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.

Proof that I may be too easy to impress

Dear Cashier Man from ShopRite,

Since my shopping trips are usually pretty small, I'm more of a self-checkout girl.  The other week, I really needed to stock up, so I thought I'd give myself a tiny break and go through the manned lines instead.  A quick scan showed that your line was the most empty.

The first thing I noticed was your piano keyboard belt straight out of a 90s Hot Topic, followed by your bed-head mop and your emo kid glasses.  The next thing I noticed was the woman in front of me in line, who was trying to hold some kind of conversation with you, of which, you were having none.

Yeah, I kind of thought you were a prick for snubbing her, but you were probably annoyed that she had about a zillion items and was attempting to bag a grand total of zero of them.  But, you should have been a little sensitive to the fact that she was like 70 years fragile and just trying to be social.

After she finished up, I started packing my own groceries, lest the residual fiery rays of cashier-angst be rained down upon me.  I was into my second to last bag, and that's when you surprised me.  As you passed a box of graham crackers down the belt, you actually spoke to me. 

Truth be told, I was impressed that you noticed (and glad that I wasn't purchasing something else like tampons).  As I finished packing, you even thanked me for bagging my groceries, and then (sort of) told off the impatient guy behind me for stepping up to the register when it was clear that I still needed to pay.

It is possible that you were trying to impress me, since, now that I think on it, I was dressed every bit the skater punk like you.  Or maybe you were just grateful that I took the time to load my own bags.  Or, you could just  be super observant.  Regardless, you actually had the notion to say something to me. 

I was walking down the shore at Raritan Bay with Dillon the other weekend, when I randomly decided to draw a huge "Hello :)" in the sand.  We walked to the other end of the beach, putzed around for a bit, and then came back.  On the return stroll, just as we were coming back on my sign, we passed by a random gent who glanced down at the message, smiled, and walked on.  I was insufferably happy afterwards, partly because I put a grin on a complete stranger's face, but also because he actually looked at it instead of ignoring or missing it.

There, and in your line, for the briefest of moments, there was some kind of human connection, and while it probably didn't mean much, it made life that much more OK in my book.

Until the next.

A Matter of Priorities

Today is the first day in a few weeks that I have managed to leave work on time.  And by on time, I mean that I worked my 8 hours, said "I'm done." and actually left without interruption.

Some people have an evening routine - workout, read, watch the tube, whatever.  Getting home around dinner time + taking care of a new, young kitten have kind of disrupted this pattern for me. Not today, though.  I made a beeline for that gate, and nothing was going to stop me.

So what did I do with my extra 1.5 hours of freedom? 

I built this nonsense:

That, friends, is the world's ugliest DIY airzooka.  One empty juice bottle, two rubber bands, a plastic bag, and some duct tape.  Does it work?  Yes.  Does it put out candles?  If you stand about 2 feet away from the flame, it will.  Is it weaker than a person just blowing in your face?  Probably.

Do I care?

Absolutely not.

I occasionally build pointless nonsense, and I am OK with that. 

Until the next.