As of today, this blog has moved to its new home!  Please come visit me at splowey.com.

Wordpress does not have native support for sending email notifications when a blog is updated, so I'm sending my RSS feed through Feedburner, which provides this capability.  So:

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See you soon, and if you notice any technical issues with the new site, please let me know ASAP so that I can fix it.  Thanks!

A month or so ago, when I posted the recipe for the Cardamom Half-Dips, I mentioned the bakery that was across the street from the church I went to before I... well, stopped going to church.  This bakery was the Prolific Oven, and aside from the half-dipped cookies, the other two pastries that I particularly remember getting there were sticky buns, chocolate croissants, and orange-almond cake.

Now, chocolate croissants are a little beyond my pastry skills right now, or at the very least, they're significantly intimidating enough that I haven't tried to make any yet.  But orange-almond cake?  Especially in cupcake form?  I can do that.



I googled "orange almond cupcakes" yesterday, and came up with several recipes.  But they varied widely in terms of ingredients (ranging from 1 egg to 4 eggs for each cup of flour, and every one used a different source of orange flavor - i.e. zest, juice, extract, pulp, or some combination thereof), and they all had different icings (everything from a blood-orange-and-powdered-sugar icing to chocolate ganache).  None of these really matched what I remembered from the pro O's cake, which had a gentle blend of orange and almond in a medium-weight medium-moisture cake, and was covered in a fantastic orange cream-cheese frosting and coated with sliced almonds around the side.  So I ended up making up this recipe as I went, borrowing bits and pieces from about five different sources along the way.



In the end, I was really, really happy with the way these turned out, and people really seemed to enjoy them.  So I consider that a job well done.  If any of you would like to try them yourselves (... mom, I'm looking at you), here's the recipe :-)

( Recipe! )
P.S.  I found this awesome cupcake carrier which makes it way easier to take these to work to share.  Technically it's supposed to hold 24 regular-size cupcakes in two levels, but it works pretty well for carrying minis too, as long as you don't mind putting them in the "in-between" spaces.  I managed to get 28 minis transported in just one layer of the carrier today, without a single frosting-smushing mishap.  Totally worth the price, especially given how often I bake things to take to work and share.

P.P.S. Sorry for the white-balance issues in these photos.  I forgot to reset it this morning and apparently it was too far off for me to fix it in photoshop.  Oh well :-/

P.P.P.S. I think I'm finally done with the new blog layout.  This blog may be moving as early as Sunday... keep your eyes peeled.

I am absolutely wiped out after this last week's conference, so today you just get a simple, whimsical sketch that sprouted (ha) from messing around with the path averaging and joining tools in Illustrator.



This one was originally going to be a very determined little plant sprouting out of a crack in a piece of concrete (somehow this came to mind after I saw Inception last week; no, I'm not sure I understand that train of thought myself).  However, once I started doing the curling vines I kind of liked them on their own and decided to leave them as-is.  [Actually, I had another sketch I wanted to do for today, sparked by an... uh... interesting tourist attraction we stopped at on our way back from the conference yesterday, but I realized that that one is going to take way way more time than I have the patience (or energy) to put into it today, so you might have to wait a week or two for that.]

Anyway, as we were driving back from Minneapolis yesterday, I was thinking about the two conferences I went to this month, and what I liked and disliked about both of them.  They were both about the same size (~120 people), but the "feel" was very different.  At the one in Maine, all of the students and faculty were living in the same dorms, ate in the same dining hall, etc., and it felt like it was really easy to walk up to a student or a professor from a different university and introduce myself and chat about research.  At the one this last week, we were all living and eating in different places, and while I got to know some of the students from other schools, it felt like the faculty clumped together and just chatted amongst themselves (though I'm coming to appreciate how much effort my adviser puts into promoting his students and his research program - it was pretty impressive to watch him work the room at the poster session and make sure we were all introduced to the faculty he thought we should meet!).  This conference also had shorter talks (though more of them) with very little time for questions, and I think that discouraged students from really participating in the science sessions.

So between that, and the fact that I wasn't quite as interested in some of the subjects discussed at this conference, I think the one in Maine was a more rewarding scientific experience.  However, I still learned a lot, and this one was a lot of fun, too - one night, we sat around playing card games (euchre, of course; this is the midwest, after all); we taught our Korean student about the "in bed" game for fortune cookies (we had a field day with this because his went something like "your lucky numbers are odd numbers", and we had to explain why we were all cracking up); and someone came up with the brilliant idea to play the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus board game (and of course, pick out all the most embarrassing question cards we could).  So lots of fun, but also exhausting - a 5-hour drive to get there, very long days of scheduled talks and such, and my entire research group was living together in a rented house (with 11 people sharing six bedrooms and two bathrooms), so we didn't get so much sleep.  Definitely glad to have nothing planned for the rest of the weekend, at least!

I feel like I can't really let the summer end without some sort of homage to frisbee in this series of sketches, and since today was the summer finals party (great game from the competitive league teams, by the way!), today's as good a day as any.



I'm not incredibly happy with the way this sketch looks; I think the body position and everything would make more sense if there were a second person playing defense between the guy and the disc.  However, it was kind of fun to experiment with a sketch style I haven't done before, so that's good.  Anyway, this is it for me for frisbee this year... I've decided not to play fall, because the fall league that most of my friends are playing in conflicts with the open classes at the good ballet school in town (and I really, really want to be able to get back into ballet a little more this fall), but it's also a little sad to see nearly my entire summer team excited about fall league starting next week and know that I'm not going to be joining them.  *sigh*.  I can't wait to play with them again next summer, though - we had a lot of really awesome people in our group and we've really grown a lot over the course of the season!

This has been kind of a blah dead week at work, which is a bummer, but it's left me a lot of time to cook and bake and read.  I've made this and this and this (all really yummy, though if I make the cauliflower salad again I'll put a tad less salt into the dressing), and I've been diving headlong into Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  I'm only on page ~350 of 900, but it's really good so far, containing such gems as this, said by the main character while sizing up their chances in an upcoming conflict: "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs... we have a protractor."  Anyway, I'm only part of the way through, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it.  In fact, I think it's time to go read some more before I go to bed, hm?

I don't have too much of a story behind this week's sketch; it's just something I ended up with after playing around with my fine-line drawing pens this morning:



I drew this in black pen on white paper, then brought it into photoshop and started playing with the blending modes to get the orange-and-white coloring.  I'm not sure why I chose orange, but it seemed to fit :-)

After the conference was over on Friday, I took the bus back to Boston and spent the day with a couple friends who are grad students at Harvard and MIT before my evening flight back to the midwest.  I really enjoyed it, but I was pretty wiped out after our party on Thursday (uh, yeah, I might have not gotten any sleep that night), so I'm not sure how much fun I was to hang out with.  Needless to say, I was really glad to get back to my apartment and crash in my comfy bed and not have to get up early on Saturday morning!

Yesterday was a pretty laid-back day, though by no means boring - I messed around at home all morning, went to the Yale alumni association picnic for a few hours in the afternoon, and then headed over to Joe and Rachel's apartment to say hi to them now that they're back from France.  While they were there, Joe asked Rachel to marry him, so we were also kind of celebrating their engagement... I love them both to death, so I'm super happy for them, but I guess this means that I'm now at the stage in life where my (close) friends are actually starting to pair off and get married, and that's a bit of a weird feeling, especially since my life is nowhere near that place right now!  But I guess that's just how life goes.  In any case, I'm thrilled for Joe and Rachel... can't imagine two friends I'm happier to see take this step right now :-)

I don't have  my card reader, but I figured I'd use my cellphone camera to give you all a quick "postcard" from Maine.  

This conference is turning out to be a lot of fun (we were referring to it as "summer camp for nerds"), with some excellent science talks and awesome people.  I've managed to meet and talk with most of the people I wanted to meet with, and have gotten to know a significant number of others as well.  So the science stuff is good, but the non-science stuff is awesome as well:

... the university hosting the conference is within walking distance of a pretty reasonable beach...


... I went kayaking on the river yesterday...



... and I ended up organizing both an ultimate game on Tuesday and am helping pull together a party for tonight.  (If you're thinking "what, Jenny?  Organize a party?"  you are reading my mind.  But it's kind of fun to get profs and students together like this, so I let myself get talked into it.  We'll see how it goes :-)

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun.  Two more science talks after dinner tonight (lobster!) followed by the last poster session and our late-night party, and then tomorrow morning it's on a bus back to Boston so I can head home.  I'll be back with another sketch on Sunday :-)

Hi from Maine!  I'm here, after an incredibly uneventful day of travel (possibly one of the first positive experiences I've had flying United in recent memory, actually, but that's neither here nor there).  Anyway, since I was thinking about travel yesterday when I started sketching, today's offering is related to travel and the places I've been:



This is the world, in terms of just the countries and states that I've visited - or more accurately, that I remember visiting.  I also added in some of the main flight paths connecting all of these places, which ties the entire thing together in a kind of interesting way (and three major hubs that I go through frequently - SFO and/or SJC, ORD, and JFK - get stars, just because).  [Actually, Texas really shouldn't be on this map, but I didn't really think about that until after I'd already done a lot of other work on the image, at which point it was too late to go back and edit it out.]  It's kind of funny how patchy the world looks when drawn out this way, and it makes me think about the places that I'd like to go: India, China, France, Spain, and North Africa currently top the list, but I'm sure there are others that would be fascinating as well.

I've got about three hours to kill before this conference starts in earnest, and I'm debating whether I should spend that time napping (have been up since 3:30am) or going out to explore the area a bit.  I think the latter is going to win out, just because I've had too much caffeine to fall asleep right now...  :-)

Anyway, I'll probably post more later this week, but for now I think one of the other girls in this suite needs to borrow my ethernet cable, so I'll let her have at it.  And by the way, the title of today's sketch is a reference to an absolutely wonderful work of fiction by Edward P. Jones, about the life of a black slaveowner and his slaves in the pre-civil-war south.  I highly recommend it if you think the subject would interest you!

Well, now that I finally have internet access set up at my new apartment, I guess I might as well let you know that I did finally make it through all of the packing and such, both in the lab and in the apartment.  The lab looks incredibly empty and sterile:



and the new apartment kind of did too:



though I had a moving company come out on Tuesday to move all of my stuff (totally worth paying someone to do that, btw), so that living room is pretty cluttered with boxes right now. That leaves me where I am now: in the process of unpacking and outfitting a new apartment.  My new roommate will be moving in on Saturday, and she'll be bringing the futon and TV and such, which will help the place feel not quite as empty, and we'll probably go out and get some basic supplies....

... but in the meantime, I have to figure out how to feed myself.  My kitchen is rather empty right now (of food, not of stuff); I brought over a few things from my old apartment and I did an emergency grocery run yesterday, but I think the sum total of the food that I have is:

• 1/2 gallon of milk
• salted butter
• mayonaise
• mustard
• dill relish
• eggs
• 1/2 lb green beans
• 1/2 lb rainier cherries
• whole-wheat bread
• peanut butter
• jelly
• cream cheese
• frozen cranberries
• frozen crepes
• fresh mozzarella
• chocolate

I also have access to an effectively unlimited supply of cherry tomatoes and basil (hence why I bought the fresh mozzarella), since my friends Joe and Rachel gave me free run of the produce from their garden if I water it while they're in France.  So I maybe this is a good game!  What would you make if this is all you had and it's unlikely you'd go shopping again until late Saturday afternoon?  Keep in mind that while I have a full complement of pots and pans, and a few good knives, I have no mixing bowls and no silverware yet :-)

(I'm kind of kidding, btw - I'm leaving early Sunday morning for Maine for a week-long conference, so I really only have to feed myself for two more days before someone else starts taking care of my meals for the week.  I can probably subsist on egg salad and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for that long!  And I'm sure that new roommate and I will go shopping ASAP once she's moved in :-)

I've been procrastinating this weekend, both about doing this week's sketch and about packing and such (I spent a couple of hours working on a fun little php project yesterday, for example; you might know what it is if you saw my facebook or google talk status). Or rather, the procrastinating has mostly been targeted at the packing, which is tedious and annoying, but it's been affecting the sketching, too. Anyway, I did finally finish a sketch for today, so here it is.



This is a sketch I've been meaning to do for a while, but just never got around to. It's the state capitol, but the entire thing is drawn with one continuous line. Of course I didn't actually draw it in one continuous line (I'm not that good!), but I think the effect is neat. My favorite drawing of this sort, by the way, is the opening of Rhapsody in Blue in Fantasia II. My lines aren't nearly as straight as those are, but you get the idea :-)

We did get the labs packed by Friday afternoon, but my apartment is still in a state of disarray.  I would spend some more time on that tonight, but I kind of feel like going on the FBC ride(*) might win out.  The responsible part of me says I should stay and pack, as does the part that's exhausted from our Ultimate scrimmage/cookout with the other team from our department this afternoon, but the procrastinating part of me says I should go for FBC anyway, at least for an hour or so.  We'll see.

Anyway, so much for another summer weekend.  I'm going to be a little sad when it starts to get cold again and we can't do all this awesome outdoor stuff any more.  At least that's still a good 2+ months away, though, hmm?

(*) The official name of FBC is not particularly PG, so I won't type it  here, but it can just as effectively stand for the "full-moon bike club", i.e. a group that gathers on a specific street corner at a specific time every night there's a full moon, and goes for a bike ride around the city (usually hitting a ton of bars as they go).  The rides also usually have themes - everything from zombies (you might have seen some of these pictures on facebook) to the underwear ride to a treasure hunt around the city to ride-across-the-frozen-lake.  I've only been on a few of these, but they're really a lot of fun, even if you're not up for the drinking part.

By the way - I meant to mention this yesterday, but forgot...

If you're wondering why I've posted recipes for yesterday's cookies and the last two sets of cupcakes: no, I'm not trying to turn this into yet another foodie/baking/whatever blog. There are plenty of those online already, and I'll be happy to tell you what my favorites are if you're interested. However, it's gotten to the point where every time I bake stuff to share, I invariably have a few people ask me for the recipe. This wasn't too much of a problem when I was getting my recipes straight from an established source - it was easy to just send the link to the blog or website or book where I got the recipe. But recently, I've started experimenting a bit more, so I can't as easily say "here's where I got the recipe!" when it's really a mishmash of many different sources. And as such, I've decided it's easier to just post the recipe as I made it and send the link out, but I'm still only going to do so when I've made significant modifications. If you do make any of these recipes, though, leave a comment and let me know how they turn out (or if you have any suggestions on improving them)!

For those of you who read this in an RSS reader: I know that posting recipes makes the posts pretty long in your RSS feed, because the Livejournal RSS feed functionality doesn't recognize the LJ-cut tag. This is one of the reasons why I am soon going to move to a Wordpress-based blog - there are plugins that make it much easier to post a shorter snippet (like a picture or two) to the RSS feed and then include a click-through link if you want to see more (i.e. the recipe and more pictures), and I'll definitely be setting that up.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that. I'm still in progress writing the new Wordpress template and testing out plugins and such, but I've finished most of the CSS, so if you'd like to see what this blog is going to look like once it moves, you can go ahead and check it out the static mock-up at www.splowey.com (yup, finally picked up that domain). My goal was to keep it simple and get it working using just CSS, i.e. no images used in the site design/layout... there are a few elements (mostly rounded corners) that only render properly in in Chrome (or, I think, any browser using Webkit, but I haven't actually tested it in Safari), but it degrades reasonably gracefully in Firefox and even IE6, so I'm happy with that. Let me know if you see any major layout problems that I missed though.

On an entirely unrelated note, this is shaping up to be kind of a stressful week (am feeling a lot of tension building up in my shoulders and back, and it's hard to massage that out by myself, though maybe playing Ultimate tonight will help). Not only am I trying to pack up my apartment to move next Tuesday, but I'm also packing up my lab, which has to be totally shut down by Monday for renovations. This wouldn't be too bad, except that the student I work with is out of town at a conference, and so I'm left as the sole person working on the old lab, i.e. the one with our group's eight years of accumulated junk (this is one of those times that I'm glad that my adviser's relatively new... at least it's not 30 years of accumulated junk!). That, and there are certain pieces of equipment that have really specific shutdown procedures... for which I can't find the manuals. I'm terrified that I'm going to screw something up and that nothing will work when we turn it all on again at the end of August.

Wish me luck!