epic backlog - recovery!

After I finished with my Qual, it was time for work. And homework. And catching up with all the people I'd been neglecting. I took the next several weeks to make tasty cookies, but I didn't really get around to posting. Nothing was too exciting about life, so I'll just talk briefly about the cookies.

(Marked as a best cookie) (63) To be brief about these first cookies will be difficult, because they were very delicious! I had carrots left over from making a carrot cake, so I used them to make carrot cake cookies. The cookies are a basic recipe, with carrot, raisins, and oats, as well as cinnamon and nutmeg. The filling is a standard cream cheese frosting. The cookies turned out nice and soft, and paired with the frosting kind of tasted like the Little Debbie oatmeal pies that I used to eat as a kid... except that these are a lot healthier, and the filling has no weird unidentified hydrogenated death oils. Honestly, I think this is the tastiest recipe yet. Hooray!


These next cookies were chosen so that I wouldn't get totally stuck in a pattern of cookies with filling, and so that I could get them done a bit quickly - I spent all day Saturday being involved in a wedding (congratulations Josh and Janine!!). Although, actually, these are blondies. Here, a basic blondie batter (you know, brown sugar, flour, eggs, butter) is mixed with (and covered with) chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts, and dried cranberries, then put in cupcake tins. Unfortunately, some of the stuff on top was a little loose, and fell off when people were eating them. The blondies were pretty good, but if I make them again I'll definitely be putting more cranberries in them. (64)

The week after I went on a baking spree (this is the same week I made those cake balls) and made what my cookbook calls Sarah Bernhardt cookies (65). According to Wikipedia, which is the source of all credible knowledge, Sarah Bernhardt was an exceptionally famous French stage actress in the late 19th century. My cookbook claims that this name is due to the many layers of these cookies resembling the layers of characters Bernhardt played. Or something like that. I don't know about these things, but I do know that I really like these cookies: these are almond macaroons (which kind of taste like marzipan) with a dollop of chocolate mousse on top of them. The whole ensemble is coated in semi-sweet chocolate mixed with just a little bit of vegetable shortening. Since they were covered in chocolate, I had to work hard to get people to eat them, but once they tried them, they were impressed. I like to describe their taste as very high class, and considering the cost of the almond paste in the macaroons and the amount of time taken in preparation, I think the description is fairly accurate. Maybe I'll make these again sometime for something fancy.

An epic tale

It's been a very stressful month since my last post, but somehow (and probably not wisely) I have kept up my baking, and even remembered to take pictures of the results.

And thus begins my epic tale of the Qual.

For those of you not well-acquainted with the world of academia, I'll explain the situation a little:
The path of pilgrimage to the Ivory Tower is fraught with obstacles, trials, and rites of passage to weed out those who lack the ability or determination to achieve the final goal, which is Knowledge. The Qualifying Exam occurs a little ways down the path, after one has toughed it out through the Undergraduate Education and Graduate School Admissions, as well as the First Year of graduate school.

In the Qualifying Exam, pilgrims are asked questions that should allow them to demonstrate their proficiency in their chosen subject. In the specific case of Physics in the Cornfield, eight questions in what are considered the four Main Topics of Physics must be answered in two three-hour sessions. To pass this test, the pilgrim must have sufficient knowledge of concepts and equations from his or her senior level undergraduate courses and be able to write very quickly. Upon passing, he may continue along towards his PhD. However, if he fails, he must try again in a year, and if he fails again, he is no longer allowed to pursue his degree.

Knowing this fully, I entered into my studying much later than my brighter peers, and had significant trouble forcing myself to focus and start working through the many old problems available online. I spent time reading textbooks, making formula sheets, cleaning my apartment, sleeping a lot, and getting very frustrated with old problems from 1995.

That weekend, I made brownies (59), because brownies are simple, and because marbled things are pretty. I failed to realize in advance that the coconut and condensed milk in the light part would not have a very strong taste, and so I was sorely disappointed to taste a brownie, and to only have the coconut texture to let me know it was actually in there. Without the taste, the texture just made the brownies seem weird.

Riding on the tails of this disappointment came terrible unhappiness at my lack of work ethic, and the realization that the only way I could possibly get through would be by God's grace. So after some serious praying, I dove into the next week.

Early in that week, it dawned upon me that it was foolishness to continue on my quest alone, and so I joined two of my stronger (i.e. smarter) friends in their studying. Their motivation was catching, and my difficulty with the subjects was alarming, and so the next several weeks passed in a panicked flurry of practice problems and pasta. For, indeed, I switched over into a mode where I spared little time for non-Physics endeavors, including food.

When I did spare a little time for cookie baking, I attempted to make chocolate meringues (60). Clearly, I did not leave enough time for whipping them, as the one shown in the picture on the left had the most shape. Aesthetically, these were a complete failure. However, they still tasted good, and although they required two hours in the oven, I was able to spend those two hours busy with... you guessed it... more practice problems.

In the final week before the Qual, my peers and I started doing practice runs of the exam - we would take old exam sets and sit down from 7-10pm in a poorly-lit and steeply-inclined auditorium, in order to get used to the misery of the real test. After each practice test, we'd get together and compare answers. Or, rather, I would look at what my friends had done, since I wasn't really able to do a lot of things. My level of panic growing, I stayed for later nights as my more prepared peers took evenings off, making lists of the things I knew I needed to understand, finding problems related to those concepts, and working on them until I thought I maybe had some idea.

At this point I was desperate. My list of concepts ran four pages long, and each of those concepts took at least half an hour to master. By the weekend, I knew that I had to forgo the practice exam schedule and just focus on my weak points. So I worked out problems, skipped the Annie Get Your Gun cast party, and tried my hardest not to do anything too unwise before the test.

During a short break I whipped up some ANZAC Biscuits (61), which seemed appropriate as they're the cookies Australian families would send to soldiers in World War 1. This wasn't war, but I certainly had no time to go the grocery store or to roll out dough, so these were a great way for me to keep up with my baking. The taste of these was rather sweet - perhaps because I could only find sweetened coconut, and the only real flavor came from the golden syrup the recipe called for. Unfortunately, this was another case of coconut providing texture but not much flavor.

Monday came, and I was a mess. I was so scared about the exam that night that I couldn't eat and had to force myself not to listen to the voice in the back of my head, repeating over and over, "I can't do this. I'm going to fail." Fortunately, several friends and family members emailed and called, wishing me luck and reminding me that they believed in me (which totally sounds like the climax of an 80s movie or a 90s anime where the heroine is just about to give up).

So on Monday night I took the first half of my test. Some of it was alright, some of it was awful, and I came out of it totally numb. After an evening of beer and Rock Band, I returned home to sleep. I awoke on Tuesday more scared than I had been the day before - although I knew that the four specific topics from the night before wouldn't be repeated, they still could ask anything else, and there were still so many topics I hadn't mastered. In addition, I figured I had only gotten half of the points on the first part of the test, which meant the pressure was on to perform better on the second part. Knowing this, I entered into another studying frenzy, until the exam was near enough that I had to go to the Physics building.

I entered into the second part of this ordeal completely aware of the inadequacy of my preparation, and completely terrified. When the exam had concluded, I had no idea if I had done well enough to pass. By the time the letters were distributed on Friday I had completely convinced myself that I had not passed and would have to go through it all over again next year. So as I opened my letter, I steeled myself for the "I regret to inform you..." that meant failure, but instead I found:

I am delighted to be able to tell you that on the basis of your written qualifying examination and your record as a graduate student in this department, the Qualifying Examination Committee recommends you as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in Physics.

Unlike the Committee Chairman, I was not delighted - or, rather, not just delighted - I was ecstatic, incredulous, completely in shock. I had to read the letter again to make sure it was real.

It was definitely real. The letter is now stuck my refrigerator as a monument of the fact that miracles do happen, and as a reminder that someone, at some point, thought that I am good enough to be in this program, and to be chasing after this PhD.

So, bridge crossed and giant defeated, I celebrated that weekend with fancier baking: vanilla cookies made into a sandwich with white chocolate raspberry filling (62). The filling was made with the juice from fresh pureed raspberries, heavy cream, and white chocolate, which means that I was in heaven. Somehow it ended up that too much liquid got into the filling, so it was very runny, but I added more white chocolate and that (mostly) solved the problem. It was good, in this case, that the actual cookies were very simple and not too sweet, as they were necessary to balance out the richness of the filling.


It would be nice to end the story here, to say that all has been well and calm ever since, but that is far from true - the long journey towards my degree continues, with small trials (like dysfunctional circuits), and other milestones (like the Preliminary Exam) to be passed on the way. For now I fill my time with research, exercise when I can get it, and my ever-continuing baking projects.

There's No Business Like Show Business

...especially when it comes to throwing my schedule into complete turmoil.

Over the past several weeks I've been kept super busy with work and rehearsals (and the actual show, of course) and my attempt to keep up some semblance of a social life in the midst of all that chaos. It was rough. But after 4 shows, the run of Annie Get Your Gun is over and I can move on to finish my summer as a normal person.

Aw, who am I kidding? I have three weeks left to study as hard as I can for my Qualifying Exam, which is basically the most important exam of my whole life. That means nonstop studying between then and now. In fact, I should be studying right now. In order to get back to my textbooks as quickly as possible, I will have to keep this post brief.

Yes, I realize I'm backlogged on 4 posts now. I'll give you pictures, brief descriptions, and will do my best not to wax too scientific on you.

After all my trip to Michigan funtime, I decided that I really like hazelnut flavoring in my coffee. This made me think that perhaps I would also enjoy hazelnuts in cookies too, so I chose to make hazelnut orange shortbread (55).

This was an interesting recipe, because the dough is about half flour and half toasted hazelnuts (which, I admit, I think I burned a little bit), and the orange zest has a nice strong taste. There's cane sugar on top, which adds just enough sweetness to help keep this shortbread from tasting like a granola bar... or, at least I was a bit reminded of some Nature Valley business or some such. My coworkers disagreed.

(marked as a best cookie) The week after that I decided that, being the middle of summer, it was the perfect time to make what I consider to be a perfect dessert for the summer: lemon bars (56). I'm not sure if it was the recipe, or if it's just an inherent quality of lemon bars, but these were SO GOOD. When I brought them in to work I encouraged everyone around me to eat them up so I wouldn't.

The recipe for the crust had an unusual instruction in it: it called for grating frozen butter so that it could be mixed with the flour and sugar. I think my grater was too fine, though, because by the time I got halfway through a stick the end had started to melt.

After that, I made peanut butter and jelly bars (57). These were a late-night endeavor, thrown together after loading everything into the theater and running through musical and technical rehearsals, so I chose something simple that required minimal shopping. What these bars did call for, however, was a LOT of peanut butter. A medium-sized jar of peanut butter went into this recipe, along with a couple sticks of butter and some other random stuff. Essentially what these are is a peanut butter dough covered with a layer of strawberry jam (homemade by my grandma), and then covered with another layer of peanut butter dough and roughly chopped peanuts.

When I tried these, I found, to my dismay, that they taste just like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that has been in a lunchbox all morning. My friends said they really liked these, but something put me off. It may be that I don't like how strawberry jam goes with peanut butter. It may be that the consistency made me think of elementary school cafeterias. I don't know. But I wasn't particularly fond of these bars. I did like the peanut butter dough, though, so I might see about revising this recipe to make peanut butter cookies (especially considering the melty peanut butter cookies I made last year).

Finally, this past weekend, I found myself a tiny bit of free time to whip together some key lime bars (58). Now, I love key lime pie, and I like lime in general, and so Saturday turned into a lime fiasco by mistake: my family came over to see the musical, and while they were here I served them Pad Thai (with lime), limeade, and these bars. But that's slightly off-topic.

I like these bars (although not as much as the lemon bars) - the key lime juice makes them exceptionally tart, so that adding whipped cream on top tones them down just enough to be amazing. I'm also particularly fond of graham cracker crusts, which is exactly what is on the bottom layer. The top layer is made with key lime juice, egg yolks, and sweetened condensed milk.


Aside from baking, I've picked up a couple things to keep me occupied in my nonexistent free time: I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I've spent a bit of time getting stars in Super Mario Galaxy, and I've started watching an old BBC comedy called 'Are you Being Served?'. I expect that I will be dropping all three of these in order to study more this month.

I'll try to keep the cookie posts up, although I warn in advance that everything I choose will be chosen for its quick prep time.

Ok that is all for now ^.^

real update soon

but for now, I think this is totally worth sharing:

My advisor went to China last week for a conference and he picked up small gifts for his hard-working students... which are multi-use matches. The thing that's awesome about these is I totally snagged one with Chairman Mao on it. Oh yeah.
I'm not sure why I'm so excited about this, but for now I'll blame it on my amusement at propaganda.

One Year: I've been scooped!?!

I realize, of course, that keeping a blog for anything at all is not particularly unique in this day and age, but I was glued to the tube the other night when I saw this (notice 1:15 to 1:20 especially). Oh great, a feel-good movie about a woman working her way through a cookbook and keeping a blog on it. Given, Julia Child is kind of cooler than Martha Stewart, and I don't have a soul-crushing job (or, at least I haven't discovered it to be so yet). And if, in the future, someone accuses me of copying this movie, I will at least be able to defend myself with the fact that I started this project an entire year before I heard anything about it.

Yes, that's right, I've been baking cookies on a weekly basis for a year now! The time has passed just as quickly as cliches call for, and here I am in perhaps the busiest summer of my life.

Why am I so busy? Well, let's see: I work full-time in a lab, I have three hours of rehearsal practically every evening, and whatever spare time I have otherwise goes into exercise or studying for the qual. I've still found time to sneak in cookie baking, but many of my projects have been uncomplicated to allow me to do other things. Although I'm often late and backlogged with posting, I promise that I'm keeping up this project, and will continue to stay on schedule with my baking.

Last weekend I made the 7-hour drive home to spend the Fourth of July with my family. This is one of the most important holidays on my Dad's side of the family, perhaps because there are something like 8 birthdays that happen in June and July put together. So everyone came home - my drive wasn't the longest, either - for a weekend of sun, soccer, and celebration. It was awesome. It also meant that I did not make cookies on Saturday.

Instead, I came home from rehearsal Monday night and started baking cookies that are perhaps the most interesting thing I've made yet: Cornmeal Thyme Cookies (53). Now, it's very difficult to imagine what it tastes like to put a savory herb into a cookie, and, to be honest with you, I thought that these were going to be disgusting. Or, considering that this is a published cookbook, I thought they wouldn't be better than mediocre.

After mixing everything together - that is, the cornmeal, currants, thyme, lots of butter, sugar, and other normal cookie things - and baking, I found that these are some of the best cookies I've ever had, especially the day after they were baked. Something between the first three ingredients listed made for a fantastic and unique taste, and perhaps it's the unique part that won me over. After all, I have some basis of comparison for most of the cookies I make, but this was totally new, and totally delicious. My friends were equally surprised that these were so good. If you're looking for a different cookie to share with people, this is definitely it.


Yesterday I decided to go with something a little more normal, and whipped up some Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies (54). These are a basic cookie with Dutched Cocoa in the dough and bittersweet chocolate chunks and dried tart cherries mixed in. The product is a couple dozen large cookies that have a very strong chocolate taste. The cherries do not feature too heavily in the overall taste of the cookies, but when you get a bite of one, you definitely notice it. Although I think these cookies are tasty, I would have liked it if the cherries were a stronger taste in them - especially considering how difficult it was to find sour cherries around here. Ah well. I'll chalk these down as good, but they were kind of a waste of money.


Alright, it's time for some sleep - I've got to be up early tomorrow for the start of yet another busy week. Hi ho the glamorous life!

Backlog, take 2

I apologize for my tardiness in posting yet again, despite it being summer, I've been insanely busy. A typical day for me lately goes like this: wake up and go to work, from work go to rehearsal, from rehearsal go out with people. Rinse and repeat for at least half of the week. Weekends get changed up a little, but I like to go swimming, and then (again) end up spending time with my friends. Whom I love. So it's cool.

The first set of cookies shown here are a basic chocolate chip cookie (50), with ingredients set up so that they're thin and crunchy. You can see Domo is crunching on this one. As far as making chocolate chip cookies to have different textures, one has to vary the ingredients. I'm noticing that things that are crunchy typically have more butter and less flour (cakey things go the other way). At first when I realized this it came as a surprise: for some reason I thought that butter would make things moist or something. This is not true. But yes, these were pretty good, plus they were convenient to make while I was over at my friend's house watching the first Transformers movie.


On the following weekend I was in my cousin's wedding (congratulations Whitney and Adam!!), so I drove home for a whirlwind weekend of fun. I was completely unable to make cookies then, but I managed to sneak some baking in on Wednesday when I decided it was too hot to leave my apartment. Baking didn't really help, but these cookies were quick to make and worked well for the pool party I went to with the people from my lab.

These are called Honey Florentines (51). They're made with butter and honey, some sugar, and the tiniest amount of flour. This is the kind of cookie that melts all over the place in the oven, and the lacelike texture is a result of things boiling and then cooling. Although they were very buttery, these cookies gave the illusion of being a light snack, and they seemed to go over well at the pool party.


(marked as a best cookie) Finally we have Sunday's (yes, I was late again) concoction, Peach Drop Cookies (52), which have won their way onto my top five list. There's a couple reasons why I like these so much: first, they basically taste like Snickerdoodles with peaches in them. Second, their texture is soft and cakelike (more flour, less butter!). Third, they were super easy to make. Aside from the normal ingredients, these cookies have chopped peach bits and homemade peach jam in them. I did not make the jam - it was a Christmas gift from my grandma, which means I should call her and tell her about how I used it. These taste so good... they were especially delicious when I had just taken them out of the oven, and I have to admit I downed about half a dozen while they were still warm. I blame it on that they're too good. As long as peaches are in season, I may end up making these again.

Alright, it's time to get back to work. Rehearsal is picking up since the show is about a month away, and Quals are coming up in two months, so I've really got to get my act together. Oh, right, and posting this stuff on time would be nice too.

Distractions

Well, the semester ended, I passed all my classes, and ran home for a week. After that I crashed in Ann Arbor for a couple days, during which I spent fun times with several of my close friends from undergraduate times, and wowed them with my cooking and baking skills. It helped that I made Truffle Brownies (47), which are now my favorite kind of brownies ever. Yes, these even top Grandma Carol's buttermilk brownies (although I may have to make those sometime again just to check).

These brownies have a lot involved: the base starts with sugar and eggs whipped together for several minutes, with melted unsweetened chocolate and butter added in, followed by the usual blend of flour, baking powder, and salt. Whipping stuff at the beginning makes the brownies pretty light, and the chocolate is nice and dark, which is how it ought to be. After the brownie part is baked and cooled, it is topped with a ganache made from heavy whipping cream and semisweet chocolate. All in all, the experience is one of chocolate decadence, which means tasty tasty bliss. And how is it that I can talk about something I made 3 recipes ago with such detail? It might have something to do with me making it again more recently for a friend's party.

Soon after that baking endeavor, I returned to my own home and started work in the new lab (well, it's new for me). That week basically consisted of me working on a simple optics problem, which actually meant learning how to use Matlab... until I realized that I needed to be using Mathematica. Basically, these are both computational programs, but the first is for numerical stuff (i.e. processing data) and the second is for symbolic stuff (that is, solving equations with variables). I'm actually still not done with that I need to do, but it's a lot of work to learn how to make Mathematica do what I want it to do. I'll get it eventually, though, and then I'm sure I'll be glad to have worked on it.

After concluding a week spent almost exclusively working on the computer, I decided it was time to make cookies that were a little more involved than usual. And so I made what my cookbook calls Alfajores de Dulce de Leche (48). Essentially, these are shortbread cookies (well, less sugar and more flour) sandwiching a layer of dulce de leche. If I had really wanted to work hard, I would have made my own dulce de leche by boiling sweetened condensed milk forever (that is, like 5 hours), but it's summer and I don't like to add more heat to my apartment than is necessary. These were tasty cookies, although a bit rich, and the center layer had to be put on just before eating them, so I kind of didn't like that I couldn't present them already prepared.

Another week passed, with more work (finally some lab work too, hooray) and an audition snuck in on Friday night. As if I don't have enough to do what with preparing for the Qual, learning what I need to do in the lab, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life, I am now singing in the ensemble for CUTC's Annie Get Your Gun. If you're not familiar with the show, here's my synopsis: this is a musical about a woman who's a champion sharpshooter, and she's in love with a guy who can't handle the idea of a woman being better than him. Throw in some other standard Musical Theater types - a young couple's forbidden love and a bunch of chorus numbers - and you've got this show. Although I'm sure I make it sound bad, I actually think it's pretty cute and I'm really excited to be involved ^.^

That weekend I got some of my favorite ingredients (toffee and butterscotch, mostly) to make butterscotch cashew blondies (49), which turned out to be exceptional. I ended up bringing these to a potluck lunch party for a friend, and everyone enjoyed them. Since these are blondies, they're pretty dense, and the three flavors mentioned above blend fantastically.


Okay, I'm off to lunch with friends, I didn't skip last Saturday's cookies, I just don't have them ready to post yet. Expect another rambling entry soon.