Friday, December 30, 2011

Blogging is hard

I suck cat it. George is gone. He's been adopted. I'll update that later. For now, pics of kittehs! (Also, Greybie has a formal name for the vet: Virginia Slims. Again, I'll get around to the story.)

These are just the kittehs doing what they do best. Being adorbs.









Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The only time that math is fun

How to substitute in baking


You guys. I don't make cakes with silly things like eggs or butter or milk or oil. That involves me going to the grocery store. Ever since I learned about Diet Coke cakes from Weight Watcher days, I've always substituted. I've never gone back. Except for making my sister's birthday cake because she is annoying and a purist and thinks Diet Coke cakes are ludicrous. Whateva.


Yes, my weight-watching, calorie-counting friends. You can substitute all the ingredients typically needed to make box cake mix with a diet soda. I swear! One 12-ounce can per box of mix. So when I'm making cupcakes just for me, I divide my box mix. Typical box mixes have 12 servings. 


So I take the weight of the mix (18.25 ozs) divided by the number of the servings (12).


18.25 / 12 = 1.520833333333-forever.


Then while I have that number in the calculator, I times that by the number of servings I want to make (I wanted to do six because I'm fat and will eat them all this weekend).


1.520833333333-forever x 6 = 9.125. 


Now you smarties out there are saying if I wanted half, just divide the weight by half. True. And that is actually what I did tonight. But I just wanted to show you how to divide it individually in case your stomach is smaller. Anyhoo, I have a food scale so I used that to measure out the amount of mix I needed.


When it comes to the diet soda, you use one 12-oz can per box mix. Which happens to serve 12 people. Convenient, right? Secret genius on the part of cake mix makers and soda makers. Thus, One ounce per one serving of cake mix.


1 x 6 = 6 (!!! I love My Dear Aunt Sally [If you don't know what that means, ask in the comments bc I'd love to know what you might possibly think it is.])


Mixa mixa, you make-a the cake-a. Bake as normal and enjoy the most delicious, moist cake you've ever tasted. And you just saved yourself 


([half a cup of veg oil, 960 cals] + [water, 0 cals] + [three eggs, 210 cals]) / [number of servings, 12])=


97.5 calories per serving!!!


Times that amazing number by the number of servings you're eating and I am saving


585 calories!!!


A normal box prepared "normally" is 3240 calories. A box prepared my way is


1020 calories!!!


Thus for half a cake, I am only eating


510 calories instead of 1620!!!


Now. The fact that I am eating half a cake is another issue for another day. :(

From the kitchen of Chef Monica: Bowlcakes

Bowlcakes? What is that, you ask? Oh, well you see. In Chef Monica's kitchen, nothing ever quite goes as planned. Not even cupcakes. :(


Looks gross, right? hehehe
I am an amazing chef. I have an extraordinary ability to combine random foods and come up with awesome ideas. My execution and ultimate product is perfection. Some people may disagree (cough cough sister), but ultimately everything will turn out ok.


In the past, I may have had some mishaps. Lemon bars made with pancake mix (Sister was out of flour and it seemed like a good substitution), July 4th lemon cake made with lemon pepper (what is the difference between grated lemon peel, dried lemon stuff in the spice rack, or lemon pepper in the spice rack? aren't they all lemon?), and Paula Deen's sweet potato balls (actually, I'm not sure what happened there. They just didn't come out... right. :[ ) to name a few. Whatever. Great chefs need to experiment.


So enter bowlcakes. There seem to always be barriers when I want to bake or cook, but I'm not one to let that stop me.


I wanted choco cake.


1. I do not have a cake pan for cooking cakes.
2. I always divide my box mix because I don't want a lot, just enough for tonight and maybe tomorrow. This means I have to do math. (Sister had to take my college math placement exams for me. lolz.)
3. Instead of measuring parts of an egg, I often just use the whole egg. This experiment has worked well in pancakes, but I've never cooked a cake this way. Since I really wanted the cake I didn't want to risk it. As well, I need to cut down the milk and oil. Boooooo-ring.
4. So, I use DIET COKE! Only this time, I didn't have Diet Coke. But I did have diet root beer! Substitution is my middle name.

5. So the bowlcakes come out of the muffin pan completely unconnected. As I try to take them out, they crumble and fall apart. But they were moist, so I pushed the cake into tiny bowl and smashed down.
6. Add store bought icing.
7. Eat and enjoy!










PS
Someday I will do a post with all my amazing substitutions. Not only are they typically better calorie wise, but probs cheaper and easier to deal with than having to go to the grocery and buy fresh things like eggs and milk.