zonkered.net

Today was a day of sitcomesque kitchen disasters. Let’s recap, shall we?

We began with the goal to bake Smitten Kitchen’s Pound Cake. As you can see, this is a cake with a hell of a lot of steps I’m normally not willing to make. From the outset, I’d already made adjustments – cake flour sifted once instead of AP flour sifted three freaking times, amaretto liqueur instead of cognac – but I fully intended to do everything else by the book.

Ahahaha. Yeah.

The first crisis came when I preheated the oven and discovered that oh, hey, it was smoking. So it went off, I put my sifted dry ingredients aside, took the racks out and scrubbed the bottom. Put the racks back in, went back to the recipe.

Break 8 eggs trying to separate four of them before finally decided to fuck this shit and just put the eggs in whole rather than beating the whites and adding them to the batter at the end.

Despite all this crap, the cake actually turned out really well – moist with a delicate crumb and a rich lemon-amaretto flavor. Definitely a keeper.

Fuck This Shit Cake (Or, Lemon-Amaretto Pound Cake, if you insist)

2 C cake flour, sifted
1/2 t baking powder
Sea salt
1/2 lb butter, softened (2 sticks)
3/4 C + 2 T sugar
4 eggs
1 T amaretto liqueur
zest of 1 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder and a generous pinch of salt. Set aside.
3. Cream butter, then add sugar and beat until blended. Add eggs and beat until smooth.
4. Add amaretto and lemon zest.
5. Beat in dry ingredients in batches. I did two batches, because I’m essentially lazy that way.
6. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake. The length of time will depend on your pan – the original recipe called for 35-45 minutes, but it took closer to 50-60 minutes in my silicone pan.

Later today I plan to make a raspberry-balsamic sauce to pour over the cake. I’m going to assume I’ll meet with less disaster this time.

Got up this morning and after paying the bills (always a grump-inducing activity, and I still have to mail the rent check, too), I click on my beloved Newsgator and finally notice that I’m being kicked off at the end of August – because I’m not an enterprise user. My options at this point for RSS readers seem to be going back to Bloglines, which I abandoned almost three years ago after months of it not working, and Google Reader, which I was singularly unimpressed with when I tried it.

Sigh.

I mean, I’ve already imported my crap into Google – it’s not like I had much choice in the matter – and I realize that Web 2.0 companies need to make money just like everyone else, but it’s a little wearying that every single web app I use and like is eventually either made enterprise-only or dies or is sold to Google, at which point it’s Google-ized. The first time I remember it happening was with Writely, now Google Docs, but in the intervening years it’s happened again and again, at least a dozen times. At this point I’m just wondering when Twitter is going to go enterprise-only, and what Google-owned microblogging service will be recommended to us poor schlubs who aren’t enterprises, just normal people.

(And before someone from Google comes over and perkily evangelizes Reader – I’m sure it’s better than it was. But I hate change, I’m stuck in an airless, humid, stuffy apartment and can’t open the windows lest the dumbass cat I live with decides to jump from the second floor, I just finished the temper-inducing endeavor of paying my bills, and – because it’s worth repeating – I hate change.)

On another note, WordPress. Please. Could you send me my fucking comment notifications. Jesus.