For as long as I’ve known of the famous Rubik’s cube, I’ve loved trying to get each and every side perfectly. I was also really wondered on how the mini cubes don’t fall off the cube when you’re turning, which is still a puzzle I haven’t solved yet. 🤷♀️ But I have solved the cube itself. It’s actually (and I can barely believe I’m saying this) not that hard… if you have the instructions right in front of you….
I know that people do cube competitions and they are probably not looking at directions. Someday, I’d like to try that with Asher. Maybe. I’ve memorized some of the process (up to step 3), but not all the algorithms.
Rubik must have not only been a genius, but had superpowers. I mean, since when does anyone come up with stuff like this?! I bet that until he wrote up how to solve it, he couldn’t.
I’ve only solved it twice, but it is SO MUCH fun. And really, who doesn’t like trying to solve it, getting faster and faster and being a show-off? I know I do.
Comment if you’ve been able to solve the cube and if you have, whether you looked at instructions, did it by memory, or just “figured it out”. As soon as I get fast, I’ll time myself and leave it here as well. It’ll probably be like 4 minutes…
For a long time, I’ve wanted to make soap without buying those kits and “melt and pour” stuff. I know this method isn’t really making soap, but it’s still fun.
Ingredients:
Soap (yep, regular bar soap)
Scent (Herbs and oils do well)
Color (optional, but fun)
A baking spray (aka Canola oil, vegetable oil or similar releasing agent)
Water
Tools:
Mold (a candy mold, muffin tin, or even an ice cube tray will do!)
Bowl
Spoon
Grater
A microwave or double broiler
Steps:
Grate butter into bowl. The smaller the pieces, the better. ***DON’T LET YOUR SIBLINGS EAT IT. WARN THEM IT’S NOT CHEESE***
Spray mold with baking spray.
Add 1 cup of water for every 2 cups of soap.
Microwave your soap in 10 second intervals until it’s thick and smooth, stirring in between intervals.
Pour into your mold
Wait overnight. Pop it out of the mold. Wait 3-5 days til you use it so it doesn’t melt as soon it comes in contact with water.
VOILA!
Your ‘homemade’ soap is DONE. Well I guess you could say ‘home-scented’… because you didn’t really make it…
ALSO: I just finished molding (not unmolding) my soap, so I don’t really know if it’s gonna work out yet, but thought that it would be nice to share the thought… but I will leave the outcome in the comments below…
Mousse. A fancy, simple dessert. Somehow, I actually was able to make it without messing up. Despite that fancy French name, it’s basically just a puree/ganache and whipped cream. I looked it up, and “mousse” in French actually means “foam”.
Anyway, a couple days ago, I tried Dominique Ansel’s recipe for chocolate mousse. Miraculously, it worked out and I didn’t completely flunk (like I do with the simple stuff…). Only thing was, it was bittersweet chocolate and no sugar at all, so I had to whip up some whipped cream to top it. It was great and all, but I wanted to get deeper into the world of Mousse.
The day after, I was wondering what other flavors of Mousse I could try. I decided to google Strawberry Mousse. The first recipe that popped up was https://anitalianinmykitchen.com/strawberry-mousse/. I liked the recipe and thought I would take the idea of pureeing the strawberries and use Dominique Ansel’s recipe for measurements and stuff. Anyway, it worked:
Alright, so most of you saw my Meringue Mishaps post, right? Good, ’cause that story basically happened again yesterday. It started with a super-complicated super-exact recipe for kue semprit sagu, a tapioca cookie from Indonesia:
Kue Semprit Sagu
100 grams tapioca starch
50 millilitres sweet condensed milk
70 grams softened butter
Mix butter with sweet condensed milk.
Once combined, add Tapioca Starch slowly, in two additions. Mix until almost same consistency as a cookie dough.
Pipe with a star tip, and bake at 300 F for 15 minutes. DON’T USE PARCHMENT PAPER. BAKE DIRECTLY ON THE PAN FOR EXTRA CRISPINESS.
Super complicated, right? Seriously, I was sure there was NOTHING that could go wrong. But of course, something has to go wrong, because that’s the way I bake. Perfection cannot be repeated.
They’re cute little swirls!
First Attempt:
Like meringues, my first attempt was near to perfection. Only problem was, there were not enough. “I want a mountain of ’em. So much that I have to eat my way out!” Dad complimented. So I began mass production.
Second Attempt:
For the first attempt, someone had conveniently left out some butter so it became soft enough for me to use. It was only one stick, so after I used it, I had to soften my own for Mass Production. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured out that the Microwave is evil to butter unless used with very short bursts (less than 5 seconds each). So decided to quadruple (x4) the batch. We didn’t have enough butter for that, so I had to defrost some as well. I made a mistake here. I decided that I would soften the butter from the fridge, then in a separate bowl do the frozen one. Well, the butter from the fridge turned out just fine, but because the second one was from the freezer, I thought that I should microwave it longer. So I did. I set the thing to 30 seconds and let it run. When I took the butter out, it was soft. So soft, that it had a pool under it. Yep, I half-melted it. That was the big mistake. It piped okay, and seemed fine until I baked it. After a couple minutes in the oven, butter was wetting the parchment paper. Not entirely sure why, but I think it has to do with all the butter and how the melted-butter didn’t like the heat or something. But I think the Evil Microwave was the biggest reason for this fail. So the cookies were fine, but not crispy enough. I used some of the batter (dough??) to stick the parchment-paper down to the pan, even though the original recipe didn’t call for parchment, but a greased pan. Anyway, the bit that was directly on the pan was way crispier than the one on parchment, so I noted that in the Semprit Sagu recipe.
This blog is all about my fails and success in baking, and I think I proved something yestereday:
It’s the SIMPLE ones I’ll mess up on. I can do fancy Creme Brulee and delicate Chocolate Mousse, but I can never underestimate a dessert.
It turn out yesterday was the Prancing Pony Club’s birthday. That means I created this site 2 years ago, yesterday. I’m going to pretend that I wrote this yesterday:
Two years. It’s been two years since I created the Prancing Pony Club. I was 9 when I finally convinced Dad to let me have a website, but I never thought it would really turn into a blog for writing. When we started the site, we clicked the option “blog” on WordPress’s site-maker-thingy. I thought it would just be a website for the Prancing Pony Club. My first post, Welcome horse-lovers! is something I would be embarrassed to read. (Please don’t click that link) Like my birthday-posts, it’s a reminder that the more I write, the better I’ll become. Something I wrote a year ago will not be the same as what I write now. It’ll be better. I’ll have better grammar, and less typos. I also never imagined that in the end, it has nearly nothing about horses. Maybe next year I’ll be blogging about BBQ. Who knows?
The Prancing Pony Club 