Month: December 2007

SSK

I made it to SSK today for gusseting‘s visit, and we had a huge turnout! There were probably 20 people there (most of whom are on Ravelry). Kate’s put up photos on Flickr here. In particular, I’d like to draw your attention to the plate of cookies I baked this morning. (That’s peanut butter blossoms and snickerdoodles.)

The Thinking Machine

This is awesome! I just discovered that you can read Thinking Machine stories online! I had a book of them as a kid. The “Thinking Machine” was a super-smart detective, sort of an American Sherlock Holmes. The author Jacques Futrelle hadn’t written very many when he went to Europe to promote the books… and arranged passage back to America on the Titanic. Yeah. So there aren’t any more. Anyway, I think these versions online may have been slightly edited in my book. There are details that I distinctly remember from the stories that don’t appear here. (I’ll list one in particular after the jump so as not to spoil anybody. Go read the stories. They’re really good.)Okay, so the really glaring change to me is in “The Silver Box”. I distinctly remember that one of the clues was that the boss had originally given the secretary a gold box, which she’d asked to exchange for a silver one (because the silver one was high enough to lift the phone receiver). That little bit doesn’t appear in the online story at all! And hey, now that I think about it, calling the story “The Silver Box” is a really huge tip-off that the secretary had something to do with it, right?

Mystery Gift

Now this is weird! A delivery guy just turned up at the front door with a package for me from Games Paradise. I didn’t order anything from them. The Snook swears he didn’t. So we open it up, and it’s a brand new Harry Potter “Scene-It” game. Sweet! There’s no invoice, so I assume it’s a gift from someone. But there’s also no note or indication at all who it’s from! So come on, who’s my mystery benefactor??

Update: It was Mom. 🙂

Carrot Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Carrot Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese FrostingCarrot Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
The Snook mentioned the other night that the grocery store had some lovely carrots (which he was serving to me for dinner), which reminded me that I’ve had a hankering for come carrot cake lately. I made the mistake of saying that aloud at work yesterday… and promptly received about half a dozen requests for it. A cake is always hard to transport and dish up though, so I decided to go with cupcakes instead. A few websites mention that carrot cake can be a bit dense and heavy for cupcakes, so I found this recipe with a trick to avoid the problem. You “emulsify” the oil by pouring it into a running food processor (with egg and sugar). Sounds fancy, but was actually really easy. So I baked a dozen of them last night, and this morning I decorated them. We’re actually out of maple syrup at the moment (and Coles didn’t have any last night), so I used the hand mixer to beat a bit of maple flavouring along with a good scoop of brown sugar into a block of cream cheese. It tastes FANTASTIC. Then I sprinkled on some orange icing sugar (I have the biggest collection of Halloween-related baking paraphernalia outside the US) and then topped with a walnut half. I hope everybody likes them! (And I have to say, I’m really proud of my food porn photography. Hooray for the macro mode!)