Crazy Cake

As far back as I can remember my Mom has made a crazy cake for my birthday. It became a tradition that has been hard to continue in the last few years as I moved farther away from my parents. This year, the yearning was just too strong, and I had to have that decadent chocolate on chocolate cake once more. So I made it myself!

Crazy Cake is called that because you do something crazy when you make it - you stir up the ingredients IN the pan!! Crazy right? :) To  make this cake, you first start with your ingredients, then realize you don't have vinegar, panic, and run next door to ask for a tablespoon. Or, you could just gather your ingredients including vinegar because you are a smart person and would never try to make something without first checking that you have all of your ingredients.

Note the lack of Vinegar in this photo....

Then you mix together your sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in your square cake pan - remember this is Crazy Cake! You want to stir it really well, checking the sides and corners. Then make three indentations in the mix - one small, one not so small, and one pretty big. In these you will put your vanilla, vinegar, and oil.

Vanilla, Vinegar, Oil

Next pour your cup of water over the top of the whole mix, again stirring very well, making sure you get the corners and sides. (Mom always made this is in a glass pan so you could easily see if you missed any, but alas I do not have a glass pan...so I just had to check and double check!) Once it is well mixed you can clean up the mess you've made along the top and side of the cake pan - that is if you are like me and have gotten a little excited with your stirring and made a mess to clean up! Then it's ready to pop in your 350 degree oven for the next 40 minutes.

Yummy Cake Batter Goodness

Now you have a cake! The next part is the really super fun part of making this cake, and one of the many reasons I owe my Mother so much...(no third rate nursing home for you Ma!)  The next part of the cake is...cue ominous music...the frosting! Also known as the most difficult and easiest to screw up part of this cake! The frosting is basically fudge, and if you stop stirring too soon, it doesn't set quickly enough and you end up with gooeyness that soaks through the cake. If you wait too long to stop stirring, then it is just a piece of fudge on top of your cake. It's very difficult to find the happy medium where the frosting actually sticks to the top of the cake AND sets up nicely. My sister says she does two batches of frosting and purposefully puts the first layer on too soon so she gets that gooeyness. I suppose if you step back and look at it, it's still chocolate cake with some kind of chocolate frosting, and there's nothing wrong with that!!

So, we start with our ingredients again, and breathe a sigh of relief that we have everything this time...cause by now you really want this cake.

Then you toss in everything but the vanilla, bring to a boil, boil for two full minutes, remove from heat, add the vanilla, and start stirring. You will stir and stir until you think you can stir no more. Then if you are lucky you will hand the stirring off to someone else, say a child who has asked for this silly cake once again and loves to help stir, then you will stir more. (No, really, keep stirring. It needs to be really thick. Unless you want it runny. That's ok too.)

You stir until the frosting is getting thick, then quickly pour over the top of the cooled (by now) cake. Hopefully it will set quickly, and you have yourself a completed Crazy Cake!

I didn't stir long enough. But I still enjoyed every bite!

Now all you need is an ice cold glass of milk, a fork, and place to enjoy your sweet chocolate yumminess.

What else could you want? Knitting, a book, crazy cake and milk!

Here's the recipe in recipe form:

Crazy Cake

1 ½ C flour 1 C sugar 4 tbsp plain cocoa 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 tbsp vinegar 6 tbsp oil 1 tsp vanilla 1 C cold water

Frosting 2 C sugar ½ C milk 1/3 C cocoa 8 tsp butter 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°

In 8 or 9 inch square ungreased pan, mix flour, sugar, cocoa, soda and salt with fork. Make 3 holes in the mixture. Put vinegar in the first, oil in the second, and vanilla in the third. Pour water over the top and stir with fork until all ingredients are well mixed. Make sure all dry ingredients are moistened, check sides and corners. Bake for 40 minutes. Do not remove from pan-let cool.

Frosting: mix first four ingredients, boil for two minutes. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and beat with a wooden spoon until thick. Spread quickly over cake, as frosting will start to harden quickly. If desired, double the frosting.

Learning As I Go

And just like that, we're back to my garden!

Hard Lesson learned: Actually research something before you dive in and do it! I know my seedlings need to be hardened off, so I took my Huckleberries out today, I'm hoping to plant them at the end of this week (I know it's really early for MT, but I'm so excited about them and I want them to be free soon!). I also took two rhubarb seedlings out. Then after I found one of the rhubarbs near death (I fear she may have passed already) I did a little internet search. There I learned that Hardening off is a long and arduous process. You can't just set the plants out, there's a procedure to follow!

Plan to harden your plants for the week leading up to planting. Find a nice shady spot for them to hang out in, and set them out there in the early morning so they can adjust to the cooler mornings, then warmer afternoons. At first only leave them outside for a few hours, then over the subsequent days add the time they are outside by one to two hours a day. You also want to be moving them closer to their future home over the course of the week, so that when they go outside for real they are ready for the heat, wind, and rain! Let's hope I haven't killed my huckleberries by setting them out in direct sunlight today!!

I also had good news: that unfocused pinkish protuberance on my raspberry stick is a branch!! Woohoo!! 

In knitting news, I am working on a new cat toy that was suggested by a customer from the Etsy shop. I am making several prototypes (remember my discussion from yesterday, the mice are at least tried and true toys - imagine the rigorous testing I put new toys through!!! These have been in the works since January...) Anyway, once I finish the prototypes (we're on stage two, so hopefully they don't need a stage three!) I will be hosting a giveaway contest! Keep your eyes out for it this summer :)

Happy Tuesday!

How to Graph Knitting Patterns

Over the past year this has morphed into a novice gardening blog, and while I love to show the world what I'm doing wrong with my garden, sometimes it's nice to talk about things I actually know how to do! Like graphing new Mouse patterns! Hopefully knowing my process will also give you insight into why it takes so long to put a new product up on Etsy. I'm like American Car designers...have an idea in 2000, see product in real life in 2012! ;)

First I write a big long list of ideas. Sometimes things sit on the list for years before I do anything, you know, you've got to give an idea the test of time - is it still a good idea three years from now? Sometimes things go on the list and are on the back of a mouse within a week (or a day). While chatting with the boyfriend and friend I decided to do a group of comic book mice (now I'm breaking a personal rule telling you about these mice before they are ready to sell, but hey maybe it will get you more excited for the actual release?) and between the three of us we came up with three different three pack ideas: DC, Marvel, Marvel Groups. Then I go out and with comic book nerdery help find the right image to put on the back of my mice:

Here you can see I picked out an image of the Punisher, then I take pencil to graph paper and start drawing out what I think I can fit on a mouse. Oftentimes I will actually build a square showing the space I have for stitches just to keep myself within a good stitch and row count. I also do my thinking now, plan what row to start the pattern in, how many stitches in, which direction to make the pattern etc. This way it's written down and I will do it the same every time. Or at least that's the idea. It's a good idea to write things down in a way you'll understand a year from now too, the more info the better. Believe me, I've learned that lesson the hard way! 

Next I actually test the pattern. I knit the mouse with the new pattern on the back. It then goes into a bag with other mice waiting to be felted. Once I have enough I do a batch of felting. This process sometimes takes a week to 6 months or longer. Once the mouse has come out of felting I check to see how the pattern turned out. If I don't like it I chart again and test again. (There's actually a new set of "Talking Mice" that aren't ready yet because they are in this stage. Made my P's too pointy dang nab it) Once I like how the felted Mouse looks, the pattern can be transferred to a "Pattern Booklet" which is basically graph paper that I fold in three, then I have room for three - five different patterns, graphs and written directions. If the pattern is really good I'll mark it in Sharpie, like the Peace symbol below:

That's pretty much it. Get an idea, graph it til it looks right, test it, test it again, then get busy making it! Also, feel free to use my (untested) Punisher and Peace Symbol patterns. I figure if I show it to you, it's free game! 

The only bad part about this multi-step process and my knit-pickyness is that my coffee table goes from this:

to this:

(And that's a good day!)

Happy knitting, and feel free to ask any question you have about charting and 'fixing' patterns :)

Raspberry Bushes

We live in a duplex where our neighbor is also the landlord. One day I expressed interest in planting raspberry bushes along the fence line next to their raspberry bushes, and my wonderful landlady said "If you want raspberries, we'll purchase them for you!" So earlier this week that wonderful landlady and I finished clearing out the raspberry patch, and last night she knocked on the door letting me know there were five bushes and a few bags of compost and manure on the back porch! (It's Chicken Manure and "Garden Compost", I'll keep you updated on the status of the bushes!) This morning I worked the compost and manure into the soil (we have very heavy clay soil, and I've heard that compost and manure work best for amending the soil!) and then planted my bushes. It seems to be perfect timing as we will have some cloudy days coming up, which is also important when planting raspberries! I just hope we live here long enough to enjoy some berries from our bushes! Here's a picture of the finished raspberry patch! (If you look really close you can see my five stark raspberry sticks poking up!)

Here are a few shots of the rest of the yard as of today:

I'm hoping to cut sod for the asparagus patch (will be situated behind the Raised Beds) and the Green Bean Trellis soon, but my hands are a bit sore from hand tilling today, and my list of indoor chores is pretty long! Plus, my helper has gotten a new job, and between training and working out his last two weeks at the old job, it looks like I'll be doing all the manual labor myself! Maybe next weekend once all of my finals are finished for the semester....

Also - I have been knitting a little bit, and should have some new products to show off in the near future! :)