Bite Size Apple Pies

I've been a little lax on my posting lately, I can't seem to get back on my old schedule and when I want to write about something I forget what I want to write about immediately. Pretty soon I'm going to turn into the lady I met at Goodwill yesterday- buying memo boards to keep all of my notes to myself in one place. Just, without the purple lipstick. And hopefully without the velour jumpsuit.

Chocolate Creme Brulee

There are many occasions in life where we just have to sit back and say, "you know what, it's okay to put chocolate in that". Someone has to do it. The friends of the person who invented chocolate milk probably said that it was ridiculous, but that person (who I'm going to affectionately name, Mr. Chocolateberg) did it anyway and now more people want the brown stuff than the white.

That figure is from my own data sampling.

From a sample of me.

This is something I was thinking about when I was hunting around for a chocolate creme brulee recipe. It had to exist, it was just taking me a few days to find the right one. I really liked Paula Deen's recipe at first, but then I saw you needed 50708 eggs and a glass of chocolate liquor. I liked the one from the reliable recipes.com until I noticed you needed to practically grow your own cocoa beans (thanks Hershey tour) to make the creme brulee - not to mention the baking time was an average of 16+ hours and a promise to never leave the kitchen. I had pretty much given up on the whole search, the creme brulee, my baking future, my education, my future children...everything. I was pretty frustrated. 

But then I found Celiac Family.com, and I can officially say that not only did I find an amazing chocolate creme brulee recipe but it's gluten free. Did you hear that Kelly Clayton?! Gluten free! I did it!

Easter, Chocolate Bunnies & Cake

There are a lot of things happening in the next few weeks make life on this blog difficult. Starting school again today, finishing our taxes, moving to an entirely different part of PA (not like our 3 minute move from Manayunk to East Falls) and Easter. Easter's been at the bottom of my list these past few days, but I can't deny how much I actually enjoy the holiday. Besides the fact that it's always fallen right around my birthday, it's got some of the best looking candy filling up two aisles at Rite Aid. Two aisles!

Every year I just slink through the aisles looking at it. Marshmellow covered everything. This year I saw orange bunny peeps (I was shocked too). Chocolate in the shape of eggs, eggs made of creme, and carrots filled with reeses pieces. You could get a cavity just looking at all of the sugar, it's amazing. 

I think I love Easter because when I was little I used to occasionally bring home chocolate easter bunnies from winning drawing contests or guessing the right amount of jellybeans or something. I remember that they were always deceivingly hollow. When I'd bring them home, Allyson and I would size them up to see if we could open the box and eat a part of it before my parents got home. It never really worked, but when we were allowed to open it up I remember you could almost see a puff of smoke come out of the rabbit's head when you yanked an ear off. Like in Christmas Vacation when the turkey is too cooked and just explodes completely hollow, these rabbits looked like they were five solid pounds of chocolate but they were just a thin shell of a bunny. So disappointing. 

Birthday Red Velvet Cupcakes

We're backkkkkkk [bitches!]. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to use bitches like that because this blog is rated G for content, but it felt right. Just really right.

So after a prolonged hiatus due to the stressors of grad school, particularly the audacity of one professor who assigned us a 10 page paper for finals week, I'm back with a vengenace [insert karate kick sound here].  I've been holed up in an office for the past two weeks creating lesson plans for invisible students and writing papers and as soon as I was free I went straight to the grocery store to stock up on red velvet cupcake ingredients. For those of you who had these red velvet guys back in November, this is that recipe. Not only is it a great comeback gig, but Saturday was my birthday so I went all out here.

Red velvet cupcakes are fun to make for two important reasons. 1. There's so much red dye involved that you feel like you're recreating a crime scene from Dexter. It's fun to walk around the kitchen and say things like "yeah, the perp came at it from this direction". The second reason is that when you accidentally combine baking powder with white vinegar you get an awesome explosion! Who doesn't love that.

Make Crepes at Home!

For four years I lived in North Philadelphia, dredging up and down Broad Street pretending like I was totally comfortable living in the city. We all know (or I think we can all assume) that I am not the most subtle person you've ever met, so trying to act cool and urbany was just not my style. I always came up out of the subway stairs ready to roundhouse somebody. I paid for that Vera Bradley bag myself mister, keep your hands off.

When you move from rural to urban everyone wants to sit you down and tell you about the dangers of society. This is fairly warranted, but the drama that people pump into it is far more scary than anything you'll probably see on campus. When I went to orientation at Temple they told us not to wear lanyards with our keys around our necks because people would come up from behind and choke us. The more they talked, the more I couldn't help but wonder why I had chosen a school that had so many stranglers on campus. 

Keys were better left in your pocket, or better yet - your largest key was better left in ready position in your right hand so you could stab someone quick if you had to.