Busy Busy Springtime Post

I'm so annoyed that I have no time to blog.

On days when I can actually go home right after school ends, I'm so exhausted, that I just collapse on the couch (with a bag of light butter popcorn and a diet coke, my "healthy" snack of choice) and do absolutely nothing productive.

I know I should do homework or write to y'all, but, more often than not, my energy level is a -45 on a scale of 1 to 10.

So here's a collection of pictures I've taken through this last month and a half and stories to go along with them since I've been such a negligent blog-parent.

I actually ate blackberries for the first time. My paw has a blackberry bush at his house, so I've always picked them but I've never eaten them since they're so sour! A few weekends ago, Paw told me that when he was little, he'd mash up the berries and add spoonfuls of sugar to them! 

I tried that and it was insanely delicious! It's probably the only way you could make fruit unhealthy, but it's a great treat! I couldn't stop thinking of everything you could make with these! Blackberry preserves, pie, popsicles, juice -- the possibilities are endless!

I had my first snowball of the season! I'm not sure if snowballs are common everywhere, but I was always under the impression that they were a Louisiana thing. It's sort of like shave ice, or Italian ice except softer (like snow, imagine that!) So you've got a nice styrofoam cup of snow and then flavored syrup on top. Not too much, but not too little either. I'm convinced that there's an art to pouring snowball syrup. The one in the picture is my favorite kind: Nectar, also known as Pink Lady. It's sweet, creamy, and pink (is pink a flavor?), and even better with sweetened condensed milk poured over the top! Yum! 

I went to prom with one of my best friends and had a blast. He got me the prettiest flowers. That picture on the bottom right is my dress on prom day being worked on. Let me give y'all the backstory:

We bought the dress right before we left for New York and it was a tad bit too long. I thought, "Oh, it can't be that hard to hem a dress, and we'll have a whole week to do it when we get back." We got back on the Monday of spring break and prom was the Saturday. Plenty of time, right? Well one thing led to another and it was Saturday already! Long story short, my mom tried to sew it, but we ended up pinning it on the inside since sewing was sew complicated! (did you see what I did there? Sew. So. Punny right? I'll stop now.)  

I baked some perfect chocolate chip cookies. Before y'all start asking for the recipe though, I better add that they were just break and bake cookies. When I say that I fail at baking cookies, I mean, I almost messed these up. I thought I did at first, but I just hadn't had them in the oven long enough. I hate that you have to wait for them to cool to know whether they're good or not, though. With cupcakes, you can just poke them with a toothpick and if it's clean, you're good! With cookies, you have to let them cool to see if they firm up, and if you leave them on the pan too long, they get stuck! 

I need a cookie mentor, asap!

I got this sparkly hot pink iPad case!! (And check out that lovely background!) My school is going all futuristic on us and switching from textbooks to iBooks next year, and they're letting us bring iPads to school now! I love it! I type faster than I write anyway, and I'm so much more organized! 

Every year, the junior band class hosts the band dance at my school! The theme is always top secret and it's a very over the top event. This year's theme was A Night at the Oscars and we had an awesome time planning it! I was on the backdrop committee and I was so proud of our picture (we actually painted it!), that I had to show y'all! I went with my same friend from prom and we dressed for the theme! Would you believe I got my dress from a thrift store for $14?? 

The after party was super fun too! I hosted it at my uncle's skating rink and it was a blast!

I baked some delicious chocolate macarons! They weren't even that hard (the second time!). Word to the wise, when making macarons, use parchment paper or a silpat mat. Don't use wax paper, because even if the box says nonstick, you will end up with macarons that look like this:

And now, I'm in my final stretch of junior year! With just one week of school left, I won't be blogging for a while. When exam week is over, I'll try to do a macaron step by step post! Until then, I'll be busy hitting the books and being distracted by other beautiful blogs. 

Also, if anyone reading has gotten Ms. Heather Baird's (of the blog Sprinkle Bakes) new book SprinkleBakes: Dessert Recipes to Inspire Your Inner Artist, let me know if it's just as amazing in real life! I want to get my hands on it so bad! 

My First New York Adventure!

Hey there!

Long time no talk. This post is a tad bit lengthy but it has a bunch of pictures! 

I really really really miss writing to you guys. 

Sometimes, I don't even understand myself. Two months ago, I LOVED my blog so much! I was going to pay for a domain name and start making money off of it! I was going to think of more creative things and become a Pinterest super star! I was going to bake more and buy a fancy photo studio in a box! 

But then my grades started to slip and my blog hit the back burner. I just baked last night for the first time in weeks but I didn't even take pictures! 

I tried to blog on the bus last week, but the wifi was being ridiculous! 

"Why was I on a bus with so much time to blog?" you might be asking yourself (even though you probably have awesome deduction skills and read the title). 

Well because I was on my way back from New York City! 

New York was really awesome! The only not-so-awesome part was being stuck on a bus for twenty-six or so hours there and back and then waiting for groups and stuff. See, I went with the entire band from my school, and we got the chance to play in Carnegie Hall! 

I had a solo (I play the piccolo) and it was such an amazing experience!

But that was only one part of the trip! We got to do all sorts of other fun stuff! 

Of course, my mom came! She's always my favorite partner for these adventures! 

She would do just about anything for me, including riding on a bus full of incredibly annoying underclassmen for 26ish+ hours. 

We got to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and I froze my booty off because I didn't realize how cold New York was in the early spring on the water. 

We bought expensive "Statue of Liberty" water (But it wasn't from the river. I hope).

We went see a Broadway musical. 

It was awesome and so funny! And I didn't expect Nick Jonas to have such an awesome 'broadway voice'. 

We saw all the pretty stores on 5th Avenue. The Juicy store was my favorite because of the pretty flowers in the window!

We also got a chance to pray in St. Patrick's Cathedral on Good Friday. It's such a beautiful place. 

 

We also got to take a cruise around the city at night. It was beautiful! (and cold). 

 

And we went to West Point. That's a pretty place too, but I was getting sick on that last day and it was really cold there. 

The day before, however, was when we got to go out on our own in a tiny group of just my mom and I and my friend Shelby and her family. 

We took the subway down to the world trade center site. 

That was definitely an experience. I can't even imagine what was going through everyone's heads when those planes crashed (I was only in first grade). 

This is a picture of the fountains and all the construction from an observation deck a little ways away. Notice that lone green tree. We were told that this pear tree was the only one to survive the attack. 

After, we made our way into one of the new "World Financial Center" buildings that was connected to the walkway we were on. Always thought those were just office buildings, but there was a Banana Republic and an Ann Taylor in there where we passed. Anyone know why and care to clue me in? 

When we wandered out of the building, we came across this adorable park full of tulips! We took a few family pictures here (This isn't even edited! Sometimes I amaze myself with how cool my pictures turn out!)

Then we walked to the fire station memorial for all the 9/11 firefighters and heroes. 

We were told it's the same inside as the day the buildings fell. 

So then we walked up Broadway and used a real paper map (not the one on my iPhone) to find

 Georgetown Cupcake SOHO!!!!!!

 I was soooo excited! 

So now I'll take y'all on a mini virtual tour! 

You walk in and are greeted with the awesome "giant cupcake picture"

Then you see the pretty cupcakes on display! 

Then you look at the giant menu (even though you've already memorized all of the cupcakes and know exactly which ones you want!) 

Then you patiently wait for the group ahead of you so you can order. 

Do you see all of the pink boxes?? 

Then you order a dozen so that everyone in your group can have two, because I mean, they are the most delicious cupcakes in all the world!!

And then you pose for another picture with your friend :P

The shop looks narrow here, but it's wayyy bigger than the Georgetown location.

Then you spot it. The coveted "sparkly bedazzled hot pink kitchen aid mixer." The one you've googled before and know that it has a price tag of $2,000. The one that you hope to one day get to take a close up picture of when you work at Georgetown Cupcake Soho, since they don't let just anyone walk behind the counter. Oh, that's only me, isn't it? Oh well. 

So then you find out the girl behind the counter is named Sydney too, so you must get a picture with her as well. 

Oh, that's just me again. 

But anyone would want to creepily stalk take pictures of the cool people decorating the cupcakes, right? 

Or of the pretty gift wrapping? 

But then, all too soon, you've got your twelve cupcakes plus the FREE secret cupcake flavor of the day (chocolate mint crunch! just like a thin mint girl scout cookie cupcake!) and it's time to go. You leave the store, and with a tearful goodbye promise yourself you'll be back again soon. 

Then you take the subway back to Times Square and make the rest of the band kids and everyone else in McDonald's jealous of your amazing cupcakes! 

Top row: Carrot, lava fudge, lemon blossom, chocolate hazelnut. 

Middle Row: Lava fudge, milk chocolate birthday, red velvet, coconut.

Bottom row: Easter vanilla, lava fudge, carrot, chocolate peanut butter chip 

(I told everyone that my favorite from D.C. was the lava fudge. I tried the carrot this time and it was so good! I had the hazelnut one too, because that one was sooooo good last time!)

I didn't take a picture of my extra one, but I did take this with its wrapper

I can't remember if I showed y'all the bottoms of the wrappers in my last trip to Gerogetown Cupcake blog, but in case I didn't, look how cute! They all have these different designs on them! 

But now I'm back home. I recovered from the sinus infection that I picked up on the way home, and I've done a whole lot of nothing on this spring break. 

I do have prom tomorrow, so maybe I'll post a few pictures for you guys of my prom adventure on Sunday. 

Until next time, xoxoxo!!

Custard Pies with the Knights

Today is the last day of the Mardi Gras week off from school, and I'm feeling pretty sad. I mean, I still have homework to do, and a big project (I'm such a procrastinator). So instead of doing said homework now, I'm writing this post (with good reason, since I probably won't get another chance for a new update until after exams). 

So as the title suggests, this post is about custard pies. A lot of them actually. 

I give you Tart a la Bouie pies (At least I'm pretty sure that's how you spell it. I take Spanish)! 

These pies are sooooo good, too! They have a sweet crust, and are filled with a creamy, dreamy sweet custard. I like them best when they're ice cold from the refrigerator, but some people eat them warm. 

See, twice a year, for as far back as I can remember, the Knights of Columbus and the American Legion have partnered up to do a fundraiser. They bake a ridiculously large number of pies (almost a thousand in the spring and close to two thousand in the fall) and sell them to people who have preorders at $7 a pie. 

Usually, we only buy a couple of pies, (they're yummy even after they're frozen) and just pick them up from the KC hall, but this year, I was in need of service hours for school and I really wanted to come help here! 

So I got there at 9:30 in the morning, ready to help with whatever needed to be done. 

I buttered a couple hundred pie pans (at least it felt like that many) with a paint brush.

Once the eleven o'clock rush of people passed, they were making another a final batch of dough. I had mentioned to the man in charge how much I loved baking, so he asked me if I wanted to see how they made the dough! I jumped at the chance! 

There's a big industrial-style kitchen in the back of the hall, that was built a few years ago, specifically for pie making! I went back there and a man they called Jr. showed me the ropes! 

We followed the recipe from this old stained book. It's hard to read from the picture, but it goes like this:

50 eggs

25 lbs sugar

5 teaspoons salt

11 cups oil

25 lbs flour

10 large spoon (I'm guessing tablespoons?) baking powder

20 teaspoons vanilla

Beat eggs 2 minutes, add sugar and salt. 

Beat 10 minutes. Add Mazola oil and vanilla. Add flour and baking powder. 

Use 10 oz. of dough for each pie. 

This dough makes really yummy sugar cookie dough, too! Just sprinkle the cookies with coarse sanding sugar before you bake it! 

As you see in the picture, they just used cups with the lines drawn on them to measure how much of everything they needed, since it must be a little tedious to add 20 teaspoons of vanilla one at a time. There are probably tons of people that would have thought of that right away (I'm not one of them, obviously, so I thought this was clever). 

AND, I got to see one of these GIANT mixers up close!! (and giant ovens and stoves and refrigerators that covered an entire wall!!) 

Something funny happened while we were mixing this up, though. Well I didn't think it was all that funny. When Mr. Jr. added the oil, he got a little distracted and the measuring cup got caught between the side of the pan and the giant whisk. He lost the cup in the batter, and then we heard a crunch! The plastic cup had broken in the bowl, and we had to fish out all of the pieces, then pour out all the batter, to make sure there were no small pieces left in it. If that would have happened to me, I probably would've been on the verge of tears, but he just laughed.

So after the dough thoroughly searched for plastic shards, it went on to these men. 

They kneaded it, then rolled it out into even sized logs and then cut those logs in half. (They even had special tools!) 

After they had filled a whole pan like the one shown above, they sent that pan to the people in the back of this picture.

Way back there, there are people who were rolling the dough flat to either cover the pans, or run it through a fancy machine. The machine made it flat and cut a lattice design that could be stretched to cover the pies. Then they put the lattice dough on another pan and sent it to the ladies in the picture below. 

The pans with flattened dough were sent down the table to about half way were a man (you can just see him with a blue shirt and blue apron) scooped a pan full of custard into the shells. 

They didn't give me the recipe for the custard, since it's super secret and they had come around three that morning to make it.

  So once they had enough filled pies and lattice dough, the pies shown above were sent to the left to these ladies. 

The mens standing up laid the lattice on the pies and the ladies made the edges pretty and pinched. Then they put the pies on the pans and they were loaded up to bake. 

Once they were baked, they had to cool 

They had to be completely cool before we covered the pies with aluminum foil. 

(There were two more tables on the left that you can't see, but all of them were covered with pies at one time.) 

And once they were cool and covered, we had to put them in boxes for the people who ordered them (Since hardly anyone only buys one or two. These are really good!). It was a little scary, since the bottoms of my shoes were coated in flour and I was slipping around! 

But I really had a grand time! It was my first taste of baking with incredibly large numbers and I loved it! If anything, it only increased my obsession with owning a bakery! I'd definitely sell these yummy pies! 

King Cake!

I know this is a little late, since Mardi Gras was yesterday, and carnival season is over, but y'all should know by now, I've been super busy... But here's my Mardi Gras post for you! I'm really sorry there aren't too many pictures either :(

I promise there's a recipe at the end of this long-winded post, but first I've got a secret to tell y'all.

You've got to promise not to tell a soul. 

I really don't like Mardi Gras.

I know I should. It's a southern tradition, and as much as I like tradition and a lot of Southern culture, I just can't ever get into Carnival Season. It might just be because my parents never join krewes, or because neither of them are the drinking and partying type. Maybe it's just because I don't go out and get drunk like so many kids my age I'm not old enough to drink legally and the thought of breaking the law for something so silly flabbergasts me.

But even overlooking the drinking aspect of it, I can't really remember ever liking Mardi Gras, as far back as I can remember. I was always a quiet kid-- I mean reallllly quiet and shy. I could never really get myself to scream "THROW ME SOMETHIN' MISTER!", especially in front of a bunch of people, for a handful of plastic beads or a stuffed animal. 

And as if I didn't hate this silly holiday enough already, since I'm in the band, I got the privilege of representing my high school and marching in two parades this year! Doesn't the thought of walking briskly, in step with everyone, while spinning a flag- trying not to hit drunk parade watchers and small children, for a few miles sound like fun?? Sometimes, drunk high school kids even throw beads at us us beads! But, upside, it's only a few miles, and since it's February, it wasn't completely unbearably hot and sticky..  

There are only three things that make this holiday bearable, and actually a little fun at times: 

1. The week off of school. 

2. Having little cousins that visit from far away. 

3. King cake. 

Having a week off of school for any reason is wonderful in my book. 

I've got some cousins that live far away from here, so they don't celebrate Mardi Gras there like they do here. The only time parades are fun is when you've got one of the screaming kiddies on your hip. (Sometimes it's fun to watch the drunk people falling all over themselves, too).  They are just adorable and you get to bring them up to the side of the float to get stuffed animals and moon pies. 

For those of y'all that aren't familiar with king cake, the best way I can describe it is like this: 

It's a bread-like ring-shaped cake that is similar to cinnamon rolls, typically covered in a white sugar glaze-like frosting and then sprinkled with purple, yellow, and green sanding sugar. Sometimes they are filled with fruit fillings or creams such as cream cheese or bavarian cream. Just recently, I saw a triple chocolate king cake, and I really want to try one!

Tradition says that whoever gets the baby (representing baby Jesus) in their piece of cake has to buy the next cake for the next party.

For more Mardi Gras history, check out Wikipedia.

Since I've got the whole week off for Mardi Gras this week, I really wanted to try making a king cake for the Monday Night (Lundi Gras) parade that passes in front of my grandpa's house.

But, instead of baking on Monday morning, I went play golf (I just joined the golf team and my first real match is tomorrow!). My mom ended up just buying a king cake...

Fortunately, for y'all, I got an easy-peasy recipe from the kids in FACS at my school.
They made king cakes the quick way in class last Friday!

I don't have exact measurements for anything, since I didn't actually bake this. But I promise it'll turn out yummy!

All you need is a tube of crescent rolls, cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, a little milk, and yellow, green, and purple sanding sugar (or just food coloring if you'll be tinting the icing).


FOR THE CAKE:

1) Unroll the crescents and arrange them in a circle on a cookie sheet, long side towards the middle. I'm betting you could even smash them into each other...
2) Sprinkle cinnamon sugar into the crescent dough.
3) Roll up the triangles.
4) Sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar.
5) Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around 10 minutes (depending on your oven)

FOR THE FROSTING:
1) Mix together around 2 cups of powdered sugar and milk until you get a creamy frosting consistency. (Just add a tablespoon or so at a time of milk until you get the right consistency).
2) Here's where you can either tint the frosting green, purple, or yellow, or leave it white and cover it with colored sanding sugar. It's completely up to you.
3) Frost your king cake, and serve. I prefer it warm, but some people like it better the next day.


And, if you're really in a rush, just unroll a can of cinnamon rolls and form them into a ring, then bake them as directed. You can even use the same frosting that comes with them, and just add the sugar to the top! Easy-peasy!

And if you feel like this sounds too simple to be a tasty king cake, you can order king cakes online! I like the ones from our local grocery store, Rouses. Buy King Cake Here!

A little blurry, but here's a picture Momma took at the parade of me!