Edge of Existence…
There’s a reason why I never buy cake mixes by box anymore and this would be a perfect example of why. Sure, there’s the joy in making something from scratch, knowing that it’s fresh and made with luuurve, but the most important thing for me will always be the taste, the smell, even the mouth-feel. The whole sensory shebang.
This is one of those times.
For an upcoming shindig, I cobbled together something pecanny, something chocolatey, something moussey, and then amped it up a little with the weird addition of hot chili spice, lime zest and salt.
Yes, there’s chili powder in that cake. Not a hell of a lot, mind you, just a bit.
It’s a classic madiera butter cake but 1/2 the flour has been replaced with finely ground, toasted pecans. Add some lime zest and chili powder to that. The filling is a classic chocolate mousse, nothing so fancy there, but it’s that topping that has me fighting with all the willpower I have to stay out of the kitchen. The top is a sweet chocolate, crusted with sweet chili lime roasted pecans.
The wet mix is a splash of olive oil, the juice and zest of one lime, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of chili powder and two tablespoons of brown sugar. Mix it up and dump in 2 cups of pecans or so and toast the whole thing, in a single layer, at 450F. Stir once it’s out until the pecans soak up the rest of the wet mix, then toss the lot with some salt and white sugar. Set it into the chocolate top before the chocolate sets and wow.
The cake was yummy (I got to taste the trimmed ends *drool*) but it’s those damned pecans I can’t stay out of.
This would probably work well as a classic round cake as well but I wanted slices this time around. Maybe next time I’ll leave the thing whole and see how that turns out.
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• READ: Hugh Jackman Drops ‘Avon Man’ For ‘Wolverine 2′:
The Australian actor has dropped out of Kevin Lima’s comedy “Avon Man” so he can spend some more time at the gym and get into the right shape for “Wolverine 2.” The sequel to the prequel — if that makes any sense — features a heavy Japanese samurai story and is due to go into production in early 2011. However, with “Avon Man” targeting an October release, the question has become why can’t the actor do both?
Apparently, Jackman’s weight and build has been a factor in his recent roles which means his physique is somewhat different to what was seen in the last X-Men movie. Now he has to focus his energy on meeting the requirements of the role.
Lately I’ve been monkeying around with tutorials and such, mostly adapting stuff from Photoshop (damn, how I envy you!) and I had this new brush and a cobbled together from various sources idea of how to work bokeh into my scribblings.
Bokeh is:
The term comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality”. The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility…In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” [Wikipedia]
Ever been out at night, say at Christmastime when the little fairy lights are up and, when you kind of squint a little, everything goes into those lovely big soft blobs of light? Yeah, like that, but this time I’m doing it with a brush and a lot of cursing and muttering.
Anyway, to start playing, I looked through some old pics that I had kicking around and started to play, getting different results that, while I’m not super excited about, I think are fairly cool anyway:
These are some handmade chocolates I made when I was in college…damn, now I want chocolate. It’s just not fair…
Seems to me that simple, clear communication works best, even with young kids. When there is a threat or an opportunity I let my kids know in plain and simple terms. No running with scissors. Walk carefully near the edge of a pool. Put the matches down. So far this plain-talking strategy has kept ER visits to a minimum and led to a relatively peaceful life with 2 pre-schoolers.
The more young people are told – usually by adults who know from their own experience it’s not true — that sex outside of marriage, outside long-term, monogamous relationships, or with any more than one partner in a lifetime, will always do them terrible, irreparable harm and make them damaged goods forevermore, the more we get questions about oxytocin, one common staple in that messaging. So, around a year ago, I started excavating. It’s taken me a while to get this out here: I confess, it’s mostly because I was dreadfully bored by it all. I’m not a neurochemistry geek, but a sex geek. Because so much of it wasn’t all that relevant to sex, and because this just isn’t my area of geekdom, every time I’ve picked this up what I found most amazing about oxytocin was its ability to miraculously cure my bouts of insomnia by just reading or writing about it.
• READ: Review: Durham County: Season 1 DVD
A few years ago I discovered this show called “Durham County” which is shown in Canada. Soon after I began watching it I realized this is a special type show. It was like nothing I had really watched before, as most shows, at least here in the US, tend to be “Safe”. There are exceptions such as Sons of Anarchy or Dexter or The Shield, but by and large most shows have a “we won’t cross this line” mentality that prevents it from seriously going in a direction that might be seen as offputting to a number of viewers.
Thankfully Durham County’s network does not have that mentality, and so it has allowed this brilliant show to be crafted in a way that is unsettling and not at all “safe”. The show is completely unpredictable and in fact the one thing that IS predictable is how you will feel afterwards. Kinda icky. And that’s a great thing I think. Anytime a show can create these emotions inside you that make you question what you just watched is brilliant in my mind.
The only show that really approaches this in the sense of “oh my God he’s not going to…oh he just did!” is probably Dexter. Dexter is a show that essentially has you rooting for a serial killer to get away with it. Perhaps because the people that he kills are all bad people. We know this watching it, so when he kills a pedophile or a child killer or a guy who killed his wife, we don’t really feel that bad. We know killing is wrong, but we know 100% that the people he’s killing are guilty and are getting away with it. So that makes it okay, if even in a questionable morals type of way.
• READ: Carlyle commits to ‘Stargate Universe’
Robert Carlyle has revealed that he plans to remain part of the Stargate Universe cast for the foreseeable future.
The actor told Collider that he was still enjoying playing the part of Dr. Nicholas Rush in the second season of the show.
“It didn’t worry me that I was going to get involved in something that was long-running,” he explained. “It’s easy enough to say that in season two. I don’t know how I’m going to feel next year or [the year after]. But at the moment I’m enjoying it a great deal.”
He added: “The premise of the show still stimulates and excites me. I’m enjoying going to work in the morning [and] that can’t always be said. So as long as that continues, I’ll keep doing it.”
Carlyle also explained that he had struggled with the morally ambiguous nature of his character.
He said: “[Rush] is a tricky character to play because he is so unlikeable at times that you have to walk a very thin line not to alienate the audience entirely from him. You have to throw the audience a bone!”
The second season of Stargate Universe begins September 28 on the SyFy network.
The infamous author of The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice, has tried Christianity and found it wanting.
“…following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”
Indeed, Many of Rice’s followers wondered when – or if – she would eventually come to reason. Read More
More awards for Stargate Universe!
• READ: Nine Gemini nominations for Stargate Universe:
It’s interesting that it’s going up against Durham County, in that Louis Ferreira blew that role out of the water as well. Wouldn’t it be something if he walked away with both?