It's Been a Long Time, Michigan

Since moving to Turkey I have been back to the States, once briefly last summer for a baptism. I have not, however, been back to Michigan to see my family. As a visit seemed due, I was again being given the privileged of being a Godmother, and my Mom's family was having a very belated Christmas party, I was able to kill birds with this visit.

Knowing that ticket prices would soon get even more ridiculous with summer upon us, I bought my ticket back in May. In order to get something not horribly expensive I had to give up the dream of taking the direct flight to Chicago, Newark, or Baltimore on Turkish Airlines and instead bit the bullet with a United flight that included not one but two layovers. However for the $500 price difference I was willing to put up with United.

For reasons beyond my ken, the guy who checked me in at Ataturk only checked my bag to Frankfurt (layover numero uno) and couldn't be bothered to tell me why; in English or in Turkish. Two hours is enough time to transit normally through Frankfurt but to go through immigration, pick up my bag, re check in, go back through immigration and security, AND get to the gate the hour before the flight stupid American airlines insist on? Naturally I had to wait ages for my bag. I haven't actually checked into a flight in Frankfurt for some 14 years-and the airport has changed a bit since. After 10 minutes of trying to find the United counter (counter 501 fyi) I finally found someone who worked there and asked. At least my German got a pretty decent workout that day. With just over an hour to go at this point I wasn't sure they'd even let me check in but everything seemed to be smooth sailing once I found the counter. Immigration and security were a breeze. I love German efficiency. Smooth sailing until I was in my seat that is! It was a full flight of course so when someone came by saying that my seat was his (econ plus, bulkhead, aisle for which I paid extra) I was ready to throw down to keep it. Until the flight attendant, after taking our tickets and doing whatever it is they do, beckoned me forward. Forward. I was in the first row of econ so there was nothing ahead of us except for business class. No one, especially on United, ever actually gets bumped to business. But it happened to me! It really was smooth sailing after that!

My little brother has been my airport pick up since I left Michigan 12 years ago. We laughed this time as I think it was the first time I've ever landed in daylight. My DC/Baltimore flights never got me in earlier than 11PM. On our way to the 'ole homestead we continued our tradition of a stop in at Meijer. Meijer is the greatest store ever and I feel sorry for all the states that don't have them. Think Super Target/Walmart but BETTER. And doing it long before those stores ever got the idea. I had been compiling a shopping list of American foods I wanted to bring back to Turkey and picked them all up there: Mac & Cheese (7 boxes), Twinkies, fajita mix, Cabot Seriously Sharp white cheddar (2), asiago, bacon (2 lbs), smokey link breakfast sausages (2 pkgs), Crystal Light lemonade, oatmeal, chocolate chips, and lemon bar mix (2). Before leaving I also added orange slices, Double Stuff Oreos (thanks Jenn!), and four bottles of wine from my collection to the mix.

In preparation for the (belated) family Christmas party my mom baked and frosted a bunch of sugar cookies that she wanted to decorate with food markers. I was razzing her for making them all heart-shaped and thought it limited the decorating possibilities. She told me that if I wanted to decorate them I could do anything I wanted with them. I could write "Go to Hell" on all of them if I wanted. So when she left to pick up my sister from the airport I tool her at her word.

She was less than pleased to see it when my brother texted her a picture and said she hoped I were hungry because I would have to eat all the cookies I did that to. I don't like sugar cookies. So with some brilliant ideas from my brother and dad I turned them all into heart-related puns and illustrations.

You give me heart burn

Heart beat

It was nice getting to see my family but within an hour of the party I remembered how exhausting it is to be around them all! Both my parents have pretty typically poor Catholic huge families and my mom's are all creative types with equally huge personalities. And because I'm as bad at mingling with my own family as I am with anyone else I didn't get to spend as much time with some of them as I'd have liked but it was still nice to see everyone. I did get a fair amount of time with a couple of my favorite younger cousins. Amanda and David made me dinner one night: flat bread with pulled pork in a red wine, blackberry jam, blackberry balsamic sauce with roasted fennel and prosciutto wrapped asparagus on the side. Homemade (because with Amanda everything is always homemade) brownies and coffee ice cream for dessert. Amazing. Thanks to Amanda's cheese plate, my mom who came with me (as I cannot be trusted to drive) is now a convert to the religion that is Cheese.

Heart attack

Braveheart

Speaking of food...I don't think I stopped eating the whole week. And honestly my clothes felt a little tight when I got home! My brother made chicken fajitas for me. His are so good. He cooks the meat, onions, and peppers all together and puts cheese right in the mix to make it gooey goodness. My mom mixed up a big batch of chicken and cheese for sandwiches-a family thing we've been eating since as long as I can remember. My dad roasted two big pork shoulders for the family party so there was pork then and lots of leftovers. I also put away some Hudsonville ice cream; a local product you can really only find in West MI which is a huge shame because they make THE best ice cream. Truly. It's not that Turkish food isn't good because it is! But all Turkish all the time gets a little boring.

Beheading of Saint Valentine

Braveheart

Sick at heart/Purple Heart

My bff since the second grade had the most beautiful twins a few months ago and asked me to be Godmother to her son. She kindly arranged the baptism for the weekend I was in MI so I could actually be there for it. The baptism was lovely and the twins were really well behaved. What I most enjoyed though was being able to catch up with my girlfriend's family! I GChat on the occasion with her brother but haven't seen her parents in years. She combined the baptism with a belated birthday party for her 3 year old so Auntie Andrea  got to watch my honorary niece (who associates me with Merida from Disney's Brave so, I'm cool) open her presents. Which consisted of a bizarre combination of princessy things and dinosaurs. Both interests courtesy of her uncle. I can't wait to see what he introduces her to next! Ballroom dancing and monster trucks?

Open heart surgery

Heart of Darkness

It was a good trip home. Not the least because they had a cold front so the weather was in the 70s (F)! which was a majorly nice change from the hot and humid we've been having in Istanbul. My sister came from Florida for a few days so this was the first time in four-five years we've all been together. Who knows when the next time might be, but until then; stay Pure, Michigan!

Big Sable Point Lighthouse

This particular post is several months overdue I'm afraid. In August I went to Michigan for my high school reunion and while I was there my little brother took me with him to Big Sable Point lighthouse in Ludington, Michigan-which is about a 90 minute drive north from our parents' place. Most of what I've learned about photography and Photoshop I've learned from my brother. Just about every time I'm in Michigan I get a lesson of some sort. This visit included a field trip to capture lighthouses, one of Brian's favorite subjects.

Lake Michigan

Big Sable Point is one of the tallest lighthouses in Michigan. It's also one of Brian's favorites making it apparently worth the mile hike along the beach to get to it. Michigan has more shoreline than any other US state thanks to the Great Lakes. And while most people I know here in DC don't believe it; Michigan attracts a lot of tourism, largely because of the beaches.

So far away...

At least I only made the trek with one camera, a couple lenses, and a bottle of water. Brian, who is far more serious about all of this than am I, had two camera bodies, a fair few lenses, a tripod, and his water. Normally I wouldn't call a mere mile a 'trek', but any distance through sand is just three times as difficult.

This was done with a Lens Baby attachment

Deliberately underexposed

By the time we finally got within sight of the lighthouse I was already exhausted. How my brother tramps around with all this weight strapped to him I have no idea. I should do it more often though because my composition still needs work. So does my knowledge of lighting...all the dials and buttons on my camera...

Done with a wide angle Lens Baby

Despite everything I don't know I still managed to get a few decent pictures, I think. Could they use work? Certainly, but they're still pretty!

Brian also showed me how to use Photoshop to straighten pictures that end up crooked for one reason or another (shores slope). I think he did it to the above pictures but I promptly forgot how to do it.

We stayed into the evening to try to catch the sunset. Unfortunately there were too many clouds for us to see the actual sun set, but we did manage to get some of the colors reflecting in the clouds.

Michigan had a rather cold summer this year. in fact when I was there in August it was only in the 60s and low 70s. The general low temperature meant that the lake never really warmed up, especially as far north as Ludington. So no swimming for us while we were there. Which turned out in our favor really. Later there was a news story that the Coast Guard found two people drowned in the lake. Which answered our curiosity about the Coast Guard boat we saw cruising around on the horizon.

 

Lighthouses...not as much my thing as they are Brian's. However I enjoyed the opportunity to shoot with my brother and observe his process a little. We're very different photographers he and I, both in interest and process, and I thought it was fun to work with someone else and get some tips and advice while in action.

High School Reunion and Cupcakes-They Go Together

Last week I was in Michigan for my high school reunion, which just happened to coincide with my birthday! Since I have a summer birthday I was never able to bring a treat to school and do the little party with my classmates thing. To make up for that I decided to bake cupcakes for the reunion. A little on the dorky side I know; but it was still fun.

Because I would be working in my mom's kitchen, and I knew I had a fair few cupcakes to make, I ended up packing a lot of my baking things including a cupcake pan, pastry bag, apron, and some other random things (including 10 pounds of candy melts I didn't end up using). I also forgot how delightful it was to work in a kitchen that not only has a generous amount of counter space, but that has high counters. When my parents redid the kitchen when I was in college they deliberately built extra high counters.

Looking for Plan B

My reunion was on Saturday so I devoted most of Friday to baking. My class was getting two kinds of cupcakes: roasted strawberry basil with balsamic vinegar frosting, and salted caramel. My first batch of salted caramel cupcakes was a flop. Quite literally really. I followed the Martha Stewart recipe which, I'm sure works just fine for cake as the recipe intends, but doesn't work so well for cupcakes. The caramel all sank to the bottom and stuck to the cupcake liners and the cake was too light to make it as a cupcake. At least half the batch caved in themselves.

After baking with Mexican vanilla I just cannot go back to extract

On to plan b! Which means call little brother and ask him to pretty please stop at the store on the way home from work and buy me a bunch of stuff. I decided to go back to my standard chocolate cake recipe; it never fails me. I also ditched the idea of using real caramel in the cupcakes and decided to just go with a salted caramel butter cream frosting, which was a problem in and of itself. The recipe I used was basically just a butter cream with home made caramel and salt added, but I just couldn't taste anything other than vanilla. And since I was pretty sick of making caramel, that would be batch four of the day (batch 1 went into the disaster cupcakes, 2 had to be thrown out,and 3 was in the frosting), I decided to cheat. My mom had some Smuckers caramel sauce in the refrigerator so I squeezed just about the entire bottle into the frosting.

I missed having my ulu for chopping the chocolate

Then there were the roasted strawberry basil cupcakes. The recipe I followed instructed me to roast the berries with some butter and brown sugar for 2.5-3 hours. I really cannot say that doing that added any flavor whatsoever to the cupcake. So I won't be doing that again. I also quadrupled the amount of basil...and possibly could still have used more.

Look at all the counter space!!

And my mom is a genius. She keeps several sizes of ice cream scoops specifically for cupcakes and cookies. It was so much more efficient than using a spoon or a measuring cup; especially as the larger ice cream scoop was just about perfect to fill the liners. I need to go to Target now and get one.

Pure genius

I have to say though that otherwise the recipe was great. The batter was really nice to work with and the cakes were dense and tasty. The frosting was a bit tricky to make. Again a basic butter cream with balsamic vinegar which I added tiny amount by tiny amount. After a while I wasn't sure what I was tasting anymore and tried to use my brother as a guinea pig but he hates vinegar. So his feedback wasn't too promising. In the end I stopped adding the balsamic as soon as I detected a hint of the vinegar tang.

Speaking of my brother; I had a personal photographer while I was baking! He's expanded his photography repertoire to include portraits and I realized that there were hardly any pictures of me on the blog...so two birds. Check out the link to his website, especially in you're in Michigan and need a family portrait or senior pictures. Or you have incredibly good taste and realize you need to hang one of his landscapes in your house.

There might have been some tasting going on

Overall I was pretty pleased with the cupcakes. Never having done mass production I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I was able to crank out over 100 of them; even with the major fail of batch number one.

Happy face!

I had a good time serving them as well. I really enjoyed my reunion which surprised me because high school was like the most painful years of my life; well really the entire time I was at the horrible school was pretty bad but high school was definitely not fun. I had a great time catching up with people and found things in common with a few people I'm not sure I even spoke 10 words to during the entire time we were in school together. Funny how people grow up and move beyond that high school mess, isn't it? :)

Strawberry basil with balsamic frosting

Roasted Strawberry Basil Cupcakes (from the Young Idealistic Baker)

Makes 12-13 cupcakes

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup roasted strawberry puree
• 2-3 tablespoons basil, finely chopped (I used a lot more basil than this...a lot)
  

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pan with cupcake liners
• In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes
• Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until incorporated
• In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt
• Alternate between adding flour mixture and milk to batter, mixing until just incorporated
• Add extracts
• Stir in strawberry puree and chopped basil
• Distribute batter evenly in cupcake cups and bake for 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean
• Allow to cool completely before frosting

Balsamic Frosting:
Makes about 2 cups

• 3 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1-2 tablespoons whipping cream(optional)
  
• Balsamic vinegar

 Directions

• Cream together sugar and butter until smooth
• Add vanilla and whipping cream
• Beat in vinegar one scant tablespoon at a time until you like the flavor

Chocolate salted caramel

Salted Caramel Frosting:
Makes about 2 cups

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Directions

• Briefly stir together granulated sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Continue cooking, without stirring, until mixture turns dark amber in color, about 6 to 7 minutes.
• Remove from heat and slowly add in cream and vanilla, stirring with a wooden spoon until completely smooth. Set aside until cool to the touch, about 25 minutes.
• Combine butter and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium-high speed until light in color and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low, add powdered sugar, and mix until completely incorporated.
• Turn mixer off and scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add caramel. Beat frosting on medium-high speed until airy and thoroughly mixed, about 2 minutes. 

Wedding Cookies part Deux

Last summer when my sister got engaged I made some wedding themed sugar cookies for her. The wedding has since come and gone but, since it took place in Mexico, few of our family attended. To make up for that, and possibly as an excuse for my dad to raise a pole barn, my parents are hosting a reception for them in Michigan this weekend. I am actually negative about four days of vacation (since I did go to Mexico) so I can't go. In lieu of my attendance I'm sending another batch of wedding themed cookies. I have a sad feeling that they'll arrive and my mom will open a big box of crumbs. Thankfully I documented the process so everyone can see what took me three days to do. And that I didn't just send a big box of crumbs. Although that would have been easier.

I started with a bride-shaped, champagne-shaped (does anyone else pronounce that sham-PAG-na to remember how to spell it? no?), and cake-shaped cookies cutters, both regular sugar cookies dough and chocolate sugar cookie dough, and a super duper floured surface.

I despise rolling out dough. This is one of the main reasons why I don't use fondant. Well that and the nasty taste. But I no less dislike rolling out cookie dough. And I rolled, and rolled, and rolled. For days. But then I had lots of cookies!

Yum! First I outlined all of them with royal icing and got to work decorating.

I'm very serious about my decorating. I had two colors of sugar sand, markers, royal icing mix, gold and silver powder (which amuses me for the warning label that says non toxic but not recommended for consumption;), color gels, little sugar ball things...and more. And the vodka was legitimate decorating. You have to mix the gold and silver with clear liquor to make a paint. I also made some buttercream as an alternate to the royal icing.

I was really annoyed to remember that buttercream always comes out rather yellowish (duh) so I added some blue to cleverly come up with the sea green the groom wanted (but did not get) for the wedding color. Sadly none of the buttercream frosted cookies took to my decorating techniques very well. Obviously I couldn't send those. So I ate them. Oh the sacrifices!! I used the food safe markers for most of the decorating. Mostly I just doodled but the bride cookies got a lot of poetry. Some of my favorites:

 Shame my handwriting isn't better.

 Homage to my other blog!

I used the chocolate dough exclusively for this topsy turvey cake shaped cookie cutter I got for Christmas. The cookie cutter came with three decorating mats for use with fondant (yuck + rolling = no) or buttercream. The buttercream just didn't work out for me so for these also I used royal icing and food markers.

I was pretty happy with these.

Also, can I say how awesome it is that I used both a bottle of vodka and the Bible for decorating? 'Cause it is awesome.