And with the power of magic, there was chocolate cake

Chocolate cake recipe:

butter
flour
sugar
coco
eggs
vanilla
baking powder
milk

you will also want a large bowl, and a cake pan. And an oven.

Doing this by weight, you will want an equal amount of butter flour and sugar. Figure out which you are running out of and use that. If the limiting factor is larger than your fist, you might not need to make that much cake, so choose a smaller amount.

Mix all of the butter and sugar together. Yeah that looks great. Add some eggs and a capful or two of vanilla. I put in two eggs, cause it looked right. if you are making more cake, put in more eggs. Mix the flour and baking powder together. Maybe... a couple large fistfuls and a very small palmful of baking powder. It'll be ok if you don't put enough baking powder, and maybe awful if you put too much. (I put the perfect amount in) Now mix in some chocolate. Put all of that together. If it looks weird add some more milk, maybe even some more butter.

Preheat the oven, since you probably haven't. Gas mark 5 sounds about right. This oven is electric but has gas marks... what?

Taste it- is it chocolatey enough? no? Man, you can add more chocolate! Does the batter look like cake batter? great! This is going to be amazing, dude! pour it into the cake pan. A rubber or plastic spatula might be useful for this. One could also use fingers I suppose.

Put that shit in the oven. Check on it a bit later. It'll take any where from 20 min to an hour. I wasn't keeping track of how long mine took. Magic told me to (tell Sam to) check on it at the perfect time. If you are sober that will help, I'm afraid you might forget otherwise. Then you would have NO CAKE and have to clean up a mess anyways. Don't do that, man.

Then maybe you should whip up some whip cream for on top. We all know this cake was an excuse for whip cream, right? Oh I forgot to mention. Well you can see from the picture that this is a half cake, half whip cream situation. put a little sugar and vanilla in your cream if you know whats good for ya.

We are American, so these are cookies

or making apple walnut cookies (buiscuts) in england, for 24 people



I've made apple cookies before. They were amazing. I managed not to eat them all before bringing them to my card playing group. However I didn't blog about them and if I wrote down the recipe (I invented one) it is in Berkeley. I couldn't remember it.

So I looked up this: http://www.aayisrecipes.com/2008/09/09/apple-walnut-cookies/

And then I attempted to both multiply the recipe by 3, and convert it from cups and such to the right amount of pounds and oz. Hurrah for maths! I also learned about the existence of gas marks instead of either fahrenheit or celcius, in the oven.

what I came up with was more or less this:

Ingredients (makes hella):

1.5lbs whole wheat flour
4 apples, peeled and diced
1 Tbs baking powder
1 Tbs baking soda
1 1/6 lbs butter
2 Tbs vanilla extract
1/2 Tbs salt
1/2lbs white sugar
1/4lbs brown sugar
3 eggs
3 Tbs Chinese 5 Spice
1 Tbs ground ginger
1/2 Walnuts chopped small (could add more, I don't notice them)

I was supposed to beat the butter and sugar first but I forgot. I recommend you do that.

did you beat the butter and sugar?

Now that you've beat the butter and sugar, put the eggs and vanilla in that bowl, and mix them well.

In another large bowl (remember this is a batch for hella cookies, and everything has to fit and not get all over when you stir), mix the remaining dry ingredients (not the sugar, you've already creamed it with the butter). Leave the nuts for later.

Pour the dry ingredients in with the butter/egg mixture bit by bit, and mix until mixed. If it is too dry you can add a little bit of milk. but be careful.

Add the apples. That will help if it is dry. Also add nuts.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5 (or 375 F) for 10 minutes. Get some people to help you grease a bunch of cookie sheets. Use a table spoon to scoop cookies onto the sheets. Not too big!

Bake for 10 minutes each batch.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST! (and buckweat)

sooo much NOOT. and a little cayenne and soy sauce.

Vegan banana bread

As always, I did not follow the recipe. The ingredients intended were as followed:

The king of quick breads, banana bread is always a welcome treat at breakfast or tea time. While most banana bread recipes contain dairy and eggs, this vegan variation uses neither but is still moist and delicious. Feel free to add walnuts, raisins or dark dairy-free chocolate chips to dress up your bread!

Makes 1 9"x5" loaf
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Ingredients:

* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cups white granulated sugar (I prefer unrefined cane sugar)
* 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
* 3/4 t. baking soda
* 3/4 t. salt
* 3/4 t. cinnamon
* 1/2 cup plain soy milk or almond milk
* 1 t. apple cider vinegar
* 2 cups mashed banana, from about 4 large very ripe bananas
* 1/4 cup canola oil
* 2 T. maple syrup
* 1 t. vanilla extract
* Walnuts (optional)

My Ingredients:

* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/8 cups white granulated sugar
* 3/4 t. baking soda
* 2/4 t. salt
* 1/8 t. allspice
* some amount plain soy milk (I don't remember if I paid attention)
* some mashed banana, from my mother's over ripe bananas (I never buy bananas for ethical reasons.)
* 1/4 cup light olive oil
* some dribbles of molasses (yay)
* 1 capful vanilla extract
* Handful of Walnuts
* Handful ground flax seed (to hold it together since I'm not using eggs)


My logic was that things are always too sweet, and molasses and bananas are already sweet.

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Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Lightly oil a 9"x5" loaf pan and set aside.

2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugars, baking soda, salt spice, and flax.

3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the soy milk and olive oil. Add the mashed banana, molasses, and vanilla extract, whisking until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, adding slowly so it doesn't clump. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and forget the walnuts until last minute (alternately you could do that earlier). Bake for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center emerges clean. Allow the bread to cool on a wire cooling rack for 20 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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I'm making it vegan because my friend Christine is awesome and it would be fin to share it with her. It's still in the oven. If it turns out badly I will update this post.

Edit: I made it again. I added 1 teaspoon of baking powder to the dry mixture. then I forgot to mix in about a half cup of the dry mixture, give or take a bit. I could math at it to re figure the numbers. Any how it turned out perfect. The first time it was pretty gooey and dense.

pancake recipe

This morning I made pancakes. I didn't take a picture cause there was nothing visually interesting going on.

I looked up a recipe and proceeded to not follow it at all. That's just my style. The recipe I looked up was as follows:

Protein Pancakes:
* 1/2 Cup Old Fashioned Oats (not instant)
* 4 egg whites
* 1/2 tsp baking powder
* 1/4 tsp salt
* Dash of cinnamon (optional)

I did:
* 1/2 Cup Baby Oats Like instant
* 2 large eggs
* some amount of bisquik, because I don't know why I have it, but it's made of flour and leavening. maybe 1/4 cup.
* capful of vanilla
* Some amount of molasses
* some sugar (not much)
* a little milk
* some milled flax seed. less than 1/4 cup
* maybe something else but I think that was it.

They were really good. And it felt like I was eating real food. I recommend them.