A chocolate and peanut butter kind of week

I have watched “10 Things I Hate About You” three times in the last three days. Seriously. I think I might have a problem. I’ve loved the movie since it came out (probably because my mom thought it was inappropriate…what adolescent doesn’t love to rebel in some way?). A friend mentioned the other day their favorite band had a song on the movie, so naturally I had to watch. I had the soundtrack too, so I knew where it was. It’s just so great. “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?” “I think you can in Europe.” Or… “My insurance does not cover PMS!” Oh and Heath Ledger’s smile? SO wonderful. Sigh.


Anyway, point is, I’ve been spending a lot of time with friends lately. I’ve reconnected with a lot of old ones and am making new ones, and it’s totally wonderful. Like I talked about last time, I had a major life event happen recently — I became single for the first time in more than two years. If you know me well, you know I’m a serial long-term dater. My goal this time is to avoid that and just do things I want to and remind myself who I am. Some of those things happen to be watching movies, hanging out with people and baking, obviously. This week I combined a couple, when my friend Anne came over and helped me make cupcakes (and took a picture of me with them so I could prove I actually do make them!). It’s been a learning experience thus far, but it’s a good thing too. A little alone time isn’t bad. And keeping up with friends isn’t either.


One of my friends from school, Lauren, just got hired on as a copy editor at my newspaper. I’m so happy I get to see her regularly! She likes chocolate (or so she tells me) so I wanted to make her a chocolate-y dessert to welcome her. Kelly gave me some polka-dotted cupcake wrappers for graduation, and I bought some yellow sprinkle things to match, so a basic devil’s food cupcake and basic buttercream and voila! a chocolate dessert. I’m not sure I’d buy those sprinkles again, because they were definitely capable of cracking molars...but they tasted good, so it's a trade-off. They looked pretty though!


Fun fact about me — I LOVE peanut butter desserts. Cookies seemed like the right way to go, because I hadn’t made them in a while. I made this peanut butter cookie recipe from Smitten Kitchen once before, and my roommate Eric LOVED them. I forgot why until I made them again, but they’re soooo fluffy and awesome. A lot of times peanut butter cookies get crunchy or hard, and then they’re just not as wonderful. These stay light, I think because you beat the hell out of the butter and peanut butter at the beginning. A few Reese's Pieces on top and you’ve got one of the best peanut butter cookies ever.


Like I said earlier, Anne came over to help me with a dessert this week too. Our sports editor at work missed a few desserts I made, so I told him to request something (I love requests! You should request something! It’s a challenge and I like those). He said peanut butter and chocolate. I’ve been kind of averse to this combo this summer because it’s been SO hot and muggy and it seems like such a heavy combination, but this cupcake had been sitting on my list of bookmarks for a while. Anne and I made them, but it really meant more talking than baking. They were tasty, although a bit rich for my tastes. The filling is pretty thick and the frosting so sweet, but if you like that combo, these are probably right for you.


For the holiday weekend, I drove out to the lake to see my dad, stepmom and stepbrother. My stepbrother, Justin, is in town from Canada, and he just returned there from London. It’s so nice out on the lake. We took the boat out after dark, anchored it and just stayed in the middle of the lake. The stars were so clear, and the Milky Way just looked like smoke. I made my first recipe out of “Booze Cakes,” a rum cake with a spiked chocolate icing. Very tasty and very pretty, although the rum in the cake didn’t come out as much as I thought it would. The bourbon in the chocolate sauce, though, you could taste.

So now I’m on to another work week. A couple things, I’ve switched so this blog has its own domain, ingredientsofa20something.com. Long and obnoxious, I know, but I didn’t really want to shorten it. The old address will still go there, but I thought it would be worth getting its own address. Plus, today I had centerpiece stories on the fronts of two sections of the newspaper! The first was about a local woman who is shaving her head to raise awareness for childhood cancer after her daughter was diagnosed. The other was about a woman who just returned from two years in the Peace Corps based in Togo. It's always incredibly satisfying to see these kinds of things in print (and online, with comments). Woo hoo!

Summer cupcakes and pie

I've officially been a college graduate for a week and a half. Now I'm a working girl. It's taking a little bit of getting used to. On the bright side, it gives me more time to bake and try new things. On the down side, I'm experiencing the end of college — namely, people moving away. I have friends moving all over the country, which I guess has happened before, except now I'm not going back to school after it happens. I imagine that when fall semester comes, it will be even stranger. I always have this feeling at the beginning of a break, where I've been so stressed with schoolwork that when it's over, I still feel like I should be doing it. I bet I get over that though :)

I've been watching a lot of movies. Saw Cabaret for the first time...jury's still out on what I think of that. And the Fantastic Mr. Fox. Definitely a cute movie. I watched Kiss Me Kate too — any musical lovers should appreciate that because Howard Keel is in it and his voice is amazing. Then some old favorites too, like Grease and 10 Things I Hate About You. "My insurance doesn't cover PMS!"

I've had a lot of time to bake lately, which is always fun. I made pink lemonade cupcakes about a week ago, sort of following the recipe. The weather was crappy and rainy, and I thought something like that seemed spring-y. You put in pink lemonade concentrate, but I added some of the powdered kind too, which made it extra pink-flavored. Same with the icing, which I also modified. Overall, they were pretty tasty, but totally weird. I guess I'm used to chocolate cupcakes or vanilla or something like that. I liked them though.


Then Keane came to town for his final goodbye before moving all the way up to Minnesota. He's working in the industry he loves, but I'm still sad to see him go. On the plus side, I guess, friends moving away mean lots of fun little trips for me to take! Anyway, Keane and AC came, and I made key lime pie cupcakes, which I've made before but apparently not written about. They're so tasty! You make a graham crust for them, and then a lime cupcake. Then you put in a key lime-marscapone filling, and top it off with key lime frosting. I'm not so hot at filling cupcakes, and might try a different method soon if I can't get better at it. But, they taste wonderful! Even though they fall apart when eating them. I made them initially for the guys, but gave them out elsewhere as well. The night out was fun too, and involved three boys singing "Shoop" in my car, putting the child lock on the windows and doing the Safety Dance.


My next project was to make bundt cake. I got this awesome bundt pan for graduation from a family friend (lemme tell you, my graduation gifts definitely had a theme, and they were all about cooking and baking). I'd really been wanting to try it, and stumbled across a recipe for Jones soda bundt cake. I've never made bundt cake before, but I had to try it. Kelly came over and helped me make the cake, which is seriously like half butter half sugar. It was flavored with Jones soda cream soda and berry lemonade, conveniently my two favorite flavors. The recipe called for just a normal glaze over the top, but I made glazes of each of the sodas instead. It was an awesome cake and very moist.


On my day off this week, I went to my aunt's house to make rhubarb pie. I've kind of shied away from pies because I'm not real confident in my crust-making abilities, so she taught me how to do it. My first crust was definitely a disaster, but a tip — roll it out between two sheets of waxed paper. Definitely helps. We made three pies, three different crusts, all from Joy of Cooking. The first was the normal pastry crust with strawberry and rhubarbs. The second, the better crust with just rhubarb. And finally, the best crust with fresh strawberries and rhubarb. The third was definitely best, but I guess that's what you get for putting more butter in, right? They all ended up really great, so now I guess I'm at least semi-ready to make my own pie crust. Fourth of July calls, right? Apple pie? I think so. Maybe I'll even brave making a lattice top.

So now I settle into summer and working. I'll leave you on an entertaining note — or at least I thought it was funny. I hope everyone watched Looney Tunes at least a little bit (and I still do if I get the chance!). Remember the cat that Pepé Le Pew always chased after? We knew she was French because she said "Le meow, le purrrr." So, my dad's in the Czech Republic right now for an airshow and sent me an e-mail today with the subject line "Czech pussycats" (I seem to always get animal e-mails...wonder why). In the body it said "Czmeow......czprrrrr!" I thought it was hysterical...coulda just been me though :)