Happy Easter...Monday?

     AKA "Jacki spent Saturday working and Sunday driving and hanging out with family and playing with babies and eating delicious things and driving again and by the time she got home and sat down to write a post her brain had already pretty much checked out for the night and this was all that was left because it's weird in there and no one was around to stop her."

     I regret nothing. 

Best Carrot Cake Ever?

     I ended that with a question mark because I don't consider myself a connoisseur of carrot cake and, having not traveled the world tasting all the carrot cakes that each nation has to offer, I don't feel quite confident enough to say that this is the best carrot cake EVER. But it's really, really good. 

This rabbit looked way less threatening in real life.

     The recipe I used can be found here, and for once I didn't end up making any major modifications to it as I went. The buttermilk glaze on my cake was about 1/4 cup short on sugar (ran out. Oops!) but I don't think it made a lick of difference, and obviously I doubled the recipe for the frosting. "Obviously" because I always, always, always double the amount of frosting suggested. I'd much rather have too much frosting than not enough, and honestly, maybe "too much frosting" is a thing that exists in technical terms, but surely it's like black holes, where we're just taking science's word for it even though none of us have ever seen it ourselves. 

     Inside, it's got coconut and pineapple and nuts for a nice variety of flavors and textures, and grating the carrots yourself, though time-consuming, lets you choose how carrot-y you want your carrot cake. Personally, I only even eat carrot cake because I can lie to myself that it's a serving of vegetables instead of just cake, so I grated the carrots super finely so that they almost disappear into the other flavors. 

Just how I like my cake: moist and crumbly almost to the point of compromising its structural integrity.

     Overall, this recipe gets a definite green light from me. It even got moderate approval from Amanda, who said "I don't like carrot cake, but that is the best carrot cake I've ever had," which, coming from her, is a rave review.

    

Eastery feastery!

     "Feastery" does NOT sound as fun and food-related as I thought it would, probably because it's a little too close to "fester-y," which just brings to mind open wounds. Oh well. I'm leaving it in the title though, so that we can all learn from this mistake. 

     The pink spring jacket project has taken a turn for the...well, it's taken a turn. To sum it up without giving away too many details that I haven't decided on yet, it's going in a very different direction. Like, if the GPS of my sewing plans had originally said "turn left in half a mile," this project didn't just turn right instead of left, it lifted up off the road and said "eff you, directions! I do what I waaaaaant!" as it floored it toward the sun. Ch-ch-changes, yeah!

     So in the meantime, I thought I would show you something pretty and colorful to distract from my sewing endeavors of questionable success. Easter eggs! 

     If, by chance, you follow me on Instagram, you'll have already seen these. They're done using a method I saw here. I wanted to try it out because it looked so pretty but still assured me that it was an acceptable activity for kids of preschool skill and up, a bracket which narrowly includes me.

     Basically, you lay out some paper towels on a protected surface (or one that you just don't care about, I guess. I don't know your life), cover the towels with drops of food coloring, spritz the towels with vinegar and water, then wrap up the eggs and leave them a while. I wrapped them in plastic wrap instead of using individual baggies, because it allowed me to skip that cumbersome "rubber band them in place" step, which I foresaw ending in a bunch of cracked eggshells. Then I stuck them back in a carton in the fridge and let them marinate in rainbowious (it's a word now, get with the program) glory overnight, and this is how they emerged in the morning! 

     I really like how they turned out. They look like either dragons or My Little Ponies are going to hatch out of them, or possibly some sinister hybrid of the two (a show that I would watch in a heartbeat). My favorite is the... fourth one from the top left, if you go like you're reading? The sixth from the top left if you go in serpentine formation? The second one down from the top left? Point (1,-2) if the origin is the top left of the photo and the units are in eggs? THE DARK ONE, I LIKE THE DARK ONE.