Birthday Gifts, Sweet Bakings and The Atheist’s Nightmare.
Late Post is late. Sorry AP5!
Birthday Gifts.
This year for my Birthday, my eldest sister Miriam, and Andrew’s Mum Dot gave me very thoughtful, and accidentally synchronous gifts. Miriam gave me cookie cutters, flamboyant flower-sprinkles, multi-coloured mini patty pans and little icing flowers in pink and purple to decorate cakes. Dot brought me two of the new bendy plastic-y muffin trays that are all the rage at the moment, one of which is for tiny cupcakes! She also brought me a simple recipe for vanilla cupcakes with real raspberry icing – made with just raspberries and icing sugar. Oh hells yes.
I think it’s so lovely that they both know exactly what I like. They got me things that they knew I would love, but are too special for me to ever buy for myself. Not necessarily expensive, but too frivolous for me to indulge in normally. That’s pretty much my definition of a great gift.
I love also that these gifts were the trigger for me realising how clever my niece is becoming. Of course she wanted to play with all the colourful things I was unwrapping, and the cookie cutters were the least dangerous of the bunch. That is how the cookie cutter bear recognition story came up. It still blows my mind that an 18 month old can recognise the abstract cookie cutter teddy as the same thing as her cuddly toy, and call it a bear without prompting. Wat.
Anyhoo, I made the Vanilla Cupcakes with Gen-yoo-ine Raspberry Icing tonight. I used the recipe, the muffin trays, the patty pans, the sprinkles and the flowers. They were really easy to make, and very yummy. Here are the results!:
Sweet Bakings.
Ima take this opportunity to introduce you guys to a few of my current favourite recipes for Sweet Bakings. Now these have to come with a warning. My idea of a great dessert is one that whacks me over the head with its flavour. I wanna not be able to eat any more of it by the time I finish a portion, due to excessive richness. I wanna be incapacitated by that bitch. With baked goods, I am pretty much the way Andrew is about everything else… EXTREME! So, it makes sense that I love things like white chocolate and raspberry cheese cake, double choc brownies, and caramel slice, right?
Chocolate Death Brownies. -Recipe from ‘Bake It’ by Murdoch Books, given to me by my lovely housemates last Christmas and adjusted by me to make it even MOAR CHOCOLATE-Y.
Ingredients:
250g milk chocolate, chopped
175g butter, chopped
2 eggs
250g brown sugar
60g cocoa
125g plain flour
80g cashews, toasted, chopped (or whatever nut/other filling you like. I like marshmallows or gummy raspberries)
150g dark chocolate, chopped (extra)
Icing:
200g milk chocolate, chopped
125g butter
50g cocoa
40g icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Grease 23cm square tin and line with baking paper.
Melt the first batch of chocolate and butter in the microwave for 20 secs, stir to prevent burning the chocolate, then another 20secs until done. Beat the eggs and sugar in a separate bowl until pale and thick. Mix in the melted chocolate and butter and then the sifted cocoa and flour. Mix in the extra dark chocolate and the cashews. Pour into the tin, smoothing the top. Bake for 30-35mins or until just firm. Allow to cool.
For the icing, melt the chocolate and butter in the same way as above. Add icing sugar and sifted cocoa and stir well. Spread thickly over brownies and allow to set. Cut into squares and serve! Add bacon as desired.
Coronary Caramel Slice/Millionaire’s Shortbread. -from ‘Chocolate’ by Parragon books, once again altered by me for ADDED YUM-FACTOR FLAVOUR-TIMES. Thanks to Hat Guy for this recipe book for my 22nd Birthday. I have got so much use out of it and have found one of my most beloved recipes inside it. Also, pretty much anything containing aweetned condensed milk is bound to be hot stuff.
Ingredients:
175g plain four
125g butter, chopped
4tbsp brown sugar
Topping:
55g butter
4tbsp brown sugar
400g can sweetened condensed milk
150g milk chocolate
Preheat oven to 190 degrees. Grease 23cm tin, line with baking paper. Put the flour and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingers until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Press into the base of the tray. Bake for 5 mins until lightly golden. Leave to cool.
For the topping, place the butter, sugar and condensed milk into a non-stick saucepan and bring to the boil over a gentle heat while stirring constantly. Reduce heat immediately and cook for 4-5mins, still stirring constantly, until the caramel thickens to the consistency of honey. Pour over the shortbread and leave to cool.
When the caramel it set, melt the chocolate and spread it over the caramel. Refrigerate it to set. Cut it into squares and allow it to blow your mind. Add bacon as desired.
Bon appetit!
And now for something completely different.
As I mentioned in my last post, I have been loving Rozebooshje’s channel on YouTube lately. During my watchings, I found a video of his that is a response to the old, Banana: The Atheist’s Nightmare video. Please watch the original first if you haven’t seen it, otherwise the following videos will make no sense at all. The middle of this video really made me laugh.
When I showed that to Andrew, he showed me this one from CauchySchwarz. It is, similarly, an atheist’s response to the original Banana: The Atheist’s Nightmare video, and made me lol.
Bon appetit x2! If that can be said about consuming the fruits of YouTube.
A Pleasing Fiveness 
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