Category: Corrales

Mixed It Up

Timothy Price85 Comments

                Chopped chocolate

We have five birthdays in October in our family. The fun has begun. I baked Laurie a cake for her birthday, which was yesterday (Saturday). I baked special chocolate sour cream bunt cake that’s a little more complicated than the plain old fashioned chocolate cake I have made for her in years past.

Chopped chocolate mixed with cocoa powder and espresso powder ready for boiling water.

I prepped the flour while the chocolate mixture cooled so I could add sour cream to it.

Getting ready to blend the butter and brown sugar into a smooth, fluffy paste.

I think this was the most exciting part of the mixing. Mixed it up and got it ready for the eggs.

The chocolate mixture after I whisked the sour cream into it. It didn’t look much different from before.

The batter all mixed up and ready for the pan.

The recipe has you make a chocolate butter past to grease the bunt pan and then coat the pan with cocoa powder. Laurie said it worked better to use a mixture of cocoa powder and flour. Either way, I made a mess.

A well-coated bunt pan

Laurie had made this recipe and filled bugs and bunny cake pans with the batter. The little cakes rose well above the top of the cake pan. Keeping that in mind, I filled the bunt pan 2/3 full and prepped a pie pan for the rest of the batter.

Coated pie pan

Intermission: The birthday girl showing off how her exercise clothes and nails complimented her birthday bag full of goodies.

Batter in the pie pan.

Nice textures

It turned out that the cake didn’t rise at all for me. It just poofed up around the middle.

The cake came out of the pan really easily and looked great other than being a little short.

Drone view

The cake in the pie pan didn’t rise either. The sour cream I used was really sour, perhaps the sourness changed the leavening. I put the bunt cake on top of the pie cake on a chrome platter. The stack gave it a sculptural look. Tristan asked me to make the tangy whipped cream suggested in the recipe using heavy whipping cream, brown sugar, sour cream, and vanilla. The cake has a super chocolaty taste and the tangy whipped cream gives it a nice zing.

Note to Herman. This cake is great with a cup of espresso. Together they make the real breakfast of champions.

Bird Watching

Timothy Price43 Comments

Gwendolyn: “Hey Paparazzo! You’re scaring away the birds!”

The kittens love sitting on the windowsill looking out at the beautiful view, but especially they like watching the birds that flit around in the foliage right outside the window.

Moon & Jupiter in the Tangle Heart Tree

Timothy Price56 Comments

I walked out to the Tangle Heart Tree under the light of a half-moon. The owls hooted, Chupacabra nipped at my heels, and La Llorona wept in the shadows. As I approached the Tangle Heart Tree, the half-moon and Jupiter fell into the heart. While I was photographing the phenom of a cottonwood embracing two celestial bodies, a legion of ghosts swept past me streaking my photo, causing the coyotes and chupacabra to howl, and La Llorona to cry out as she grabbed at the apparitions hoping to catch her children among the flock of phantoms. The remnants of ghostly matter made the next photo look like a painting. The following photo came out a little clearer, but there were still pieces of paranormal particles hanging in the air. The last photo cleared up a little more but it still shows remnants of the eidolon.

A legion of ghosts swept past me.

The remnants of ghostly matter.

Pieces of paranormal particles hanging in the air.

Still showing remnants of the eidolon.

 

66 Inches of Tape

Timothy Price35 Comments

A gas pump at our local gas station. Corrales, New Mexico.

I stopped for a fillup at Phillips 66 at Oh! It’s still dark thirty this morning. While I was waiting for my tank to fill, I noticed the pump in the bay across the way had what looked like a 66-inch long tape of unclaimed receipts. The pump I was on wasn’t giving receipts, perhaps my receipt was printed on the pump across the way.