Velvet undercooked.

Edda is outgrowing her stroller. We don’t use it very often – Edda usually walks wherever we walk, just very slowly and while someone is holding her hand. But today she fell asleep in the car on the way to the dog park, so we plunked her in her stroller and watched while her head tilted all the way back because it wasn’t held up by the mesh seat anymore.

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This afternoon, Jeremy and I went to a prayer ceremony at a Sikh temple. A friend’s father passed away last week and they were holding the traditional 72 hour ceremony this weekend. The whole family gathers at the temple to pray and cook. We had a delicious vegetarian meal consisting of her late father’s favorite dishes.

Emy’s birthday is on the 20th and she’s been keen on red velvet cake. Apparently red velvet cake is very hip – we followed the recipe from the New York Times.

In went a whole bottle of red food coloring.

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Apparently cochineal is a dye made from bugs. It freaked Jeremy out that we were pouring bug remains into our cake and then I freaked out that we were planning on serving red velvet cake with bug food coloring to vegetarian friends tomorrow night. Was I going to tell them that the cake wasn’t really vegetarian because it had red bug juice in it? Or was I not going to because if we hadn’t googled it, none of us would have been the wiser? But then Emy noticed that it said artificial on the label, so therefore it was made from fake bugs and the cake remains vegetarian.

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And, whoa! It turns this bright red color!

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But then, 10 minutes after the cake goes into the oven, disaster strikes and the power goes out in our whole apartment complex for about 90 minutes. No oven, no internet, no videos. We decide to swim in the unlit pool.

When the lights come back on, the cake continues baking, but it turns out all greasy and flat.

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We are so not hip.

3 thoughts on “Velvet undercooked.”

  1. kids do outgrow their strollers too fast, don’t they? We are in the process of trying to get a special needs one! It will go up to 140 lbs! Caitlyn just tires too easily, and then wants to sit down where ever we are!

    I love the cake story! Our power went out mid-turkey cooking one Thanksgiving!

  2. I read your blog to my 86 yr old grandmother who has made that cake all my life. I told her that she was hip and she just laughed and laughed. She said now you need to learn to make 7up cake.

  3. Rebecca – wow, 140 pounds! are you getting the convaid one? we’ll have to get on soon too. Oh no about the turkey! I hope you didn’t have 15 hungry people over sitting in the dark.

    Sheila – oh, you have to get your grandmother’s recipe! I want to make another attempt… And the 7up cake? that sounds just weird!

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