Karl Pilkington Cake

Last weekend was James's birthday, and we had a nice little BBQ at our house. I made him a chocolate cake in the likeness of Karl Pilkington -- or at least, in the likeness of Ricky Gervais's own portrait of Karl, as seen on the book.

More info on Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais here. We're big fans of their radio show, not to mention The Office and Extras!

The brown and blue part is supposed to be Karl's scarf, but somehow his neck disappeared when I was decorating, so it's not quite apparent. Oh, well! Karl's head looks even more round after being moved to a plate:

My First Blueberry Pie

The top crust broke and the blueberries seeped, but it tasted damn good for a first try. This was the first fruit pie I've ever made. It was surprisingly easy to make homemade crust. I found an all-butter recipe in the book How To Cook Everything: The Basics by Mark Bittman. It's verrrry easy with a food processor.

I've made pat-in-the-pan crust before (for pumpkin pie), but this rolled type is so much better. It came out nice and flaky. It was actually easier than pat-in-the-pan anyway...so it's rolled crusts from now on for me!

The blueberry filling recipe was from The Joy of Cooking. I used frozen storebought blueberries, which aren't as good as fresh, I'm afraid. The pie definitely wasn't as good as Brenda's pies -- she uses homegrown blueberries! Maybe if I can get my hands on some good fresh blueberries and practice more often, my pies will taste better. (And maybe LOOK better, haha.) I'm definitely psyched to make more of these.

More Origami Flowers

More experiments with using different paper for origami flowers. The red paper is a nice textured scrapbook paper that I bought at Michael's. The edges showed some wear after folding, but overall it keeps its shape well.

The ivory flowers are made from a wedding patterned gift wrap paper that I bought at The Container Store. I like how gift wrapping paper holds up to folding, and it's cheaper than fancy scrapbooking paper or origami paper. But the glossiness of the gift wrap paper makes it a little difficult to photograph. I wonder if a big bouquet of glossy ivory and white flowers will get washed out in photos?

Online Bridal Store Recommendation

I must post a rave about eBridalSuperstore.com. I ordered my wedding dress from there and it just arrived. Here's the lowdown:

In March I visited two local bridal shops in the Baltimore area to try on an Alfred Angelo dress that I had my heart set on. One shop quoted $700 for the dress and the other quoted $850. They both said that once I ordered it, it would take four to six months for the dress to arrive.

I started shopping for the same dress online and found it at a much lower price on eBay and some online bridal shops. I settled on eBridalSuperstore.com which had the lowest price and shipping rate, and the best reviews from what I could find on the web. I ordered the dress on April 3rd. I paid $419 for the dress plus $12 shipping. The website has a shipping status feature, and it estimated that the dress would arrive in July.

Exactly three weeks later, the dress arrived via UPS! I was amazed! It looks great, in perfect condition. It is the correct color and size, with the Alfred Angelo tags and optional straps. Now I just need to take it for a fitting and get alterations done if needed.

So I was very happy with the low price and quick service that I got from eBridalSuperstore.com. They are like a bridal shop in that they order the dress for you straight from the manufacturer. But since they don't have the overhead costs of a physical store, they can offer the dress at a lower price.

I must admit that I picked a popular color and style for this dress, so Alfred Angelo probably has a lot of them made already, and that's why I got it so quick. It might usually take three or four months for a dress that needs to be made per order. But anyway I just wanted to pass on the recommendation. I took a leap of faith, buying the dress online. It paid off!

Origami Flower Prototypes

I've been experimenting with the idea of using orgami flowers in my wedding decorations and bouquets. I figured out that I can use high-quality gift wrapping paper as a less expensive alternative to origami or washi paper. Here are some prototypes I made this weekend. They don't have the finishing touches yet, like the center embellishment or calyx. And this isn't the actual paper I'll use for the wedding -- it's just what I had on hand. :) It will look better with a more even-toned paper.

I'm using the book Origami Flowers by Hiromi Hayashi. The reviewers on Amazon are right -- in this book, the instructions for many flowers are missing some steps! So it's a bit of a challenge to figure out the steps that the book skips over.

Below is my attempt at Rose #3 from the book. They use a soft tissue-like paper for this rose, which looks cool, but I couldn't get that to work (the paper tore so easily). So I tried gift wrapping paper and it was easier. I like the more sculpted look, anyway. You can click the picture to get a bigger view.

Below is Rose #2 in the foreground, and the Rose #3 in the background. I figure I'll use big #3's in the bouquets with small #2's in a different color.

Below shows Rose #2 on the left and Rose #3 on the right. The #3 is made from regular white copy paper, and it's not glued together. It was my first prototype. :) I will definitely use more fancy paper for the wedding! Anyway, I think #3 has a lotus look'n'feel more than a rose look'n'feel, but I like that just fine!

I got the gift wrap paper from Sally Foster -- someone at work was selling it to fundraise for their kid's school. It's good quality paper that can take some abuse before the design starts to rub off. Still, I tried to fold and handle the paper as little as possible to prevent worn edges.

Surefire Siu Mai and Green Onion Pancakes

We made two recipes from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking tonight. First was the Siu Mai shown above -- it's the first time we tried making it! This was made with pork, so it's for Sheu and not me. ;) I formed the dumplings for him. The Siu Mai shape is harder to make than gyoza, so after about 14 of these, I switched to making the gyoza shape instead. The recipe made about 30 dumplings total (most of which went into the freezer!).

The filling contains: ground pork, black mushrooms, bamboo shoots, slightly beaten egg, green onion, soy sauce, salt, minced ginger, sugar, cornstarch, sesame oil, white pepper. There's a bit of grated carrot on top. We steamed them in our rice cooker.

While I was slaving over the Siu Mai, Sheu was slaving over Mandarin Green Onion Pancakes. They are actually kind of complicated to make! It involves kneading and rolling out the dough, rolling it up with green onions and cilantro inside, making a coil shape, then rolling it out again. Whew! Here's a picture of Sheu frying up the pancakes:

Click on the photos for a closer look!