shadowsong26x

[shadowsong26x]

Adventures In Baking

Aka an Attempt to turn a botched buttercream into cookies.

Okay, so. I am a semi-decent amateur baker. I can make tasty cakes even if they often break when I turn them out, lol, and nommy brownies, and delicious cookies, and all kinds of things.

Today there was a family thing, because Father's Day and also my brother and sister-in-law's birthdays are just past and coming up, respectively. I was responsible for the cake.

The cake itself went fine (mostly, had to redo the caramel but that's a caramel problem lol, and it actually turned out without breaking go me!), that's not what the Adventure is.

The recipe I was following included a salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream that I was actually pretty excited to try. But by the time I got to that step, I was running behind, concerned about getting everything cooled in time to frost properly, and just not wanting to deal with another Fussy Thing In A Pan.

"Okay, I'll just make a regular buttercream. It won't be as nice, but I know how to do that!"

"...hm. I don't seem to have any powdered sugar."

And here is where I admittedly had a complete brain fart because I do know better, I swear.

"I'll just use regular sugar, it'll be fine."

It was not fine.

I mean, flavor-wise, it was pretty good. It was butter and sugar and vanilla extract and several tablespoons of the salted caramel I made for the cake.

But texture-wise...it was icky and grainy and just. Did not belong anywhere near a cake.

"Okay. Fine. Store-bought can of frosting to the rescue. Not the end of the world. ...but I also don't want to throw all of this out. ...well, hey, that's like. Half of a cookie recipe, right? After family time I'll come back and add some eggs/flour/etc. make it into cookies for me and my roommates!"

And thus, the Adventure.

What I ended up doing was adding two eggs, a teaspoon each of salt and baking soda (based on the old reliable chocolate chip cookie recipe), and then flour until it looked like cookie dough (ended up being roughly two cups).

So the final recipe was:

A bit under two cups of unsalted butter (original frosting recipe called for 470g if you weigh things like a sensible person but I am lazy and do not have a scale)

One and two-thirds cups granulated sugar (original frosting recipe called for 320g, see above)

4 tsp vanilla

5 tablespoons salted caramel

Two eggs

Teaspoon salt

Teaspoon baking soda

About two cups of flour

So this is like...roughly 1/3 butter, 1/3 flour, 1/3 sugar and flavory bits, plus the salt and baking soda for Chemistry purposes. This gave me enough for about four dozen cookie-sized blobs of dough, which I did in two batches (twelve on each of two cookie sheets)

The adventure came in figuring out how to actually bake them into something reasonably cookie-like.

Attempt 1: just put a dozen blobs on each (greased) cookie sheet as soon as it was mixed, set the oven to 375F (which is like 190C according to Google) (again using the chocolate chip recipe), baked for 7 minutes.

Result:

So obviously they did not turn into cookies, lol. The taste was pretty good? The texture was interesting, kind of spongy/crumbly but not in a bad way? It's mostly that I had to scrape the spread-out cookie-like substance and it kind of fell apart lol.

Attempt 2: same dozen blobs on each (greased) cookie sheet, but the batter had been hanging out in the fridge for 10-15 minutes while the first batch baked and cooled. I also, on the advice of Google, turned the oven temperature down to 350, since there's so much butter, and started with five minutes in the oven (but ended up increasing to seven because they weren't done).

Result:

Again it spread out, haha. But you can see a little better where the borders of the original cookies would have been? And they still taste good, which is the most important part.

Crumbly bits for eating! (from the first batch. Also possibly slightly underbaked, but Roommate1 and I agreed they taste good. The caramel flavor is kind of diluted admittedly, but ah well. I think I might mix with vanilla ice cream at some point, that would probably be good...)

Lessons learned: Definitely chill the batter, probably for longer, also probably use smaller blobs that are more widely spread-out? Also possibly I needed to add more flour...

But turning botched buttercream into cookies is Definitely possible! I'm just not quite there yet lol.

[shadowsong26x]

frolicking with mama :)

[shadowsong26x]

resting

[shadowsong26x]

#ofcourseitis

[shadowsong26x]

SARAH BOLGER AS PRINCESS MARY TUDOR

we never come to the kingdom of heaven but by troubles

[shadowsong26x]

Another BSG study, I think I'm starting to get the hang of shiny hard surfaces

[shadowsong26x]

Walk in T hormone clinic and calorie dense food restaurant combo called build a bear is this anything

[shadowsong26x]

it's been a decade but i'm still not over the insanity that is the movie Jupiter Ascending

spoilers ahead, but this movie was slammed when it was released. sitting pretty at a 27%/38% on rotten tomatoes, it was critiqued on essentially every single aspect by a large majority of viewers. almost everyone hated it. almost.

i can't speak for what the the wachowskis actually intended, but this movie is a homage to every 12 year old dreamer writing acidentally self insert stories with unrestrained enthusiasm.

the main character played by Mila Kunis is named Jupiter. no literally. Jupiter Jones.

movie opens with Jupiter living an uneventful, monotonous life. there's a montage of her waking up early, going to work as a house cleaner, waking up early, going to work as a house cleaner, repeat.

within 20 minutes of runtime she is about to be murdered by aliens but is saved bridal carry style by channing tatum rolling in on hover skates. yes exactly what you're picturing. he also has a laser gun that barks when he shoots it. no im not kidding.

channing tatum is a wolf man hybrid. his name is Caine Wise. yes, "dog man", exactly, his name is literally Dog Man. he has pointy ears. "bred for the military but that didn't work out for me". after he saves Jupiter, she is unconscious and wakes up with a gun next to her bc Caine "thought it would make her feel better". he is Guarded and Rough yet Kind and Gentle.

it is later in the movie revealed he used to have wings, pretty feather angel-wings looking wings, but they were ripped off because he broke the rules. he has scars on his back. it's all very man pain. the movie makes a poorly masked point of talking about how he's a wolf man without a pack while the camera is pointed at Jupiter.

Jupiter spends most of the movie alternating between fainting, being kidnapped and holding her own against people wanting to kill her. you know, she's Powerful and Cool and Kickass but also has hunky yet sensitive men saving her. at one point a man who planned to murder Jupiter insults her and Caine, pointing a gun at the guy, asks Jupiter "may i kill him" through his teeth but she says no so he doesn't. (she has a guard dog she literally has a guard dog im-).

she has several wardrob changes and she's either dressed in flannels, snassy space movie outfits or the most beautiful dresses you could imagine.

another character is Stinger Apini played by Sean Bean. he's a human honey bee hybrid. im still not joking. he gets little gold hexagon in his eyes sometimes. he uses "beeswax" as a swear.

while Caine and Stinger have a little "you betrayed me last time we saw each other" fight, a bunch of Stinger's bees start swarming Jupiter, following her movements like some kind of avatar water bending powers. this means she's royalty. because "bee's are genetically designed to recognize royalty" (sean bean says this with a completely straight face for which he deserves an award). Jupiter is space royalty. queen, to be exact. she's queen of a bunch of planets, including earth.

Jupiter Jones, normal human girl from a boring, monotonous life, is Queen of Earth.

she's one of the most important people in the universe and has a hot wolf man saving her at every turn. this movie was written for every little sensitive, creative child inside the heart of a adult clinging to their imagination and dreams.

the movie has about eight bad guys but oscar-winner and acclaimed actor eddie redmayne plays the top bad guy. eddie did this movie coming off the backs of Les Misérables and The Theory of Everything. i can only assume the casting director knew about a murder he’s committed and blackmailed him into doing this movie.

eddie's character name is Balem Abrasax (a fine, 'character name generator'-name) and he either whispers or blows out the speakers.

one hour into the movie it takes a break and does a 'space bureaucracy is like the DMV'-bit as Jupiter, with the help of a robot named Intergalactic Advocate Bob, tries to claim her title as queen. there's a montage where they are sent around to get documents so they can get other documents so they can get other documents only they can't get those documents before submitting the first document and-

jupiter gets a cool glowing tattoo on her wrist and then the movie jumps back into space opera and she's kidnapped and saved a few more times.

jupiter tries so hard to seduce Caine but he resist bc He's Broken and Dangerous and Does Not Deserve Her. the third act kicks off with Jupiter (the person) inside Jupiter (the planet) with Balem who will most certinly hurt her, so Stinger give Caine a pep talk about how much he loves Jupiter and he has to go save her.

mind, they've known each other for about two days and Jupiter has been kidnapped three times so they've only spent about half of that time together. but it's TRUE LOVE goddamnit. Caine looks like he's about to cry when Stinger tells him to go after the girl. then he sets his jaw very masculinely and proceed to fly a little spacecraft though the storm clouds dodging lightning

they kiss during the last fight, defeat the last bad guy and then movie cut to later. now Jupiter is waking up early and happily go about cleaning houses, only she pauses to look at the glowing tattoo on her wrist proving she owns Earth and after work she goes on a date with her wolf man boyfriend who got his wings back so now she uses the hover boots and they go flying together. the end.

movie has so many stupid little quips and bits and funny quotes. the amount of fanfic tropes used would kill you if you did a take a shot-game. it's so silly. so so silly. it's stupid and the pacing is atrocious and the dialouge is so campy it hurts sometimes and the action scenes are a mess of visual effects than nearly give you motion sickness and they are about ten minutes each which is nine minutes to long and i love this movie with all my heart.

it's the most comfort movie to ever comfort. it's little younger me sitting up at night dreaming up insane stories. it's younger me pretending to hoverboard alongside the car on long drives. it's wanting to feel special and loved and go on cool adventures. it's endless imagination wrapped up in a stupid little story with stupid little characters with stupid little names written with pure love for the child inside every creative person.

i will die defending this movie. go watch it

[shadowsong26x]

Grocery shopping, Budapest, Hungary, 1987 - by Attila Manek, Hungarian

[shadowsong26x]

STAR TREK: VOYAGER (1995–2001)

[shadowsong26x]

i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

[shadowsong26x]

something that should be taken with a grain of salt are the statistics talking about the high rates of mental illness + neurodivergence among trans people (ocd, bpd, adhd, autism, etc)

I see both sides of the political spectrum taking these studies at face value - conservatives say we're broken, and trans people try to come up with reasons why for example autism + gender dysphoria makes sense and why one of them feeds into another

at the end of the day you have to remember that we're the one category of people on this planet who are legally required to go see a psychiatrist in order to receive non-psychiatric medication and surgeries.

more trans people are in therapy by law than any other demographic of people, and as a result, this captures more comorbidities.

if I had to look at my own family & rates of mental illness?

mom, dad, 2 maternal aunts, maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, sister, sibling, and me all have OCD.

7/9 of them are cishet, never been to therapy, never diagnosed. 2/9 are trans, required therapy for hormone treatment, and were diagnosed.

you don't have to do any math to just see that the resulting statistics end up intensely skewed.

and we can think back to how autism was virtually never diagnosed more than 50 years ago - ruling out any grandparents being included in statistics - and even my parents' generation (they're in their 60s now) wouldn't have been included either.

I don't think it's to anyone's benefit to accept these studies uncritically. a lot of these things are hereditary and far more prevalent in the overall population than people realize

[shadowsong26x]

[shadowsong26x]

Dude, the enemy is not "the group of people who can afford a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and have enough saved for retirement."

The enemy is the group of people who make it IMPOSSIBLE for EVERYONE to have a nice house and car and take vacations and eat well and save enough for retirement.

In the US, "poor people" USED to be the people who had not-so-nice houses and cars, or who had to rent instead of own. And it's not the dentist down the street who changed that; among others, it's the ultra-rich CEOs and shareholders who refuse to pay a living wage so they can live off your labor, and the exploitative corporations that buy up as much housing as they possibly can and charge exorbitant rent so you'll never be able to own your own home. It's the bosses who decide that "excess" food must be destroyed if it cannot be sold at a price that enriches shareholders. And it's the politicians who encourage and enable all of that.

[shadowsong26x]

[shadowsong26x]

Setting a few things straight:

1. magneto was right (accepted all mutants to his cause instead of just the pretty ones, taught them to love and respect themselves, actively fought against anti-mutant rhetoric in order to prevent another holocaust)

2. magneto was kind of stupid (regularly played chess with a telepath)