Sewing on ice

Hey! Remember Valentine's day? Yeah, neither do I. My idea had been to make a penguin for my boyfriend and I had set about it kind of on time, but alas, it turned out that I was merely finding another distraction and reason to procrastinate. So the project was put on hold until such time as I could finish it properly without the goblins of guilt tugging at my hair. Here's how it went.

I thought I would start out doing a bit of research about penguins. My trusty Google at my side, I dove into the internet and you know what I found out? Making a true-to-life colour pattern on a penguin is really difficult. Here I was thinking that they're mostly like Tux. They aren't. I decided though to stick to what I know and went for the familiar pattern we all know and love. A chubby dinner-suit-wearing bird with awkward little legs.

See that? How the bloody hell do you do that in terms of fabric?

Or this?

Or this?

I got about sketching. Drawing a silly little ball of cuteness with a Valentine's day theme wasn't difficult at all. Pin a heart on something and the theme part of it takes care of itself. Then I set about measuring and drawing a pattern. I get really OCD about sewing patterns. Where as any normal human being would just freehand it onto a piece of paper, I had to use rulers (yes, plural), bits of string and a compass. Complete bloody time-suck, but I was very happy with the end results.

After the tough part was through, I purchased felt and set about cutting out the pieces. This was about the time that I realized I will have to pause this project because I had spent the better part of a day working on it. The parts were stored in a box and put away for the time being. After my exams, I visited the bf and brought the penguin parts along (does that sound morbid to you? Does to me) fully intending to present him with his penguin on the spot. Being the scatter-brained genius I happen to be, I forgot to bring any stuffing and again, the poor little penguin's creation was put on hold. He spent about a month in that box, moving from my desk to my travel bag to my to-do bin.

Finally, after much delay, I started putting the little guy together. Soon after completing the body and wings I realized that he was too small to have those legs as well, and thus to pasture that idea was put, leaving the penguin go be a flat-footed ball of adorableness.

 That whole "Measure twice, cut once" thing turns out to be true. I shook my fist angrily at the god of useful proverbs when I discovered that through all my obsessive calculating, drawing and measuring, I forgot to take into account the curve of the body for the length of the wings. What this meant in practical terms was that the penguin's wings were too small to hold the heart. A quick heart transplant later the heart was big enough to hold, but created a whole new problem: You couldn't see most of the penguin because of the heart.

Well, bother! What to do now? Scrap the whole heart thing? But then it won't be a Valentine's day thing! It simply must be a Valentine's day thing because... reasons! And you can't tell it would be unless there's hearts and/or flowers and/or chocolate. I suppose I could have smeared some chocolate on him, but why would I do that when I could enjoy it instead? To the side the heart went, being held up by the brave little penguin, who was pretty tired of my miscalculations by this point. 

Adding some final, but important touches, namely eyes and a tail, the little guy was finally ready to be mailed to my boyfriend's office, where he now lives happily, reminding him of me and home. Oh, btw, did I mention he loves penguins? That's why I went with the penguin in the first place :)

Stock credit: sxc.hu

The white no-bake cake of doom

Everybody in my family likes the white cake and it is the go-to cake for marking any occasion. It's quick and easy and people tell me it's delicious. Frankly, I've made it so many times, it lost all appeal to me, but since I'm strapped for a topic to write about, and late to boot, here's how the white cake is made.

First you will need a lot of very yummy ingredients: 

• 1 liter of whipped cream
• about 1 liter of sour cream
• 1 kilo of defrosted frozen fruit (I used cherries and raspberries)
• 3 layers of cake (store-bought)
• around 200g of sugar

You will also need a huge-ass bowl, like the yellow one in the picture. Why, you ask? Because no mere mortal bowl can take this much stuff without spilling! (does that sound a little bit pervy?)

See, what did I tell you? That's what one liter of whipped cream looks like. It took me 20 minutes to make that sucker stiff (I'm turning into Nigella with the food porn). It made me long for a nice KitchenAid mixer that mixes stuff for me and that I don't have to put any effort into. Until the day that happens though, it's the elbow-grease path for me.

After that is done, in another much smaller bowl, we mix the sour cream and the sugar, then add this mixture to the whipped cream. Folding this is a bit tricky because the whipped cream moves out of the way for the sour cream and sometimes you are left with a bunch of sour cream on the bottom, which, though making for a good dirty joke, isn't much good for a cake, because it will just spill out. So take your spatula, mixer, hamster wheel or whatever you like to stir with and patiently even out the mixture.

And you're done! That's all the preparation you need to do.

 
 

So what you do next is you separate your cake layers and place one on the serving dish. Cover it with the cream mixture, leaving about 1cm of the edges free, so when you press down, the filling won't spill over. Then put the berries over the cream and add another layer of cream. Cover all this with the next cake layer and press down gently.

You should end up with something like this. The top layer doesn't have any berries, except the ones that will be used for decorating. Now all you have to do is put the remaining cream mixture onto the sides of the cake and it's done!

This, in total, took a half hour to make, despite the horrid cream whipping session. The cake is really easy to make, but it isn't for the faint of heart or the lactose intolerant. I usually have some cream mix left over and I combine it with the juice that came from defrosting the berries. It makes for a simple and yummy ice-cream.

Oh, and finally, don't forget to do the little lad dance if you want your cake piece!