toasty buttermilk pie.

no pictures sorry :( 

The title was originally "Browned Butter Buttermilk Pie," but there was too much butter going on. Not that that's a problem for most people ..

I actually reduced the butter in the recipe, but increased it in the title! Ha ha! I feel so clever. Actually, I get this "cleverness" from my dad.

(a fey days ago, over texting)

Me: The temperature is 97 degrees right now, and the heat index is 110. My work still has no AC. 

Dad: No need to go to India. 

(few minutes later, trying to continue conversation) 

Me: Can we go to Denville Dairy for dinner?!?! 

Dad: This is "cool" idea. 

Ya see, ya see? I just can't help but exude as much "cleverness" as he does. And if you haven't noticed my oh so subtle quotation marks by this point ... ok let's keep the focus on the pie.

tell me about: Joghurt Chocolate!

One day I went to a Brazilian place to eat Brazilian burgers (more on that in a future post) with a few friends. Afterwards, we drove to a nearby Brazilian grocery store. They had lots of interesting things, like these Quail eggs.

They were so tiny! 10 calories each, too. It would take eight of them to equal the caloric value of the regular chicken egg most of us are used to, at least here in the US.

Where do ostriches live? Do people in those places take advantage of ostrich eggs? I saw either a Food Network show (ugh. Food Network.) or a Top Chef challenge where people had to cook with an ostrich egg. One person carefully carved open the thing & dumped the contents into a large measuring cup (that had the capacity of  > 1 cup) and poured it that way onto the grill. One person tried cracking it open directly onto the grill and failed majorly.

basic cream cheese frosting.

Yum. I love frosting. For some people, that's the worst part of the cake, especially on those store-bought cakes. The ones that are yellow, chocolate, or white cake, and have that massively thick layer of buttercream on top and skimming the sides.

You know what I'm talking about! That buttercream is heavy stuff. And despite turning off every single person I know, I like it. I like that sickly sweetness .. is that weird?

Don't get me wrong, I totally appreciate mellow frostings (like the one I am about to share with you) and glazes, icings ... but I don't mind that super sweet buttercream. I kind of anticipate it.

strawberry cake.

This strawberry cake is my new love. Born purely from inspiration. And I am so excited it came out well!

"orange velvet" whoopie pies.

Hello lovelies. How was this past weekend for you? Good, hopefully?

I traveled a lot this past weekend, but the weekend before, I stayed closer to home. It was a pretty busy three days. Friday was more relaxing than Saturday and Sunday, though. I went over a friend's house to meet my three other friends. We all brought food & scrolled through the On Demand movies on IO for like ten minutes because the cursor was moving soooo slow. And eventually decided on watching No Strings Attached.

Progression of the night? Read on.

cat-eye look: with pencil eyeliner.

(view full post for pictures!)

Okay. I feel like everyone has their staple feature to play up with makeup or their signature makeup look. And by everyone, I am mostly referring to youtube beauty gurus.

The one look that stands out to me as the most appealing is DulceCandy87's winged eyeliner. I love to focus on my eyes, whether it's a swipe of liquid liner on the upper lashline, a hint of a shimmering eyeshadow in the inner corner by the tear ducts, or a simple coat of Full 'n Soft mascara, I always want to enhance my eyes.

My most desired, yet rarely achieved look is the Cat-Eye, or Winged Eyeliner. My eyes are not that large, and they usually become even smaller when I smile, so an eye fully rimmed with eyeliner closes my eye more and results in .. not so good results. Thus, I have had issues with too thick liner, too thin, almost nonexistent, eyes that look like I elbowed myself while furiously whisking heavy cream into whipped cream ..

But ladies. And gents ... I have found an eyeliner that helped me overcome my inept-ness in a matter of minutes. I might possibly be in love.

spiced honey face mask.

Doesn't the "spiced honey" part sound like it's a cake or bread or something?

But it's not!

Before I get into the mask, story - I spent the day at Rutgers, with the people I will be living with next year. We also visited our other friend, who cannot make pasta. He put hot water to boil. But before it even began boiling whatsoever, he dumped in a bunch of pasta. And by a bunch, I mean a whole box of linguine. Into what would be termed a "small saucepan." My suitemate (who likes to cook, as well) and I ended up watching his pasta for him, and we turned off the stove when it was cooked to al dente. And we found a long hair in the water.

And then we walked over to the common area, where he was playing Smash and everyone else was watching and sat down. Yeah, it was a little gross.

zucchini ricotta galette.

I should try to make more summer-focused things that take advantage of the fresh, in season produce. This way, the wonderful flavor of the fruits or vegetable themselves can highlight the dish.

This galette = summer. It's like those analogies that used to be on the SAT.

review: Denville Dairy.

This place is amazing.

I was going to write: This. place. is. amazing. But it's so halting and even though that's closer to how I would say it, it's just too slow and ugh. I prefer: THIS PLACE IS AMAZING. or: this place is amazing.
One emphasizes enough and one underemphasizes to the extent that it emphasizes.
So yeah, I don't know how this turned into a linguistics blog. Or whatever the correct term is.

SO DENVILLE DAIRY. I would go here everyday if it were a perfect world in which ice cream, cake, and whipped cream calories mattered nary.

It is a little local shop that fills up fast, especially on hot summer days. They have not only ice cream to scoop and serve, but tons of regular, fat-free, and sugar-free pre-cartoned flavors, if you want to enjoy the deliciousness at home whenever you want. Additionally, they have ice cream cakes, ice cream cookie sandwiches, and awesome sundaes that are prepared already and waiting patiently for you in the freezer. The different cash register for these already ready items saves one the (usually) long wait on line with the people ordering ice cream.

Read on for pictures and descriptions of the flavors I have tried.

just chillin on the swing wit mah ice cream. 

vaseline + toothbrush.

Another beauty post, just saying.

Have you ever just felt like pampering yourself? Like, a lot?

I felt like that the other day. I wanted to pamper every aspect of myself - do my nails, do my hair, exfoliate my entire body, condition my cuticles, use a face mask, and so on.

I love it. I love the idea, and I think I love (even more so) the luxurious aspect of putting in the effort to do all of that. Because it's not easy! Just look at my preview of the list above. Doing my nails in and of itself is a huge task, because I basically do whatever manicurists do at my own home .. except a little more. And it's me, so it takes longer.

But sometimes all the work is what I crave. Why? I don't know .. maybe because I know all the work is going into myself. It is all purely for me. And I don't really spend time on myself at all. Even when baking, I have to make sure my family will eat it.

That face mask I made before (and froze! i have been craving it for a while, but i haven't had time or the strength to use it :( ) was excellent for pampering myself.

So that's the face part down.

orange spice cake.

I made my own cake! This is a variation on a vanilla cake, but I feel that there are enough tweaks for me to consider it my own.

swedish visiting cake.

I don't know whether this is Swedish or why it is called a visiting cake.

But I like to keep things simple, so I won't question the name of this fabulous cake, unless someone is willing to explain it to me.

I am going to keep this post short and let you focus on the multitude of pictures I have of the process.

chicken fatayer.

Very sorry for the picture quality - all taken at night, therefore have yellow tinges.

Ever write an entire blogpost, complete with EVERYTHING, including a long, detailed recipe, and then have it deleted because your computer decides to only save the draft after writing three sentences, and then goes oh, why save the rest? It's not like it took an hour to type or anything.

So I am sorry, but I cannot retype an hour's worth of creativity and detail. A short post will have to suffice.

I am not too knowledgable about Arabic cuisine; I was just browsing on tastespotting one day when I came across a picture of doughy triangles that appeared to have some sort of filling. The caption read Chicken Fatayer. I had never heard of it before, so it grabbed my interest.

(^that's what got saved. silly blogger.com tricks are for kids ... WOAH. woah wait I just had an intense revelation. TRICKS are for kids. TRIX are for kids. has anyone ever noticed this before?!!?! this is ridiculous. i never knew ... i can't even .. )

The dough has been separated into balls to be rollen out.

I googled the dish, but there is not much online about it. This is what I gathered: chicken fatayer is an Arabic pie. The term pie here is in the sense of how spankopita is a Greek pie. Fatayers can have fillings ranging from meat, to spinach and cheese (see how similar different cultures can be?), to just cheese. The filling is enclosed within a bready yeast dough. Yum.