Flavors of the Month

I'm selling cupcakes the fringe bar market on Cuba street this saturday; and Karl designed me this super sweet menu. I really have literally nothing going on in my life right now apart from kitten rearing and growing the layers out of my hair, so I focus a lot of energy on making new flavors for my cupcake weekends.
Let's break it down:

1. WHITE CHOCOLATE EXPRESSO. This is going to be insane delicious. For real. It's got a surprise gooey white chocolate ganache centre; and the sweet ooziness is going to balance out the strong, rich coffee flavor in the frosting. 
2. PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE. My favorite flavor- the base is pretty much like a giant cupcake brownie, and the frosting is 50% pure peanut butter, with just enough confectioners sugar and cream to get it to an awesome, whipped consistency. And it's drizzled with dark chocolate because THAT'S HOW I ROLL.
3. LAVENDER & WILD HONEY. The wild card. It's a fluffy vanilla cake with the butter substituted for homemade lavender butter- most recipes using lavender just mix it in with the batter, but I thought it would be better to do it the same way you make hash brownies- don't just throw it in there, make hash butter first! And I was totally right. It's waaay stronger that way.
4. CHAMPAGNE & STRAWBERRIES. I carried this over from last month because it was my favorite. I didn't really think I'd like it because I'm not so into champagne*; but for some reason when its turned into frosting it just become the best thing in the world. Also, these each have a whole strawberry in the centre and I like getting to eat tons of strawberries while baking. Win win.

*A couple of valentines days ago, Karl** and I won this massive prize pack that included a whole bottle of champagne at San Fran. I refused to drink it, so he choked down the entire bottle because I didn't want it to go to waste, and then puked it up on the side of the road. Later, we found out out was an $150 bottle. We have no taste, apparently. 

** Thank you Karl for designing this menu. Karl can totally design stuff for you too, hit him up on his blog!

DIY with Frances: Magical String Lamp!

BEHOLD.

This lamp is ridiculously cool. Its all hempy and crap, makes our flat look super organic and stuff, and implies we are the type of people who recycle and eat artichokes and ride our groceries home in a basket crate on the handlebars of our restored vintage bicycles*.
All that from one lamp? Yes. Thats how intense this lamp is. And you too can experience the joy, by following these simple steps:

1. Buy a ginourmous balloon from the Met Shop off Cuba st. There is a cafe next door that does great wedges. Check it out. 
2. Get a ton of PVA glue, vaseline, string and newspapers. I don't know why newspapers still exist, but I do know you can get them for free at the Vic campus, so you can save some cash money by doing that.
3. Lay out the newspapers to protect your lovely countertops from damage. If your countertops are already gross, you can omit this step.
4. Inflate balloon and slather it lovingly with vaseline. Then have your assistant fill their palms with glue. Run the string through the glue and wrap it around the balloon, turning it as you do so. Continue for ages and ages until your happy with the density of string. Make sure to leave a gap at the top to fit over the light fitting.
5. Hang it to dry for 48 hours.
6. Pierce the balloon and gradually let the air escape. 
7. Congratulations, you have achieved lamp! 

*We are not that kind of people. Last week we decided we wanted to eat an artichoke so we went to Moore Wilsons to try and find one; but we didn't know what they looked like and we were too embarrassed to ask so we just gave up. Later, when we were on a candy run at New World Metro, Karl found a container of Jerusalem Artichokes and we bought some. I don't know what the hell those tuberous monstrosities are, but they are NOT ARTICHOKES. Also, I can't ride a bike. 

This is the Next Big Thing in Baking: Cupcakewurst!

Word on the blogosphere is that after french macarons* and cupcakes, the next big thing in baking is cake pops. This is not true. I hate cakepops. They are stupid. I refuse to engage in cake-popping.

Ugh.

The next big thing in baking, the confection that will be all over your pinterest like herpes, is CUPCAKEWURST.

Behold!

It's cupcake batter, in a sausage skin casing and grilled. Of course, the downside of this is that you have to grope intestines as part of your baking process now, and feeling uncomfortable about touching meat is pretty much the reason I became a vegetarian** (unlike Kim Kardashian, who became famous because she WAS comfortable touching meat. Zing!).

Food that looks like other food! Cuuuute.

In other baking related news, I'm going to be peddling my buttery wares at the Fringe Market instead of the Mighty Mighty Market this month. Just felt like a change of scenery; and also a lot of the girls that hang out there don't eat so it was kind of a flawed business model to start with. I'll be there at 191 Cuba street  from dawn till dusk on Saturday the 26th- and my super cool friend Alice will be with me and she's making us MATCHING APRONS. Like a REAL buisness. I am so excited, you guys.

*WHICH I CAN MAKE. My macarons have such beautiful feet that Quentin Tarantino and Joss Whedon would fight to the death over them.
**More of a watery pescatarian these days, if I'm honest.

Total Nightmare Fuel

So. Wrong.

This popped up on my tumblr* today and its the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my whole entire life.

It's a child's skull before losing baby teeth.

What the hell?? I mean, I guess I knew your adult teeth were waiting under there; but I kind of though they grew out or something. Like pearly white spring flowers, sprouting timely from the warm earth. Not like that abomination.

This picture concerns me in a lot of ways, one of the biggest being, what happens to the space in your jawbone when the teeth migrate out? Do you just have dark, empty caverns that once housed teeth, or do they close in or something? Grosses me out.

*Yeah, I have a tumblr. Down with the kids and whatnot. 

Kitten Update: Naming Edition

Our new batch of kittens are coming along nicely. They have been increasing in fluffiness, laser pointer chasing skills and neck cuddles at a rapid rate; and also decreasing in pooping on floor and sneeziness.

Not creepy to take pictures of people while they're sleeping if kittens are involved.

They've been a little ill the past few weeks, but they've had a course of antibiotics and multiple lullabies and they're almost all better. So much better, in fact, that I think I can stop inspecting their poop twice a day for signs of disease like I'm reading freakin tea leaves.

We have also finally named them. We started off with the little grey one, who we named Dear Prudence, because that's what I sang to her while she ill and wouldn't stop crying. So then we named the two black ones Lucy and Sadie*, for matchy-ness; and the mother Yoko also for matchy-ness and because for a while there we were calling her 'asian cat' because she looks like one of the evil asian cats from Lady & the Tramp and we were like, 'wait, is this racist' and we decided maybe, so, Yoko it is. Definitely less racist.

Also, pretty much all of my photos are of Pru, not because I like her the most(although I do) but because black cats awkwardly aren't that photogenic.

*You can tell the difference between them because Sadie has a distended anus.**
**DON'T JUDGE. She's still cute. 

Four (More) Things I Really Want To Buy, But Shouldn't

The second installment. For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you'll be happy to know I now own 3 of the 5 things on my old riducu-list. Ten points for whoever guesses which. Now without further ado, here is the 2012 list of Things I Really Want To Buy (But Shouldn't): 

1. ENORMOUS ARMCHAIR COUCH THING

I found this chair in freedom when Karl and I were shopping for our imaginary future-house.* You don't really get a great sense of scale from the photo, but trust me, it is ENOURMOUS. Two people can easily settle down on this beast of a chair for an evening of drinking airplane size liquor bottles and pretending to be in Alice and Wonderland world. Three, if they're skinny.

However, it costs nearly 2k and I can't reasonably spend that money when the Salvation Army sells perfectly good moldy armchairs that someone probably died in for a fraction of the cost. Also, it's white, and I am currently parenting three kittens who haven't quite mastered the use of their sphincters, so, no sale. Sadface. 

2. Jedi Robe

Those of you who watch Game of Thrones will know that Winter Is Coming. And it's going to be cold, especially in an uninsulated Wellington flat. Which is why(prepare for pop culture reference shift) it's more practical than ever for me to buy a deluxe Jedi Robe to use as a dressing gown around the house.

There are several online options for jedi robes online, ranging from thinkgeek.com at the low end, to the aptly named jedi-robe.com at the high. All options are equally dorky.

The main thing that's holding me back is that if I buy this, I'm in inevitably going to wear it to the dairy at some point, and Patel(Aro Valley dairy is the WORST) already eyes me up like I'm a shoplifter so I don't want to strain relations further.

3. Renly Baratheon's Stag Crown

Of course Renly has the most fabulous headwear in the series.

 Moving on from Star Wars and back to Game of Thrones, I need this crown. Spoiler alert, Renly Baratheon doesn't, he got stabbed by a vagina shadow monster. But I want one. 

I don't actually know if anyone is producing these commercially, but please can you? This is a hundred times more badass than those Lana Del Rey flower crowns everyone is into. If someone can track this bad boy down for me, I will buy it so hard and wear it at all times without a trace of irony.**

4. JEFFREY CAMPBELL SUSPECT PLATFORMS

Nasty Gal has long been the number one port of call for slutty hipster wear; and they have not disappointed with their latest offering. These shoes are amazing. I love the juxtaposition of the giant 90’s Spice World-esque platforms with the clear plastic stripper heel straps. These look like something Courtney Stodden*** would wear if she was a Dutch milkmaid, on her way to market with a basket of hot pink tulips.****

Who am I kidding, I’m totally going to buy them.

xoxo

* It’s not so much a house as the Batcave, really. And I’m not so much going to be living there with Karl as I am with Christian Bale.

** In other Game of Thrones news, I'm working on an embroidery piece of Daenerys eating the bloody stallion's heart. Medium to high obsessed with that show. KING IN THE NORTH!

*** Don’t know who Courtney is? You’re missing out.

**** Feels like a missed opportunity for a joke about dykes.

Some Awkward Teenagers Holding My Cupcakes

I never actually saw any of them take a bite.

Mighty Mighty May

Credit to Karl for my adorable menu.

This weekend I cleaned up at the Mighty Mighty Market, although I did immediately spend most of my lucre on long island iced teas and frosted cherry pop tarts (thank you, Nik Naks*). The rest is going towards the wardrobe budget for my fantasy surfing holiday to Noumea. 

All of my cupcakes, bar one, had alcoholic frostings and they were pretty delicious. My favorite was the strawberry shortcake cupcake with Champagne frosting, which I hand decorated with different sized silver cachous, to be evocative of bubbles. See, major thought goes into this shit- I don't just toss on some sprinkles and call it a day.

Sometimes I think about not bothering with university and just running off to Vienna to go to a fancy dessert academy or wherever it is pastry chefs come from; but then I remember the reality is probably a lifetime of waking up at 3am everyday and spending six hours hand peeling almonds, then having French people yell at you because you botched your macronage and your meringue is too runny, so I decide to stick with my far more practical BA in Art History and Philosophy. 

*For those of you who aren't in the know like I am, Nik Naks is an amazing dairy on Cuba St that sells all kinds of exciting American candy and also has the distinction of having the finest pick n' mix selection in the lower North Island. 

Hey, Urban Outfitters...

what.

I will take up your offer of free shipping, but only begrudgingly, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO KOALAS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Having foreigners mistake you for an Australian is the worse. Not to generalize or anything, but Australia is a huge wasteland full of demon spiders, racism and people who are way too tanned.

 When I'm overseas and people mistake me for an Australian, I instantly hold a grudge against them forever no matter how profusely they apologise. It's literally the most offensive thing you can say to someone, apart from this one time a girl told me I could be a model if I wasn't so fat.*

*It's ok, later that night she walked out of the bathroom with her skirt tucked in her undies and I totally didn't tell her. VENGEANCE.

Let them eat cake

This is the cake I made for my niece for her fifth birthday. It's a 25 centimeter high red velvet ombre cake filled with whipped cream and homemade plum jam. I don't know if you can really get a good sense of the scale from those pictures, but each layer is the size of a regular cake. Considering there were only like 12 kids at the party, I may have gone a little overboard.

I seriously love making cakes. I would make them all the time, but I don't really have anyone to give them to- it's one thing handing out some excess cupcakes or cookies; but giving someone an entire cake for no good reason is a little intense.

Aside from not wanting to be some kind of creepy cake peddler, the only other thing standing between me and my own spinoff of Cake Boss is the fact that I refuse to work with fondant. I hate the stuff. It tastes like crap, and it's CHEATING. You can make any shape with fondant so easily, it takes away all the skill. I feel the same way about fondant as Hayao Miyazaki feels about Pixar. 

I WANT THIS CAT

CATKINS DIET.

This is Meow. Meow was abandoned at a shelter in Santa Fe this weekend, and she weighs almost 20kg.

AND SHE IS SO ADORABLE.

I don't know why I find this cat so cute. Maybe I have some weird fetish I don't know about, maybe it's because I'm used clinically obese cats from hanging out with Coco, or maybe it's just because this thing looks like a giant freakin pillow you could just bury your head in while it mewed and waved its arms and legs around helplessly.

This is Coco. She insists it's glandular.

Whatever it is, I WANT THAT CAT. I wonder if she's going to have arm(paw)loads of creepy floppy skin after her diet is finished, like those people on the Biggest Loser. Because that would not be so cute.

I think insanely fat animals are right up there with my favorite genre of animal news, right next to interspecies friendships and ability to talk. Do you think we could we could pair this thing up with, I don't know, a turtle, and then teach it say 'I love you'? Because that would really blow my mind.

It could happen

[public] beating

I don't know if you've been following the [public] bar vs lesbians saga, but I couldn't manage to write it up in an in-depth balanced way without getting tl;dr, so you should definitely supplement this with additional googling if you're interested. Yes, my blog now requires homework.

Here's my best attempt at being succinct: Young couple complains online about being kicked out of [public] bar for kissing while gay. Bouncer tells them they wouldn't have been removed if they were straight. Support snowballs online; issue gets picked up by mainstream media. Girls are barraged by homophobic internet commenters, snarky reporters and accused of lying because they don't have 'proof'. Girls get exhausted, sick of being harassed, decide to withdraw complaint, go home, and eat ice cream. Naysayers rejoice. 


I have only three things to say.


1. What kind of 'proof' do these accusers want to establish that they're not lying? DNA samples? Fingerprints? This isn't CSI, it was a verbal dispute. And unless you believe in some kind of underground gay agenda, it seems the one with the motivation to lie would be the bouncer who wanted to save his job.
Add to that the fact that we know lesbians are very often discriminated against; and this particularly bouncer has apparently bounced (lol pun) around Wellington bars for years gathering a solid reputation for douchebaggery, and I don't really see why we're getting all meta about the nature of knowledge and can we ever really know the truth.

2. Rebekah and Jennie must have had a bitch of a weekend. They shouldn't be pilloried for wanting to get out of this situation and have their privacy back.

3. [public] is a crappy club anyway. Last time I went there a girl puked on my hand in the bathroom and a bunch of malaysian businessmen followed my friend and I around the bar standing directly behind us, never speaking to us or looking us in the eyes, and doing their best to breathe all over our boobs. I'll be boycotting it anyway, homophobic bouncers or not.

At the end of the day, no one but Rebekah, Jennie and the bouncer know what went down, so until we develop a Harry Potter style veritaserum there isn't a lot we can do about it. So let's just all be nice to harassed minorities, not write nasty anonymous comments online, and avoid gross Courtney Place bars; and we'll be good to go.

The Cutest Kitten Video You'll See This Week (depending on how many kitten videos you watch; and how high your adorability standards are... but it's pretty cute, promise)

It's really short, too, so if you have time constraints on your daily kitten video viewing, this is a solid choice for you.

This is one of our newest kittens, trying desperately and nearly failing, to get back on it's feet after a sweetass tummy rub.

We have three new kittens as well as a mother cat. They don't have names yet, so I've just been calling them all Mogwai until we think of something cute and witty.

SO TINY AND FLUFFY

Get Your Drink On: Vodka Mudslide Cupcakes

Since the Mighty Mighty Market is set in a bar, I decided to theme all my cupcake flavors for next month's market around drinks I love.

I couldn't think of a way to make a tequila, lime and salt cupcake taste good (testing is underway, rest assured) so I went with vodka mudslides; the ultimate bitch drink. These were what I used to buy all the time when I first got my fake ID(I love you, Alyse) and didn't have to rely on rocketfuel any more. All class, all the time. That's Frances.

Was going for a soft serve ice cream swirl effect with the icing; may have accidentally achieved the sparkly unicorn poop effect instead. 

All the vodka is in the icing- and don't be fooled by the tiny airplane bottle in the picture; there is A LOT of vodka in there. I kept adding more because I couldn't taste it through the buttercream; but then I waited a few seconds and got the aftertaste- it is INTENSE. As they say in Russia; there cannot be too much vodka, there can only be not enough vodka (it sounds much more profound if you say it in a Russian accent like I do in my head).

The market is May 5th, so get ready to get your drink on! xoxo

p.s. Kitten news- Buttercup and Farmboy got adopted today- together! The family that took them home sound really nice, and we're really happy they got to go together. A little bit sad that now there is no chance Annie will go with Buttercup, because they were bff, but hopefully she'll go home with one of her siblings. Loneliness is kryptonite to kittens.

Frances Has No Kittens.

Cobra Kai, Crazy Horse and Annie all went back to the SPCA today to get spayed and rehomed and left me all alone with nothing but a shockingly full litter tray and more scratches on my wrists than Demi Lovato.

Usually when I'm sad, I look at photos of squishy faced cats to cheer me up, but obviously that just makes things worse right now.

Still, just in case YOU'RE having a sad day too, here is a photo of a squishy face cat belonging to a girl I know. It has three legs, no teeth and a monopoly on adorable. Enjoy.

LOOK AT THAT SQUISHY FACE.