Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter Baking

I have been quite remiss in posting about my culinary adventures, of which there have been many in the last few months.  But in honor of the holiday, I'm going to post about the three stages of my Easter baking!

Stage 1: Bunny, Chick and Lamb cakes.  I used a mold that I bought on Easter sale at Karstadt, and used a Germany recipe, which included grated marzipan!  This was new for me, and I must say even the baking marzipan here bears slight resemblance to what is found in the UK.

Stage 2: Two days later, I made cupcakes.  If you look in the first picture, you can see two different kinds of Easter flavored cupcake liners!  I made coconut cupcakes from a Barefoot Contessa recipe.  They were quite popular at work, but I wasn't so happy with them because there was also almond extract in, and it was a bit too strong for me, I suspect because the coconut here being dessicated and un-sweetened, the flavor doesn't offset the almond as much as it should.



Stage 3: I was invited by a couple of co-workers for Easter brunch today, and I volunteered to bring supplies for Easter cookie decorating.  This picture is just from the beginning; about half an hour later the table was completely full.  It was a hit!  And the guests were from all over the world, so some had never decorated cookies before.  And best of all, I finally got to use all of my Easter cookie cutters.  And the second picture is my cookies.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Xan: Love-hate relationships

What do smoked salmon and corn dogs have in common?

They are both foods that I LOVE, but only for the first few bites.

It is a peculiar sort of love-hate relationship.  I love smoked salmon, but I get sick of it so quickly, and I have no idea why.  I also love corn dogs, but I can only make it about halfway through a corn dog before I am just done with that taste.  I have the same problem with hot dogs to a lesser extent.  (Foot-longs are definitely too big).

I do not seek these foods out.  I eat them when they come to me in life, which is just infrequently enough for me to forget about my love-hate relationship with them.  When I saw smoked salmon at a breakfast buffet recently, I remembered how much I loved it, but I took too much because I didn't remember that I was about to hate it again.

There are probably other foods in this category that I just cannot remember right now.  Has anyone else had an experience like this?