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.

A friend and I have spent all day today RPing Watchmen (Nite Owl/Ozymandias, to be specific.  This is my OTP.  Don’t look at me like that.) and the secondary character in this RP ended up being the food.  Specifically, homemade manicotti made in Dan’s kitchen.

Then we finished, and I wrote the recipe.

Dan Dreiberg’s Manicotti:

Sauce:

1-28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1-28 oz can diced tomatoes, drained
2 T tomato paste
1 C red wine
2 roasted garlic cloves, minced fine
1 C onion, minced fine
1 t oregano
1 t tarragon
1 t rosemary
1 t red pepper flakes
3 T extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 C grated romano pecorino

Manicotti Filling:

1 lb ricotta cheese
2 C fresh shredded mozzarella
2 T fresh chopped parsley
1 egg

Plus:

Extra mozzarella, parmagiano reggiano, and romano pecorino to top
1 package manicotti shells, cooked al dente.

Preheat oven to 350F.  Saute onion in olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot.  When translucent, add roasted garlic and cook for about five minutes.  Deglaze pan with wine, and add tomatoes, paste, herbs, and salt and pepper.

Meanwhile combine ricotta, mozzarella, and parsley and egg in a bowl.  Stuff carefully into manicotti tubes.

Drizzle a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a lightly oiled lasagna pan.  Layer in manicotti tubes, and top with the remaining sauce.  Sprinkle a mixture of mozzarella, parmagiano reggiano and romano pecorino on top and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until bubbly.

Nite Owl says eat the damn manicotti.

Anyway, Kimberly, who I met through Jezebel, has created A Rahm A Day, and it is possibly the best thing ever.  If anyone else reading this also has a thing for screamy, snarky, ass-kicking Democrats from the Midwest, it’s definitely a must see.

Keanu Reeves, starring as the emotionless kind of stoned alien character has not been so perfectly cast since The Matrix.

But the interesting this is that it resets when playing the same song.  And while that could just be a corrupted file, the choice of song is kinda…interesting.

The song? “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

Just a guess.

I managed to not laugh out loud.

There really IS nothing to do in Moline.  Or Rock Island.  Or Davenport.  Or Bettendorf.

This is why I went to grad school in Madison.  Well, most of the reason.

 Oliver Stone would not be making movies if I didn’t make movies. My roommate and I at Yale made two feature-length movies with a Bolex—which is a wind-up camera, not a social disease—while Oliver would hang out. He was writing this horrible, crappy novel—he was trying to be James Joyce or something, but it was awful—but as a result of hanging around us, he went to film school…But at Yale, he would hang out while I was making movies.

When I was in college (not, obviously, at Yale) I hung out and watched boys play video games.  Sadly this has not led to a career  as a hotshot video game designer.

Also, I’m somewhat disappointed that “References available upon request” isn’t available as a slogan. (Via PopGadget)