jaina

Today was my birthday, and a delightful birthday it was. To wit:

- Woke up to find a present sitting on my laptop: Glee Season 1, Part 2! (OMG IT HAS A VID TO TEACH PART OF "REHAB" AND YOU CAN SEE THE DRESSES SOOO WELL!!!) Do I have a good sirrogue or what?
- Fantastic 8 mile run this morning at a 10:10 pace
- Birthday presents of new running shoes and running hat at Roadrunner's grand re-opening sale, plus a bunch of free energy gel/cube/bite samples
- Registered for next year's San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon, and hopefully convinced my Disney-loving salesgirl to run the Princess Half next year
- Treated myself to the cutest skirt ever from SkirtSports
- aviendiora and rhynndavrie came over with birthday Chick-Fil-A and we had nuggets and cupcakes for dinner
- I made lemon cupcakes and delivered them to the boys' Star Trek CCG tournament. It's a hobbity kind of birthday. Except for all the stuff I bought myself.

Also: rosiewook called me "Caitlin Jaina Robin Sparkles" on Facebook. I DEMAND THAT HENCEFORTH EVERYONE SHALL ADDRESS ME AS SUCH.

Also also:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

A quick round-up of some of the stuff I've baked recently:

I came across this recipe for Magic Peanut Butter Middles and desperately needed to make it. Luckily the boys were having a Star Trek tournament that day, so I had people to foist them off onto. (Dan's face when I showed up was priceless.) Mine are a little pale; I ran out of cocoa powder. That just means they'll be even tastier next time! ;-)

They look like pretty ordinary chocolate cookies on the outside:



But when you bite into them...



Mmmmmmm, sugary peanut butter. CHOMP.



I also made some red velvet cake truffles (essentially stick-less cake pops) for our last ballet class of the semester. I tried making square-shaped truffles (because Colleen's always after us to keep our hips square) in addition to the regular round ones. I also got a ballet-shoe-shaped candy mold to decorate the tops of the truffles.

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I was pretty pleased with how these came out. I melted red and white candy melts together (1:5) to get the pink and I quite like it. I had to double-dip the square truffles to keep them looking presentable, so there was a bit more candy coating on those than I prefer.

I also made more Thin Mint truffles (thank you J-9!!!) for Dan and Debby's Memorial Day gathering, but I didn't take pictures, and they didn't last long once we got there. *g*

I had today free, and I was planning to do all sorts of grown-up responsible things like laundry and tidying the first floor and the dishes.

I totally made cupcakes instead.



Chocolate-iced cream-filled banana cupcakes, to be precise. (I had bananas that needed using.) A bunch went to the boys for their D&D session tonight; the rest will go with Rogue to his Trek card tournament tomorrow. (And all the scraps went in my tummy, yummmmm.)

Cake recipe: Wonderful Banana Cake (use three bananas, not two, and preheat the oven and bake the cake as usual, not the weird method suggested)
Filling recipe: That's the Best Frosting I've Ever Had (I wouldn't call it the best ever, but it's interesting. Very good for fillings especially, like if you're making homemade Ding-Dongs or Hostess cupcakes. I think I overbeat mine a bit.)
Icing recipe: Creamy Chocolate Frosting (Good. Really good. But use good cocoa powder. If you use Hershey's, it will taste exactly like Hershey's.)

To fill the cupcakes, I used the method described on Not So Humble Pie, where you core out the center of the cupcake, cut off most of the cake from the plug you've just removed (leaving just a "lid" of cake), fill with your filling, and replace the lid. She uses a small biscuit cutter; lacking one, I just used a small serrated knife. Worked perfectly.

Now I have to go get the laundry out of the dryer. Cupcakes, after all, can only delay the inevitable. *eyes the kitchenful of dirty dishes*

Went to the grocery store today and wouldn't you know it, there were Brownies out in front, hypnotizing us all into buying even more Girl Scout cookies. Oh darn.

So I came home and made some more Thin Mint truffles! They were mostly a success the last time I tried them, and judging by the reaction of the boys when I dropped them off at their Trek tournament just now, they were pretty good this time too.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly; I just used one sleeve of Thin Mints, mixed with the crushed Oreos leftover from last time (about six cookies), and added cream cheese until I got the right consistency-- about 2.75 oz or so. It made 20 little truffles. I did better with the dipping this time, but I'm certainly no Bakerella! I think I need to get some paramount crystals if I'm going to be using candy melts in the future. But I liked them enough to take some pictures:

. .

It has been all-Olympics, pretty-much-all-the-time here for the last few days! I adore the Winter Olympics and I basically just put it on all day. I just wish we weren't on a tape-delay...blech.

- I loved the Opening Ceremonies. I cried a *lot.* My favorite part was definitely the fiddling/tap dancing section-- only two of my favorite things in the entire universe at the same time! The ballet-in-the-trees was great too. And the whales!!!

- Figure skating is off to a great start! I think the pairs podium turned out perfectly. I had a blast chatting live about it tonight with my CJ girls. (Thank you again for the streaming link, Liz!) Also, our local news is having John Baldwin talk about the pairs competitions which is hilaaaaariously awkward.

- How do the moguls athletes still have knees? I've skied down a fair few mogul runs in my life, and man, I'm just in awe of them. Great results in both of those competitions, too.

- I CANNOT WAIT for skicross. Snowboardcross is amazing already, and skicross better not disappoint!

- Watching the cross-country skiers makes me exhausted.

Other random stuff from the weekend:

- On Saturday I ran my fastest average yet (8:30/mile for 3 miles). This may or may not have had something to do with the Girl Scouts selling cookies that I passed as I ran. (I caught up to them after I finished and bought Tagalongs and Thin Mints, mmmmmm.)

- I was seized with the urge to make candy-- so on Saturday I made both chocolate chip cookie dough truffles and Oreo truffles, then popped over to the Star Trek card tournament and foisted them off on the boys. Verdict: very tasty, but I need serious work on my dipping skills. Maybe next time they won't be so ugly and I'll take pictures. I also made a few Thin Mint truffles using the Oreo method and they were yummmmmm.

- We've started doing some furniture rearrangement in the house. Yesterday we took down most of the posters from the bedroom, just leaving the ones we actually care about. It looks so different! Much more open.

(that's right! I'm busting out the old-school Charlie and Claire icon for this post!)

Soooo, as previously mentioned, Tree and I co-hosted Dan and Debby's baby shower on Sunday at her house. We promised them that it would just be a regular party, except with presents and cake-- no games involving diaper pins or toilet paper or anything scary like that. This ensured that 1) our circle of friends would come, even the single gamer boys, and relatedly, that 2) Debby and Dan would actually attend their own shower. :D

I had promised cake, so I had to live up to my end of the bargain. I ended up going maybe a liiiiittle bit crazy, because I apparently felt the need to make a cake, cupcakes, and cake pops. I'm sure you are all shocked, shocked! to hear that I was still up at 2 am on Sunday, sticking chocolate ladybugs onto cake pops. No? Yeah, me neither.

ANYWAY! I'm not gonna be working at Charm City Cakes anytime soon, but I am pretty damn excited about how these came out:



D&D (ha) announced the news to the gaming group by passing around a character sheet that looked something like this. It took awhile for the guys to figure it out, but they eventually caught on. So this is my tribute to that. :) (On the name thing-- D&D neglected to provide us with a baby nickname, so the guys came up with one. Reasoning: baby girl = pink, pink = lightish red, lightish red = Donut.)

( cupcakes, cake pops, and many more details under the cut )

I leave you with a quote from the party:
Me: "What do you say to people at a baby shower, anyway? 'Congratulations'? 'Happy baby'?"
Rogue: "'Nice knowing you.'"

Here's my contribution to the inauguration festivities-- CUPCAKES NOM NOM NOM:



These are going to my science writing class tomorrow night; I made some politically-neutral ones for work (just random blue and red sprinkles). I'm a multicultural cupcake baker-- some are chocolate, some are white, and some are marble. ;-)