Tummy Thursday: Under the Sea

Last weekend was the kid’s birthday party. I asked her what kind of party she wanted and she said “surprise me!”.

I went with “Under the Sea” and basically started the preparations a month ago with googling ideas, ordering moulds and fossilised shark teeth, trying out recipes and watching videos for inspiration.

The results were:

Ocean macarons

Sadly the colours didn’t bake too well. The purple ones are filled with lavender buttercream, the blue ones with white chocolate buttercream.

The seashells are white chocolate with a bit of cocoa powder. I must say the silicone moulds worked perfectly.

Next are the sea foam cupcakes, on a pumpkin muffin basis:

The topping is marshmallow fluff: Lightly caramelised sugar poured into beaten egg whites, like for an Italian meringue. I then added some gelatine for stability. Tails and fins are fondant.

The sand is grounded almonds

And last but nor least, the cake:

This is what it looked liked before being frosted. I baked the cake on Thursday and needed to get it layered and frosted on Friday, and that day, everything went wrong. The fillings are on a cream cheese, whipped cream and fruit basis with gelatine, but despite stirring in the gelatine as you should, it became lumpy. In the end, the lower filling was still lumpy, but you didn’t notice when you ate it. The lower filling is with fresh pomegranate seeds and I can only recommend that. They are delightfully sweet and sour and add texture. The top filling is blueberries, which are a safe bet for taste.

Also my muffin batter separated and when frosting more shit happened, but in the end it went well. I frosted it with Italian meringue buttercream and let it cool over night. In the morning I popped it into the freezer for a few hours to prepare it for the mirror glaze.

This time the sand is brown sugar. I had already made the mermaid tails the night before, though I should have made them earlier to let them dry out more. Then I made corals by pouring caramelised and coloured sugar over ice cubes. This worked hmpf but ok. My cups were too small, my ice cubes not the right shape and the sugar started to crystallize again, but I got a few suitable pieces. I added those and more chocolate sea shells and this is the result:

Wednesday Wings: Happy Halloween!

I think that vultures are very halloweeny, because hey, they literally eat the dead.

Yes, I’ve been having fun

This resin stuff is great for messing around. What follows are a few things that went well, some that didn’t go that wll and some that are still work in progress.

First of all, the globes

On the left you have a light globe with a small string of embedded fairy lights. Although the blue resin all rose to the top, I quite like it. This one’s so big that it released a lot of heat while curing. On the right there is the next attempt at a snowglobe. I like the results a lot. Glueing the ornaments to the wood and then inserting them was a good idea. I still hate the moulds. They are way too thin and easily separate. More on that later.

That was the rest of the resin Marcus sent, btw.

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Monday Mercurial: Otterly adorable

It’s no secret that otters are the cutest. Here’s why.

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Tummy Thursday: Rfissa

Recently I talked to one of my colleagues about how my kid had better been born in a society where you eat with your fingers. This made her drool about Moroccan food, which you do eat with your fingers (though there are of course strict rules of hygiene and politeness), and she mentioned something she really needs to make again. Of course i asked for the recipe and because you’ve all been very good kids, I share.

Flat bread:

600g soft durum wheat semolina

300g flour

1 tsp salt

at least 400ml of warm water.

Mix until there’s a rubbery dough, let rest for 10 minutes. Form small calls with lightly oiled hands, let them rest for 20 minutes. Roll/pull until they#re almost translucent, fry in a lightly oiled pan, let cool and tear apart.

I only used half the recipe and that was more than enough for 3 adults and 2 kids. Making the bread was a hello lot of work and I think I’d prefer to make it for a dinner where its role is more prominent. I also didn’t tear it into pieces.

Chicken:

Wash a chicken and cut into pieces, fry for a few minutes in a large pot with some oil. Add two large onions in not too small strips. Fill the pot 3/4 with water and season. The recipe says “to taste” and suggested ginger, ras el hanout, fenugreek, cumin, stock, coriander.

After 30 minutes add lentils and keep cooking. About 10 minutes before the lentils are done, add two more roughly cut onions and some parsley.

I didn’t use a whole chicken but chicken legs because 1 chicken is exactly too little for 5. For seasoning I used beef stock, fenugreek, cumin, black caraway seed, orange pepper, garlic and chili. I used small red lentils because they nicely fall apart and make a velvety sauce. I also only added my parsley after the cooking. And I cried a lot because onions.

The picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s very delicious and savoury. And since the sauce was basically onions and lentils, #1 ate two big servings. With her fingers.

Wednesday Wings

More images from the birds of prey at Amnéville. I must say they got the optics down to a T, puuting the black guy on the white horse and the blond white woman on the black one.

Monday Mercurial: Patagonian Sealions

Sealions, much like penguins, look comical and clumsy while on land, but in water, they’re nothing but sleek grace.

You live, you learn…

Well, my latest resin project didn’t go that well. I wanted to created little snowglobes using wooden deco elements. The idea was to pour the lower half of the moulds, wait some time until the pot time is over, push the elements into the resin, let cure, add the top half, add a wooden base, be happy.

As you can imagine, reality had other plans. First of all the resin was still too soft to hold up the deco elements. The right moment would probably have been 5 minutes in the middle of the night.

I tried to stabilize them with bamboo skewers, but it was less than optimal.

The next day I added the top half. The hole is pretty small so I needed a syringe to put in the resin. Usually the two half separated a few times during the process and were a pain to put together again.

First of all, that introduced way too much air, second of all, I added too much glitter.

The results are sad. Very sad.

But I’m not giving up just yet. For the next trial I’ll do the following: I’ll cut off part of the top half so I get a bigger opening. I will then glue the halves together so they won’t separate. And I already glued the deco to the wooden platforms. I’ll pour the globes in one go (with less glitter) and then push in the elements and just let the base close the mould.

But in the meantime I had fun with the kids and my friends and we made many nice things.

My favourite one is the under water scenery, which I promptly turned into a necklace:

The plants are some fern which I collected and dried last week.

Friday Feathers

I think we’ve had these images before, but since naturalcynic expressed dismay at the lack of close ups of the condor, here’s the next smaller bird I have to offer: Norbert, a European griffin vulture. According to one of the falconers he takes a much more direct approach to food than “waiting until you drop dead”.

Wednesday Wings

A wee birdie.

At Amnéville they built a “Medieval Arena” to show their birds of prey, which has the advantage of high ramparts that allow them to fly even larger birds.

There’s going to be more pics, but the first bord was my absolute favourite because how can you top a South American Condor?

[Read more…]

When Captain America comes to the aid of James Bond…

The day before yesterday (or yonderday as I’d like to call it because why, English, why), British supervillain extraordinaire Piers Morgan, armed with supreme stupidity, verbose bigotry and lots of poop to fling tweeted a pic of Daniel Craig doing one of those normal thing people do like taking the baby for a walk to play Pokémon Go. OK, I made up the Pokémon part, but apparently, an image of a dad doing dad things was really too much for poor Piers.

Oh 007.. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond pic.twitter.com/cqWiCRCFt3

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 15, 2018

Oh 007.. (sic) not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond

The tweet got picked up by Chris Captain America Evans who rightfully called out Morgan for his attempt to literally shame a man into not caring for his child.

You really have to be so uncertain of your own masculinity to concern yourself with how another man carries his child. Any man who wastes time quantifying masculinity is terrified on the inside. https://t.co/9jsHZ3WKRn

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) October 16, 2018

You really have to be so uncertain of your own masculinity to concern yourself with how another man carries his child. Any man who wastes time quantifying masculinity is terrified on the inside.

And for once, go read the replies which are full of dads posting pics of them carrying their kids.

Monday Mercurial

Oversized kittens

Progress

I poured another batch of resin last night.

I stirred it, and I stirred it, and then I stirred it some more and it went much better.

First you can see my prepared wood pieces. I wrapped some laminated foil around them and secured it with tape. That was a good idea.

My workspace all set up before the pouring. I used the little cups from a sweet to dye some resin.

That’s waht it looked like afterwards

Oh, wait, did you want to see the results?

[Read more…]

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Tummy Thursday: Under the Sea

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Wednesday Wings: Happy Halloween!

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Yes, I’ve been having fun

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Monday Mercurial: Otterly adorable

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Tummy Thursday: Rfissa

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Wednesday Wings

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Monday Mercurial: Patagonian Sealions

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You live, you learn…

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Friday Feathers

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Wednesday Wings

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When Captain America comes to the aid of James Bond…

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Monday Mercurial

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Progress

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