Muppets Doing the Dance of Joy to Vince Guaraldi (and a cupcake recipe)

I was awakened this morning to a phone call from Fraser. I answered and heard, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" and then the call dropped.

A minute later, as I sat up and basically blinked a lot, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, the phone rang again. Imagine trying to extract information from a Muppet, say Grover, on a massive caffeine high and you'll get a vague idea of the first minute of that call. The next minutes, after I realized that he was telling me that he'd heard from the embassy and his visa interview is next Monday, it was straight up Dance of Joy time!

It's so surreal that after all the months of delays and waiting and starting to lose hope, it's finally happening, and with one week's notice! In case you're just tuning in, we first applied for Fraser's fiancé visa last year, so he can emigrate. The interview is the final step in this extremely frustrating, redundant, and expensive process. By most accounts, this is practically a formality, as they tend to weed out the frauds, terrorists, and human traffickers before it gets to this stage. He will be told on the spot if the visa is granted, and then the actual paperwork will be couriered to him within a few days. As soon as those papers are in his hand, he can get on a plane! Once he's here, we have to get married within 90 days, but don't ask me for details about that just now. One thing at a time!

In homage to my Scottish boy being soon on his way, I made some Irn-Bru cupcakes to take to a gaming night tonight. If you're not familiar with Irn-Bru, it's an orange-colored soft drink that tastes something like Juicy Fruit gum. It's made in Scotland from a recipe that is allegedly so secret that the president of the company himself personally mixes every batch of concentrate and will only grant access to to the recipe to his successor when he retires. I've heard it hailed as the ultimate hangover cure and condemned as a danger to children because of its high sugar and caffeine content. It took me a while to acquire a taste for it, and now, while I couldn't drink it all the time, it's good for a treat now and then. I'm lucky enough to have a great British (yes, Britain includes Scotland) grocery shop in town, so I picked up some Irn-Bru. There IS one tiny difference between the Irn-Bru imported from Scotland, and the Irn-Bru made by the American distributor. One of the coloring agents used in the Scottish original is banned by the FDA. However, two points are worth noting: 1. I've had both and there is no noticeable difference in taste (unless you ask a Scot), and 2. at least at my local shop, you can buy both versions. Look on the label, and if the ingredients list includes "Ponceau 4R," it's the original. Here is a list of places you can buy Irn-Bru in the USA. If you decide to try it, let me know what you think! I'm always curious for reactions to this stuff, especially since it'll be appearing in some form at my wedding, possibly in these cupcakes.

Now, as promised, here's the recipe! These give just a hint of the Irn-Bru flavor, which is boosted by the citrus zest or extracts, and the vanilla.

You need:

1 cup Irn-Bru
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 TBSP corn starch
3/4 tsp baking POWDER
1/2 tsp baking SODA
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil (or 1/2 cup softened butter, but that'll mask the Irn-Bru flavor, and it's only a hint to begin with)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp orange zest OR 1/2 tsp orange extract (real, not imitation)
1-2 tsp lemon zest OR 1/2 tsp lemon extract (again, seriously: real, not imitation)
12 cupcake wrappers

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and line a muffin tin with the cupcake wrappers.
2. Combine oil & sugar. I used a stand mixer with paddle attachment, but a wooden spoon or hand mixer works just as well.
3. Add the egg and extracts. Beat until thoroughly combined and has a smooth consistency. 
4. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. No, it's not fine if you don't do this and just dump it in with the wet. Trust me.
5. This is where the stand mixer is really your friend: Add a little Irn-Bru to the wet mixture, then alternate adding dry mix with Irn-Bru until you've used it all and the consistency is mostly smooth. There will be a few lumps, and you might think the batter looks too runny, but it's okay. It's supposed to look like that.
6. Fill each cup of the prepared tin NO MORE THAN 3/4 FULL. Seriously, if you have batter left over, start a second pan (just fill any empty cups with water), do some individual cakes if you have freestanding cups, or something, but DO NOT OVERFILL THOSE CUPCAKES! If you do, it's not my fault when they overflow, run together, burn on the edges, and sink in the middle. 
7. In my oven, it took 22 minutes for them to bake perfectly, but check them at 20 minutes. If a toothpick inserted in the center of one of the middle ones comes out clean, they're done, even if they look a bit wet on top (they're just on the shiny side).
8. Let them cool completely before frosting. I topped mine with justJENN's whipped cream frosting (though I used regular granulated sugar instead of brown sugar).

Life, the Universe, and Homemade Nachos (Vegetarian, Gluten-Free)

If you're a regular visitor here, you've noticed that I've sort of gotten out of the habit of blogging. It's one of those things where life has been so eventful that I just don't know where to start. I'm hoping that this will get the ball rolling again, but it will unfortunately involve just listing, probably in an excruciatingly boring manner, the stuff I'd have blogged about if I'd taken time to when it was new. For your trouble, I'll also share the recipe for some nachos I just made, which made Sam declare they were better than any she'd ever had in a restaurant.
So, the news:

• The petition for Fraser's visa was approved near the beginning of the month. Hooray! That's the first hurdle done. He has to go to London in a few weeks for a medical exam (after filling out umpteen more forms and waiting for a couple of other things to process), after which the embassy will schedule his final interview, after which they will at last issue his visa and he'll be able to come over here for good.
• One outcome of the above is that we will be getting married within 90 days of his entry into the USA. The tentative date we've set is May 21, but I can't stress enough that that's tentative. We just can't make solid plans yet without knowing when his final interview is. We're planning a fairly small affair, knowing that hiked travel prices and worldwide financial issues will prevent many people from making the trip. Still, those who attend will be treated to homemade goodies, music, and fun on the theme of "stuff we like." So far, that includes Willy Wonka, Doctor Who, and Star Wars, but expect that list to grow. Fraser will sport a snazzy new kilt, and I have no clue what I'll be wearing. That is, until the costume party bit, where we're encouraging Scottish/American character mashups.
• I am back in the USA now, as of 2 weeks ago Wednesday. It's weird, and it has its ups and downs, and of course I miss Fraser, and of course I'm glad to see family and friends again.
• I'm actively looking for a decent job. I have a couple of leads to follow up, but no news there yet.
• Before leaving Scotland, I got to see more of the country, including Aberdeen and the northeastern coast, along the North Sea, including Pennan, where the movie Local Hero was filmed. I'll be posting pictures from that trip as part of a forthcoming article on Pop Bunker, so stay tuned for that. I did post reviews of a lot of the places I visited on Yelp, so if you're interested, you can see those here.
• I've brought on a new batch of writers at Pop Bunker, so hopefully things will pick up there and get fun again.
• I'm going to be writing more for the Geek Girls Network, once I get my posting credentials, so look for me there too.
• Supersecret project I can't tell you about yet goes here.
• More stuff I've forgotten and may get to later goes here.

Now, for the nachos! I was just feeling snacky, but didn't want anything sweet, so I raided the kitchen to see what all we had. There was a package of corn tortillas. There was one tomato, some onions, some dried cilantro, some lime juice, some garlic powder, some ancho chili powder, and a nearly-full bag of shredded cheddar cheese. Therefore: Nachos!

Use a pizza cutter to cut a stack (don't ask me how many - about 1/4 of the package) of small corn tortillas into quarters. Spray some Pam (I used the organic canola variety) into a gallon-sized ziploc bag. Dump in the tortillas & sprinkle in some garlic powder & ancho chili powder. Zip shut, shake like crazy til evenly(ish) coated. Spread on cookie sheets. Bake at 400F for 5-10 minutes (crispy but not burnt). You might have to check them pretty frequently. Throw away the ones that burned because you weren't checking frequently enough.

While the chips bake, dice up a tomato & a bit of onion (less onion than tomato). Mix in a bowl with a bit of cilantro, a dash of salt, and several generous squeezes of lime juice.

When the chips are done, switch the oven from bake to broil. Spread a layer of chips on an oven-safe plate. Top with shredded cheese and 1/3 of the salsa, making sure you get some of each on every chip (because those dry, bendy chips at the bottom of a plate of restaurant nachos are just nasty). Lay more chips on top and top with more cheese & salsa. Repeat one more time until you've used everything up.

Pop in the oven for just a minute or two, to get the cheese all nice and melty.

Remove with an oven mitt, bring to the table, and warn your friends that the plate is hot!

Recipe: Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Cinnamon & Crushed Chili

Just in case you were wondering, roasted sweet potatoes with cinnamon and crushed chili (red pepper flakes in America) is a wonderful idea. Fraser and I had it with the chicken curry we made for dinner. After learning how to cook basic roasted potatoes, thanks to Gordon Ramsay, I decided to see if it'd work with sweet potatoes and if that combination of tastes would be good. In short: SUCCESS! They were so good, we ate all of it before it occurred to me that a picture would be helpful with this post.

It goes like this:

1. 1. Peel and cut up sweet potatoes (however many you want to eat) and boil with a little salt for about 10 minutes.
2. Put just enough oil in a rectangular baking dish to coat the bottom, and place it in a hot (200 C/ 400 F) oven for a few minutes to get the oil hot.
3. Drain the sweet potatoes, then toss them with some cinnamon (enough to give each chunk of potato a nice sprinkling) and a dash or 2 of chili flakes (depending on how spicy you like things). Season with a little salt & pepper, then toss with a drizzle of oil to help it all stick.
4. Put the potatoes into the heated pan and carefully toss with the hot oil. Roast until crispy, or until you can't take the smell of deliciousness any longer and must eat them even if they're still a bit soft (30-45 minutes, depending on how crispy you like them). Turn them once or twice while roasting.
5. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and spread them on a paper towel to remove any oil that stuck to them.
6. Devour.

P.S. If it won't alienate anyone, I think I'm going to ditch the Tumblr account and just post my recipes and cooking adventures right here, in the mix with everything else I babble about. Tumblr is too buggy, and it's not like I'm over-posting and flooding the Internet with this thing, right?

Proper Care and Feeding

Today marks the first day back from my mostly-offline vacation. I've been trying to figure out where to start to recount the events that might be of interest to others, and I realized I've done an awful lot of talking about cooking and wanting to share recipes. Thanks to a Scottish boyfriend who appreciates sweets, I've learned some good ones I'd never heard of.

Fraser brought me a cookbook of Scottish Teatime Recipes. Upon receiving it, I said, "now, this isn't really a present for me, is it?" He just grinned, like this:

So far, I've only tried one recipe in it, which is the same as this one for flapjacks, which are absolutely nothing like pancakes. I've made these before, but they're so good it's worth repeating. The recipe calls for golden syrup, which I couldn't find, so I used maple instead (note: not artificially-flavored pancake syrup, but real maple syrup). The batch I made to send home with Fraser had cinnamon and raisins added, mostly because every time we passed a bakery case or grocery shelf that had oatmeal-raisin cookies on it, he'd sigh and go "mmmmmmmoatmeal cookieeeeeeeeeesmmmmmmmmmm," but then move on because there were already baked goods at home.

I had already made what Fraser calls shortcake but has nothing to do with strawberries. The recipe I used refers to it as "Millionaire's Shortbread," but he said it was exactly right, and even bestowed upon it the ultimate compliment: his Gran would have approved of it. The recipe calls for either premade dulce de leche or homemade caramel. I made the homemade caramel, and I like to think that (since it was really time consuming, though not difficult) this was the extra touch that prompted him to roll his eyes back in his head and profess his undying love for the cook.

Working together, we made another favorite of his Gran's, which was new to me in its entirety. The closest thing I've ever eaten to Tablet is the maple candy you can get in Canada and New England. It's hard to describe, but imagine a sort of caramel fudge or soft toffee. It's as sweet a thing you can eat without digging into a bag of sugar.

I love the commentary attached to the recipe, such as "if black streaks appear, you've burnt it and good luck cleaning the pan." After a half hour or so of mostly stirring, we were awarded with a tray of melt-in-your-mouth, caramel-colored squares of what my best friend referred to as "holy sugar coma, Batman!" I discovered by accident that a bit of it dissolved into a cup of coffee is a nice alternative to artificially-flavored creamer. I don't usually sweeten my coffee, but since half my piece of tablet just broke off and landed there, then dissolved instantly, I went with it, and it was good!

We took some of that, along with the results of another recipe I'd never heard of, Empire Biscuits, with us to visit Spike. Yep - same Spike of The Paul & Spike Show. If you remember, I was a guest on the show along with some other Pop Bunker contributors, prompting Spike to play matchmaker and set me up with his best friend. As a tiny thank-you, I had Fraser find out what kind of baked things Spike might be partial to, and he came back with these. I followed this recipe, except Fraser said that his Gran always put a gumdrop on top instead of the cherries called for, so that's what we did.

I struggled a bit with the shortbread, but I attribute that to the 98 degree heat and extremely high humidity. When the dough is half butter, it just won't stay firm in those conditions. Still, after lots of grumbling and getting the dough as chilled as possible in the fridge, I did manage to get it to work. I was afraid they'd be tough after having to re-roll it a few times, but thankfully, they were not. Fraser said they "taste like childhood," so I'll take that as a good sign!

There are lots more recipes in the little cookbook, and I'm sure even more out there, and I'm enjoying having them introduced to my life.