Sunday was Ann’s birthday and so with a wonderful excuse to do some proper baking (which I hadn’t done in quite a while) I picked the most complex cake recipe I could find, raided the grocery store for enough chocolate to make everyone else in line raise an eyebrow (and look on quite jealously) and scoured the kitchen for anything that could make my job easier (I’m still using plastic pint glasses as measuring cups as they don’t have American style measuring cups here and we don’t have an ingredients scale).
Image of what the cake was supposed to look like - take from Martha Stewart's website.
The recipe I decided to use was from Martha Stewart’s website and is a Devil’s Food Cake with Chocolate Ganache (picture from her website above) which is basically an excuse for chocolate covered chocolate covered chocolate cake with chocolate filling. I’ve reposted the ingredients below so you can get a sense of how rich this cake is:
Ingredients
Makes one 9-inch layer cake
* 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for pans
* 3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted, plus more for pans
* 3/4 cup hot water
* 3/4 cup sour cream
* 3 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 1/4 cups sugar
* 4 large eggs
* 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
* Chocolate Ganache
I had used this recipe once before - in an attempt to make the cake while at college at Colby. Unfortunately due to a series of scheduling conflicts, we didn’t end up in the kitchen we had planned on using and found ourselves continually sticking the cake and the ganache out in the Maine snow in an attempt to get the chocolate to cool. This time, with at the very least a refrigerator, I wanted to prove that Martha’s cake couldn’t master me.
I’m not sure I entirely did so. The cake turned out pretty well (and quite delicious) but there were a number of minor issues. First - I would advise you NOT to try this recipe if you don’t have an electric mixer. I did it by hand and beating the ganache for the middle layer took about 40 minutes of whisking. Also, I didn’t have two layer cake pans so used a single, larger 9-inch pan, planning to cut the cake in half to create two layers. This worked alright, although it doubled the baking time which meant that the outsides were just a tad overdone. Unfortunately, in my impatience to get going with the frosting (which I had just spent 90 minutes preparing, including 40 minutes of whisking), I tried to start spreading the ganache before the cakes had cooled which caused the chocolate to melt all over the counter - and the top layer to break in half!
In the end, the cake came out surprisingly well and looking a lot more like the picture than I had ever expected. Let me know what you think:
I didn’t have a chance to say that over the weekend, I had the opportunity to meet up with Parker Beverage, the director of Admissions at Colby, when he came to London to take part in a college fair for prospective students.
On Saturday afternoon I made my way across town to join him at the fair and had an absolutely wonderful time gushing about Colby to some quite scared-looking prospies and their rather intense-looking parents. In most cases, they were international students (from all over the world) studying in London but there were a number of Brits as well. I always forget how much I enjoy talking about Colby until I have a chance to start raving about my Alma Mater. It really was an incredible experience and I’m so happy I went by.
After the fair, Parker and I grabbed coffee and it was great to chat with him just on the level of someone who understands the Colby culture. He also was quite familiar with Castilleja (his niece went there) and the Bay Area. I gave him the DormWise pitch as well and if he comes across anyone who might be able to help me out by taking over the site, he promised to put us in touch.
Best part of it all? I am now on the radar for someone who can do alumni interviews in London :).
In the ongoing quest to experience as much of London as possible in the name of event reviews (i.e. for free) I am always excited when I get press tickets from Spoonfed or complimentary tickets for no particular reason at all - as was the case when some random promoter handed me three tickets to Beer Exposed while I was on the tube to work earlier last week. Last night, Sarah and Steve (my now married dancing friends couple - congratulations to the two of them! Although it does make me feel a bit old to have friends who are married couples. I digress.) and I headed off to Beer Exposed at the Business Design Centre in Islington to see what this whole thing was about.
Well, as no one was really surprised to discover, it was about getting drunk. We made a solid effort to treat the event like the beer coineseur’s paradise that it was supposed to be - we took the small sample cups of international beers, read the brochures about what food to pair with which color of ale, got experimental with some fruit (raspberry and strawberry), savoury (coffee and chocolate) and vegetable (carrot and pumpkin) beers which was actually quite enjoyable, but in the end, it was lots of happy inebriated people.
Our two favourites had to be the champagne beer which is made with champagne yeast so as to have the consistency and flavour of champagne (courtesy of Kasteel Cru brewing company) and the raspberry beer (provided by the Brouwerij De Halve Maan group and, apparently, the Flanders and Belgium tourist board). After I had a few drinks in me, I got somewhat patriotically excited by the American brewing companies present which led to this photographic gem (thank you Sierra Nevada Pale Ale):
In addition to Sierra Nevada, some of the other American breweries present included Budwieser, Brookyn Brewers and Blue Moon - which I seem to remember being an on-tap favourite at the Colby pub. Yes, that's Steve in the background.
Also unsurprisingly, it was an incredibly friendly crowd. The patrons were happy, the distributors were happy, everyone was smiling and having a great time. Without a doubt, that event solicited the most interaction between strangers I’ve seen yet in London. It could be their new slogan for next year: “Sick of avoiding eye contact on the tube? Come to Beer Exposed where everyone is your friend whether you know them or not.” I meet a lovely promoter from Ireland who explained to me what the “quintessential British beer” was (she was less than flattering, Brits); an American guy doing a graduate program here who wants to get involved with Spoonfed, another promoter who also got really excited about Spoonfed and will be following up to do some writing with us, and a distributor’s housemate who got dragged along to the event - who gave me probably more free bottles of the beer to take home than he would have had he been working for the company himself and I think asked me out next Thursday.
Overall it was a lot of fun. I don’t know if I would have paid the 14 quid entry, although had I thought about it, since my ticket was free I should have signed up for one of the workshops where they teach you how to pair chocolate or other foods with different beers (with samples) for the extra fiver. It was the first one of these events and I think they’re looking to make it an annual thing. Definitely the most important change for next year would be to get more food at the event next year - the occasional cracker at one or two of the booths was definitely not enough.
Which meant that, after we left, Steve, Sarah and I poured ourselves into the first pizza place we saw. Sorry British kebab shops… we just wanted our drunk pizza.
The British answer to the late-night drunken pizza order seems to be the kabab shop. These things are everywhere, possibly more predominant than burger joints, and have even more questionable quality products. Almost without exception, I have never seen a crowd outside a kebab shop at anytime other than late on a Friday or Saturday night. There is one, however, that is fairly near my flat and happened to be the source of my very first meal in the UK and I happened to swing by around dinner time and grab dinner to go. The food is tasty, the floors are clean and the prices are reasonable which makes for a good take away in my book.
In any case, kebab shops usually offer something called a doner kebab which, depending on where you get it, involves a thick flour tortilla, shavings from a roast lamb, and then some or all of the following: salad, chili sauce, chips (that’s “french fries” for the Americans in the room), mayonnaise and some other random items. The most interesting thing about this whole process is that the lamb is on an upright skewer rotating in a half open oven and as the day progresses, more and more is shaved off for the various patron’s kebabs. By the end of the day, it’s been shaved down to the skewer and a new cut of meat is put on in the morning.
The thing is, these things are quite big and I’ve never been there in the morning when they open (hmm, kebab for breakfast….) but I have this somewhat repulsive image of a full sheep on a skewer in the morning that just gets wheedled down to meat bits by the end of the day.
And with that lovely mental picture… perhaps I’ve just discovered why kebab shops only appear to hungry drunk people.
There’s a great little startup also based in London called The School of Everything which has the incredibly brilliant concept of allowing anyone to teach anything and have all of the information located in a central place. Want to teach piano lessons? Find students, get listed and charge through the site. Want to offer home yoga classes? Done. Want to be the foremost local teacher on soap carving? Great but don’t expect many people to sign up.
Alex and Henry, the CEOs of Spoonfed know the team over at School of Everything and swung by their office earlier this week for lunch, something which ended up getting a write up in their blog. This post made the rounds through the Spoonfed office today and we of course expected their lunch to have involved some highly intellectual conversation, innovative business initiatives, cutting edge technology… and all that jazz.
Imagine our surprise when the School of Everything blog exposed their true conversation: a debate between whether the School of Everything team or the Spoonfed team has the bigger teapot.
Last night I was quite proud of myself for managing to put together an absolutely delicious meal and I thought I’d share the recipe because it was so simple.
First I sauted broccoli (which had already been cooked in the microwave for two and a half minutes so it wasn’t raw), snap peas and onions in olive oil, garlic, fresh grated ginger, red pepper flakes and soy sauce. Meanwhile I brought another pot of water to a boil and started cooking egg noodles.
Next, I combined the noodles and veggies to sit together over a very low heat for a few more minutes. I didn’t have a wok pan but if you did, I suppose this is where you would use it.
After a ridiculously short amount of time I have a very flavourful and surprisingly filling (for being vegetarian) dinner. I’ve got plenty of ginger and some left over snap peas… I might have to try this one again tonight.
I think it’ll be even better when I add some meat as well.
So this is an oldie but goodie apparently throughout Britain but I hadn’t seen it before my flatmate Ann sent it to me at work the other day. I had a good chuckle over this one:
To the citizens of the United States of America from Her
Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
In light of your failure in recent years to nominate
competent candidates for President of the USA and thus
to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume
monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths,
and territories (except Kansas,which she does not
fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint
a Governor for America without the need for further
elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine
whether any od you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency,
the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English
Dictionary.)
1. Then look up aluminum, and check the pronunciation
guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have
been pronouncing it.
-------------------
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as
'colour', 'favour', 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise,
you will learn to spell 'doughnut'without skipping half
the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by
the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to
raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up
'vocabulary').
-------------------
3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with
filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an
unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.
There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let
Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker
will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated
letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.
-------------------
4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
-----------------
5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without
using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that
you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that
you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should
only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort
things out without suing someone or speaking to a
therapist then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
----------------------
6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to
own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable
peeler. Although a permit will be required if you
wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
----------------------
7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts,
and you will start driving on the left side with
immediate effect. At the same time, you will go
metric with immediate effect and without the benefit
of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and
metrication will help you understand the British
sense of humour.
--------------------
8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol
(which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly
$10/US gallon. Get used to it.
-------------------
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those
things you call French fries are not real chips,
and those things you insist on calling potato chips
are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut,
fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but
with vinegar.
-------------------
10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling
beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only
proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and
European brews of known and accepted provenance will
be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also
acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest
sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to
the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth -
see what it did for them. American brands will
be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so
that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
---------------------
11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast
English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be
required to cast English actors to play English
characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English
dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an
experience akin to having one's ears removed with a
cheese grater.
---------------------
12. You will cease playing American football. There
is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer.
Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to
play rugby (which has some similarities to American
football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every
twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body Armour like a
bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans
and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.
---------------------
13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not
reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a
game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1%
of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your
error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will
let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out
of their deliveries.
--------------------
14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving
us mad.
-----------------
15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from
Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure
the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
---------------
16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper
cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality
biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with
cream) when in season.
God Save the Queen!
Stay tuned… I’m composing a response to Her Majesty which I hope to have on the blog sometime soon ;).
As promised, I want to explain a bit about StumbleUpon which I mentioned with regards to Oh How Lovely! the other day. This will also give you a bit of an idea of one of the many things I do at work all day.
StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking tool which means that it is a social network (like Facebook or MySpace in that it allows millions of users to connect through shared interests or backgrounds on the same website) based around your favourite sites on the internet. At it’s most basic, StumbleUpon stores your web favourites and bookmarks online so that you can access them from any computer. But where things get interesting is when you bring in the rest of the social network.
When you register with StumbleUpon, you enter your interests and install their toolbar to your web browser (which adds another row of buttons to the top of your screen when you’re on the internet). That toolbar includes a little graphic that looks like this: and when you click that button you are taken to a random page on the internet that someone else who is a member of the site had added to their list of favourite bookmarks and tagged with an interest of yours.
For example, let’s say that I discovered a page on this blog, saved it to my favourites on StumbleUpon and tagged it with the word ‘London’ (you need to provide tags for all bookmarks you save). Then, let’s say you registered for StumbleUpon and listed ‘London’ as one of your interests. When you click the button, you might see my page appear on your screen - simple as that! Of course it gets a bit more complicated… in the tool bar you can give sites a or which makes it more or less likely that others will see it again.
Where this all gets very interesting is when you look at how StumbleUpon can be used from a marketing perspective. With millions of people out there using the button, you want to make sure your page appears when they are looking for interesting sites. It’s a very simple way to reach people who are interested in your content who may never have heard of your website. On Spoonfed, we have hundreds of articles including great music reviews, writeups of art exhibitions, theatre commentary and more that’s not necessarily unique to London - we’d like people around the world to start noticing our quality content.
StumbleUpon has a pretty smart algorithm and you can’t just favourite your own site thousands of times hoping other people will see it. The more diverse your own account is, with lots of different favourite sites from a number of interest groups, the more likely it is that a new find will appear to lots of other Stumblers.
Confused? The important things are that StumbleUpon lets you save your bookmarks online so that you, or any of your friends, can always access them from any computer AND it helps you find sites throughout the internet that match your interest but you may never have heard of. Keep clicking around and if you see The Top Floor Flat or Spoonfed pages appear, be sure to give me a !
by:Meg
It’s noon on a Saturday and all I can think about is hitting someone. I’m ready to go three brutal minutes in the ring and at the end of those three minutes, I’m going to challenge them to a game of chess.
Wait… what?
Confused? Ladies and gentleman, the perfect combination of physical and mental strength and ingenuity can now be found in chessboxing…. Read the rest of my article on Spoonfed.
I was a quarter of an hour late into the Spoonfed office this morning through no fault of my own. In fact I leave at exactly the same time every morning (7:45am) and arrive at the office, which is 8 miles away, anytime between 8:40 and 9:30, usually rolling in just before 9am. So how on earth does 8 miles take 90 minutes? Here are the top 10 things that delay the London commuter.
1) Cyclists
I complained about cyclists when I lived in California. I complained about then when I lived in Maine. But I will never again complain about cyclists after living in London. I’m not sure what causes these masochists to loose all fear of death in the face of double decker buses, but whatever common sense gene they’re missing, it manifests itself as the tendency to bike well below the speed limit in the bus lane on busy streets and not letting the bus pass. Thanks.
2) Slow walkers in the underground halls
Slow walkers are annoying anywhere. But they are most annoying as the underground announcment system is saying “stand back, the doors are closing” and if those people would JUST GET OUT OF YOUR WAY you would have made it to train. Of course, when you’re behind a slow walker, the next bus or train won’t arrive for another 10 minutes.
3) Person under a train
I realise this is callous and there’s nothing funny about people who are so desperate that they want to end their lives. But it says something about the frequency of suicides on the London underground that there is an automated announcement citing severe delays or station closures due to “a person under a train.” Please, if you ever have such thoughts, seek help. At the very least, don’t choose to be a person under a train during commute hours.
4) Diversions
Diversions. Sounds like something fun, entertaining… I don’t know, diverting! Unfortunately, diversions are a fancy way of saying that buses aren’t going to go where you expect them to go and they’re going to no do so very very slowly using round-about roads you’ve never seen before for no understandable reason.
5) Tourists
Fortunately, this is becoming slightly less of a problem as the summer ends but London is a popular enough tourist location that there will always, ALWAYS be someone confused by the ticketing system, unsure of which change to use when paying bus fare, or blocking major walkways while trying to read a tube map.
6) Crazy bus drivers
The bus drivers in this city are insane. I think it might be a job requirement. This generally becomes most obvious when they (insanely) decide to maneuver the bus into a space where a bus most clearly CAN NOT fit. All bystanders and passengers look on in horror while trucks, cars, sidewalks or buildings nearly scrape the sides of their chosen method of transport. Then, everything stops entirely while all drivers involved wonder how they are going to get unstuck.
7) Narrow roads
London is such a quaint city. Clearly evolved from more provincial roots, you have pubs that are hundreds of years old, ancient traditions, the ruins of the original roman city and ROADS THAT ARE THE WIDTH OF TWO HORSES. While this was great when all you needed on the road were two horses, when you have two double decker buses, a parked delivery truck, and a black cab and four bikers who thought they could fit in as well, things tend to slow down.
8 ) Broken underground barriers
For how much we pay for our Oyster cards, travel cards, and underground tickets (£4 for a one-way 2 zone trip?!) you’d think they would manage to make the things that accept our expensive travel vouchers functional. Instead, long queues of people stand outside the single working barrier and glare at the station master who shrugs apologetically.
9) Black Cabs
Possibly even worse than cyclists, these maniac drivers don’t generally have a concept of how much space is needed for their vehicle. Or stop lights. Or how not to enter an intersection when they can’t get through. I don’t have the money to use the cabs but I’m pretty sure if I did, I’d be gripping the armrest, white-knuckled, the entire trip.
10) Minor delays
The biggest contributor to severe delays in my commute are ‘minor delays.’ This comically overused indicator (which can mean anything from ‘the trains are working fine’ to ‘you’ll be stuck in the tube with no prayer of getting out for the next 45minutes while we move between two stations’) gives you hope that things are only somewhat busy, and pretty close to working. It’s time I figured out what a lie that really is.
So when I get into work, I’ve survived a harrowing, life-threatening experience that. I overcome quite a bit on my way to the Spoonfed offices so it’s a good thing that there’s always a hot cup of tea ready to go when I arrive.
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I ve been singing the praises of the collaborative creation of Courvoisier and jelly makers Bompas and Parr ever since I heard about plans to create a giant punch bowl so big one could row a boat across it. The idea of a bowl of punch where one could...
and when you click that button you are taken to a random page on the internet that someone else who is a member of the site had added to their list of favourite bookmarks and tagged with an interest of yours.
or 
which makes it more or less likely that others will see it again. 
