The day-to-day, things that are neither here nor there. Follow via RSS.
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It’s such a stereotype. But there really is a moment when suddenly they’re not a baby anymore.
You open up your phone to look for particular photo and notice it’s automatically made a memories album of your kid. So you click and watch, and realize you missed the moment, whenever that was. It’s a weird shock that seems so obvious, it’s like you didn’t get to say goodbye to a friend you always knew had to leave.
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This recipe was in the cookbook that my Grandma Piper customized for me. This is apparently the cake that the Piper family always made for weddings (so my great-grandma’s recipe on my Grandpa’s side, I think), and my Grandma made it for birthday parties. I made this for the first time last week for B’s birthday party on the weekend.
It results in an exceptionally smooth batter, it almost feels a bit too fancy for a kid’s party. But it’s a lovely cake! It also stored well double-wrapped in the fridge for a few days before I iced it. I haven’t tried freezing this cake, but I think it would probably work nicely.
Grandma would have always used her KitchenAid, but it was no problem making this with handheld electric beaters. Her recipe didn’t specify salted or unsalted butter. I used salted and quite liked it. Likewise it didn’t specify the sugar. I’m almost certain she would have used granulated, but I used caster which worked fabulously. If you use caster, just make sure to go with the weight measurement, not cups.
Apparently this recipe makes 3 dozen cupcakes and you have to bake those for 25 minutes. But I’ve never tried it, and there is no more instruction from her on that.
Goes well with this classic white frosting recipe.
* This cake is sort of hard to tell when it’s done. When done, it will have picked up a little bit of color on top and should pull away from the sides of the pan slightly. If you listen to it you shouldn’t hear much crackling, and if you very lightly press the top, it shouldn’t feel like you pop too many bubbles.
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This post by Peter Richardson is wild. I considered doing something like this a few years ago but A) the tech didn’t exist / wasn’t easily accessible, and B) I’ve been sort of afraid of how deep the rabbit hole is.
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My favorite season as a kid was summer (obvi). Then autumn in my 20s, maybe because I actually started experiencing it then. Now it’s spring. You get all of the excitement and anticipation of summer without the humidity and mosquitos. Not sure it will ever be winter, but who knows.
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I think it’s time to get in to macrame. The big girl version of my childhood friendship bracelet habit. F**k it, bring back friendship bracelets too!
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My grandma’s cheesecake is truly the best around in my opinion, and it has been a huge hit on the extremely rare occasions I have made it for friends.
It is a little involved to make, you really need to follow the instructions and ingredients quite carefully in order for this to come out right. It takes about a whole afternoon and it’s best to let it chill in the fridge overnight, but it’s very worth it. Also worth the lactase pill, in my case. Can be made 1–2 days ahead of time.
I’ve included variations on the original recipe below because she included these variations in the cookbook she gave me. I’ve never made them myself though, not yet!
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This is a re-written version of my grandma’s recipe. I inhaled this as a kid.
It’s basically a really massive “drop” biscuit that you then slice in to portions and drown in strawberries + milk. It is one of the quickest and easiest things to make, a must between May and June.
You can use oat milk instead, just try to use something as similar to whole milk in consistency as you can find. The smaller the strawberries, the sweeter they are. A sturdy straw works fantastically as a strawberry core-er.
Also, you can make this ahead of time, but it’s really best enjoyed the same day you make it. The crispy bits of the cake go a little soft after the first day, and the strawberries, while still delicious, start to look a little sad and anemic. It’ll still taste good, but I recommend re-warming a slice of cake if you’re having it the next day or so.
One final thought: This makes quite a lot of cake + strawberries… Might be worth halving this recipe if you’re not serving many people.
As my grandma wrote in her recipe book (she was confident about this recipe, and she wasn’t often wrong): “MMMM good!”
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I think you could do a ton of great variations on this recipe. Like a crushed gingersnap base with chocolate ice cream and butterscotch chips instead of chocolate chips. Or a Biscoff cookie base with coffee ice cream. Or a graham cracker base with quality, real vanilla ice cream.
But below is Grandma Piper’s original recipe, with some notes from my friend Sarajane Blair. Grandma preferred mint chocolate chip.
This is super simple but takes a lot of freezing, so plan to make it at least a day in advance. It’s easiest if you give it a few days and do most of the freezer time overnight.
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This site is ‘bout to become a recipe blog for a hot second… The SuperHi crew was talking about favorite cakes recently, and I have a lot of family recipes to share.
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So apparently you can’t set your iPhone to show AM and PM alongside the 12-hour time. This may not seem like a big deal, but I think it’s a pretty significant accessibility issue.
My grandpa is 100 years old, we just celebrated his birthday in March. He’s doing pretty darn well for his age. The only thing he’s having trouble with is short-term memory. This usually isn’t a big enough problem to cause any major concern at the moment. Although he lives on his own, it’s in an apartment that is equipped for his needs within an assisted living building, and my parents aren’t too far from him.
The thing that is causing problems, pretty major problems, is when he takes a nap and then wakes up and thinks it’s the wrong time of day. This causes him to miss meals because he doesn’t go down to the dining room in time. And when older folks start to regularly miss meals, they get pretty weak pretty fast.
He doesn’t want to cause a fuss, so we don’t know exactly how often this happens. I imagine with other folks, it also might be a bit embarrassing (maybe it is for him as well, I’m not sure). He naps a lot, which is fair enough considering his age, so I suspect it might be more often than we think.
I was talking about this with my mom, asking him if he has a big digital clock in his apartment or something. He does have a clock, but he usually looks at his watch or his phone for the time. I don’t want to suggest that he wear a digital watch, because his watch came from my grandma. So we were looking at our phones, and she pointed out that there’s no AM/PM.
There’s no way of changing it! That seems ludicrous.
I know he could change it to 24-hr time. But I doubt he would do that, because he would probably convince himself that it’s fine and he doesn’t need it. It would be a heck of a lot easier if you could just show AM/PM via the iOS Date & Time settings, as one would expect.
If any Apple folks happen to read this, I’d love if you could take this feedback onboard in some way. Or if you happen to know anyone at Apple, I’d really appreciate if you shared this with them.
In the meantime… I guess we get him a bigger digital clock for his apartment? I’m really not sure.