German Shepherd Cuteness

I'm just posting this to share the cuteness of German shepherds :)  Jagger decided to take a nap after running around the house like a crazy dog.  He settled down by the hedgehog toy he was playing with and decided that his little friend would make a comfy pillow.  I decided that it made an adorable photo opportunity :)

Just so cute :)

Divine Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

Cupcake topped with a Chocolate Covered Strawberry

I made these cupcakes in 2009 for an office party and every time I mention making something for an office party I can't help but think about how spoiled and lucky my coworkers are ;)  I wanted to make a cupcake that was impressive, detailed, and just screamed, "CHOCOLATE!!!", but also had something to complement the chocolate.  At the time I was on a gluten-free diet and wanted to make cupcakes that were not only gluten-free, but so insanely wonderful that no one would miss the gluten.  This isn't really hard to do with chocolate.  I replaced the flour in my recipe with quinoa flour and no one ever knew the difference.

I made dark chocolate cupcakes (using Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder) and filled them with homemade strawberry whipped cream (cream, sugar, vanilla, and freshly squeezed strawberry juice).

Dark Chocolate Cupcakes filled w/ Strawberry Whipped Cream

I frosted the cupcakes with a whipped milk chocolate ganache.  Since the cupcakes were dark chocolate I wanted the frosting to be a slightly sweeter, lighter chocolate.

Frosted with Whipped Chocolate Ganache

At this point I had chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting, and a strawberry surprise in the middle.  In a way the cupcake itself was a chocolate covered strawberry :)  For a lovely edible garnish and decoration I added a chocolate covered strawberry as a cupcake topper.

Final Product:  Cupcake topped with the strawberry

The chocolate covered strawberry was made with white chocolate and sprinkled with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips.  The black, white, red, and green really made the cupcake look spectacular!  There's something about chocolate covered strawberries; they look beautiful, sophisticated, and luxurious without really requiring a lot of work to get that appearance.  I'm sure I was in some Food Network state of mind and became concerned with the plating of my dessert in addition to the deliciousness as I ended up making a dark chocolate sauce to swirl onto the plate.  This cupcake had multiple textures, chocolates (dark, milk, semi-sweet, & white), and the wonderful strawberry which made it divine.

Divine:  Dessert with a Halo

Pregnant Cupcakes (Baby Shower Treats)

These are cupcakes that I made last night for a coworker's office baby shower.  Yeah, we still manage to throw baby showers in the technology sector.  I'm really pioneering this whole pink in the workplace thing for Women in Technology ;)  There will be plenty of posts about Women in Technology, but for now we need to get on to the delicious world of cupcakes.

Yellow, plain, naked cupcakes

Dressed w/ a whipped chocolate cream ganache frosting.

 Normally I make everything with chocolate... I'm kind of a chocolate freak, but I know that the mother-to-be is a yellow cake and chocolate frosting kind of a girl, so I decided to deviate from the chocolate on chocolate world and go with it :)

I topped them with a whipped chocolate cream frosting.  This is always the best part ;) 

Vanilla candy melts A, B, C letters to decorate

I melted some "candy melts" and wrote out some pink alphabet blocks... surprise, she's having a girl! lol.  They made cute baby shower themed decorations... right?

I used some princess tiara cupcake wrappers to make them all pink & princess like.  It's kind of my thing ;)

An assembled cupcake - B is for Baby :)

Now, for the pregnant part, I baked a chocolate chip cookie into the cupcake.  Years ago I saw some idea from Nestle about baking with kids and throwing cookie dough into the cupcakes to make "surprise cupcakes". 

When trying to think of something fun to do for a baby shower I thought of this idea and decided that I could use that to make "pregnant" cupcakes.  It's pretty easy to do as far as the technique is concerned.  You fill the cupcake pan/papers as usual, then place a rounded tablespoon (rolled up) piece of raw chocolate chip cookie dough into the cupcake and push it to the bottom.  I smoothed the batter over the top and baked as normal after that.  You can use one piece of cookie dough from the prepared/refrigerated cookies in the supermarket. 

Pregnant with a cookie baked inside of it.

Ranting About United Airlines (Part I)

In October of 2010 I was flying from Dulles International Airport to San Diego on what should have been approximately a 5 hour flight arriving in San Diego at 10:35AM.  I was looking forward to spending the entire day with a friend that I was meeting there who was flying in from NY around the same time.  I had rented a car for both of us and we had plans to explore San Diego together that day.

The plane started to descend on time.  We were heading into the landing when the plane shot back up into the air again with quite some force.  Passengers looked at one another and we joked, "oops must not have been our turn to land", trying to make light of the fact that we may have just avoided a dangerous/fatal collision.  A few minutes after we were back into the air the pilot announced that, "due to an issue with a short runway we'll be landing at LAX in Los Angeles instead of San Diego" and that was it.  At this point we were all annoyed and asking out loud, "wouldn't they know that this plane couldn't be landed in San Diego?" and that didn't make sense anyway because it was an ordinary Boeing 757 and San Diego isn't a tiny airport.

About an hour later (11:30 or so) we were at LAX and ready to land in Los Angeles which is about 125 miles away from San Diego.  This time the pilot announced that there was a problem with the flap and we needed an extra long runway for the landing.  It was one of those "everyone needs to be buckled up and secured to prepare for a dangerous landing" moments.  I wasn't really worried at this point, I was somehow comforted by the fact that JetBlue once made similar landing on live television due to faulty landing gear and it was one of the smoothest landings ever seen.  Other passengers were a little more worried at this point.

As we approached the ground we saw an impressive group of fire & emergency vehicles waiting for us and following us (waiting for a crash and burn?).  We landed successfully, a bit fast, but w/o incident or injury.  The emergency vehicles turned away, almost appearing sad at the lack of action ;)

Some official people inspecting the plane after we landed at LAX

OK, so at this point I wasn't upset with United Airlines.  Stuff happens (although I suppose it's possible they hadn't properly inspected the plane before the flight), they safely avoided an airplane accident, and it's OK that I am deplaning more than an hour after I was supposed to in a city that I did not want to be in.  The problems started after we safely landed.

They didn't offer anyone a flight to San Diego.  They said there were no flights that would get people there and they really discouraged such a thing.  As we were deplaning they told us where our luggage would be and that there would be buses arriving to bring us to San Diego.  There was no one from the airline to meet us in the luggage area and provide additional information.  We weren't sure where the buses would be or when they would get there.  We got our luggage and made our way outside to where we understood the buses would be.  I think it was around 2:00PM or 2:30PM when an employee from United Airlines kind of gathered us up and told us the buses were coming and took our names as we boarded the buses.  They never once during this time offered us food or water.  There was no mention of any vouchers.  After a long bus ride I arrived in San Diego around 4:30/5:00PM.  My friend had already paid for transportation out of the airport when his flight arrived at 11:30AM.  I now had to get the car that I rented and had expected to pick up in the morning.  After all of that I was basically exhausted and very hungry; too tired to fight with the airline and demand some kind of compensation.  I wouldn't have been that upset if they had taken better care of us after we landed at LAX.

After a few days I called the airline and requested some kind of compensation for my flight, whether that was an upgrade on my next flight or a voucher, I didn't care.  I wanted something.  I called and spoke to an agent who apologized for the incident and offered me a $250 voucher which she said would be emailed to me in a couple of weeks.  I was satisfied with that outcome and thanked her.

About a month passed and I didn't receive my voucher.  I emailed United's customer support address and days later received a response saying that my voucher had been emailed to me.  This email said my voucher was included in this email as well and that I needed to use it within one year.  I scanned the email over and over again and couldn't find a voucher or how to use it.  I emailed them again and asked for further instruction.  The emails were a bit difficult to understand since they were all coming from India and there were a lot of serious grammatical errors as well as generic copied and pasted pieces of customer service "pleasantries" that made me wonder if they were actually responding to my question.  After contacting them a couple of times I finally received my voucher/ETC, but I soon realized that it was only worth $150 and not the $250 that I was told over the phone.  I decided that it wasn't worth my time to try to get that extra $100 and left it as it was.

I'll write another post about what happened when I tried to use the voucher; a credit that they owed me for something that they did.

First Beach Day of Spring

It is so good to get outside again and enjoy nice weather.  Near 60 degrees feels so awesome at this point.  There are no palm trees or dolphins, but it was still a beautiful day, and Jagger makes any day the best :)

He won't look at the camera when I'm in the photo.

Getting out of the office and enjoying time outside with a K9 provides awesome stress relief!  Everything just feels so peaceful out there and problems seem to disappear. 

Beautiful blue skies at Fort Popham in Phippsburg, Maine

Really just a gorgeous day today.  One of those feelgood, happy, life is full of possibilities kind of days.  Ahhh spring :) 

The most handsome dog ever :)

 I love seeing him so happy!  He has also been suffering from "cabin fever" after this winter (even though he *loves* playing in the snow).

Coffee Glazed Brownies

Recently I made double chocolate chip muffins for a coworker's last day in the office.  I topped them with a coffee glaze that I had conceptualized for the occasion; thinking that a muffin made for the morning would be extra useful to a bunch of geeky coworkers if it had some coffee on top of it.  Geeks rarely turn down a source of caffeine.  I personally do not drink coffee, but I think it adds a wonderful accent to something chocolaty.  It also helps to cut through the excess sweetness of some treats.

When I threw the coffee glaze together I couldn't help but think to myself that it would be amazing on some nice chewy brownies.  Chewy brownies, melt in your mouth glaze, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, vanilla, and coffee flavors all together?  Brownie bliss!

This morning I brought this idea together:

Chocolate chewy brownies with a sweet coffee glaze

Like I said, these are chewy chocolaty brownies made with a blend of Ghirardelli cocoa and chocolates*.  The bottoms of the brownies are dipped in semi-sweet chocolate for another depth and smooth texture.  They are topped with a mildly sweet vanilla coffee glaze made with Starbucks Colombia Coffee.  The flavor of the brownies is a bit complex with the different chocolates and they are also made with Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil which is a great way to add another depth of flavor to chocolate as well as cut back on animal fat if that sort of thing matters to you.  There are large chunks of chocolate baked into the brownies and mini chocolate chips on top of the glaze.  So many flavors and textures to enjoy!  I just started to eat one and it is so delicious and delightful! :)

*As a side-note I wanted to mention that Ghirardelli chocolate is my favorite kind of chocolate for eating plain or baking with.  Have you ever been to a Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop?  Omgoodness... had to be the most delicious place I indulged at in San Diego.  If my town had one of those I wouldn't be able to fit into any of my clothes ever again (and it might even be worth it).

My First Blog Post

OK, so I just want to test this out and get an entry up here to see how Blogger works... I'll have something better up soon :)