a nice weekend.

AJD and I don’t usually have the same days off (I take my weekend in the middle of the week to avoid tourist mayhem, and AJD’s schedule changes weekly), so when our schedules work out we try to do something fun.   Last weekend, we were supposed to go to NYC but AJD’s nasty cold kept us out of the city.   Instead, we spent the morning at the beach in Maine:

And the afternoon at Webs in Mass:

“webs, I salute you”

I scored some Malabrigo worsted in burgundy and in ‘Paris Night,’ a really beautiful navy blue.   I didn’t take any photos inside the store- but I’m sure you’ve all seen photos of the store and the infamous warehouse.  It did not disappoint.

And this is the state of my knitting.  In another effort to use up odd balls of scrap yarn, I’m knitting a pair of knee socks.  I have a ton of koigu mill ends and a few balls of leftover yarn from sock toes and heels on other projects.  I pulled 200g of scrap yarn from the cookie jars in the photo, divided each color into two evenly weighted balls (one per sock), and started knitting.

And, right after I took this photo I realized the livingroom/ studio needed a complete tidy.

enough to be getting on with.

The last two weeks have been busy:

Plus a graduation, six day work weeks, and out of town guests.   More information in a little while.

German Chocolate Cupcakes? Yes, Please.

I’m going to be boastful for a moment- these cupcakes are the best bit of baking I’ve done since I made gingerbread at Christmas.   I promised my friend Milan a batch of cupcakes one Sunday.  A few days later I saw a German Chocolate Cake sitting out at our local bakery and I thought, why not combine the two?  So I culled a few recipes, picked out the bits I liked, and here’s what I came up with.

The cake recipe is from the Inside-Out German Chocolate Cake recipe on Epicurious.  The coconut icing comes from The Cupcake Project, and the satin glaze comes from All Recipes.   The only real changes I made were in the procedure, but to make it a bit easier to follow, I’m going to write out the whole recipe as I used it.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract
• 3/4 cup boiling-hot water

For the Coconut/ Pecan Icing:

• 1 C sugar
• 1 C evaporated milk
• 1/2 C butter
• 3 eggs, thoroughly beaten
• 1 1/3 cups baker’s coconut
• 1 C chopped Pecans (finely chopped so they can fit through a pastry bag)
• 1 t vanilla extract

For the Chocolate Satin Glaze:

• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon light corn syrup (I loath to use corn syrup.  Instead, I used some local maple syrup, and it did the job nicely.)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Odds and Ends:

• Pastry bag & icing tip
• Cupcake/ muffin pan
• Paper cupcake liners

Directions:

Make the cupcakes:
1- Preheat oven to 350°F

2- Put papers in the cupcake tins.

3- Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl.

4- Whisk together whole milk, butter, whole egg, yolk, vanilla, and almond extract in another large bowl until just combined.

5- Beat egg mixture into flour mixture with a fork until thoroughly mixed.

6- Beat in water until just combined (batter will be thin).

7- Pour batter into cupcake papers, until each paper is about 3/4 full.

8- Bake in upper and lower thirds of oven, switching position of pans and rotating them 180 degrees halfway through baking, until a tester comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes total.

9- Put cupcakes on a rack to cool completely.

Make the Coconut/ Pecan frosting:

1- In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, evaporated milk, butter, and eggs.

2- Cook over medium heat until the mixture starts to lightly bubble. Stir CONSTANTLY!! or you will end up with scrambled eggs in your frosting!!

3- Remove from heat immediately.

4- Stir in remaining ingredients. Cool until the icing is room temperature.  Don’t let it get too cold, or it will be impossible to pipe the icing through the pastry bag.

Fill the cupcakes:

1- After the cupcakes have cooled completely, put only the inner icing tip in the pastry bag.  This should leave you with a hole the size of a nickel to pipe icing through.

2- Fill the bag with coconut/pecan frosting.

3- Jam the tip of the pastry bag into the cupcake as far as it will go, without breaking the cupcake.  Pull tip halfway up (not entirely out of the hole!) and fill the hole with icing.  Keep filling until the hole is full.  The cupcake shouldn’t break, but if there’s a little cracking along the top of the cake it doesn’t matter, the glaze will cover it up.

(Step 3 is a very satisfying thing)

Chocolate Satin Glaze:

1- In a double boiler over hot, but not boiling water, combine chocolate chips, butter and maple syrup. Stir until chips are melted and mixture is smooth, then add vanilla.  I don’t own a double boiler, what I do is fill a pot with water and put a tin pie plate on top of the pot, it works well.

2- Ladle over cupcakes so that the glaze pools neatly within the walls of the paper liners.

Allow glaze to cool before you put cling wrap or anything else over the cupcakes- the glaze will stop being liquid and will turn to a nice thick, fudgey icing once it cools.

Eet Smakelijk!  (Eet Smakelijk is Dutch, not German, but German Chocolate Cake apparently isn’t German at all, it is all in keeping with the theme of the post).

Bressay Hap Shawl

New Hampshire has been enjoying a little bout of rain, so AJD and I snuck out during a clear moment this afternoon to take a few shots of the newly blocked Bressay Hap Shawl from Rowan 42 (rav link).  Some of the shots are a bit blown out, but hopefully I’ll get a few better photos after I finish Hap Shawl #2, and before I give the shawls away at Christmas.

I’ve really taken a shine to Hap Shawls:  the lace is not too lacey, color is very important, and they burn up bits of stash.  I’m pretty pumped about my next shawl, and I have never even remotely considered knitting shawls before.

I usually begin my Xmas knitting in September, and I must say it feels pretty good to check a gift off the list.

Modifications:

I knit the striped section as one very large strip, rather than four pannels.  The central lace pattern was worked directly off of the striped bits, decreasing at the corner stitch markers.  Finally, I seamed up the piece, and presto: shawl.  I think for the next shawl, I’ll work the pattern entirely in the round and find a new central lace pattern, just to change things up a bit.

Stash shopping

AJD and I have been planning our next big move for a while now, so I have been trying to save by cutting costs where I can.  One big cut I made was to my yarn budget.   The rule I’ve been working with for a while is:  Only buy yarn to finish projects.  No new yarn for new projects.

This isn’t as awful as it sounds.  My stash is large and varied, and I’ve had tons of fingering weight yarns knocking around in it for years.

So let’s trace the slow depletion of my Harrisville Designs fingering weight yarn stash.

2006:  I purchased cones of 12 different colors for these two sweaters.  (If I have inherited one thing from my father, it is the urge to buy far too much of one thing.  With him, it is tomato pie, with me, yarn.)

2007: I needed yarn for the sleeves of Rannoch:

2008:  When I went to the Netherlands, I packed several small knitting projects.  And so, two pairs of Latvian mittens:

Last Christmas, I used the yarn to whip up a few mini Christmas stockings:

2009:  I used the navy yarn to sew duplicate stitches onto AJD’s argyle.   I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about that FO yet.

Now I’m busting out a fairly large hap shawl.  And the cones all still have upwards of 150g of yarn a piece on them, which is great because I’m probably going to start a second shawl soon.

One day, the cones will run out, but until then I’m enjoying the seemingly endless color combinations.  I have purchased a few 25g skeins of accent colors  here and there,  but for the most part, these peices were knit from the same 12 cones.  Moral of the story:  fingering weight never goes bad.  Buy cones, and you’ll be rich with Latvian mittens, fair isle sweaters, and hap shawls for aeons.  I’m just hoping to use up a few cones by moving day.

Limonada

1.5 cups lime juice (as in, juiced from a lime, not the drinking kind)

6 cups cold water

10oz agave nectar

1 cup crushed raspberries

1 cup whole raspberries

Stir all that goodness up and drink it.  AJD dilutes his, he finds this mixture to be a little too strong.  I like it strong, with the berry chunks in it and some cookies on the side, raspberry limeade is a very satisfying thing.

Phila-centric

(Moravian Sugar cake- recipe link with AJD’s food list)

As a former resident, I know I’m biased, but I can’t get over how completely amazing food is in Philadelphia and south eastern PA.  Lobster rolls are all fine and good (ok, they’re completely excellent) but normal people can’t eat them all the time.   Philly food is good stuff for every day.  Unfortunately I wasn’t home long enough to really enjoy all the home-food I wanted, so here are two lists (with links to websites and recipes) for my next Philly visit.  Or yours.  Whatever.

My home town is a quick train ride from center city, so I’m including food from the ‘Illadelph and the suburbs.

1- Sang Kee Duck.  The best duck won ton soup you will ever eat.  Ever.  That is all.

2- Marrone’s Pizza in Ardmore.  You grow up with it, you love it.  You’re from out of town, it’ll take convincing.

3- Monk’s Cafe.   Belgian food, mussels and frites to die for and a really excellent beer selection.  I reccomend the Rodenbach Sour (if they have it available), with the Brussles Mussels and an extra side of frites. Mmmmm….

4- Le Petit Mitron, Patisserie Francaise, in Narberth PA.  Excellent Lemon Raspberry sandwich cookies, and right down the street is Ewe & I, my favorite non-food place to visit at home.

5- The Reading Terminal.  Really, you can’t go wrong at the Terminal.  My ideal lunch  would be something from the 1oth street cantina, or Sang Kee’s stand, or Thai food, followed by a scoop of cinnamon ice cream from Bassett’s and an apple dumpling from the Pennsylvania Dutch Eating Place.

6- Carlino’s.  Bread, spreads, and chicken.

AJD is a Pennsylvania Dutchman, and his good food list includes more items that come with recipes.

1- Moravian Sugar Cake.  A special cake for holidays, or breakfast.

2- Black Raspberry Pie.  AJD’s mom uses the pie recipe in Good Housekeeping with black raspberries, and it is amazing.

3- Chicken corn soup. I’ve never had it with eggs in, but this soup is always present at events like auctions.

4- Wilbur Chocolate.  Wilbur buds existed years before Hershey kisses and they are about a million times better.

5- Martin’s Pretzels.  Made with Mennonite love.  The best pretzels I’ve ever had, especially if they’re a little burnt.

And here’s what I’m working on now.  Inspired by Gudrun, I’m knitting the hap shawl from Rowan 42 with some of my Harrisville Tweed fingering weight stash.   I’m thinking of knitting two, but we’ll see how crazy knitting one makes me.  Lord knows, summer isn’t summer unless I’m knitting a wool blanket in 90F weather.