September 18, 2010
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After staying up till midnight waiting for #2 daughter–She was stopped twice by state troopers on her drive down from the Big City. The first trooper made her get out of her car and get into his patrol car (am I the only one now thinking of all those movies where the bad guy disguises himself as a police officer and kidnaps the girl?) after asking her whether she had an hand grenades in her pocket. While I’m completely willing to believe that this is an example of state trooper wit, I was sort of shocked to hear about it. However, #2 daughter tells the story in a very funny way, so we enjoyed hearing about her adventure.
In any case, after waiting up for her until midnight, I slept in until 7:00 a.m. and entirely failed to get up and take care of my Aussies or go to the farmers market or anything. Instead, an assortment of friends of #1 daughter and #1 son came by on the way out to the wilderness to go rock climbing. #2 daughter and I, declining the invitation to accompany them, went instead to Partygirl’s house for mimosas and talk.
Then #2 daughter went out with CG2 (we have three colleagues with the same name. We call them, if their name were Cecil, thus: Cecil, Cecil2,and Cecil3. In fact, in these pages, the first one is The Computer Guy, so I guess the others have to be CG2 and CG3.
I lolled about while they were at lunch, reading the new novel by Janet Evanovich. It involves cupcakes, a treat which is still reasonably trendy around here, though in your area everyone may have moved on to macarons.Cupcakes, however, are pretty and teeny (at least these are) and cute, so by the time they got back from lunch I was thinking that we ought to make cupcakes. We talked shop a bit, CG2 and I, and then I hauled out some cookbooks and we got going on the cakes.
We ended up making Guinness Ginger Cupcakes from Ready for Dessert: My Best Recipes by David Lebovitz. We grated up fresh ginger, boiled up molasses and Guinness and oil to combine with eggs and flour and cinnamon, and mixed butter and confectioner’s sugar with fresh squeezed lime juice for icing. It was fun, and we made a couple dozen tiny cupcakes.
I served them with chili, guacamole, tortilla chips, and strawberries, and it felt like a wonderful fall dinner.
Now everyone has gone, and I’m about to get back to reading my novel. It’s conceivable that I might have another of these pretty little cakes. I wouldn’t have thought of the combination of lime and ginger with Guinness, but it creates a complex and delicious flavor.
