Red bean crepes?!

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No, like actually, this is making me hyperventilate: http://aroadmorebalanced.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/undressed/

My need to make this recipe is killing me ASD;LAJER;AER

Recipe: Red Velvet Cupcakes!!

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Red Velvet Cake + Creamy Vanilla Frosting
From "The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook"

Notes:
Magnolia Bakery is my favorite bakery in the whole world. Why? Three words: red velvet cupcakes.

As the legend goes, these guys invented red velvet cupcakes. They're often imitated, but never duplicated: perfect frosting, perfect cake consistency, as;dlfjka;elrkjasre it's heaven. There are times I want to drive down to NYC just to get these cupcakes. They're kind of like Aya's muffins in terms of sheer addictiveness. (Although Aya wins because I'd willingly go across the whole country for those, but they have the unfair bonus of seeing Aya, too, so.)

Anyway, THE COOKBOOK HAS THEIR RED VELVET CUPCAKE RECIPE. I copied it down in the bookstore and then ran home and made it. I've made it twice now, and yes, these cupcakes tend to make people moan involuntarily when they eat them. They're sumptuous. Excellent gifts and good for other classy things.

This recipe is very involved, which makes sense since it's such a high-class bakery. There's a lot of stuff going on in a lot of different bowls, and an assistant + an electric mixer is heavily recommended, if not required. It says something that I bust my mixer out to make this recipe; I make everything by hand, even meringue, but this really is quite complicated.

Okay, enough talking, on with the recipe!

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CUPCAKES. FUCK YEAH.

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies!

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Notes: These make a LOT of cookies. Like, a LOT. If you make small cookies, like I do (I use a flat tablespoonful of dough for each one), half of this recipe yields 36 cookies.

Also, these are 90% chocolate. Seriously, it's kind of just like eating a chocolate bar. If you like actually having cookie taste (like I do) you might want to go a little easy on the amount of chocolate chips used.

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Ingredients:

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt (you can actually omit it and it tastes just fine—yes, even with unsalted butter!)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 cups semisweet chunks (or dark chocolate chunks; milk chocolate chunks will make this recipe too sweet).

--

Directions:

1. Place the butter in a large bowl and cream at high speed until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until completely mixed.

2. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking soda. Add to the butter mixture at low speed until just combined and add vanilla extract. Beat on medium speed, scraping bowl down, until blended. Do not overmix.

3. Add chocolate chunks and mix till thoroughly combined. Refrigerate batter until cold, preferably overnight.

4. Preheat a conventional oven to 350 degrees or a convection oven to 300 degrees, and line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop heaping spoonfuls of batter 2 inches apart on the lined baking sheets and bake, turning tray once, until golden brown around edges (we're talking just slightly golden brown, here, if you're making tiny cookies like me) and soft (but not bubbly)—about 9 minutes in a convection oven or 12 in a conventional one. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy :D the chocolate chips will stay melty for a really, really, really long time--like a few hours after you pull them out of the oven.

Venice—snippet

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The man speaks perfect Italian, rapid syllables that roll off of his tongue. It echoes slightly off of the silver water beneath them, sounds clearly over the muted rustling of boats and passerby. Kyuhyun leans back and feels the sun press against his closed eyelids, lulled by the heat and the gentle rocking of the gondola.

Zhou Mi falters for a moment as Kyuhyun slides down the seat until he's almost lying down, but he recovers quickly and the flow of words continues. "Ponte dei Sospiri," he says. Above the boat, there's a faint cry of greeting, followed by a slight shift in the boat's balance; Zhou Mi is waving back. This has happened several times in only the past few minutes. Vaguely, Kyuhyun wonders if the gondolier knows everyone in this city.

The boat falls into shadow as it passes underneath the bridge, the sound of swishing water amplified. Kyuhyun shivers in the sudden chill and opens his eyes. The man smiles down at him.

"You don't look Italian," Kyuhyun says in English. Zhou Mi's eyes brighten.

"Ah," he says, "he speaks!" Kyuhyun snorts. "Kui, Kyuhyun—" the accent makes his name take on a new sharpness. (He likes it). "Where are you from?"

"Los Angeles," Kyuhyun says.

The man nods. "So far," he says, "and you have come to Venice to—sleep?"

Kyuhyun laughs at that. The man's eyes twinkle. "You are tough to impress," the man says, dropping to a stage whisper. "So. I will show you something special."

Kyuhyun smirks, closes his eyes and rests his hands behind his head, settling in. "Try me," he says.

A few minutes later he's sitting up, staring wide-eyed at the gondolier as the song dies out. The man smiles, pleased.

"Okay," Kyuhyun says, "I'm impressed."

"Of course you are," Zhou Mi says, and gives a little bow without upsetting the boat's balance.

Recipe: the best double chocolate chip cookies ever

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Super fudgy. By far the most interesting batter I've ever worked with for a cookie in terms of velvety, smooth texture and taste. I literally could not stop myself from licking my fingers clean (I knead with my hands) and nearly made myself sick. I never do that, but I could not stop myself.

Try the pure-chocolate version fresh out of the oven and your knees will go weak. That's how intense these cookies are. Eating one is an incredibly guilt-inducing experience and is basically just eating a chocolate bar.

I am still tweaking this recipe, however (I've already modified it quite heavily from the original) and updating this post as I go.

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter (next time I want to try it with margarine tried it. No, these cookies just look like lumps, there's no helping them along with margarine or anything. Margarine just makes them taste less good, so avoid it if you can.)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla (more can't hurt)
2 cups flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup of dark chocolate chips (you might need more?)
1 cup of white chocolate chips (optional; alternatively, make it 2 cups of dark chocolate, but don't say I didn't warn you)
2 tsp cardamom (ground) (optional; I made a half-and-half batch, splitting the batter in half and adding 1tsp cardamom to one half of it. Both variations of this recipe are really delicious, although the non-cardamom, pure-chocolate version will basically stop your heart with chocolate goodness. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. It really did feel like I was dying slightly.)

Directions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the sugar and butter together in a large mixing bowl, then add the eggs and vanilla. In another, smaller bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and (if adding it) cardamom. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until well-combined, but be sure not to overmix. Stir in the chocolate chips. You'll probably have so many chocolate chips that the batter can't hold them all; that's normal. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes; err on the side of undercooking. If you overcook them they get all cakey.

ENJOY.

Recipe: Flourless Airy Chocolate Cake

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Well, I found what I'm making for my birthday.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/03/the-best-chocolate-cake-expletive-free/

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Recipe: pineapple-raisin loaf

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3-1/2 cups flour
2 cups of sugar
1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 can crushed pineapple
1/2 cup raisins or more
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil

Bake 325 degrees oven 30 to 45 minutes. Test with knife to come out clean.

Recipe: vegan molasses cookies

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I think the flax seed is actually an egg replacement, although I'm not completely sure.
Omit the crystallized ginger because I never have any of that on hand, sigh.

You can use whole wheat flour for them, too—awesome!

http://hellyeahitsvegan.com/?p=710

Seller Feedback

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If you've purchased something from me, feel free to leave some feedback here so people know I'm trustworthy :)!

Note: I'm a very new seller on LJ, so I don't have a lot of reviews yet.

Leave a +1, -1 or ~1 as your subject.

+1: 2
~1: 0
-1: 0

Wherever you go, there you are - omake

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(Set right after Heechul lovingly tells them to get off his train.)

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Going Your Way - Meta

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(Read the fic here!)

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My request post ._.

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I dumped everything I could think of here to give you maximum freedom. Pick one thing, pick several things, pick none of it and just give me goopy fluff, I don't really care?

All I ask is HAPPY ENDINGS FOR EVERYONE, for every character, I demand it; even if a character isn't happy or emotionally well by the end of the piece, you have to at least show that they have the capacity to be okay in the future. In that vein, please no downer endings or broken pairings unless you have a really good reason for it and/or are really confident in your writing/drawing skills. Also please try not to kill anyone, and please try to avoid gory violence, although (if you have a good reason for these things happening) these bother me a lot less than the other things I just mentioned.

Also, tossing me fic recs for anything I've listed below works for me too!

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"After All This" by Richard Jackson

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"After All This"
Richard Jackson

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