her mind to levitate a bouncy ball on my first hancock christmas.
this is one of our earliest hancock+missy family portraits at a cross-dressing charity event back in the day. (wasn't jeremy just radiantly beautiful? btw in case you are wondering, brother-in-law there in the front was tammy fae baker, complete with real-weepy-action.)
i realize that some people might read that "fabulous mother-in-law" statement and assume that i say it sarcastically. but no, i pretty much won the in-laws lottery. totally love the hancocks. as a matter of fact, i am sending purposely annoying text messages to my brother-in-law [just for fun times] while writing this post! (where is your mom, ben? "i don't know" well did she tell you any of her plans for tonight? "no she did not" BUT I MADE CUPCAKES, BENJAMIN!!! CUPCAKES, DO YOU HEAR ME?! good thing he is a patient lad.) anyway, the point is, love my in-laws, i'm a lucky ducky.
so anyways, we did not celebrate my mother-in-law's b-day on wednesday due to her currently ridiculous work schedule ... but tonight, we acknowledge the date of her birth. so i did the only thing i know to do in these situations.
i baked something.
but i didn't just bake any old something. no, no. i baked cupcakes. dark chocolate cupcakes. flourless, deep dark chocolate cupcakes. yes i did.
super moist, super chocolatey, blacker than sin.
and so then i was like .. you can't just take unfrosted cupcakes to a woman that you respect for her birthday. it's just ridiculous. however, i really suck at making frosting. it consistently turns my kitchen into a disaster area, it's always heavy and gritty and gross and you can feel your teeth rotting from all the sugar ... blech. so instead, i made whipped cream. stabilized whipped cream for long-lasting-action.
and then i was like, what makes whipped cream better?
and then jeremy opened a cabinet where he had stashed my cake-testing toothpicks (the nerve .. can you even imagine?) and there was a bottle of jack daniels.
the finished product, topped with some bittersweet chocolate shavings.
i don't mean to toot my own horn here but ... *toot toot*.
**editor's note**
so then jeremy got confused and thought today was National Be Really Boring Day and he fell asleep on the couch with tillie mae (that little skank waffle)((pictured below))
and so i was bored and made a ganache with my leftover bittersweet chocolate. i thought i'd be real slick and dip the whipped cream-topped cupcakes in the ganache, but my first attempt resulted in catastrophic failure.
so i drizzled it on, instead. never let it be said that missy hancock was afraid to gild a lily.
this is me and mother-in-law at a sock hop, circa 2010.
this is mother-in-law using only the powers of her mind to levitate a bouncy ball on my first hancock christmas.
this is one of our earliest hancock+missy family portraits at a cross-dressing charity event back in the day. (wasn't jeremy just radiantly beautiful? btw in case you are wondering, brother-in-law there in the front was tammy fae baker, complete with real-weepy-action.)
i realize that some people might read that "fabulous mother-in-law" statement and assume that i say it sarcastically. but no, i pretty much won the in-laws lottery. totally love the hancocks. as a matter of fact, i am sending purposely annoying text messages to my brother-in-law [just for fun times] while writing this post! (where is your mom, ben? "i don't know" well did she tell you any of her plans for tonight? "no she did not" BUT I MADE CUPCAKES, BENJAMIN!!! CUPCAKES, DO YOU HEAR ME?! good thing he is a patient lad.) anyway, the point is, love my in-laws, i'm a lucky ducky.
so anyways, we did not celebrate my mother-in-law's b-day on wednesday due to her currently ridiculous work schedule ... but tonight, we acknowledge the date of her birth. so i did the only thing i know to do in these situations.
i baked something.
but i didn't just bake any old something. no, no. i baked cupcakes. dark chocolate cupcakes. flourless, deep dark chocolate cupcakes. yes i did.
super moist, super chocolatey, blacker than sin.
and so then i was like .. you can't just take unfrosted cupcakes to a woman that you respect for her birthday. it's just ridiculous. however, i really suck at making frosting. it consistently turns my kitchen into a disaster area, it's always heavy and gritty and gross and you can feel your teeth rotting from all the sugar ... blech. so instead, i made whipped cream. stabilized whipped cream for long-lasting-action.
and then i was like, what makes whipped cream better?
and then jeremy opened a cabinet where he had stashed my cake-testing toothpicks (the nerve .. can you even imagine?) and there was a bottle of jack daniels.
the finished product, topped with some bittersweet chocolate shavings.
i don't mean to toot my own horn here but ... *toot toot*.
**editor's note**
so then jeremy got confused and thought today was National Be Really Boring Day and he fell asleep on the couch with tillie mae (that little skank waffle)((pictured below))
and so i was bored and made a ganache with my leftover bittersweet chocolate. i thought i'd be real slick and dip the whipped cream-topped cupcakes in the ganache, but my first attempt resulted in catastrophic failure.
so i drizzled it on, instead. never let it be said that missy hancock was afraid to gild a lily.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
have you humped anyone today? (don't look at me like that. it's hump day.)
breakfast. trader joe's reduced sugar triple nuts cereal (i love a mouthful of triple nuts first thing in the morning!...whatever, it's real tasty cereal. and there are a lot of nuts in it.) and peppermint tea.
lunch is a salad (with hummus instead of salad dressing) and string cheese because i feel like i haven't been eating too many vegetables lately and that's probably not great. i am also taking a snacktime apple and some saltines and ginger ale, because after lunch yesterday (after feeling normal all morning!) i felt pretty barfy for a while. it simmered down but i still felt weird the rest of the night. what is going on in my guts? [it is not the 'p' word so do not even begin to conjecture] i also had a nasty headache most of yesterday and woke up with it today. good times.
here is a demon cat. she and tillie mae hate each other super big time. she used to get along pretty ok with alfred but [as you saw yesterday] they have started brawling too. though i think their fights are for fun times because there's never any chunks of fur or blood or screaming like there is with tillie.
i went for my first outside morning time spring time walk today. it was very nice. the sky was pretty while the sun came up and there were like hundreds of birds singing. it reminded me of back in the day when i lived on west king street in boone and i went for early morning time spring time walks through the residential areas nearby. a lot of the sounds and smells are the same, but sadly the sights have pretty much nothing in common.
a busy day in boone.
a busy day in newport news. also, 5 people were shot during in the time it took to take this photograph.
speaking of not loving where we live, jeremy told me a bit about Obama's shipyard speech from yesterday. he ended up with, "...so anyway at least now we have a good reason to sell the house and move to Canada like we always wanted". womp womp.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
tuesday bluesday
anya: hey alfred buddy, how's it goin' whatcha doin' i wanna do that too it looks fun is it fun hey alfred!
anya: hey, alfred!?!?!?!!
anya: hey alfred guess what.
anya: guess what.
anya: alfred, guess what.
alfred:WHAT?!?!?
anya: (totally freaks out and runs away until she forgets that she got her ass handed to her about 2 minutes later and comes back for more)
and then he looks at me all like, "woman, why have you brought that creature unto this place?"
...except for alfred is so not that eloquent, so really if he could talk it would come out like, "moms why u's brings dat kitties to here i's don't likes her moms!!!!"
and this whole time, tillie mae was downstairs dreaming about going to prom:
because she's a little princess. aren't you just a foofy woofy little pretty pretty princess, tillie mae? (she totally is).
ok anyway. so we're on day 2 of my pre-biggest loser diet. i lost 1 pound yesterday, but i'm thinking that could be because i had some kind of weird stomach bug and was too nauseated to eat very much of anything. i am better today. hooray!
there's breakfast, the same as yesterday.
and lunch .. again, the same as yesterday ..
and this weird cancerous cantaloupe that i was pretty afraid of.
it turned out to be neither the best (farmer's market) nor the worst (asian buffet) cantaloupe of my experience.
there was a good year or so where i refused to eat cantaloupe because of this listeria scare in north carolina. listeria sounds like it would be the name of some beautiful flower or something, right? wrong! it's a super evil bacteria that will kill the living eff out of you. so .... fingers crossed for no listeria on this badboy.
the first Biggest Loser (tm) weigh-in for 2013 at my office is on Thursday (originally I thought it was Friday. or Monday. or some day other than Thursday). In order to make it to my weight loss goal by the end of the contest, i'd have to lose about 25 pounds in 12 weeks. according to the mayo clinic (mayonaise clinic, har har) it's ok to lose 1-2 pounds per week. my goal in this case would be 2 pounds per week, which is pretty lofty, but not unrealistic. or as other people might say, realistic. [i am so negative!] anyways, let's see if we can make it happen.
because...
Monday, February 25, 2013
i whanna wheen
so every once in awhile, it comes to the attention of the people in my office (and to myself) that we have all become enormous, bloated, doughy blobs of insecurity. when this happens, we pull together and do a Biggest Loser (tm) contest. this time last year, i entered the contest and won the shit out of that shit. i looked and felt amazing! hot damn. but then the fourth quarter happened and i stress-ate my way back to only 4 pounds less than my pre-biggest loser weight. why can't i have a better way of handling stress? some people get so stressed that they can't be bothered to eat. other people find an outlet for their stress in jogging or lifting weights. or like, shopping. or cleaning. but missy? missy can't do something useful or beneficial with her stress. she just eats everything that isn't nailed down.
anyways, my point is that this year's Biggest Loser (tm) contest is looming on the horizon, with our first weigh-in slated for March 1. the thing is, i am actually in need of a little pre-game. so to get ready, i'm doing a little special-k (tm) type pre-contest run. the problem with special k (tm) is that it is like not super awesome for you. so i subbed it out for some dirty hippie cereals from trader joe's.
there's breakfast, minus the pear that i am taking to work with me.
and there's lunch.
the point of this little pre-game diet is to flip the eating switch back to 'off'. if my only choice for breakfast and lunch is cereal and fruit then i don't really have to think about anything. i just follow the rules and that is that. so hopefully i lose a couple pounds before the weigh in and i enter the contest in a more health-conscious state of mind. (which by the way, is a state of mind that i have not been in [....in which i have not been?....] last weekend i ate a doughnut the size of my face from the doughnut shop in the same plaza as the Hancock Family Tattoo Artist. and that doughnut followed a breakfast of challah french toast. mhm. bad things.
so anyway, biggest loser, special k, and nacho libre's battle cry.
it's kind of upsetting how much i have in common with nacho libre. spent childhood in group home, check. speaks with ridiculous accent for no apparent reason, check. likes to dress up in costumes, double check. weight problem, hello?! check. sometimes wear stretchy pants in my room for fun, check. great ... this movie is going to be playing in my head all day.
but it's ok because from now on, when i am tempted to indulge in a calorie-laden snack, i'll be like:
and if anyone tries to tell me that i can't get back into shape, i'll just be like:
anyways, my point is that this year's Biggest Loser (tm) contest is looming on the horizon, with our first weigh-in slated for March 1. the thing is, i am actually in need of a little pre-game. so to get ready, i'm doing a little special-k (tm) type pre-contest run. the problem with special k (tm) is that it is like not super awesome for you. so i subbed it out for some dirty hippie cereals from trader joe's.
there's breakfast, minus the pear that i am taking to work with me.
and there's lunch.
the point of this little pre-game diet is to flip the eating switch back to 'off'. if my only choice for breakfast and lunch is cereal and fruit then i don't really have to think about anything. i just follow the rules and that is that. so hopefully i lose a couple pounds before the weigh in and i enter the contest in a more health-conscious state of mind. (which by the way, is a state of mind that i have not been in [....in which i have not been?....] last weekend i ate a doughnut the size of my face from the doughnut shop in the same plaza as the Hancock Family Tattoo Artist. and that doughnut followed a breakfast of challah french toast. mhm. bad things.
so anyway, biggest loser, special k, and nacho libre's battle cry.
it's kind of upsetting how much i have in common with nacho libre. spent childhood in group home, check. speaks with ridiculous accent for no apparent reason, check. likes to dress up in costumes, double check. weight problem, hello?! check. sometimes wear stretchy pants in my room for fun, check. great ... this movie is going to be playing in my head all day.
but it's ok because from now on, when i am tempted to indulge in a calorie-laden snack, i'll be like:
and if anyone tries to tell me that i can't get back into shape, i'll just be like:
Friday, February 22, 2013
i will never be a grownup
good morning everyone!
or should i say, buongiorno. there's a lady i work with who started out being my boss [one of several of my bosses]. she is italian and i always thought she was super cool but also super scary. i tried really hard to make her like me, but it seemed like the harder i tried, the more she scowled. i even gave her a random present once just because i saw something that i thought she'd like to have. [she still has that present on her desk to this day and that is a great triumph for me]. anyway, finally once it became clear to her that i was not aligned with her arch nemesis in the office as she had originally believed that i was .... she [seemingly] started to like me!! but just for good measure, i bought an italian phrase-a-day calendar, and nearly every day when she comes in my office, she asks me what the phrase of the day is and makes me say it to her. so basically ..... i totally nailed it. i love it when people like me after not liking me! it's the best! though it's also pretty devastating when things go the opposite way [when people go from liking you to not liking you. ouch.]
which brings me to my point for today, which is: i will never be a grownup. i will always be really stressed out about who doesn't like me or who is talking about me when i leave a room. did they think that joke was funny, or were they just sympathy laughing? or worse, were they laughing AT me instead of WITH me? social skills aside, i also can't follow simple instructions, i often interrupt people when they're speaking, i couldn't find my way out of a brown paper bag, my socks often do not match, i would rather eat dessert than dinner, i cry when feeling just about any emotion, and i freaking love to pop bubble wrap.
fortunately, i managed to marry someone who can deal with my grownup shortcomings. jeremy is the perfect husband and he comes with a lot of bonus perks. for example: he always smells good but never wears cologne (i hate cologne. no exceptions to that rule), he looks super cute in a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he knows how to fix almost anything, and if he doesn't know how to fix something but you give him 20 minutes and the internet then he will damn sure figure out how to fix it. animals love him, which you know is a good sign because animals are excellent judges of character. plus it's super cute when he goes to his parents' house and sits on the couch and suddenly every pet they own is either sitting on him, sitting next to him, or sitting at his feet and gazing up at his face with adoration in their beady little eyes. but the perk that i'd like to highlight today is jeremy's acknowledgement of the fact that i'm not a grownup and is not only totally ok with it, but he actively supports some of my most childlike habits. in this case: he does an excellent job of hunting down YA supernatural fiction that i will totally love.
example 1. chemical garden so this is a trilogy called the chemical garden series. jeremy found it at barnes and noble and was all like hey missy you're going to like this. so i bought the first one and read it in less than 24 hours because i could not get it into me fast enough. [that's what she said?] so then i ordered the second book from the internets and read that as fast as my eyes could laser through the pages but then the THIRD book i had to wait for because it hadn't been published yet but by the time it had been published, i was already distracted by example 2. of jeremy's teenage melodrama book finding gift!
example 2. beautiful creatures Jeremy found this little treasure when we were at barnes and noble looking [unsuccessfully] for the third chemical garden book (before i realized that it hadn't been published yet]. he didn't know that i had seen previews for the movie version of this book when i was in the theatre watching the twilight saga: breaking dawn part 2 [DON'T JUDGE ME] and that i had thought to myself, hot damn that looks like a bunch of nonsensical preteen drivel! i must see this film!! and at the time, i don't think i realized that that book belonged to that movie preview (because breaking dawn came out sort of a while ago and i forgot.) but anyway i started reading it when i was dying of the plague/rage virus/pseudo flu/common cold and it was so great! secret underground catacomb libraries? ancient societies? magical creatures? psychic dream connections? hello?! sign me up. so then i had to order the other 3 books from that series online because there are none in the store because all the other 13 year old bitches already beat me to them, but while making that discovery, jeremy hunted down this little jewel:
example 3. etiquette and espionage oooh yeah. this one is super great! i'm still reading it, but it's about this 14 year old girl named sophronia who is just an incorrigible tomboy and her mumsy sends her away to a finishing school after an incident that involved her dismantling the dumbwaiter, tearing her petticoat, and launching a bowl of trifle onto an old lady's head. the language is super stylized and affected and it's all just way over the top and too many adjectives and the author is trying waaay too hard and i just love it. love it!! so then i went online to find out about the rest of that series and disovered in the meanwhile that this lady also wrote a series of steampunk supernatural romance comedy books called the parasol protectorate. so then i ordered all 5 of those too.
so anyway, thank you jeremy, you enrich my life in many ways.
so last night and this morning i did something kind of shocking that nobody will believe i actually did.
yes that's right, i took a step out of my comfort zone and baked a cake.
...
um so anyways, this girl that works in the same office as me just found out she is going to poop out a baby boy some time in july, so i made a cake to celebrate because food is how i express all my emotions and explains why i am as big and fat as a big fat cow who always makes cakes. ANYWAY i used the 'best cake i ever made' recipe and created some weird chocolate marshmallow fluff frosting that i can't tell whether it's a triumph or not ... i have such a difficult time with making frosting. [can someone help me?] and then because the frosting was weird i decided to make a ganache to pour over it. the ganache is made with half and half, semi-sweet chocolate, and some coconut oil. why? because i didn't have any whipping cream and i read on the internet that you CAN make ganache with half and half but you need to add more fat so all the science still works. and i couldn't add butter because i already used all my sticks of butter in the past couple cakes i've made [ehem .. this week] so i used coconut oil. it seemed like a great idea but then i was all like ... what if she doesn't like coconut. womp womp. ANYWAY the exciting thing about this cake is that it's bright blue on the inside.
she doesn't know that i already know that it's a boy! so when she cuts into it she'll be like z0mg! (fingers crossed for making a pregnant lady cry. now that i know i have this ability of causing cake tears, i'm sort of intoxicated with the power).
ok and to wrap things up, here's a picture of anya the demon kitten who stopped being possessed long enough to sit in my lap and be cute before resuming her normal schedule of shredding all my earthly belongings:
or should i say, buongiorno. there's a lady i work with who started out being my boss [one of several of my bosses]. she is italian and i always thought she was super cool but also super scary. i tried really hard to make her like me, but it seemed like the harder i tried, the more she scowled. i even gave her a random present once just because i saw something that i thought she'd like to have. [she still has that present on her desk to this day and that is a great triumph for me]. anyway, finally once it became clear to her that i was not aligned with her arch nemesis in the office as she had originally believed that i was .... she [seemingly] started to like me!! but just for good measure, i bought an italian phrase-a-day calendar, and nearly every day when she comes in my office, she asks me what the phrase of the day is and makes me say it to her. so basically ..... i totally nailed it. i love it when people like me after not liking me! it's the best! though it's also pretty devastating when things go the opposite way [when people go from liking you to not liking you. ouch.]
which brings me to my point for today, which is: i will never be a grownup. i will always be really stressed out about who doesn't like me or who is talking about me when i leave a room. did they think that joke was funny, or were they just sympathy laughing? or worse, were they laughing AT me instead of WITH me? social skills aside, i also can't follow simple instructions, i often interrupt people when they're speaking, i couldn't find my way out of a brown paper bag, my socks often do not match, i would rather eat dessert than dinner, i cry when feeling just about any emotion, and i freaking love to pop bubble wrap.
fortunately, i managed to marry someone who can deal with my grownup shortcomings. jeremy is the perfect husband and he comes with a lot of bonus perks. for example: he always smells good but never wears cologne (i hate cologne. no exceptions to that rule), he looks super cute in a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he knows how to fix almost anything, and if he doesn't know how to fix something but you give him 20 minutes and the internet then he will damn sure figure out how to fix it. animals love him, which you know is a good sign because animals are excellent judges of character. plus it's super cute when he goes to his parents' house and sits on the couch and suddenly every pet they own is either sitting on him, sitting next to him, or sitting at his feet and gazing up at his face with adoration in their beady little eyes. but the perk that i'd like to highlight today is jeremy's acknowledgement of the fact that i'm not a grownup and is not only totally ok with it, but he actively supports some of my most childlike habits. in this case: he does an excellent job of hunting down YA supernatural fiction that i will totally love.
example 1. chemical garden so this is a trilogy called the chemical garden series. jeremy found it at barnes and noble and was all like hey missy you're going to like this. so i bought the first one and read it in less than 24 hours because i could not get it into me fast enough. [that's what she said?] so then i ordered the second book from the internets and read that as fast as my eyes could laser through the pages but then the THIRD book i had to wait for because it hadn't been published yet but by the time it had been published, i was already distracted by example 2. of jeremy's teenage melodrama book finding gift!
example 2. beautiful creatures Jeremy found this little treasure when we were at barnes and noble looking [unsuccessfully] for the third chemical garden book (before i realized that it hadn't been published yet]. he didn't know that i had seen previews for the movie version of this book when i was in the theatre watching the twilight saga: breaking dawn part 2 [DON'T JUDGE ME] and that i had thought to myself, hot damn that looks like a bunch of nonsensical preteen drivel! i must see this film!! and at the time, i don't think i realized that that book belonged to that movie preview (because breaking dawn came out sort of a while ago and i forgot.) but anyway i started reading it when i was dying of the plague/rage virus/pseudo flu/common cold and it was so great! secret underground catacomb libraries? ancient societies? magical creatures? psychic dream connections? hello?! sign me up. so then i had to order the other 3 books from that series online because there are none in the store because all the other 13 year old bitches already beat me to them, but while making that discovery, jeremy hunted down this little jewel:
example 3. etiquette and espionage oooh yeah. this one is super great! i'm still reading it, but it's about this 14 year old girl named sophronia who is just an incorrigible tomboy and her mumsy sends her away to a finishing school after an incident that involved her dismantling the dumbwaiter, tearing her petticoat, and launching a bowl of trifle onto an old lady's head. the language is super stylized and affected and it's all just way over the top and too many adjectives and the author is trying waaay too hard and i just love it. love it!! so then i went online to find out about the rest of that series and disovered in the meanwhile that this lady also wrote a series of steampunk supernatural romance comedy books called the parasol protectorate. so then i ordered all 5 of those too.
so anyway, thank you jeremy, you enrich my life in many ways.
so last night and this morning i did something kind of shocking that nobody will believe i actually did.
yes that's right, i took a step out of my comfort zone and baked a cake.
...
um so anyways, this girl that works in the same office as me just found out she is going to poop out a baby boy some time in july, so i made a cake to celebrate because food is how i express all my emotions and explains why i am as big and fat as a big fat cow who always makes cakes. ANYWAY i used the 'best cake i ever made' recipe and created some weird chocolate marshmallow fluff frosting that i can't tell whether it's a triumph or not ... i have such a difficult time with making frosting. [can someone help me?] and then because the frosting was weird i decided to make a ganache to pour over it. the ganache is made with half and half, semi-sweet chocolate, and some coconut oil. why? because i didn't have any whipping cream and i read on the internet that you CAN make ganache with half and half but you need to add more fat so all the science still works. and i couldn't add butter because i already used all my sticks of butter in the past couple cakes i've made [ehem .. this week] so i used coconut oil. it seemed like a great idea but then i was all like ... what if she doesn't like coconut. womp womp. ANYWAY the exciting thing about this cake is that it's bright blue on the inside.
she doesn't know that i already know that it's a boy! so when she cuts into it she'll be like z0mg! (fingers crossed for making a pregnant lady cry. now that i know i have this ability of causing cake tears, i'm sort of intoxicated with the power).
ok and to wrap things up, here's a picture of anya the demon kitten who stopped being possessed long enough to sit in my lap and be cute before resuming her normal schedule of shredding all my earthly belongings:
Thursday, February 21, 2013
according to Proverbs 16:18, the following post is pure bad juju. let's pretend like it's a tutorial and not just me bragging about being awesome.
...and we're back!
i know, you thought that yesterday was just a fluke and that i'd disappear back into the ether again.
nope!!
to start things off, i'd like to gloat about that cake that i made [frantically] yesterday morning.
that was the finished product. nothing spectacular, right? wrong. imma let me finish, but [apparently] this cake was the best thing i've made all year. and it's not like i haven't baked that much. let me share some of my other creations from 2013:
this was a cake for the 17th b-day of the young lady who helps out in the fileroom at the office. she's a lovely young lady and i like her, which is really saying a lot because i pretty much hate teenage girls. anyway it was a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, surrounded by a wall of pirouline cookies. with some pirouline cookies crumbled on top.
next up, we have the fanciest cake i've ever made. it was a made-from-scratch hummingbird cake with made-from-scratch cream cheese frosting. that frosting took ohhhhh idk like 2 hours to apply. but then the next day i woke up feeling sickly so i didn't take the cake to work like i had planned on, because i didn't want to poison anyone. AND THEN I WAS EXTREMELY ILL FOR LIKE OVER A WEEK so it's a damn good thing i didn't feed my biological warfare cake to anyone, especially the pregnant lady it was intended for!! so yeah that cake went in the trash. i don't want to talk about it.
i can't really express how irritated i am that the ribbon fell down on one side when i took this picture. but let's just say .. very irritated.
and finally, we have my valentine's cake. it was just a [homemade] vanilla cake with pink zebra stripes and [homemade] orange-cream cheese frosting, surrounded with amaretto cookies. people loved this thing. i dropped it off on my way into a meeting. when i came out of the meeting, there was like maybe a crumb or two left.
and YET! somehow this one-layer, made-in-a-super-hurry cake for which i did crazy substitutions and used ridiculous fudging techniques (no time to cream butter with sugar, i just melt the butter and see what happens) and it's the best thing ever. the person that i made it for said that once she got a forkful of the cake to her face and could smell it, she remembered her 11th birthday and her mommy. people.
she said that the smell of this cake brought tears to her eyes.
now that is a damn good cake! amirite?! ok ok, enough gloating. anyways, everyone wanted the recipe for this thing. so i'll post it here, as much as i can remember on account of i was just kicking this shit from my head.
The Best Cake I've Ever Made
Ingredients:
Directions:
1. preheat oven to 350°.
2. grease and flour a 9" round cake tin.
3. whisk the mostly-melted butter with the sugar. it should be light and fluffy. [this is one of the things that makes the texture of the cake nice and light and fluffy, so don't fuck it up.]
4. add the eggs, vanilla and yogurt and mix well.
5. add the flour, about 1/2c at a time, mixing between additions. don't over-mix. if the batter seems too thick, you can thin it out with a little milk. but then again, this batter is supposed to be a little thicker than most cake batters, so don't add too much milk. just eyeball it.
6. pour batter into prepared pan.
7. bake until done. yeah so this is a little tricky. my cake ended up looking perfect on the outside about 25 minutes into the cooking time, but was still cake-soup on the inside. if that happens, gently cover the top of the cake with aluminium foil and keep baking until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
8. when the cake is done, remove it from the oven and let it hang out in the cake pan for 5-10 minutes. then run a butterknife around the inside of the pan and invert the cake onto a wire rack and let it cool the rest of the way.
Frosting
so, it turns out that i don't actually like frosting. but this frosting wasn't too bad. It's not all sickly sweet from powdered sugar, i guess.
Ingredients:
Directions:
1. mix that ish up. real good. try to avoid lumps.
Cake Topping:
Ingredients:
Directions:
1. combine ingredients. sprinkle artistically over your fugly frosting. drizzle with some more honey.
so anyway, that's the cake that everyone loved so very much because i did a great job because i'm a genius and an artist and nobody appreciates me!!
i know, you thought that yesterday was just a fluke and that i'd disappear back into the ether again.
nope!!
to start things off, i'd like to gloat about that cake that i made [frantically] yesterday morning.
that was the finished product. nothing spectacular, right? wrong. imma let me finish, but [apparently] this cake was the best thing i've made all year. and it's not like i haven't baked that much. let me share some of my other creations from 2013:
this was a cake for the 17th b-day of the young lady who helps out in the fileroom at the office. she's a lovely young lady and i like her, which is really saying a lot because i pretty much hate teenage girls. anyway it was a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, surrounded by a wall of pirouline cookies. with some pirouline cookies crumbled on top.
next up, we have the fanciest cake i've ever made. it was a made-from-scratch hummingbird cake with made-from-scratch cream cheese frosting. that frosting took ohhhhh idk like 2 hours to apply. but then the next day i woke up feeling sickly so i didn't take the cake to work like i had planned on, because i didn't want to poison anyone. AND THEN I WAS EXTREMELY ILL FOR LIKE OVER A WEEK so it's a damn good thing i didn't feed my biological warfare cake to anyone, especially the pregnant lady it was intended for!! so yeah that cake went in the trash. i don't want to talk about it.
i can't really express how irritated i am that the ribbon fell down on one side when i took this picture. but let's just say .. very irritated.
and finally, we have my valentine's cake. it was just a [homemade] vanilla cake with pink zebra stripes and [homemade] orange-cream cheese frosting, surrounded with amaretto cookies. people loved this thing. i dropped it off on my way into a meeting. when i came out of the meeting, there was like maybe a crumb or two left.
and YET! somehow this one-layer, made-in-a-super-hurry cake for which i did crazy substitutions and used ridiculous fudging techniques (no time to cream butter with sugar, i just melt the butter and see what happens) and it's the best thing ever. the person that i made it for said that once she got a forkful of the cake to her face and could smell it, she remembered her 11th birthday and her mommy. people.
she said that the smell of this cake brought tears to her eyes.
now that is a damn good cake! amirite?! ok ok, enough gloating. anyways, everyone wanted the recipe for this thing. so i'll post it here, as much as i can remember on account of i was just kicking this shit from my head.
The Best Cake I've Ever Made
Ingredients:
- 1c white sugar
- 1/2c butter (melted in the microwave. sort of. not all the way. like not totally liquid, but some liquid. it's um ... a science.)
- 2 eggs
- 2t pure vanilla extract
- 1t coconut extract
- 1 1/2c all-purpose flour
- 1 3/4t baking powder (not baking soda)
- 1/2c vanilla greek yogurt
Directions:
1. preheat oven to 350°.
2. grease and flour a 9" round cake tin.
3. whisk the mostly-melted butter with the sugar. it should be light and fluffy. [this is one of the things that makes the texture of the cake nice and light and fluffy, so don't fuck it up.]
4. add the eggs, vanilla and yogurt and mix well.
5. add the flour, about 1/2c at a time, mixing between additions. don't over-mix. if the batter seems too thick, you can thin it out with a little milk. but then again, this batter is supposed to be a little thicker than most cake batters, so don't add too much milk. just eyeball it.
6. pour batter into prepared pan.
7. bake until done. yeah so this is a little tricky. my cake ended up looking perfect on the outside about 25 minutes into the cooking time, but was still cake-soup on the inside. if that happens, gently cover the top of the cake with aluminium foil and keep baking until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
8. when the cake is done, remove it from the oven and let it hang out in the cake pan for 5-10 minutes. then run a butterknife around the inside of the pan and invert the cake onto a wire rack and let it cool the rest of the way.
Frosting
so, it turns out that i don't actually like frosting. but this frosting wasn't too bad. It's not all sickly sweet from powdered sugar, i guess.
Ingredients:
- 8oz cream cheese
- 2t vanilla and/or coconut extract (or to taste, i think i may have done 2 t vanilla and 1 t coconut, don't remember.)
- 2T granulated sugar
- 1T honey (spray some PAM onto your measuring spoon so the honey doesn't stick)
Directions:
1. mix that ish up. real good. try to avoid lumps.
- *it would be best to do this with a hand mixer, but mine broke a long time ago and i tried to use my kitchen aid instead, but the whisk doesn't go all the way to the bottom of the bowl so ... i ended up with lumpy frosting. which necessitated the following:
Cake Topping:
Ingredients:
- almond flour
- cinnamon
- sugar - brown if you have it, white if not.
- honey
Directions:
1. combine ingredients. sprinkle artistically over your fugly frosting. drizzle with some more honey.
so anyway, that's the cake that everyone loved so very much because i did a great job because i'm a genius and an artist and nobody appreciates me!!
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Je suis revenue
good people of internet ... i return to you.
it's been a long time.
your hearts have broken.
you can't trust my promises anymore.
i understand, but i'm going to make it up to you, baby. just wait and see.
i know you can't stay mad at this face.
this is me in a spectacular chicken hat that mr. hancock bought me as a sign of his love and affection for me. because i'm not just any girl. i'm the kind of wife that men buy chicken hats for.
speaking of the most exquisite hunk of man candy on the planet, jeremy got a birthday tattoo this weekend! want to see it?
of course you want to see it. that was a rhetorical question.
it's this super evil cartoon villain octopus. there was a fancy cruiseship that sank, see, and this octopus climbed aboard while the boat was only half submerged, and he totally murdered this fancy pants guy in cold blood which is pretty fucked up considering that if the octopus had just waited a couple minutes, fancy pants guy would have just drowned and had a nice peaceful poetic death and then otto the evil octopus could have looted his lifeless corpse like a normal saturday night in the garden. but nooo. otto the evil octopus is in it for the sport. so anyway he brutally murders this guy and steals his monocle and tophat. he even ripped the fancy waxed mustache right off fancy pants guy's face. yeah. and now he wears it like a trophy.
next up we have the top-notch dinner that i prepared for my beloved, evil-octopus-clad husband last night.
it consisted of perfectly cooked chicken (see my previous blog post wrt "how to cook chicken" for the recipe) along with perfectly executed basmati rice, sauteed baby bok choy in a spicy asian sauce (for which no i will not give you the recipe) and a beautiful, perfectly ripe avocado. rice + avocado = delicious.
that brings me to this morning. here is a picture of breakfast.
ginger tea is my favorite kind of tea. jeremy bought a bottle of ginger tea at 7-11 the other day and then declared [hastily] that he hates ginger tea because it 'tastes like spicy dirt'. the moral of this story is don't buy bottled ginger tea.
so then this morning after the gym i was all like herp a derp a derp OH SNAP it's somebody's birthday whose birthday i give a crap about it being. and so then i was running all around the kitchen in circles from the pantry to the fridge going all like WHAT CAN I MAKE A CAKE OUT OF AND HOW CAN I FROST IT IF I DON'T HAVE ANY POWDERED SUGAR. why doesn't facebook give me more of a head's up about people's birthdays? and where did the expression 'heads up' come from? i mean let's pretend like we're in the trenches. it's the great war. there's bullets flying all over the place. but then it's eerily calm. you look at the guy next to you. his face is coated in sweat, mud, and blood. he looks kind of sexy. you notice that the top button of his uniform is undone. wait! sorry, you're imagining the wrong scenario. ok so the bullets are flying, and then the guy next to you goes all like, 'HEADS UP!!' so you stick your head up out of the trench thinking that someone needs your help, and then your head gets shot off because you stuck it up during a bullet bath. it just don't make no sense. when people are telling you to get to work they say 'keep your head down' and 'push through it'. put your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel. none of this involves sticking your head up like some kind of retarded duck in the pond. anyway, if someone could clear this up for me, i'd really appreciate it.
so! i found some stuff and threw it in a bowl and threw that in the oven.
and then when the timer went off, it looked like that, which is to say, it looked golden-brown and perfect and oh man did it ever smell good. but then i did the toothpick test and it was pretty much cake soup with a crust. so i was like ok, NBD, let's just throw some aluminum foil on that shit and keep rolling. wellllll except for remember that one time when you didn't have any more aluminum foil? great. so instead i crinkled up some parchment paper and put that over the cake, hoping simultaneously that it would keep the cake from browning too much AND that the parchment paper would not catch on fire.
the cake came out looking pretty ok, the parchment paper didn't catch on fire, and i made frosting out of cream cheese, some granulated sugar (because who doesn't love crunchy frosting!), vanilla and coconut extracts, and some honey. yeah i'm not positive that we have struck gold with this thing but I TRIED, OK?! on very little facebook notice.
i guess that's about enough for now. but don't you worry. there is more where this came from.
it's been a long time.
your hearts have broken.
you can't trust my promises anymore.
i understand, but i'm going to make it up to you, baby. just wait and see.
i know you can't stay mad at this face.
this is me in a spectacular chicken hat that mr. hancock bought me as a sign of his love and affection for me. because i'm not just any girl. i'm the kind of wife that men buy chicken hats for.
speaking of the most exquisite hunk of man candy on the planet, jeremy got a birthday tattoo this weekend! want to see it?
of course you want to see it. that was a rhetorical question.
it's this super evil cartoon villain octopus. there was a fancy cruiseship that sank, see, and this octopus climbed aboard while the boat was only half submerged, and he totally murdered this fancy pants guy in cold blood which is pretty fucked up considering that if the octopus had just waited a couple minutes, fancy pants guy would have just drowned and had a nice peaceful poetic death and then otto the evil octopus could have looted his lifeless corpse like a normal saturday night in the garden. but nooo. otto the evil octopus is in it for the sport. so anyway he brutally murders this guy and steals his monocle and tophat. he even ripped the fancy waxed mustache right off fancy pants guy's face. yeah. and now he wears it like a trophy.
next up we have the top-notch dinner that i prepared for my beloved, evil-octopus-clad husband last night.
it consisted of perfectly cooked chicken (see my previous blog post wrt "how to cook chicken" for the recipe) along with perfectly executed basmati rice, sauteed baby bok choy in a spicy asian sauce (for which no i will not give you the recipe) and a beautiful, perfectly ripe avocado. rice + avocado = delicious.
that brings me to this morning. here is a picture of breakfast.
ginger tea is my favorite kind of tea. jeremy bought a bottle of ginger tea at 7-11 the other day and then declared [hastily] that he hates ginger tea because it 'tastes like spicy dirt'. the moral of this story is don't buy bottled ginger tea.
so then this morning after the gym i was all like herp a derp a derp OH SNAP it's somebody's birthday whose birthday i give a crap about it being. and so then i was running all around the kitchen in circles from the pantry to the fridge going all like WHAT CAN I MAKE A CAKE OUT OF AND HOW CAN I FROST IT IF I DON'T HAVE ANY POWDERED SUGAR. why doesn't facebook give me more of a head's up about people's birthdays? and where did the expression 'heads up' come from? i mean let's pretend like we're in the trenches. it's the great war. there's bullets flying all over the place. but then it's eerily calm. you look at the guy next to you. his face is coated in sweat, mud, and blood. he looks kind of sexy. you notice that the top button of his uniform is undone. wait! sorry, you're imagining the wrong scenario. ok so the bullets are flying, and then the guy next to you goes all like, 'HEADS UP!!' so you stick your head up out of the trench thinking that someone needs your help, and then your head gets shot off because you stuck it up during a bullet bath. it just don't make no sense. when people are telling you to get to work they say 'keep your head down' and 'push through it'. put your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel. none of this involves sticking your head up like some kind of retarded duck in the pond. anyway, if someone could clear this up for me, i'd really appreciate it.
so! i found some stuff and threw it in a bowl and threw that in the oven.
and then when the timer went off, it looked like that, which is to say, it looked golden-brown and perfect and oh man did it ever smell good. but then i did the toothpick test and it was pretty much cake soup with a crust. so i was like ok, NBD, let's just throw some aluminum foil on that shit and keep rolling. wellllll except for remember that one time when you didn't have any more aluminum foil? great. so instead i crinkled up some parchment paper and put that over the cake, hoping simultaneously that it would keep the cake from browning too much AND that the parchment paper would not catch on fire.
the cake came out looking pretty ok, the parchment paper didn't catch on fire, and i made frosting out of cream cheese, some granulated sugar (because who doesn't love crunchy frosting!), vanilla and coconut extracts, and some honey. yeah i'm not positive that we have struck gold with this thing but I TRIED, OK?! on very little facebook notice.
i guess that's about enough for now. but don't you worry. there is more where this came from.
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