Month: June 2016

Making a Baskin Robbins-style Ice Cream Cake

I make cakes.  From scratch.  With homemade frosting.  It’s what I do.  I’ve been changing people’s mind about cake for years now.  (I think most people think they don’t like cake because they’ve only experienced grocery store cakes.  A real cake from scratch is an entirely different thing.)

But the boyfriend likes ice cream cakes.  And it was his birthday.  And so I did some research (thank you internet) and made him a Baskin-Robbins-style ice cream cake.  Here’s how I did it.

I found a recipe for cake in my America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.  The recipe I used was for Pantry Chocolate Cake and was designed to be baked in an 8×8 pan.  I baked it in a cheesecake pan (I think that’s a 10-inch pan?  It might be 12-inch.) and watched it carefully so it didn’t burn.  Then I froze it.  I happened to freeze it for a week, but a few hours would probably be fine.  If I do this again, I will cut the cake down a bit.  Maybe to an inch in height?  I feel like a smaller layer of cake would not be so solid.

When I was ready for the ice cream layer, I set out the ice cream to soften for about 30 minutes.  While it softened, I prepped my tray, which was some cardboard with aluminum foil taped to it.

I removed the cake from the cheesecake pan bottom and set it directly on top of the tray. Then I replaced the cheesecake ring around the cake as if the bottom was still there.IMG_5612

In went the ice cream.  I smooshed it out so it was even, and even got out my dough scraper to level the top.  That was an unnecessary thing as there will be icing to even things out, but I wanted a totally flat surface.  At this point everything went back in the freezer for several hours.  Like maybe eight.IMG_5613

What the internet research turned up was that the “icing” on Baskin-Robbins cakes is just softened vanilla ice cream.  A-ha!  So I set out vanilla to soften for about 20 minutes and then removed the cake from the freezer and the cheesecake ring from the ice cream.  (A hot knife helped with this.)

The frosting part was difficult.  I found that I had to work very quickly and a thicker layer was better than a thinner one.  Like normal icing, I did the sides first and then the top. It was not as smooth as I wanted it to be, but it was also getting melt-y, so I put everything back in the freezer where it stayed overnight.

Once the icing was rock-solid, I made a ganche (I use multi-purpose chocolate truffle sauce which was from the early-to-mid 2000s Oregonian Food Day section and which does not seem to be in their recipe archive.  Boo!) and put it in the refrigerator until it was solid.  Then I got out my decorating tools and did my best to decorate. (I’m more of a baker than a decorator.) I found myself wishing I could work IN a freezer, so the icing wouldn’t melt as I was attempting to garnish.  It ended up messier than I wanted, but I knew no one would really care.IMG_5621

The finished product was happily consumed by many.  This is not a cake you can whip up in an afternoon, but if you plan out the time, it’s several short steps over several days and isn’t too taxing.

Postcards from Hood River, Oregon & Portland, Oregon

This marvelous ad card arrived from Hood River, where Laurie (you might know her from the Cosmic Tripster post) and the Valaries were doing a training.  It’s an ad card full of stickers!  I’ve never seen such a thing.IMG_5610

This came from my mother, who was sending me some paperwork for me to mail.  I suspect she must have found this while visiting stores when he friend Linda was in town.  I’m familiar with this artist and have sent her postcards to Postcrossers, so it was fun to see it arrive in my mailbox.IMG_5611

Three sentence movie reviews: Love & Friendship

love_and_friendship

Walt Stillman’s Damsels in Distress left me cold, so I was a little wary of this film.  But it turns out that he just needed the proper setting for the stodgy manners on display in Damsels.  This was a complex narrative carefully told and Lady Susan was delightful in her unabashed selfish villainy.

Cost: $10.85 (I know!  I just really wanted to see a movie, so I paid full price at Regal.  And bought popcorn.  And was reminded I don’t really like movie theater popcorn. Again.)
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/love_and_friendship.html

Did you know it was World Skate Day?

Me neither.  But the street in front of work was blocked off and a ramp started to be assembled.  Suddenly, there was a gaggle of skaters hanging out.IMG_5604 IMG_5605 IMG_5606 IMG_5607 IMG_5608 IMG_5609There was a bit of a confrontation over this camera, but the two parted smiling, so that worked out okay.

I left work as the ramp was still being assembled, but my co-worker said when she left it had been fully assembled and it was fun to watch them skate on it.

The end of Anton Yelchin

My first point of contact was during the Star Trek reboot. That movie was humming along quite nicely when suddenly here was this young guy doing the Chekov thing. His attempts at entering his authorization code (9-5-wictor-wictor-2) were so delightful I made a mental note to see just who this kid was.STAR TREK

I don’t think I ever checked.  But he had a long resume already.

It wasn’t until last summer, when he started popping up in the movies I happened to be watching, that I was reminded of his existence.  His acting revealed an intelligence that brought more than the usual to his parts.  He was versatile, and could both carry a leading role and do the supporting thing while also stealing scenes. He was good looking (those curls!) but talent oozed out of him in a way that pointed to a long career, even after those curls thinned out and disappeared, as they were already beginning to do.

The great tragedy of an actor dead long before his time is that we won’t have an opportunity to see what he does next. We can check through his back catalog and see what we’ve missed, but after the things in post-production are released, that’s it.  Someone else will be Chekov in the future, someone else will take those parts he would have been great in and he will be forgotten sooner than he should be.

Yelchin didn’t die because he was troubled, or accidentally overdosed, or had been drinking too much, or was driving too fast.  His death was a dumb random happenstance and too bad.  Because we will never see where he was going to go.  We can only imagine.

Here are the three movies from last summer that turned my head.  They show his versatility: a conflicted lover, an enthusiastic musician, a young guy really into a hot girl. All are good in their own way and all were made better by his presence.

Like Crazy1-like-crazy

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Only Lovers Left Alivep1050419070-3

photo credits:
http://www.trekcore.com/specials/albums/rare/yelchin/chekov_pb02.jpg
http://blog.sfgate.com/mlasalle/wp-content/blogs.dir/2272/files/the-faces-of-love-in-the-movies/1-like-crazy.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CIZ-tfESfUw/maxresdefault.jpg
http://photos.gordonphoto.org/img/s5/v133/p1050419070-3.jpg

Soon to be gone.

The block which houses my bank is soon to be redeveloped.  I saw the sign a few weeks ago.  The new building will be the same old same old: mixed use with retail on the bottom, five floors of offices, five floors of apartments.  We know the drill.  You can see a photo here and also read about the building being the first high-rise in North America to be made of cross-laminated timber.  More photos here.  The second set of photos bug me because I can’t orient myself in space.

I was surprised to see how quickly they were starting.  This is not where my bank is, but is the structure on the other end of the block.  It was an antique store for several years, and of late it has been empty.  It was one story, painted an unattractive color I suddenly can’t recall, and no one will miss this building.  IMG_5597

Here’s my bank.  I asked the teller and she said they would be relocated during construction and then the plan is to come back to the same location.IMG_5598

From the corner.IMG_5599

I also can’t tell from the photo just how much of the block they are taking.  So here’s the rest of the block face.  I’m guessing the colorful building housing LexiDog will go.IMG_5600 IMG_5601

I’m not sure if this building will survive or not.  I’m hoping so.  It’s got good lines.IMG_5602 IMG_5603

It seems that corner will be very dark, what with the new 12-story building, the condo across the street with the red parts and the condo building across the other street that is yellow brick. That’s three tall building on one corner. We shall see, though.

Gorge Hike: Wahkeena Falls to Multnomah Falls

We got up early on Father’s Day and took a hike in the Gorge. It was a beautiful day for a hike.  Plus, there were Father’s Day hikers to spot.

The plan was to start at Wahkeena Falls, hike up and across and come down by Multnomah Falls.  It was a good plan.IMG_5580

Matt poses by some falls.  There were a lot of falls.IMG_5587

Self-portrait with falls.IMG_5588

More falls.IMG_5589 IMG_5590 IMG_5591

Either J or C, or possibly both, had recently been here.IMG_5592

Sadly, my camera battery was near death and I didn’t have the spare with me, so pictures were rationed.

Matt wanted me to take this picture.  I obliged.IMG_5593

Multnomah Falls.IMG_5594

There were a million people at Multnomah Falls.  There were a million people celebrating Father’s Day.  Here’s one family right here.IMG_5595

And here is a biker eating a cookie as big as his face.IMG_5596

It was a good hike and my legs were uniformly sore for the next few days.

Three sentence movie reviews: Away from Her

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A story of Alzheimer’s Disease and how the progression affects loved ones.  It also had a lot to say about long-term relationships and how love changes over time.  Julie Christie’s best actress acting nomination was well-deserved.

Cost:  free via work-sponsored Netflix
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2007/away_from_her.html

The reality vs. the purported ideal.

I bought Vanity Fair from the newsstand (really from the rack at New Seasons) because Amy Schumer was on the front and because the issue was about sisters.  I should probably just subscribe, as the subscription is so inexpensive, but I haven’t gotten around to it, plus I would really be committing to the long (long long) articles that are the usual Vanity Fair thing.  And then there are the ads.

I don’t really read a lot of magazines with what I think of as magazine-type ads.  You know.  The impossibly thin and tall women who look nothing like nearly all the women I see and fit into clothing that nearly all the women I know will never wear.  I don’t like what they are selling and I don’t like what they are saying and I don’t like that they are some sort of homogeneous ideal.

And this page sums things up.  Who are you more likely to encounter: the sisters on the left, or the naked ladies on the right?IMG_5578

Other than the ads, it was a great issue.  I spent several days contemplating one of Annie Leibovitz’s pictures of Amy Schumer. I couldn’t decide if it disturbed me or was kind of awesome. Matt had no such trouble making a judgement call.  When I showed it to him, he took one look and said, “That’s awesome!” I finally decided if I had been thinking about it for three days it was kind of awesome.

In other news, I’m bummed I don’t have a sister.