Monday, January 27, 2014

Weekend Report: Birthday and Bollywood


I know I say this every time I write now, but, hello! It's been too long! School kicked into gear hard, I dropped off the face of more than just the internet earth, and this silly little blog that used to be my favorite thing to do every morning fell by the wayside. I miss it! So here I am, back again. Let's pretend like I never left. Ok? Ok.

This weekend I revisited another one of my favorite things from my past life (i.e. pre-school): baking epic birthday cakes!

The only picture is blurry...sorry. Just pretend it's purposefully Artistic.
Friday was looooonnnggg -- I had class starting at 7:30 am, and then a big presentation at 4:30pm. Ick. Needless to say, I got home feeling like I'd been to war. So I made a beeline for the kitchen, cranked up my favorite song, and made frosting.

I'd made the Red Wine Chocolate Cake the night before, in a quick break between readings, and plastic-wrapped and froze the three gorgeous layers. Friday was creativity time: I had an idea for Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting that involved straining the raspberries, because yum (also, straining = no seeds). And it worked! It worked SO WELL. Forgetting the day behind me and looking forward to the birthday party ahead, I danced around the kitchen licking the beaters and marveling in the fact that frosting can be sooooo good!

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

  • 8 oz (1 block) cream cheese at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 teaspoon rum
  • 1/3 cup heavy cream
  • 2 ½ cups powdered sugar
Directions:
  1. Microwave the raspberries, then puree them in a blender. 
  2. Pour the raspberry slush into a fine sieve, and push it through with a spatula to get all the raspberry and none of the seeds.
  3. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese, butter, vanilla, rum, raspberries, and cream until smooth.
  4. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. If it's too thick, add more cream; too thin, add more sugar. 
Like the out-of-practice blogger I am, I totally forgot to take pictures of this gorgeous masterpiece. But trust me on this, it was beautiful! And everyone agreed that the cake was delicious. And that perhaps baking cakes should be my post-grad school backup plan (you know, in case this whole International Relations thing doesn't work out.) And the birthday girl (HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE!) said that I won at her birthday.

What else this weekend? Four of my friends hosted an Inaugural Movie Night on Sunday, because they have a projector! Like the whole huge set-up: big screen and sound and everything. Their living room is literally like a movie theater. 


To start off what I anticipate will be a series of projector-supported movie nights, we watched Barfi! a Bollywood hit. I've actually never watched a Bollywood movie before, and it was hilarious! Like the style of a Charlie Chaplin film, with plot elements from The Notebook, and just a smidgen of the Borne movies thrown in there too. Completely silly, and thoroughly entertaining! There were not epic dance scenes, which I thought was a requirement of Bollywood, but the whole movie was set to music with very little talking, so it was kind of like watching a 2-hour dance scene.

And with that I conclude my Weekend Report. Hopefully I'll be more regularly blogging soon!