Cake-o-rama
A follow up on the sorting cake:
As expected, the cake turned out to be a tie-dye mess of purple, pink and blues. Also, it was a little ... breadier than I expected, too. I don't know how that happened, I followed the recipe to a T. Ah well, better luck next time.

Today I made a reggggylur pound cake, with a hint of lemon zest. I haven't tasted it yet, but it smells and looks glorious. For icing, I made a quick little coffee flavored glaze. I didn't have enough sugar, so I only made a teeny bit, but hopefully the cake is flavorful and won't need too much icing.

In other news,

TWENTY DAYS!
Forever and a day
I've been terrible at blogging this summer.

The season had an exciting start; looking back I was doing fun stuff all the time (Sasquatch, Portland, etc). Now... I work. And I hate it. Everything I do in the gift shop is undone the next week, not because of any sort of quality control, but because that is just the nature of working in a shop. You have to constantly move the same few things around to get the attention of the customer. This week we have Shark stuff on display, before then it was Lemurs and Belugas pre-Lemur. It's impossible to feel any sort of satisfaction with anything you've done when you fold 150 t-shirts at 10:30 a.m. and by 4:00 p.m. they're all in a heap on the floor in the corner. When you have to pretend to be interested in what the customer is purchasing. When you have to pretend to care that there aren't any more Beluga tumblers or plush Sloths. And the word 'plush,' holy GOD, what is wrong with calling them stuffed animals? Syllables: a gift shop has no time to dilly dally with them. My boss/coworkers are sexist, I never get to leave the store because working Strollers or getting stuff from storage is for the boys. Girls don't know how to do any "real" work so just smile at the register and take the money. Fold the shirts. Make the displays all pretty. Sort the PLUSH.

August 16th cannot come soon enough.
Easy Bake Keavy
I've been trying to cook/bake more this summer so that I can have a few recipes under my belt for next year and just because it's fun.

So far, baking-wise, I've made some cute cupcakes, a dark chocolate cake with orange & lemon zest icing and chocolate chip cookies. Not anything too exciting, but it's all turned out nicely so far.

For my next trick, I plan on making what I've been calling a "sorting cake." A friend invited me to a Harry Potter themed party and said that if I wanted, I could bring a tasty treat. The plan is to make up a batch of yellow cake batter then separate it into four bowls and dye them red, green, blue and yellow - the colors of the houses in HP. I'll layer the different colors into the pans so that it looks like this. Once the cake bakes (and has cooled, learned from this mistake last time), I'll frost it a dark purpley with stars and moons and what not so that it looks like the sorting hat from the movies. Ideally, the cake will have baked so that each piece has an obvious main color and that would be your house. Realistically, it'll just be fun to look at because it'll be a crazy colorful mess.