[Eating] on the Sidewalk, part 1: Mmmm... pie (and roller derby).

Everybody loves a good pie.  Of course, everyone has different interpretations on the definition of 'good pie', but I have to say that my standards are cray-zay high when it comes to pie.  I'm a pie-snob!  I confess!

Sometimes, you can get a really bitchin' top crust, then a gorgeous filling... which is all totally ruined by soggy under-crust.  Or you get amazing crust action, and then fundamentally gross filling.  Or the whole thing is just a big 'meh' - which is the worst, I reckon... don't get me wrong, I'm all about the classics, but I'd rather have pie be the highlight of my day than just something to fill my belly.

Now this, this is good pie:

Have to say that I was a tad dubious when I saw the Lad coming back from the counter at Ernesto's with a big wodge of this pie, which is berry and apple (as I'm sure you were able to guess from the photo...  hope my photography isn't that bad).  It was technically a pie to share, but I bet you can guess who was the one that ended up cramming it into her gob as fast as she could go, washed down with gallons of wicked good soy latte.  It always gives me a private chuckle to know that Ernesto's is run by the same people that own Fidel's and Havana coffee (some of the best coffee money can buy, in my humble opinion... seriously, it is a humble opinion, I know nothing about coffee, except what I like)... and both the cafe's are on Cuba Street.  Doesn't take much to tickle my funny bone, obviously.

But back to the pie... Pie should really be the kind of food which is equally good fresh out of the oven as it is fridg-y cold.  Don't know about this one fresh out of the oven, but it was excellent cold - and it speaks to the confidence that this cafe has in this pie that they didn't feel the need to give you a big splattering of yoghurt or cream, or any other decoration at all (oh, hang on, they did give us yoghurt, but we didn't need it, and I ate it afterwards on it's own), other than a wee dusting of icing sugar.  Mmm.

So that concludes the first part of Eating on the Sidewalk - I'm gonna try and make this kind of regular-ish, 'cause I like to give props to cafe's and stuff that do things right.  If any of y'all have got any places you think would be good to try, let me know, 'kay?

In other news, the final derby round was not last weekend, but the weekend before.  Unlike last years season, Brutal Pageant were pummelling Smash Malice 2 bouts down - and even though Malice put up a brave fight, the Pageant girls were just too good.  Didn't help that Tuff Bikkies went out at half time either.  The Richter City girls are putting on an exhibition match against Pirate City in December, on the 11th - you can get tix from Under the Radar , and I totally recommend that you do - there were about two thousand people at the last bout (yay Wellington! Man, I love this city!).  

Whoa.

Frickin' heck, I've got so many plans at the moment, I'm like... a plan monster, or something.  It's the first proper-nice day of the spring season today, and with remarkable good planning, I'm not at work... nice to be doing something right.  Mum and Dad are down in Wellington tomorrow, so it will be sweet to see them (and sweet to have all the frickin' cleaning out of the way... *sigh* I know they don't care, but I do it anyway), and we're going to the World of Wearable Arts show on Sunday, which I'm so looking forward to it's not even funny.  Plus I'm trying to write my letter for library school next year, which is into something like it's eighth draft... and so I'm ignoring it for a little while, just to get my mojo back on it.

Oh yeah, the baby shower!  Damn, it was so good, I am King Organised, nothing was a total failure (read that as: nothing failed so badly that I couldn't fix it), the new Mama was completely surprised (muahaha), and I've had several really nice emails from guests saying how much they enjoyed themselves... sweet!  It was actually surprising easy, in the end of it - I think that the most stressful bit was having a bunch of people that I didn't really know very well coming over to my house.  You just never know what you'll be inviting through the front door.  Still, we didn't have any chronic undressers or kleptomaniacs (yes, I have been rereading 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk - how did you guess?)  All the baking was an unmitigated success too - no reports of food poisoning, which is just fab.

I think that I'm most proud of my pistachio macaroons, because I'd never made them before, and I'm now cautiously optimistic that I've conquered my brain-block against egg white baking... but I'm gonna make a sponge or a pav or something before I get too excited on that front.  They were so good - I actually liked them better without the ganache in the middle, but that's just because I'm not really a sweet tooth kind of lady.  But there were also cupcakes (der, of course there were, I'm kind of bored of baking them to be honest, but now it's getting to be something that people expect), savoury junk (wee tomato and olive tart things, thyme and gruyere gougeres, just to be fancy), and a fantastic chocolate and raspberry cake that the fine lady helping me organise made... it was so awesome.  *drool*

I just want to (butter)fly

Damnit, now I have that stoopit Crazy Town song stuck in my head.  No way to start a day (I'm eating weetbix with one hand and typing with the other - how do you spell 'milk on the keyboard'?)

Anyway, things are looking a tad busy for me today, so I thought that I'd finally get around to posting about these wicked-ass cupcakes I made for my friend Sara's birthday.  It was an important birthday, plus she's pregnant at the moment, so I wanted to make a big fuss out of Sara-the-person-who-likes-stuff, rather than Sara-the-pregnant-lady.  So the scene was set for cupcake action!

And here they are!  The flavour is chilli-chocolate (Evil Sara introduced me to the taste exploooossssion which is Lindt chilli flavoured chocolate, and now it seems that a chocolatey treat just isnt' right without a nice big smack-your-face blast of chilli), and the little butterflies that you see on the top are made from sugar cookie dough.  Again, the cakes were just made with the chocolate variation on the white cake recipe, which is totally my go-to recipe for cupcakes - I doubt if I'll ever use another (unless it's the sour cream and white chocolate recipe, which should be coming up in the next post).  I got the awesome teeny butterfly cutters from Cakestuff, and the lady who runs that shop should be given a niceness medal - every time I've interacted with her (albeit over the emails) she's always lovely, which was even better this time because they accidentally send the wrong thing first up.  But they fixed it super-promptly, and I got to keep the wrong thing too!  Noice.

So that was baking adventures.  Well, last week's baking adventures - I'm in the middle of a bit of a secret squirrel operation at the moment, so you'll just have to wait to see how that turns out (can't wait until that is done, looking forward to having a sense of achievement, rather than a sense of trepidation and 'biting off more than I can chew'edness).  Mum and Dad are coming down for a visit next week, which should be real fun, haven't got anything planned, in fact I'm almost praying for kind of shitty weather so that we can just blob around (invariably, it's always a bit rank on the weather front when they're down here though... *sigh*)

The weetbix in my bowl has now become sludge, so that must be the signal to finish up here.  TTFN, y'all.