If you know the Oh, Yeah reference, you can probably find the instructions on how to make a smaller amount of this punch that is named after our 50th state.  Which I have totally swiped for myself.

• 10 lb bag of ice
• 1 gallon vodka
• 1 gallon pineapple juice
• 3 quarts guava nectar
• 1-1/2 quarts apple juice
• 1 quart mango juice
• 1 quart water
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 oz red food coloring

In a 5 gallon water cooler, mix everything together.  Due to certain molecular properties of ice, it’s possible that the ice may take up more volume than the 1.25 gallons of water it’s replacing as I’ve estimated.  So, add the ice last, just in case.

Stir.

Drink.  With friends, please.  Many friends.

FYI, I made some minor changes to the recipe that I stole this from, namely to skip the sugar, add a smidge more apple juice (because of the sugar), replaced most of the water with ice, and added the vodka (strange that wasn’t in the original recipe.)

Cooking.com is no more. And it had all these great recipes. Including this fruitcake recipe that people ask me to make again.

YEAH, FRUITCAKE. Apparently when you don’t use candied cherries and cement in your fruitcake, people like it!

So, I’m totally reprinting it here, copyright be darned. The Recipe is by James McNair’s Cakes. James McNair’s Cakes is a book. By James McNair.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon:  LINK TO IT  I mean, it’s out of print.  If you find it for sale somewhere, let me know.  I WANT IT.

Note:  This is a different James McNair than the James McNair that shows up when you just google James McNair.  

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Except instead of Apple pie it’s:

Red, White*, Blue and Chocolate Cake

nom nom nom Read the rest of this entry »

Cinque Terre

This is the first of a series of planning posts about an upcoming trip to Italy.  If you are also planning a trip to Italy in the summer of 2015, this should be helpful!  If it’s not 2015 anymore, I hope I’ve provided enough reference links for it to still be helpful.

Five Lands

The official Cinque Terre are five villages on the northern end of the west coast of Italy.  From north-west to south-east, they are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.  The spiffy part is that all of the villages are built up the side of the mountains on terraces; after my trip to Turkey I call this “Greek Architecture” because they always seem to be building towns up a hill in Turkey (back when that part was part of Greece) when there was a perfectly good plain nearby.   The buildings are typically painted up like a Easter egg.

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♥burn Cake Balls

Red Velvet: Pretty, Blah

I find red velvet cake to be one of the most interesting features of moving to the south.  Mostly because it can be used to make a bleeding armadillo cake (here’s someone else’s post about red velvet, with a pic of a bleeding armadillo cake), and nextly because of a perfectly suitable reason for cream cheese frosting.  But, frankly, other than it’s red and cream cheese, Red Velvet mostly bores me.  I mean it’s super moist (with a slight acid hint) because of the buttermilk, making it a great combo with cream cheese, but it usually contains such a ludicrously small amount of chocolate that no one would ever call it a great chocolate cake, but other than that it’s blah.  Pretty, blah.

I don’t admire Pretty, Blah.  I want my cakes to be interesting, to have levels of taste and I don’t care as much about pretty, but as long as it’s as easy as dumping a bunch of red food coloring in it, I’m game for Pretty.

♥burn Cake: Pretty, Dangerous

I want chocolate like it’s going out of style.  I want this southern specialty to acknowledge that chocolate was often considered savory before the Europeans found it, and by that I mean spicy.

I want sexy cake. I want Pretty, Dangerous.

And that means the ♥burn Cake’s full name is:  Triple Chocolate Chipotle Red Velvet with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting.  And when I make cake balls out of it, it’s full name is:

Triple Chocolate Chipotle Red Velvet with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting in Dark Habenero Chocolate Cake Balls

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Bagels ‘n’ Lox ‘n’ Cranberries Cheese Ball

Nothing says traditional Thanksgiving like a cheese ball.  It’s all the other stuff that makes this crazy.

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See, the problem with random searches of people in airports is that it’s wholly ineffective.  What are the odds of finding someone carrying an explosive in a carry-on that is undetectable by a the x-ray machine using random searches?  Well, if TSA searches 1 in 1000 people that come through security and a terrorist has cleverly disguised the explosive device as a laptop, cell phone, hair brush, camera, music box with a cute little dancing ballerina, or anything other than an easily recognizable tangled mess of wires and explosive putty, it’s practically 0.  It could be as high as me winning the lottery (I don’t buy tickets). Read the rest of this entry »

I was re-reading a favorite XKCD comic, when I thought. The left-cross turn, the most common step in Viennese Waltz, is conterclockwise, and in fact, all ballroom dance is performed counterclockwise.

Are we inadvertantly slowing down the earth’s rotation by dancing ballroom dance? Read the rest of this entry »

I met a lot of really great people that promised to vote for my cupcakes.   As I was too beat to stick around for the results of the contest, and no one  has told me differently, I’ll just assume that I won.

I’d like to thank my fellow bakers for really bringing it this year.  Winning a contest such as this means nothing if you are only competing against crappy competitors.  I’m only as good as better than everyone else around me.

I’d also like to thank my loyal assistants:  my stove, my dishwasher, my KitchenAid, my measuring cups and spoons, my bakeware, the lovely people at Central Market and HEB for providing me with the raw ingredients to produce such magnificent cupcakes, and Marla.  She helped just by being there for me.

Edit: I have been informed that I have a trophy with my name on it somewhere.  I do not know which trophy, but I assume the Gold Medal Trophy.  Will keep you updated.

Edit 2: I have heard that someone else has one “1st and 2nd” prizes.  I can only assume that I have therefor won “Best Overall” or some other such prize that is better than “1st and 2nd.”

There is a film called “Super Secret TBD” playing at SXSW this year. Needless to say, the “SXXpress” (South by Express) tickets, which allow badge holders to skip the line provided that they show up 30 minutes before the show, sold out of that first today. Read the rest of this entry »