Turns out Karen (@ok2baprincess) and I are both big Eric Hutchinson fans. He’s kinda like Jason Mraz, whom we also like.
Well… the concert didn’t exactly happen as planned. Trevor Ramlow caught a great picture of why.
Yeah, so sucks to that huh? One hell of a storm that threatened the area, lots of lightening and thunder but almost zero real rain. Such a tease.
The night wasn’t lost, we went to Bleu for a great dinner and some wine. Here’s to hoping 102.3 BXR reschedules or something.
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My dear friend Karen aka @ok2baprincess always refers to her “boys” as the important guys in her life, her closest male friends.
Being a gay male, you’d think that I have a lot of really close gay friends, like you see on television. Well, TV lies. I do have a few great gay friends but really… in Columbia, besides my amazing incredible beautiful wonderful boyfriend… I only have two or three super close gay friends.
I won’t name them… you know who you are.
So, when I say “my boys” I mean the guys in Columbia that for any particular amount of time were of the most importance to me. In particular we’ve got Chase and Corey ( @clettenberg and @coreyschmidt respectively). They are of the awesome band, Scouts (check them out at http://scoutsmusic.com or on their MySpace).
The band recently moved outta town, off to Kansas City Missouri, you know, where all the big bands really make it… Well… hopefully that’ll be the case for them.
Ever since, my life has been a little empty. I miss the late night bad decisions they helped me make, the trips to the tattoo parlors where I drunkenly asked for full sleeves and various body piercings. There’s the incredibly open conversations about sex, relationships and emotions that I don’t think I could have with any other friend. I miss Chase’s insults on my clothing, taste in music, taste in television, taste in movies, taste in… well my taste period. I miss the apparent battle between Chase and Corey for who could wear the gayest outfit, the tightest jeans, the deepest v-necks.
I miss their concerts, taking their pictures, shooting the shit with the band and just generally experiencing all the good, and bad, that we all went through together. Breakups, new relationships, shit jobs, shit classes, you get the point.
I miss the random trips to St. Louis to hang with Chase’s insane(ly awesome) cousin and the completely EPIC beer pong tournaments at Corey’s apartment.
Bottom line, I miss my boys. And Chase coming into town the other day, seeing a movie with him and Karen at RagTag Cinema just brought back all those positive memories.
Soon I’ll be moving to California, well in about a year. There I will be reunited with all of my old wonderful friends. Meanwhile, I have a few of those really special friends in Columbia; as time passes and external forces push us away, again I will look fondly at the times we had together.
So here’s a cheers to my best brotastic friends, even if they abandoned me here in the great abyss that is Mid Missouri.
So, I’ve mentioned it a few times here and have even posted pictures of the cakes here but, now officially, a post just about Cake and a Movie.
I started Cake and a Movie Night during Winter Break… I was bored and had all these ingredients so there we go, baked a cake. Then made the call, invited a bunch of friends over and we watched a movie.
Now it has grown through Twitter and the hashtag, #CaaM. Each week I have about 20 or so people over, we drink wine, watch a movie and eat cake.
So, I built a site to keep up with it!
Check it out! My friends Karen (@ok2bapincess) and Josh (@brooding_soul) help with the site by writing wine and movie reviews. I post all the recipes I use/create along with photos of the cake and the process.
You can even vote on which movie we watch!
Anyways, just wanted to put the info out there, the site is up and running and growing every week. Thanks for checking it out!
Every week, on Sunday around noon, my lovely Twitter friends and I get together for what we call, the Twitter Brunch Bunch.
It has since grown to include more than just the originals…
@ericcox @bigred77 @ok2baprincess @justex07 (me) @turtis
Now we can add to the roster
@mdanbom @jlwest @brooding_soul @eapenthampy @fotofobe
It continues to grow and we’ve moved it from Bleu to @TopTenWines. Instead of buying food and wine, we bring our own food, sort of a pot luck deal, and drink the wine from @TopTenWines.
It’s an awesome time. Join us next Sunday?
I met with Karen (@ok2baprincess) today at Ingredient to watch her eat a friggin delicious looking veggie burger. I love our time together…
We followed that up with some coffee and tea at Starbucks.
Now it’s time to get ready for the trip to Kansas City with Ryan. Excited to get out of town with him, just the two of us. Feel like we haven’t had enough of that kind of time together for a while.
The Princess invited a few friend over for BBQ at her place last weekend. It was just such an awesome time! The people were great, the wine was awesome and the food… amazing. Her hubby can really cook!
The entire time, not matter what we did, booze, food, Guitar Hero… this girl kept getting all of the attention. Gah!
Even Ben had no power over the baby.
Well, actually, that talk about nothing be able to draw them away from the baby? That wasn’t exactly true. Ryan was allll about the doggie. It was the cutest thing, and it’s what happens every time Ryan and I go to Karen’s.
We really need to get a cat or dog… or bunny. It seems like Ryan was just made to have a pet. It’s just too adorable.
Curtis was kicking ass at Guitar Hero and then I’m not exactly sure what happened… Karen walks over to Curtis, bends over….
Curtis starts to pull $1 bills out of his wallet. I’m not saying Karen was extending “favors” to Curtis for change but shortly after she was playing cards with nickles.
I’m just sayin’!!!
I’ve got another recipe for you guys. This one I made for the last Cake and a Movie night.
We watched the movie, Hard Candy. Wow. This film was incredibly well done. Razor sharp, absolutely awesome… But not for the weak stomach at times. Definitely not a movie you’d pair with a carrot cake. It might be better paired with a glass of Vodka. Straight up.
We had a great group of people come over, 15 in all, though not all stayed the entire time. The movie got off to a late start as we couldn’t stop talking and socializing… not a bad problem at all!
Here are the tweeps that showed up
@j_tigers @laurenreid @mdanbom @ok2baprincess @madmax69 @turtis @kaleb1983 @aurablush @brooding_soul @savannahbrooke @clettenberg @coreyschmidt
And now for the cake!
This is a really great cake and holds a few firsts for me, mostly an original recipe and my first carrot cake. I was a little nervous about it coming out but it did just fine! A very forgiving formula, light and fluffy yet miraculously dense where it matters. The cake is spicy and moist, the frosting sweet and creamy. Let’s get to it!
Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
Carrot Cake Base
Makes about 7 1/2 cups
Start by washing, peeling and grating carrots, the smaller the shreds of carrots the better. Put aside.
In a stand mixer, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger until well blended. Add sugar and oil until well blended, batter will be thick. Add in eggs one at a time, ensures a consistent batter. Scrape the batter from the sides of bowl and add carrots, let this mix until smooth and well blended.
Spray three 9-inch-diameter cake pans with baking oil (I prefer to use the kind with flour). Line bottom of pans with parchment paper. Spray parchment paper as well.
Divide the batter between the prepared pans, about 2 ½ cups per pan, and bake the layers for about 40 minutes each, or until a tester inserted into center comes out clean. Cool cakes in pans 15 minutes before placing in the freezer while you make the frosting.
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
All ingredients need to be at room temperature.
Using the stand mixer, whisk all the ingredients on medium until fluffy and smooth. Chill the frosting for 10 to 20 minutes, until it has set up enough to spread smoothly.
Remove cakes from the freezer, frosting from the refrigerator. Remove one cake from the pan, topside down on the cake platter. Peel away parchment paper. (You can choose to level the top of the cake by cutting it or just flip it upside down to save time and have an extra tall cake, doing so might require more frosting)
Frost the flat top of the first layer and add the second, and then the third and finally, frost the sides of the cake.
Place in the refrigerator until ready to cut and serve.
I choose to top the cake with some extra carrots that I shredded with a micro-plane to create these tiny, soft, bright orange carrot topping.
You can see the entire process in this slideshow.
I hope you enjoy this cake! Let me know if you bake it or have any suggestions. I didn’t include nuts in this cake because I’m allergic and no raisins because some of my regulars have voiced their opposition to the raisin haha.
It’s a HUGE cake when all is said and done. So tall that my glass dome wouldn’t sit on top. It’ll end up being about 6-7 inches tall, 9 inches wide. Mine served 15 with two slices to go, and we went with some really thick slices. You could easily serve up to 20 people with a cake like this.
Also, try substituting half the oil for applesauce or yogurt. You can also use fat free cream cheese for the first 16oz (if you do all fat free the frosting won’t have the proper consistency). You can even cut the sugar by using Splenda’s baking sugar substitute. Do all of this and it’s the perfect cake for those looking at their waistline after a few Cake and a Movie nights have hit their belt! It’ll still taste great and be super moist, I promise!