This year, for the first time in a while, I’ve been celebrating each night of Hanukkah. No presents — just lighting the candles. My sister gave me a nice stone menorah from Israel earlier in the year, which I’ve been itching to put to good use. I decided to search for [Hanukkah] to see if there was any relevant news. And then, I noticed dreidels along the right hand side, next to the ads. Super cool, so I decided to tweet about it.
Then, I refreshed my Google search results and whoa!! There was my tweet. I don’t know which was more exciting, seeing the dreidels or seeing my tweet in the search results for [Hanukkah]:
This is awesome! Happy Hanukkah, everyone.
(There are also Christmas lights, too, if you search for [Christmas])
Recently, I’ve been making a lot of cupcakes. While I was still looking after my parents’ house, before the barbecue, I made these Red Velvet Cupcakes. It was my second time using one of Amy’s recipes, and this time also didn’t disappoint!
Even the batter looked good. Lots (almost two bottles) of red food coloring!
They came out of the oven looking like this:
And, here they are, complete with cream cheese frosting:
Then, the following week, I helped Kim make Miniature Strawberry Cupcakes (with strawberry frosting) for her potluck using a recipe from picky cook. They turned out really well. Yum.
Tonight, I ruined a batch of Original Nestlé® Toll House® Chocolate Chip Cookies by adding just a little bit too much baking soda. They still look edible, though:
Last week, my parents were visiting my sister in Chicago, leaving me to house sit their huge home up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Since they have a nice barbecue (charcoal grill) and an amazing view, I decided to have some friends over for a relaxing, carnivorous Saturday. Enjoy the pictures!
I should challenge Reid to a cook-off one of these days!
During my most recent trip to Target, I noticed they stopped stocking the Orbit Melon Breeze gum. Panicked, I searched for it online and found an 8-pack from Amazon. (They didn’t have an image for the product, but now they use mine!) It might be a bit of an exaggeration to call it the perfect gum, but I like how it comes in a nice container (the “Big E Pak”) and the melony flavor is refreshing.
A few weeks ago, I made Banana Blueberry muffins, inspired by this recipe for Blueberry Pecan Banana muffins. Not as cool as Totoro cream puffs (amazing, right?), but still yummy. Here’s a picture followed by the recipe:
Banana Blueberry Muffin Recipe | makes 12 — (I did 3x this)
Ingedients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large)
1 large egg
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
muffin baking liners
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line twelve muffin cups with muffin liners. Sprinkle the blueberries with a little of the flour so that they don’t sink to the bottom during baking. Mix the rest of the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Combine mashed bananas, egg, melted butter, milk and vanilla in a smaller bowl. Stir banana mixture into dry ingredients just until blended (do not overmix).
Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake muffins until tops are pale golden and a toothpick inserted into center comes out moist, but with no crumbs, about 30 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack, cool. (They’re really good freshly out of the oven too though)
There has been a heat wave in the bay area this weekend. Today, it was 97°F in Cupertino. But, I’m training for a 10-mile race this coming weekend when I visit my sister in Chicago, so I decided to brave the warmth and run my usual 4-mile loop around Cupertino. Henri came along. Here he is after the run:
