I am slowly teaching myself how to use a pastry bag for icing/frosting cakes/cupcakes. Here is some of my latest homework… slowly getting better! This time next year ill be a badass decorator.
Every Thursday there is a farmers market on 8th st. It starts around 3pm and goes on until 7… over the last couple months I have found some awesome deals here… I got 5 medium jade plants for 2 dollars each, I got four tubs of baby heirloom tomatoes for 10 bucks, I got a whole basil plant for 3 bucks… Aside from the deals there is a great baker that sets up… he has just about everything, including Quark bread which is this awesome semi sweet german bread with Quark cheese in it. You gotta check it out. It between the Navy Archives and the Portrait Gallery. See you there!
I went to see Janelle Monae on Monday night at the 9:30 club. She was opening for ‘Of Montreal’. After watching most of Janelle’s show and half of Montreal’s it was clear the billing should have been flipped. ‘Janelle Monae’ was in a totally different league than ‘Of Montreal’.
Check her music out if you like Outkast. Its fun, deep as you want it to be, concept pop.
Sorry the pictures are so bad… i’m really wary of bringing my SLR into the 9:30 club. Ill get over it though… one of these days.
Seaweed makes me very happy. Every time I find myself on a beach (which, unfortunately, isnt often) I look for the seaweed the tide brings in and leaves. The east coast (north of the Carolinas) doesnt have especially cool seaweed. Its usually a beautiful green swampy color, but essentially a great big mush on the beach. Seaweed on the west coast (south of LA) is super cool. Its structured and brightly colored. Full of air bags and fins and rippled, succulent, off-shoots. Some day I would love to go scuba diving in a seaweed garden.
I found these really beautiful raspberries at Costco for 2.99 a batch (I think they were technically cheaper than apples… amazing). I went ahead and bought two batches. The same night I had some out of town guests coming over for dinner so I decided I would make a very raspberry cheesecake… meaning that the cheesecake itself would be flavored with raspberry as well as the topping. After adding half a jar of seedless raspberry preserves, some extra flour and egg to stabilize the additional liquid, and a healthy dose of pomegranate molasses (to mimic the tartness of raspberries) I baked the cake (turned out texturally perfect) and added a sweet raspberry glaze and a layer of fresh berries. The cake looked awesome. The rustic crust turned out beautifully (no broken edges). And the fresh raspberries tiled nicely.
Upon serving my guests the desert (after a hearty meal of baked chicken, homemade stuffing, gravy, and salad) I was a little surprised that no one seemed to eat much of the cake. I cut myself a piece and quickly started a conversation about the Middle East.
While we dove into solving the worlds problems, I noticed something disturbing. The Cheesecake wasn’t a cheesecake anymore. In fact, it didn’t taste like anything. Somehow the raspberry, and pomegranate molasses, has merely countered the naturally sour flavor of the cream cheese…. and the result was NOTHING. it didn’t taste like raspberry, it didn’t taste like cheesecake, it tasted like soft, perfectly formed, mildly sweet, desert matter. Thank god for the raspberry glaze and fresh berries… otherwise I would have had to dish out the stand-by ice cream and fresh berries (always have a backup desert when you have guests over).
Lesson learned. Leave cheesecake to taste like cheesecake. Focus on the toppings as flavor definition (this must be why I never enjoyed chocolate cheesecake).
