Baking Experiment! White Cake Recipe

Although I am not vegan, I do have a pretty serious milk allergy so I need to avoid milk at all costs.   Otherwise, it's crying in a corner for three days with intense gastrointestinal distress.   I don't want to do that, again.  It's basically like having food poisoning for three days.  Not fun. 

So, I've been learning about all sorts of milk and dairy substitutes from vegan websites.  It's been immensely helpful.  However, since I also have a corn allergy, sometimes I have to get very creative.   It means I've been baking a lot ever since back in March when I figured out that the reason for most of my problems was butter.  Grr....

Today, I wanted to try to bake a white cake.   Baking one from scratch isn't very hard and it makes sure that you know EXACTLY what is in it.   You wouldn't believe what is in a cake mix box....

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com that looked really good:

• 1 cup white sugar
  
  
• 1/2 cup butter
  
  
• 2 eggs
  
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
  
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
  
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
  
  
• 1/2 cup milk

The problem is that I can't have butter, I need to make my own baking powder unless I buy the special stuff at the organic market and I can't have milk.  To add to the fun of this experiment, I decided to make it vegan which means no eggs either.

Here's what I used instead:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup of Coconut Spread
• 4 tablespoons of applesauce
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose organic King Arthur's flour (it's much better than the other generic stuff I get at the store)
• 1 3/4 teaspoons of my baking powder (1/2 baking soda, 1/4 cream of tartar, 1/4 arrowroot powder)
• 1/2 cup of Vanilla Almond milk

I followed the rest of the directions but with the subsitutes:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

Let me just say I'm baking it now but I tried the batter. YUM!!!  I really hope that the cake is fluffy and not flat.  The batter itself (no eggs so take that FDA!) was absolutely delicious.  I was worried because I've never used the coconut spread before however, based solely upon the taste of the batter, I think I need to buy stock in the stuff.   It didn't taste like coconut at all.  I did taste the apple sauce a bit - it was spiced apple sauce- but really, it's a fall cake.   It's fine.  Spicy cinnamon sorta white looking cake is still perfectly edible. 

I've used the almond milk many times before.  I got addicted to the stuff back in Feb and March when I was doing the Lenten Medieval diet thing to figure.   It's great to make hot chocolate with.  :-)   The baking powder is something I read up on online.   A lot of baking powder is just baking soda with cornstarch.  Since I have a corn intolerance (it's a borderline allergy really but I can have a small amount without my system going out of wack), I can't have the cornstarch.  There are some cornstarch free baking powders available but making my own is a lot cheaper.   It's easy to make; just shift together a mixture that is 1/2 baking soda, 1/4 arrowroot powder, and 1/4 cream of tartar.   I have a nice big plastic cup of the stuff right now that should last me through the New Year. 

I promise a follow up post on how the cake actually tastes.  I'm taking it to work tomorrow so we'll see how everyone at work reacts.  :-)

EDIT: I used this recipe for the vegan chocolate icing because what is white cake without chocolate icing?

Ingredients:

• 2 cups organic powdered sugar
• ¼ cup (½ stick) dairy-free soy margarine, softened
• ¼ cup plain unsweetened almond milk or soymilk
• ¾ cup unsweetened pure cocoa powder
• ½ t. vanilla

Preparation:

1. In a medium-large mixing bowl, using an electric hand mixer, cream the powdered sugar with the soy margarine until mixture is thick but well combined. Add the almond milk, cocoa powder and vanilla, and continue to mix until smooth.

I used the coconut spread rather than soy margarine party because it's what I had on hand but also because the soy margarine has corn in it.   The coconut spread doesn't which is why I decided to try it to begin with.

I've iced the cake now using this recipe for chocolate icing.  Oh my!  If you like dark chocolate fudge, then you will LOVE this.   It's ridiculously yummy.   Seriously, if my dairy allergy disappeared tomorrow, I don't think I could go back to normal icing after this.    It's very thick, creamy, and tastes like fudge.    I hope the guys at work like it too!

The Tudors

Not the real Tudors but that horrible, revolting TV show that blatantly uses the name of the dead to advocate modern Hollywood values. Yeah, I really don't like the show. However, I did see a few of the costumes for it on my recent trip to Ireland and think others might enjoy seeing them. At least from a costuming aspect.



I know, it's blurry. I promise the majority aren't! The pictures for the Tudor TV show costumes start with that one and end with this one:



Some other good photos include:



and:




Take a look!

How to Use the MET site

If you've tried to use the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the past year, you know it is horrible. Last year, they changed their search functionality so it's near impossible for the average costumer to find that specific Elizabethan jacket anymore and, very recently, they deleted everything in my "MyMet" page. Yes, they've now added pinterest for the adoring masses (and not Tumblr or LJ or blogger or...)but it annoys me that I have to go and find all those 16th and 18th C pieces I had saved in MyMet again.

At least, with the search functionality, I have talked to the computer guys behind it. I asked them what the heck they were thinking and wrote a long rant about how I couldn't find anything back in January - never expecting a response. Well, I got one. :-)


Hi Isabella, Cogapp forwarded your message to me. Thanks for sending it in. The ability to sort by date is possibly the most frequently requested feature in the new collections search.



I have a couple responses to your query.



First, you can search by narrower ranges of dates, just not exactly how you expect. Go to the Collections main page (http://metmuseum.org/collections/) and click on the When tab under “Search Collections By:.” There, you can enter specific dates or ranges of dates for your search. Then you can narrow down the search later with the Who/What/Where/In the Museum tabs that come up on the results page.



We know that this is not ideal always, but if you really are looking for specific dates, it works most of the time. Give it a try and let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.



Second, we are adding a Collections Advanced Search function to the site. I don’t know when exactly, but in the next few months. It will allow you to do much more specific searches and will allow you to sort results by date.



Finally: you asked why we built the search this way. While I think we misjudged a little and as a result we are adding back the “sort by date” function, the truth is that very few of our searches and result sets benefit from sorting. Consider a search for “Claude Monet,” one of the more frequent searches on the site. Today it returns 1278 results. If I were to sort it by date, it would only be helpful for the first 100 objects or so, because clicking through dozens of pages is less preferable than narrowing the search down further. Similarly, if I look at all the works made with “Oil paint” (http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections?ft=*&what=Oil+paint) I get 2,025—sorting by artist name at that point would be mostly frustrating, and instead it is better to refine the search.



So basically it’s about two things:



1. The overwhelming size of our collection.

2. Our desire to steer people toward more useful ways of searching such vast numbers of objects.



For example, if I continued to narrow down that list of oil paintings with a “Where” setting of “United Kingdom” and then selected “A.D. 1600-1800” under “When,” I have a manageable list of 58 works. So we do hope people will prefer that narrowing function—it’s more practical more often, but moreso, it offers a way to understand our overwhelming collection as a set of sensible, well-catalogued works of art.



You will still argue that sorting it by date would be useful, and I agree. We’ll add it back to the advanced search when it launches!

:-) I've tried it many times now and it works! You can now use a "between" dates function that is, very, very close to what is needed. Yay! So, if you are searching the the MET, try going to "When" and then "Search Collections By:"

What I wore to Dress U

This was Firday night and I was very very unhappy about the way the blouse came out. As you can see, the bodice came out well - after two weeks of tweeking it- and the skirt was okay, but the blouse made me cry. :-( The bodice kept giving me issues to the point I really couldn't play with the blouse as well - I just didn't have the time. I'll play with it now that I do have time, once I get around to wearing it again.



Saturday morning, I was much happier. This is my Edwardian Tea Dress that I made a few years ago. I had just bought a pair of wonderful leather gloves in the photo which is why I'm looking very silly. :-) The tea dress is almost all other people's stash fabric. I can't recall exactly whom I received the main white embroidered from, but it works really well for the main body of the dress. The lacy center was from Loren's stash. The orange I think I bought off of ebay for a completely different project and it was too orange - not pink like I wanted. It's a fun, simple, dress.



For the afternoon, I wore my Edwardian Bathing Suit. It had issues but all of them were well hidden beneath the over-swimdress. Basically, I added the corset to the combinations way too low so I couldn't get it to close up or sit properly. I managed to fiddle a way to wear the outfit but I need to fix the combinations so I can wear the bathing outfit properly.





The super secret Titanic Ghost outfit! I knew there would be a lot of lovely outfits at the Titanic Dinner Party so I decided to do something a bit different. I came as a ghost from the Titanic! The dress is from an old sari I distressed and pieces of very old Edwardian sheer fabric I got from someone that was selling all there grandmothers old sewing stash. The fabric was already distressed so it worked really well.

The make up is white face clown make up, old silver eyeshadow for around the eyes, silver eye liner, and a lot of glitter glue and crystals. I also had glitter hairspray. My roommates managed to put up with me and all the glitter I got all over the bathroom floor before I left for the party.



This is my Lolita Regency outfit. I made the dress last year and never got a chance to wear it. It's made out of off white silk with a red poly satin ribbon around the base of the dress. My hair - I used soft curlers after washing my hair of all the glitter the night before.



My Mad Hatter outfit! It's based off of me wanting a cupcake on my head and the movie Dangerous Beauty. The outfit is out of an embroidered silk. The sleeves are out of metallic silk organza. I wore this Sunday afternoon - even through my extant gowns class although I lost the hat by that point. That would just be ridiculous! ;-)



I wasn't happy with the bodice on this one but the skirt came out lovely. The outfit is based off of Anna's ball gown in Van Helsing. It's out of some wonderful Red Silk my Mom and Cousin managed to get for me in LA. I just need to re-do the bodice (I used a simplicity pattern that came out a bit too big) and it should be a pretty decent outfit. My tiara was from ebay. :-)

That's it for my entire wardrobe during Dress U. I had a lot of fun at the event and I really hope to be able to go and teach again next year.

How'd you find that?!? Or how to search for costume related items.

At Dress U, I taught a class regarding using search engines like Bing and Google as well as searching on ebay for costume related items. Basically, it was about learning various formulas that work in the search engines to better refine your searches. I've included examples and hope this is clear. Please, feel free to comment with any questions!


Quotation marks:

         ""s around a word or phrase help to look for that EXACT item.   Capitalization isn't important but spelling is.   Using quotes around a phrase helps immensely when looking for something like examples of a Robe a l'anglaise. In any search box, just use "Robe a l'anglaise" to find the 18th Century fitted back gowns.   On both google and bing, it will come up with appropriate links as well as images.

The beloved minus sign:
       I <3 the - sign in searching.  I use it rather liberally and suggest everyone else to do so as well.   The - is used to get rid of terms you don't want.   So, let's say you are searching for a green dress but you don't want a yellow one.   Your search term would be as follows "green dress" -yellow.  This way, anytime yellow shows up on a webpage with the phrase green dress, that webpage will not be included in your results.   You don't have to use exact phrasing (quotes).
     On eBay, they have an even more sophisticated method.  If you are searching for a green dress but not any other colors, all you need to do is the following green dress -(yellow, blue, red, pink, orange, purple, black, white).  Ebay will allow up to 10 search terms inside the parenthesis. For both Bing and Google you need to add a - before each term.  Also, both Bing and Google seem to have a lower limit for the amount of negative terms you can add.  

It was just here, on this site, I know it!
    
     We've all been there.  You see something pretty, think "Oh, that's nice", continue on your merry way only to think you might want to bookmark that site later and.....it's gone.  The item you just saw - that black 18th C gown or that lovely silk fabric- is no where to be found now and you can't recall exactly how you got to it in the first place.  The site: function is for you.
       In the search box of either Bing or Google (I'm sure it works on Yahoo and Ask as well) type the following site:www.metmuseum.org blue silk and it will search the entire Met museum for any page that contains the words both blue and silk somewhere on it.   This function is only good, however, if the page itself is public and not private (ie, doesn't work quite as well on blogs.)

I kinda sorta think maybe this or this or that but they all mean the same thing...

   As we all know, in the costuming world, we can very easily have ten terms that mean the exact same thing.  On one page a dress might be called a gown, a robe, formal attire, ect.   You want to be able to find all the terms that refer to that one item.  Rather than doing multiple searches, just use the ~.   By placing the ~ before a term, it means "like".   So ~dress will also search for, at least, gown.   It's basically pulling from a thesaurus and looking at every similar term.  

All I know is it was some PDF that had pretty pictures

   This is something I've done.  You find a pdf that has awesome research and your computer dies on you or you otherwise forget to save it.  You have NO idea where the pdf was hosted, all you know is it had information on your topic and it was a specific type of file that was not a webpage.   Filetype: can be used with any file type.   Let's say you saw a nice Word doc on women's renaissance shoes but you can't find it again - just type into your search bar filetype:doc renaissance shoes and it should find the file for you.   If the file was a pdf, then use filetype:pdf renaissance shoes .  It works very well in both Google and Bing.

I only want to see items from the 1880's!

   Trying to sort through the wedding dresses when all you are looking for is a bustle gown is highly annoying.  You keep getting links of Vera Wang when all you want is House of Worth!  To help narrow your search by a decade, used the following 1881...1890 bustle dress  This will force the search engine to only search for pages that have a number between 1881 and 1890 on the page plus the words Bustle and dress.   Although this helps narrow the search for links, it doesn't work well on images since a wedding gown can still be number 1882 as the price or as the retail number. Of course, this will work with any decade.  :-)  Or, century if you want to see everything from 1701 to 1800, of course.

The almighty wildcard, *

    I probably overuse the asterisk.   It's GREAT when searching for items that have the same root but have multiple endings.  My favorite example is embroidery.  It can be embroidering, embroidered, embroideries, and yet, it all means the exact same thing.  It just depends on what the seller or webpage owner decides to use.   Since embroider is at the heart of each of those terms, just use embroider* as your search term.   You can, sometimes, use the wildcard (*) at the start of a term but it works much better at the end of a search term.

Google Image Search [Insert Drool Here]

   The new Google Image Search is awesome.  Have you ever saved an image to your computer and forgotten where you got it from? Go to Google, click on images on the upper bar, and up should come a search screen where there is a camera in the search bar.   Click on the camera to upload the photo you want to search on.  If it's still on the web, Google will find it.
    Google is also very good at finding where other people got their images from (tumblr /cough).  That pretty dress that has no sourcing with it on a blog post?   Just right click on the image, go to properties and see the address of the image.  Copy the address and paste it in the search bar.  Google will find it.
   On Bing and Google, if you see an image in your searching results that you like but it's not quite right or it's too small, they both have functions to find "similar" or "other sizes" of the image.   Don't give up if it says that's the only size in that image, do a similar search and you'll often see the exact same image right next to the one you just searched.  Click on the second image and do a "more sizes" search.  I've found images that are much bigger than my first results this way - which is great for movie costume recreations.


That's it!   Feel free to ask questions and I do hope this was helpful for both those that took the course and those that weren't able to make it. 

Holy Thursday

According to the Roman Catholic tradition, after Holy Thursday mass, Lent is over. Now, normally this is because mass is right before sundown and passover begins. :-) However, we had mass at work at 11 am. :-) It was great since the hall we used was right above the cafeteria. Right after mass, I ran down the stairs and bought tater tots and chicken nuggets. I hadn't had either in a very long time. It wasn't great (cafeteria food) but it was nice not to get a salad for once.

I didn't get a cake because I knew I had this waiting for me at home:



Chocolate covered strawberries!!!!! Yummy!

Oh and:



Mini cake pops!

A few weeks ago, Amazon had a "local" deal- spend $15, get $30 worth of chocolate covered strawberries. Honestly, I forgot about it until I got an email reminding I had to use it before April 8th. I figured that a good way to celebrate the end of the medieval diet would be with my favorite food, chocolate covered strawberries.

Since then, I've been eating a lot of fun stuff - to the point I made myself sick on Sunday. Easter weekend was a blast - really, one of the best Easters I've ever had. I did have to buy my own Easter candy -which is sad- but it's super yummy. Vegan chocolate covered marshmallow chicks are freakin delicious. To the point even the carnivores in my family loved them. I can't eat normal marshmallows since they are made with corn syrup. Vegan candy tends not to include corn (it's not "natural" unlike cane sugars) so I eat a lot of it. I'm allergic to corn (it's not super serious but it's annoying enough to avoid it).

I really did like the medieval lent diet. I learned a lot and it helped to make me very excited about Easter. It was NOT easy but it was manageable. I'm not sure I'll try it again -although I like the idea of eating seafood all late winter/early spring long - I enjoy potatoes too much. :-) I might try just doing the fish thing next year and not actually go with pre-17th C recipes.

Some things that helped me get through this were my friends and family of course. :-) It was wonderful that they were all very understanding during this season. I know it wasn't easy on any of you either. ;-) But also hot chocolate and salads, believe it or not. I think not having sweets restricted other than the pre-17th Century rules was VERY useful. I could have sugar and I could have apple fritters. If I wanted chocolate, hot chocolate was always available. I think the salad helped so much because it had a)salt and b) was something very familiar in taste and look. It never took long to prepare either.

This was definitely a different take on Lent for me this year and I'm glad I did it and I'm glad it's over. I'm just disappointed that I might have a milk allergy. Grr... Luckily, it's not serious and I'm just going to have to be aware of it for my own cooking. I'm not going to worry when I go out - I'll just take allergy pills.

Last Lenten Dinner

I decided to try trout and saw this recipe:

This is an excerpt from Libre del Coch
(Spain, 1520 - Robin Carroll-Mann, trans.)
The original source can be found at Mark S. Harris' Florilegium

183. Trout in crust or roasted or boiled. The trout must be scaled, and if you wish to make it in crust, cast in pepper and a little ginger. And if you wish to cook it in some other manner, such as roasted or boiled, cause water to boil in a casserole, and cast in the trout. And when it is almost half cooked, cast in a little salt so that it should have good flavor. And then cast a half glass of vinegar into the casserole, because the vinegar will make it firm, so that it shouldn't break; and eat it with pepper, and with a little broth of the pot or of the casserole itself.

And if they want to eat it roasted, it must be eaten with orange juice and water and salt and a little oil, and all the good herbs; and prepare the plate of the roast trout. And cast this juice on top of everything. And know that the best morsel of it is the snout.

I really liked the idea of broiling it in OJ, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a seeing how it would come out. I did a half and half of OJ and water with a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil. The good herbs were cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The recipe was good but the fish, itself, wasn't. I think I just had it in the freezer too long. I'd love to try it again some day with fresh trout.

I also had rice and carrots which was great.

By Tuesday evening, I was so excited for Lent be over, I was like a kid before Christmas. Easter really ended up being joyful which, sort of, is the point of the entire Lenten season - to prepare for Easter and realize the joyful occasion it is supposed to be. Plus, I learned that, yes, I have yet another food allergy. Grr...

More posts to come!