Cake! (Or Death)

Holy fricker-fracker.  I'm old.


Well.  Jersey resident.

To celebrate the day, I decided to share the wealth in the only manner I knew how - by baking.  Out of the goodness of my heart, I decided to share the secrets of my nom-mery with all my faithful readers.

So today's super easy, and yet amazingly delicious recipe is:  Cherry Bombs.

So what exactly are Cherry Bombs?  Most people call them cake balls, but the difference is that I place a stemmed Maraschino cherry in the center of mine, both for presentation, and to give it a little something extra.  I made a batch for my area, put them in the mail room at about 8 AM, and they had all vanished before noon.  So how do we make these treats?

Step one.  Make a cake.

Hah.  But, really, before you start, you need to have a cake (mine was 9x13, but it will of course vary with the number of bombs you want to make).  It can be from scratch, from a box mix, whatever.  I've done both, and they all turned out great.  The recipe I used was a tweaked chocolate-coffee cake, but I've mixed and matched before.  It's all about personal preference.

While the cake is baking, you might consider draining the cherries and patting them to dry

It's not really necessary, but it does make wrapping them a little easier.

Step two.  Get "glue".  What this means is, you'll need a sticky substance to keep the balls together.  Most recipes call for frosting, but I used marshmallow fluff, which is lower fat than frosting.  Some people use cream cheese, some use peanut butter, you get the idea.  Again - mix and match.  My sister suggested red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting - sounds divine, right?

This is important - wait for your cake to cool completely!  If you don't, and you try to mix in the glue, you'll just get a giant, goopy mess.

Cut up your cake, put it in a large bowl, and mash it around with enough of your glue so that it's a soft, not-too-sticky, but not dry mush:

Step three:  forming the bombs.  This step is best accomplished with a melon scoop or a cookie scoop, but a spherical tablespoon works just as well.  Scoop up some of your mixture (not too much), take a spherical teaspoon, and push the rounded side into the scoop so that you get a little chamber for the cherry:

See all that excess stuff around the side?  You're going to push it back to the center, covering up the cherry, and making a nice ball around it:

Again, what's nice about having a scooper is that you can just pop it out of the spoon, without messing up the form of the ball.  Once you have all your cherries covered, set them aside in the freezer for about a half an hour, just so they are a little more solid for the next step.

Step four:  coating.  For some reason, I'm completely incompetent when it comes to melting chocolate, so I'm not going to explain how I do it.  So... have some pictures of glossy chocolate instead:

Coat the entire ball in chocolate, and set it down in the fridge to harden on a sheet of wax paper. 

And, voila!

Keep in mind, don't do this on a busy day.  Not that they're hard to make, but it does take some patience, since you're making one ball at a time.  Have friends over, and make them help you :P

Feel free to get creative with it.  An alternative recipe that I have made used brandied cherries (bake the cherries at the lowest oven setting for 15 minutes just to evaporate all the juice, then let them soak in brandy overnight.  A friend of mine taught me this trick, and in his honor, I call these babies Dragon Eggs.)  The following are the ingredients that I used, and which yield maybe 3 dozen cherry bombs:

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I actually used 1 1/2 cup wheat flour)
• 1 cup white sugar  (I cut down on the original recipe because the marshmallow fluff makes it super sweet)
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 7 1/2 oz Marshmallow Fluff
• 10 oz jar of Maraschino cherries (with stems!)
• 6 oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Happy baking!

Until the next.

Turf Wars

This may or may not come as a shock, but I grew up in a pretty typical suburban neighborhood, and as normal as it was, with it came all the typical oddities of living in close quarters.  I.e., having neighbors like the rubberneckers, the newlyweds, the ornery old man, and the guy obsessed with caring for his lawn.

This tale is about that last guy.

This man owns a large riding lawnmower with which to mow his less-than-1/3-acre yard.  And when I say large, I don't mean:

I mean:

Photo via CentralParkNYC.org

In his defense, he does own a landscaping business.  This, however, does not excuse the fact that he typically mows the lawn sometimes up to 3 times a day with his giant, rumbling machine of doom.  (And as an aside - for those not acquainted with lawn care - this is actually really bad for the grass.)

Now, I obviously am no longer affected by this, though it unnerves my father to no end, mostly because it's our next-door-neighbor, and being an older, quieter man, the Lai Patriach doesn't much care for the noise of thunderous engines during meals.  In fact, I wouldn't have given the Grass Overlord a passing thought, if the following hadn't happened.

On a ledge near the front door, I spied a wad of dollar bills, just sitting out in the open.  My parents are usually good about leaving money out in the open, so of course, I had to inquire.  When I brought it up, my dad kind of laughed, which is never a comforting response to a situation about money.

Like I mentioned before, my dad is getting on in years and needs help with outdoor chores.  This summer, he had tried to hire someone to mow the lawn for them. 

This is where things get weird. 

When the chap tried to perform the task with which he'd been given, Captain John Deere began berating him, telling him that he was DOING IT WRONG.  Now, I wasn't present for this, and only have my father's word to go on, but apparently Don Weed-o Corleone was so vehement that the hired hand eventually left, without taking his pay.

In my sad, romantic mind, I sincerely hope that showdown went something like this:

Photo via Hemmings Daily

 Or even this:

But, no.  It was probably just a sad, overly-bronzed, slightly overweight man, staring down some hapless guy.

Which brings me to my real point:  What the eff?  Yeah, we all have our passions in life, and we all have our fortes.  Some of us tend to be nagging when it comes to seeing others try to reach the same echelon of greatness we think we've established. 

But sweet holy fricker fracker.  Have we become so desperately bored with life that these are the kinds of things we stoop to fight over?

Until the next.