"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."
-Jean Luc Picard

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Whoot! Even More Fun with Feedjit!!!

I was checking my Feedjit to see what search terms had brought visitors over to my little blog. I'm used to finding search terms like coconut cake, homemade cleaning wipes, Sandra Lee and her arussipes, various searches related to hairballs, etc..

Today I find this:

San Antonio, Texas arrived from google.com on "Hairballs on the carpet of life: SHCWSL- Homecoming Tailgate" by searching for unfrosted cooked cake layers for sale. 15:36:00 -- 1 hour 43 minutes ago

So I followed the link to the search results and yep, my blog was the third result:

I said in that post:

"Should I be on the lookout for a new chain of stores called "No Monkey Business Here!" featuring a entire line of unfrosted layer cakes, seasoning packets, booze, and items for creating tablescapes? *bangs head on desk muttering and crying about the future of food in the USA*"


Could it be that I have just found the very first customer for such a business? Or was it another shrike who was just curious if there actually are stores where one can easily find unfrosted layer cakes for sale?

The world will never know!

Whoot! It rained this morning!!

In honor of this most splendid occasion, we need a little happy music!




I own this movie and sing along with it.


Here's another good movie to watch on a rainy day.

Yellow butter cake with chocolate frosting

This post is also a victim of my itchy trigger finger as I detailed in my post about putting garlic in pizza dough, so I only have one photo to share with you.

Because I recently made coconut cake and chocolate angel food cake, I have a lot of egg yolks in my freezer to use up. Unfortunately I forgot to properly prepare my yolks for freezing so I was unsure how this recipe was going to turn out. I did make one change though and substituted Mr. Hairball's favorite chocolate frosting for the one recommended in the above recipe.

Now first up I must tell you that my egg yolks were not pretty at all after defrosting. I saw them and thought there's just no way this is going to work. I so wish I had a picture to share. The egg yolks had unfortunately separated into chunks ! I decided to push on and just see what happened. My sweet DH recently sniped me some replacement beaters for my hand mixer on Ebay, so that made this task much easier. I followed the directions as closely as possible for this recipe except I beat the batter on a higher setting for a slighter longer amount of time. After it appeared well mixed, I took a wooden spoon and scraped down to the bottom to check for any bits that had escaped the wrath of my mixer but, everything looked great.

I poured my batter into a prepared 9x13 baking pan and slipped it into the oven and hoped for the best. Yes, layer cakes are gorgeous but, I don't normally have room to store one in my refrigerator. Due to climate and my small household size, a cake left out on the counter can easily go bad before we can eat it all. Because of this, I don't normally make very many layer cakes.

The results were better than expected and I will keep this recipe to make again. Since the recipe calls for cake flour, the crumb is very tender and the chocolate frosting with a hint of coffee flavor goes very nicely with it if I do say so myself. My pretty picture got deleted so all I have for you is this one that I snapped last night after we've been picking at this poor cake for a couple of days!


Sometimes the best cakes are the ones you eat in your kitchen, wearing your jammies and enjoying a big glass of milk. LOL

Can you put garlic in your pizza dough??

I have no pictures for this post due to user error. I thought I had uploaded all the pictures from my camera to the computer so I erased them on the camera. Duh!

I've been meaning to get back in the habit of making homemade pizza again and have been collecting recipes from my fellow bloggers for pizza dough. Judy of Judy's Kitchen has one on her blog that looks good and Rosie of Kitchens are Monkey Business makes and blogs about her homemade pizza on a regular basis.

I remembered reading somewhere that too much garlic can retard the action of the yeast so caution should be used when making bread doughs that contain garlic. I figured since Rosie makes pizza on a regular basis, that she would be a good person to ask about where the line is about how much garlic can you put in your pizza dough and still get a good rise. Rosie emailed me back saying that she had never heard of this but, was aware of sources that report that raw garlic cloves have the ability to cure yeast infections. (That form of yeast is Candida albicans and the yeast normally used in baking is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.) Rosie suggested that I just try it and see what happens and to please share my results with her.

I should have split the dough up so I would have a control but, I was feeling lazy so I just dumped in four large cloves ( like maybe six normal sized cloves) of minced garlic to my dough as it was mixing in the bread machine and let it go through its paces. I peeked in at the dough and it appeared to rise just like any other yeast dough I've made. When the machine finished, I had a nice, smooth, silky dough that was ready to be made into pizza. I smooshed out the dough on a baking sheet, and baked it at 425F for a bit till it just started to get some color. Then I pulled it back out of the oven, and topped it with tomato paste mixed with salt, pepper, and olive oil, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan cheese. Next, I put on some pepperoni, and some leftover crumbled up hot pork breakfast sausage . It was most tasty!

In conclusion, if garlic does inhibit the action of baking yeast, then you have to add more than I did.