Cupcakes, storms, and skillet cake.
It's been an awfully long time since I've done an open update in my journal - I've been back in Kansas for a little more than two weeks and I've been doing many of the things I was looking forward to by the end of my long year overseas.
While I was in Kansas City I took a bunch of pictures of my niece. I have some nice pictures of Sam here, but not as many of Alex. This is because when they are both awake, I'm too busy to take pictures! So these were taken while Alex was having her nap. Sam is an incredibly intelligent, strong-minded little girl with a wonderful sense of humor. By the end of my visit there she was feeling much more comfortable with me, and we had fun taking pictures. I brought her my old digital camera to play with. I was interested in getting some pictures that show her quiet, serious, deep-thinky side as well as her playfulness. I've never really known any very small children until Sam and Alex came along, and I'd say that one of the big revelations is that they tend to spend a pretty good amount of time in serious thought. Figuring stuff out. Thinking about things. It makes sense. There's a lot to figure out when you're that little. Figuring out people. Stuff. Things.
But she is also sweet. When she smiles like this my heart just melts!
I set my camera to consecutive shooting and asked Sam to show/smile me her dimple:
I was laughing so hard by the end of this that I could hardly breathe. She can be such an adorable hambone.
The next weekend was a big country music festival in Manhattan called Country Stampede, and during the course of the week I worked long and hard downstairs, starting to get things squared away in the master bedroom down there (it's been used mostly as chockablock storage for the last 10 years or so). Then the kids and my brother and sister-in-law were in Manhattan, and we had lots of stuff to do.
One of those things was baking cupcakes.
After Country Stampede I went back to finishing up my administrative follow-up for the trip and other academic this-and-that. Mostly I've been sleeping. I feel like I'm catching up on about six months of not enough sleep. I love sleep. So, so much. I stay up too late and sleep too long, but it's just so delicious and comfy to be able to do both. When I'm not sleeping I'm working around the house. Soon it will be disgustingly hot in Kansas again, and it seems like a good idea to get as much done as possible that requires running around before it's hell-planet hot here.
Last night I did some very light storm-chasing. Nothing dangerous, just trying to get squared up against the storm wall so I could take pictures. No dice getting pictures of lightning - you either need a fast(er than my) camera or a nice long exposure for that, and I just had a short hood for my lens - no tripod or anything like that. But I got some nice atmo shots and one nice one of the storm wall - I had to do more than a little driving around some gnarly back roads to get into position, but it was fun.
I picked up some peaches and nectarines at Westside (one of the mostly-local produce markets) and decided to bake a cake with them. I opted for a skillet cake, because I had a vision of upside-down cake looking at them, but I didn't want to mess around with doing an upside down cake in a pan. A skillet cake is pretty simple stuff - you caramelize some sugar in the bottom of the skillet, toss your fruit in the caramel, then pour your cake batter on top and bake it at 350 until it's done, which is around 40-50 minutes.
My initial attempts at caramel sauce were... Problematic. Half stick butter, half cup sugar, stir over medium heat til wow, caramel, right? Ha. I vaguely remember reading something about caramel separating and how to make it not do that and fix it if it does, but I couldn't remember what I'd read and had to kind of wing it. Then, omg, when I dumped my peaches and nectarines into the frying pan, the colder juice caused the hot caramel to harden up like POW. Then I had to poke at it until it broke into caramel pieces, and stirred them up until it softened and swirled again. Totally not ideal or best-practices, for sure.
The cake batter is very simple -
The skillet looked like a hot mess. Then I poured my cake batter in the middle of the hot mess. I felt highly skeptical that this was going to work out. So skeptical that I put down double-redundancy cookie sheets against what I thought was an inevitable peachy nectariney volcano in the oven.
And yet!
This is what came out of the oven about 45 minutes later:
Pretty good crumb:
Pockets of melted caramel from the sauce fail:
Serve with ice cream. Pretty yummy.
And that's the update! Uneventful, other than some pretty vigorous firefly hunting (no pictures available, haha) for my nice. Unfortunately, I bunged the lid of the jar and the fireflies ended up wandering the house for a few days. Oops.
Happy 4th of July!
While I was in Kansas City I took a bunch of pictures of my niece. I have some nice pictures of Sam here, but not as many of Alex. This is because when they are both awake, I'm too busy to take pictures! So these were taken while Alex was having her nap. Sam is an incredibly intelligent, strong-minded little girl with a wonderful sense of humor. By the end of my visit there she was feeling much more comfortable with me, and we had fun taking pictures. I brought her my old digital camera to play with. I was interested in getting some pictures that show her quiet, serious, deep-thinky side as well as her playfulness. I've never really known any very small children until Sam and Alex came along, and I'd say that one of the big revelations is that they tend to spend a pretty good amount of time in serious thought. Figuring stuff out. Thinking about things. It makes sense. There's a lot to figure out when you're that little. Figuring out people. Stuff. Things.
But she is also sweet. When she smiles like this my heart just melts!
I set my camera to consecutive shooting and asked Sam to show/smile me her dimple:
I was laughing so hard by the end of this that I could hardly breathe. She can be such an adorable hambone.
The next weekend was a big country music festival in Manhattan called Country Stampede, and during the course of the week I worked long and hard downstairs, starting to get things squared away in the master bedroom down there (it's been used mostly as chockablock storage for the last 10 years or so). Then the kids and my brother and sister-in-law were in Manhattan, and we had lots of stuff to do.
One of those things was baking cupcakes.
After Country Stampede I went back to finishing up my administrative follow-up for the trip and other academic this-and-that. Mostly I've been sleeping. I feel like I'm catching up on about six months of not enough sleep. I love sleep. So, so much. I stay up too late and sleep too long, but it's just so delicious and comfy to be able to do both. When I'm not sleeping I'm working around the house. Soon it will be disgustingly hot in Kansas again, and it seems like a good idea to get as much done as possible that requires running around before it's hell-planet hot here.
Last night I did some very light storm-chasing. Nothing dangerous, just trying to get squared up against the storm wall so I could take pictures. No dice getting pictures of lightning - you either need a fast(er than my) camera or a nice long exposure for that, and I just had a short hood for my lens - no tripod or anything like that. But I got some nice atmo shots and one nice one of the storm wall - I had to do more than a little driving around some gnarly back roads to get into position, but it was fun.
I picked up some peaches and nectarines at Westside (one of the mostly-local produce markets) and decided to bake a cake with them. I opted for a skillet cake, because I had a vision of upside-down cake looking at them, but I didn't want to mess around with doing an upside down cake in a pan. A skillet cake is pretty simple stuff - you caramelize some sugar in the bottom of the skillet, toss your fruit in the caramel, then pour your cake batter on top and bake it at 350 until it's done, which is around 40-50 minutes.
My initial attempts at caramel sauce were... Problematic. Half stick butter, half cup sugar, stir over medium heat til wow, caramel, right? Ha. I vaguely remember reading something about caramel separating and how to make it not do that and fix it if it does, but I couldn't remember what I'd read and had to kind of wing it. Then, omg, when I dumped my peaches and nectarines into the frying pan, the colder juice caused the hot caramel to harden up like POW. Then I had to poke at it until it broke into caramel pieces, and stirred them up until it softened and swirled again. Totally not ideal or best-practices, for sure.
The cake batter is very simple -
- 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 cup milk
The skillet looked like a hot mess. Then I poured my cake batter in the middle of the hot mess. I felt highly skeptical that this was going to work out. So skeptical that I put down double-redundancy cookie sheets against what I thought was an inevitable peachy nectariney volcano in the oven.
And yet!
This is what came out of the oven about 45 minutes later:
Pretty good crumb:
Pockets of melted caramel from the sauce fail:
Serve with ice cream. Pretty yummy.
And that's the update! Uneventful, other than some pretty vigorous firefly hunting (no pictures available, haha) for my nice. Unfortunately, I bunged the lid of the jar and the fireflies ended up wandering the house for a few days. Oops.
Happy 4th of July!