cake! and other tasties

[mamajoan]

So yesterday was my mom's birthday and thus recipe #26 of the year for me: chocolate layer cake!! From this recipe suggested by someone on the AP recipe list. It got me all nervous because it needed to bake way longer than the recipe said -- it just wasn't done and wasn't done, and then finally it was. It rose WAY up high out of the two 8-inch-square pans that I used, so probably three would have been better but I don't have three. ;) So, layering it was "interesting" (my first-ever attempt at a layer cake) but it turned out well in the end. As I said repeatedly to everyone who came to mom's birthday dinner, you weren't going to mistake it for anything but a homemade cake...but it looked decent and tasted great, so I call it a success. :)

Oh, and I also get recipe #27 for the frosting, why not? "quick white icing" from Joy of Cooking which is basically just butter, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla. VERY sweet, but fortunately(?) it didn't make enough to cover the cake thickly -- was just barely enough to cover the whole thing, so it wasn't overpowering.

All in all, a success! yay, go me :)

We had a babysitter stay with the 3 kids (mine and Bastian) at mom's house while we went out to dinner, the adults of the family plus a few friends mom had invited. It was nice. Afterward we all went back to mom's house for the cake and to show off the kids to the friends who hadn't seen them in ages. ;) Kara, our lovely babysitter, had come up with a great "project" idea to make pizza with the kids -- she brought some dough and tomato sauce and cheese. I gather they had a lot of fun with it and Isaac ate either four or five pieces of pizza depending on whom you ask. ;)

It was quite late by the time we got home, so we all conked out. Ruthie had only been asleep a half-hour or so before she started coughing a lot, and I was worried that it boded ill for the night, but apparently she never really woke up despite intermittent coughing for an hour or so. In the event, she slept until almost 5am, which was a VERY welcome break for me since the previous 4-5 nights had been up-every-two-hours extravaganzas. *groan*

Conversation on the bus this morning:
Ruthie: Uh-oh!
Me: What's wrong?
Ruthie: (big grin) Uh-oh!
Me: Uh-oh?
Ruthie: Uh-oh mama!
Me: Uh-oh Ruthie!
Ruthie: Uh-oh daddy!
Me: O.o

In other news, a couple days ago I finished Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades which was every bit as good as its predecessor with the exception of a few quibbles (mainly editing-related, like a whole section about the political structure of an alien race in which the word for their highest leader is spelled "hierarch" half the time and "heirarch" the other half) and a kind of eye-roll-worthy sequence at the end where the bad guy takes time to explain his evil plan to the hero in great detail. Haven't these people ever read the Evil Overlord List?? Srsly. But anyway, now I'm very interested to read the third book in the series, The Last Colony. Anyone have a copy they'd like to lend me, hint hint? ;)

BTW if I were Scalzi I would be having a serious discussion with whomever it is at my publishing house that decides what quotes to put on the covers of my books. On the back cover of The Ghost Brigades there's a quote that says (paraphrased) "if Stephen King decided to write science fiction, it might look something like this." That's damning with faint praise if ever I heard it! ;P

Also now I have begun reading Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis, which is nonfic about the world of competitive Scrabble. A coworker loaned it to me and it's pretty interesting. mofic have you read this one?

Comments

[mofic.livejournal.com]

I haven't read - or even heard of - the Scrabble book. It sounds interesting!

I'm glad the cake came out well after all. And I think a home made cake ought to look like a home made cake!

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

you do know that Scalzi has a VERY active blog, called the Whatever right? He's very approachable. (at least online)

It was verry yummy!

[noone-else13.livejournal.com]

OK, so I'm a bit late reading LJ, but despite that let me just say that the cake was VERY YUMMY and much appreciated. B-)