666 Cake Tricks!

Todays post is kind of a deep cut, going all the way back to when I first started blogging! I used to photograph step-by step recipes, Pioneer Woman style, and post them on my blog. No idea if anyone ever followed them, but I had fun making them.

Anyway, today I'm doing that again! I don't really bake, but for some reason I just out of the blue decided I wanted to try to make a cake. Now I don't have flour, or sugar, or cake ingredients, but I decided to get a cake mix, and use some Pioneer Woman tips and tricks, plus some that I'd seen on YouTube, to fancy it up a bit, and make it more homemade.

So the first thing I did was ignore just about everything on the box. I used whole milk instead of water, butter instead of oil, an extra egg, and a cup of applesauce. (Please excuse my terrible photos, I had to use my phone because my camera is still back home in Harlan, not to mention, the color seems to have been horribly desaturated in the upload.)

I mixed all the wet ingredients together, minus the butter. I used some of it to grease the pan, and the rest I melted on the stove. I didn't want it getting too hot and cooking the eggs, so I saved the melted butter for last. I mixed in the bag of dry ingredients into the wet, and then whisked it together. The box said to mix on medium speed for three minutes. Well, I don't actually own an electric mixer, so I had to mix that stuff by hand like a REAL Pioneer Woman! Mixing cake batter for three minutes is actually kind of an arm workout! While I mixed, I slowly added in the butter, as I figured by that time it was probably cool enough.

Once everything was mixed thoroughly, or at least as thoroughly as my non-Pioneer Woman arm could get it, I also stirred in a cup of chocolate chips. Actually, I didn't pay attention to how many chocolate chips I added, I just had a container that had been in my cupboard for like three years, and I thought this would be a perfect way to get rid of them. Bonus hack! Got ingredients you want to use up? Dump them into a cake!

I baked the cake following the instructions on the box, but I think I ended up adding 10-15 minutes to the cooking time. I kept checking on it with a chop stick, (I don't have toothpicks) but it wasn't done, so I just kept adding to the bake time. While the cake baked, the next step was to improve the frosting. Regular store-bought frosting is okay, but not great. Want to know how to fix that? More butter. I added half a stick, but I think a whole one would have been even better.

When the cake was done I let it cool awhile, but I broke one of the cardinal rules of cakes, and I frosted it while both the cake and the frosting were still warm. I thought it worked beautifully.

It was amazing.

So that was fun. I like to cook, but I generally don't bake. Partly because I really try not to eat this kind of thing too much, but it was still a fun change of pace for me. Now I have an entire cake to eat... Oh well! :)

Oh, incidentally, this was my 666th blog post, and this was a Devil's Food Cake.

Poetry and Things

So a year ago, (A year ago?!?! Where did the time go?!?!) I was in a creative writing class, and while in that class, I wrote a few things that I was planning to share on my blog. And then I forgot.

Speaking of that class, I ran into my teacher from that class, while walking across campus today. He actually remembered me, which is a feat unto itself, considering the size of that class, how many classes he probably teaches at the same time, and how many he has taught between then and now. He asked me if I was still writing, and told me I'd better be, because I was too good not to. So that was something...

Anyway, I had been planning to post these things for awhile now, so it wasn't just running into my teacher that made me remember to do so, but it did help me decide to do it right now. The first thing I'm going to post is something that literally makes no sense, but it seemed to go over very well in my class. It's a poem conceived by the website poetweet, a site which takes your twitter handle, and mines your tweets for rhyming lines and then pieces together a short poem out of them.

I ran poetweet over my entire twitter history multiple times and got as many rhyming lines out of it as I could. Then I mixed and matched, went back in and took some rhymes on my own, and came up with the bizarre poem that I've transcribed here. It makes no sense, but I was really happy with how it turned out, and my class really liked it too. It was so funny to me to read their feedback as they tried to decipher what I meant by it.

A few figured it our right away, the poetweet prompt had been an early writing assignment that I expanded on for this, much later, but some people really searched for something deeper, as that was what we were supposed to do. I had more than one person questioning if it was a commentary on social media, a guess prompted by the use of the word "Post" in the first line, and the fact that I titled it, "LIFE-CHANGING ANNOUNCEMENT," as if it was a sarcastic nod to people's tendency to over-exaggerate on social media.

That actually was an excellent observation though, and I wish I'd put that deep a thought into it, but even the title was just a line from a random tweet. However, the original tweet that that line came from, was exactly that! I was using it as a spoof of people's "Announcements" on social media, as it came from one of my April Fools jokes. So the people who caught that second-hand meaning that apparently bled through, should get an imaginary gold star. :)

Other guesses to the poem's meaning were that it was some kind of a strange blog post, maybe a commentary on blogging, or a weird PSA for a school (I mentioned a semester), but most people were just generally confused. Most of them said they liked the imagination and creativity though, even if they didn't understand it at all. Which is fine, I literally meant almost nothing by this poem. It was just a fun writing exercise. :p

I'll post that poem now, and I'll post my other things in separate post later.

P.S. As a side note, you'll notice that one line of the poem refers to The Pioneer Woman, (I tagged her twitter handle in a tweet once) and I was quite amused by the fact that in her critique, one of my teachers pointed out that particular line, and wrote next to it "Ha! I love Pioneer Woman!"

LIFE-CHANGING ANNOUNCEMENT 

Last semester, in this post,
It’s for a writing contest.
In the air, one guy’s a ghost.
Chris Pratt is just the best. 

 The kiss must happen at midnight.
He can't stay there forever!
My first assignment is tonight!
Best episode ever! 

 Giant invisible hamsters.
A miniature, time-locked explosion.
If you’re looking for legitimate recipes,
Try @thepioneerwoman 

 There’s evidence left that they existed.
How is this even possible?
You like living. I bet you do.
It’s a serious inner struggle... 

 The old me wants nothing to do with this,
Like, a child in the grocery store.
The new me is morbidly curious,
In the archives waiting for more! 

 Have you seen the finale yet?
No shell? It's called a Globster.
In Ames, he meets an adorable fate.
I loved it, it’s so sad it's over.

Odd Numbers

Today on The Pioneer Woman's blog she was writing about stocking up on groceries and she posted a picture of a package of meat that she had gotten.

I thought her reaction was really funny, and it got me to thinking about the numbers I encounter in my life as a grocery checker.

Weird number combinations happen to me at the store all the time, every day. I'll usually get at least one, if not two orders a day with no change. For example an order will total out to $88 or just $15. Seemingly stranger, but not any rarer, I'll get something where the dollars and the change are the same. Like, $24.24. Or even palindrome numbers, like $34.43. Sometimes I'll get all the same too, such as $55.55, or $111.11. At first these number things were really odd, but now they seem normal to me. I still think it's cool when they happen though.

For the average shopper, these combinations are probably really rare, and if they get them, a more superstitious person might see them as a sign. Maybe as a sign from God, or something more sinister. I laugh to myself when I ring up an order and the result is exactly $6.66, but I'm still waiting for the day when someone freaks out. Someone told me once that they rang up someone's order and when it totaled out to $6.66 they refused to pay. They insisted on the checker just adding to the price because they did not want to pay "The number of the Beast."

Since I see so many prices in one day, it's much more probable that I'll get interesting results. So I really don't see any of this as any sort of a "Sign," from God or otherwise. It's just a statistical probability that every once in awhile something that looks unique will come up. When you think about it logically,  $176.32 is not really any more special than $222.22. It's just that one tends to catch your eye more and you see something special, even though it really isn't any rarer than the first one. They are both unique, one of a kind numbers.

Next time you go to the store, look at your receipt, and see how much you paid. It doesn't matter how much it was. The price you see is unique to you, no matter if it comes out to $3.54 or $6.66. The only difference between them is that Satan will roast you if you end up with three 6's. Just kidding. >:D (Maybe. :p)

Wisdom From The Pioneer Woman

A quote from Ree Drummond "The Pioneer Woman"

"I’m a laid back parent and homeschooler, so I don’t spend much time sweating things. Well, except text messaging; when we got our older daughter a cell phone, I told her I’d turn off the phone if she used text language (UR, tho, etc.) in her messages, not just with me, but also with her friends."

If only more parents were like her, perhaps the English language wouldn't be collapsing, one poorly written facebook status at a time! Go Literacy! :D