Step 1: make a chocolate chip sheet cake and cut it into circles.

So a few weeks ago, after we finished the Bon Appetit Food Lover’s Cleanse (I’m not writing about the rest of it because it still makes me cranky to think about it and we ended a day early because we were so miserable and snowed in) and to celebrate the end, we embarked on making the Chocolate Chip Layer Cake from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook. Finally!

Something happened in Step 1 which led to a series of improvisations, but for our first attempt, we were pretty damn impressed. Our cake wasn’t as fluffy as it was supposed to be, so we ended up with six layers of chocolate chip cake instead of just three.

Then, we couldn’t find acetate which is this plastic stuff that helps you build the cake up and out of the 6 inch cake ring, which we also couldn’t find. We substituted with a spring form pan which was actually awesome and then we used our pink silpat to build it up, which was next-to-impossible but worked since we had no other options.

We also ran into the passion fruit problem, which we solved and you can read about here.

Then, there was the issue of timing. The coffee frosting literally took like 35 minutes to make and then this cake has to be frozen and then unfrozen in the refrigerator for a total of like 15 hours, on top of making all of the other components. It is QUITE the process – probably the most complicated thing we could have possibly chosen.

In the end, however, we ate a piece and served the rest of it to my book club and I’m pretty sure they loved it. It was super rich and really a rather interesting combonation of flavors – coffee, chocolate, and passion fruit! Who woulda thought? Below is the step by step, as seen through my camera.

Step 2: work with what you've got. in our case, a 6 inch springform pan rather than a cake ring and a pink silpat instead of acetate.

Step 3: layer it up! and top with chocolate chips.

Step 4: Un-mold from the springform pan.

Step 5: Un-peel silpat from cake.

Marvel.

Step 6: Photograph next to the photograph.

Step 7: Serve with artichoke dip, 6-cheese mac and cheese, edamame, and potstickers. Book club food!

Tuesday: President Jimmy Carter at the Paramount

What a great guy! The World Affairs Council of Seattle brought out Jimmy Carter (and practically every single person I know in this city) to celebrate their 60th Anniversary. Now, I didn’t know much about Carter before I purchased my ticket, but I viewed it as an excellent opportunity to see a former President speak, and after I did my due diligence and researched his presidency and his work as a former president, I’m super glad that I got to see him. His presidency may be regarded as one of the worst in history, but it’s what he has done SINCE that makes him such an amazing man. He was funny, gracious, honest and what I imagine true Southern gentlemen are like. I particularly appreciated his thoughts on how elections have changed over time – in his day, candidates did not accept any money from PACs, didn’t air negative campaign ads, and referred to one another as “my distinguished opponent”. Can you IMAGINE what it would be like to inject a little civility into politics? Talk about the good old days.

Wednesday: Jennifer Egan at Benaroya for Seattle Arts & Lectures

I’ve said it before, I think, but volunteering for SAL is really one of my favorite activities because a) I do it by myself and it’s literally a “just for me” kind of thing, and b) I get to see really awesome authors speak and sometimes I get to meet them and have my books autographed. I have a sick addiction to books lately, to be honest. I feel like I’m constantly buying them but rarely reading them. I need to get better about that.

Anyway, Jennifer Egan talked about her writing as a novelist and as a journalist, and how she has two completely different approaches to each. For example, she writes her novels by hand, but types her articles on the computer. She talked about her process as she researches for articles, her failures (but ultimate triumph) in writing about the music industry, and afterwards signed my book with a “I hope our paths cross in the future”, which I hope too because I have since read nearly all of the articles on her website and would love to speak more with her about her work. And she was SO nice!

Thursday: Shootin’ and Drinkin‘ with LivingSocial

You guys, guns are scary. And I am rightfully scared of them, though I am apparently 100392 times MORE scared of them then the rest of the LivingSocial Adventures team. We drove up to Norpoint Shooting Range on Thursday night to do a run-through of our upcoming adventure which starts next Sunday. We’ll be taking bus-loads of people to shoot handguns and rifles (terrifying) and then to Scuttlebutt Brewery for a tour and then to their restaurant for dinner! Quite a day – and also a sold out event so if you’re reading this and you didn’t get the deal, too bad for you!

Back to shooting though – I started out in the rifle bay and when the first shot was fired I jumped back in terror and thought about how AWFUL it must be to live in a war-torn country where you have to hear guns fire regularly! It is so loud and awful and I’m kind of upset just thinking about it. I refused to fire them until I decided that it is maybe better to UNDERSTAND a gun in case I ever need to use one (god forbid) and then I discovered that I was actually rather good at it because I shot the target through the head on my first try.

So now I know kind of how to shoot an AK47 (not really sure if I shot one of those but it was something like that) and also some Glock 9s (not sure if I shot that either but whatever) and I can load magazines and I can kind of tolerate the sound though I jump at first and flinch a lot the rest of the time.

Friday: Most beautiful February Day Ever (except for every single day since!) + a great haircut at VAIN + the Building Bake-Off

Friends, it’s been such an incredibly gorgeous few days in Seattle that you can’t help but look outside at one of our breath-taking views and think, “I get to live HERE?! How lucky am I?” I’ve said THIS before too, but seriously, people live here because the beautiful days in Seattle make you forget about how crappy and rainy it can be the rest of the time. And the fact that we’re having these coat-less days in February and that my latest pair of TOMS have yet to be ruined by rain is pretty miraculous.

After doing a venue site visit, I had a few hours to kill before I was to get my hair groomed by the lovely Alexis at Vain, so I decided to walk down to the Sculpture Park and sit in the sun for an hour and marvel at how beautiful the day was. Then I took a walk downtown and window-shopped before we chopped off a centimeter that feels like 6 inches of hair and then rushed home to bake.

Saturday: Volunteering with The Service Girls at YouthCare

I’ll write more about this in another post, but January’s Service Girls call was with YouthCare, an awesome organzation whose building I walk by regularly and have always wondered what is going on inside.

YouthCare serves Seattle’s homeless youth population – a population of more than 4,000 – a number which shocked me. They have a “continuum of care” approach that starts with outreach and basic needs, shelter and housing, education, employment and training. I was really inspired by this organization and I hope you’ll take a minute to learn about their work. If you won’t do it now, I’ll force you to read another post about in a few days.

Sunday: Superbowl and Oklahoma!

I didn’t care about the Superbowl but I DID want Superbowl food, and Kendall is convinced that going to sports bars is a good way to meet the love of my life (disagree, but whatever), so we ended up at The Tap House for food and beer before heading over to the 5th Avenue Theatre for Oklahoma!

Except… it wasn’t really Oklahoma as I remembered it from the movie. No, Jud was African American and he portrayed to be a terrorizing monster which of course was all part of an underlying tone of racism which made me uncomfortable and that was hard to ignore. I wish we HAD been able to ignore it – that and the weird dance-y sex-y scene that was strange but ultimately my takeaways were that Curly is a cutie and Laurey was stupid to play games that whole time and thank god they have Aunt Eller around to talk sense to everyone and keep them all in line.

Nevertheless! An enjoyable evening and musicals are fun. Oh and it was FREE! thanks to The 5th Ave’s community day showing. We had awesome balcony seats that Kendall estimated were $100+ and we had four of them for the price of waiting in line at 7am.

signage by Eliz

On Friday evening, after a crazy beautiful day that I spent outside playing tourist in my own city, I returned home after getting my hair did and competed in the first annual “Building Bake Off” with my neighbors and some friends. I had initially planned to enter in two different baked goods, but in the end I was only able to execute one completely. To make up for it, Heather and I also offered the last of our stellar twice-baked potatoes because after so much sweet, we all REALLY needed some salt. I really regretted that the next day, because I wanted to eat one as a leftover but ah well. They were very much appreciated by our judges.

Not pictured are the winning “chocolate decadence” dessert by “Other Heather” or the salty bacon-y cheesy potatoes. We’ll definitely be hosting another bake-off in the future, but we’ll also definitely give ourselves more time to prep because it was a bit of a rushed disaster towards the end.

Smore's Cakes in Mason Jars by Sarah

What I didn’t realize about this bake-off is that there was absolutely NO reason to make a full serving of the baked goods for the contestants. I made 10 mason jars of smore’s cakes and only two were consumed because everyone only took a bite or two of each thing. Lesson learned.

Banana Bread by Eliz

Too healthy.

blueberry lemon ricotta maple syrup muffins by Lucy

The surprise of the evening. Nice and fresh compared to all of the chocolate offered by everyone else.

chocolate stout cupcakes by Heather (served on the cake stand that I MADE out of a candlestick holder, decorative plate and epoxy!)

Light and fluffy which was good because the last muffins Heather made last weekend were basically rocks. No offense.

pink champagne cake with chocolate dipped strawberries by Jamie

Jamie is a mad scientist in the kitchen. Any cake that requires the purchase of two bottles of champagne is fine by me!

the scorecard

Looking back, this scorecard makes no sense to me, but there had been several bottles of wine consumed at this point and everyone was on a sugar high.

the complete spread (and a couple of weird feet)

Pretty impressive!

We pulled up to the Zone and gasped. All the windows were covered with “Store Closing! Everything 70% Off!” signs and we could tell that there wasn’t much left. We raced in and were dismayed to find that the entire store was basically cleaned out of merchandise. We called the other location to see if they were in the same boat, which they were, so we decided to make the best of it.

We walked out with the following. Not a bad haul, all things considered. I felt pretty bad about boohooing to all the store closing to the employees, who I suppose are losing their jobs, but this is really truly a tragic loss for crafters and party-throwers like me. RIP, Paper Zone. I hardly knew ye.

120 pink and purple cups, 5 brown take-out containers, 1 giant red + white takeout container, 4 brown rectangular table cloths, 16 birthday party invitations, 48 black knives and spoons, 48 orange knives and spoons, 48 purple knives and spoons, 1 bachelorette "last night out" kit (watch out boys!), assorted ribons and two blue containers of glitter.

2. Passion fruits are effing EXPENSIVE! If you pick them up at QFC, they’re $3.99 per fruit – but at Uwajimaya they’re only $2.99. Doesn’t really make much of a difference when you need to buy like 10 of them to make one cup of puree. Faced with the prospect of purchasing $32 worth of passion fruits, I took to the internets and found out that at least back in 2008, you could buy frozen passion fruit puree at El Mercado Latino in Post Alley of the Pike Place Market. I immediately called them and found out that yes! they had it and that it was only $4.95! Hallelujah!

Now, I’m not sure why YOU might need passion fruit puree, but we do because we’re making Chocolate Chip Layer Cake from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook. It’s literally a three-day receipe. It’s going to be so delicious. The Banana Cream Pie blew our minds last night.

3. Polish changes in nail salons only cost like $5 bucks (as opposed to $15 manis) and they’ll file and buff your nails and then repaint them. Weekly maintenance like that is WELL worth it, I’ve decided. I’m rocking a hot pink/coral color with a splash of banana yellow on my left ring finger and feel free to compliment me on it because it’s bomb-dot-com.

everything on this list has been accomplished, except "Eliz" because she didn't want to play Just Dance 2. "Mother" is actually "Mother Bread" so that we can make bagel bombs for next week.

1. TOMS is about to come out with ballet flats. Holding my breath until 2/15/12! I will order all of them.

2. The 5th Avenue Theatre is offering free tickets to Oklahoma on Superbowl Sunday! I will definitely go stand in line and get four of them. Would you like to come with me? This means skipping the deliciousness of the Superbowl and having to YouTube the commercials after the fact, but considering that this is probably the best one anyway, you won’t be missing much.

3. There is a free phone service called “Callin Oates” 719-26-OATES (719-266-2837). They let you choose one of four Hall and Oates songs when youre having a Hall and Oates Emergency. I haven’t actually tested this out and I really just copied and pasted this from my friend Jeff’s status update on Facebook but if you wanna try it out and report back, be my guest.

Friends, I am miserable. Not only has Seattle been hit by a “monstrous” (well, not by Colorado standards) winter storm that has shut down the entire city (not exaggerating), being on the cleanse makes the entire experience extra rotten because we can’t do the warm cozy stay-inside activities that we typically would.

We haven’t baked a thing. I don’t even think that we’ve turned on the oven.

We have barely been able to use Heather’s new stand mixer because there’s been nothing dough-y to make and no cream to whip.

I’m so sugar deprived that yesterday I ate like 6 oranges and then caved in and had several handfuls of M&M’s. And just now I had another handful of M&M’s – though I have truly restrained myself because Heather shoots me a nasty look every time I fall off the cleanse wagon.

Our stockpile of butter is still completely intact.

We haven’t made any soup, save for the Morrocan-lamb business from a few days ago, which was delicious but after having it for lunch, I don’t need it again.

We’ve eaten pork tenderloin with roasted grapes, braised greens and leeks, quinoa and coconut tofu.

Meanwhile, upstairs neighbor Jamie has suddenly turned into a Master Chef and whipped up homemade pasta and shrimp scampi last night, as well salmon fritters. She woke up this morning and threw together the batter for blueberry muffins and is currently baking them off. It’s killing me.

So I’ve decided that today, in honor of Snowpocalypse 2012 and because there are ice balls falling from the sky, I will finally bake something from my autographed copy of the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook and then I will eat it and I will LOVE it. And tomorrow I will re-approach the cleanse and hopefully have a better attitude about everything – weather included.

Anyway, my list is 32 places long, and the majority of them are conveiniently located in Capitol Hill, which is fantastic because it will entice people to head over this-a-way. I’ve already made some progress in the past two weeks:

1. Revel - I’ve been reading about Revel for the last year and have desperately wanted to try it, except that it’s in Fremont and was never open when I was in the neighborhood. Kendall and I stopped by the Quoin Bar at Revel for happy hour instead of going to yoga last week, and let me tell you – 90 minutes there was much better than 90 minutes in a Bikram Yoga class. Try the pork belly pancake and the short rib dumplings. No picture available because (shockingly enough) my phone was dead.

2. Taylor Shellfish Farms - this place is delightful! And expensive! But it’s so delightful that I didn’t really care that we paid $20 for some spot prawns that we had to clean once we got home. Because it’s so fun to see the open baskets of shellfish in the middle of the room – ready for you to pick them out. They have crabs and lobsters and GEODUCKS and clams and mussels and oysters and scallops – and a fine selection of wines to pair them with.

3. RN74 – As I mentioned in an earlier post, all the talk and hype around this restaurant, in addition to my experiences in Michael Mina restaurants made me feel intimidated to walk in, but I was pleasantly surprised by their great happy hour. Below, truffle popcorn and tuna poppers.

4. Montana - our new favorite neighborhood bar! It’s a teeny tiny spot on Olive Way, next to Tacos Gringos and The Elite. They have a fantastic little photo booth, a saddle you can sit on as a stool (though I wouldn’t recommend it for an extended period of time) and they’re experimenting with carbonated liquor which meant I had several tasty blood orange tequila fizzy drinks (and then some Bud Light because that’s what Montanans would do). The photo booth also only takes credit cards, which is both awesome and dangerous.

5. The Rock Wood Fired Pizza – hip hip hooray! Our favorite place in Tacoma has now opened up a spot in Queen Anne, attached to the Maxwell Hotel. This means we can have brown-sugar mozzarella bread whenever our hearts desire – that, or the My Generation pizza. OR a bucket of liquor – OR a LAVA LAMP drink in a glass that lights up and has a jello shot in it. I’m collecting the glasses so if you happen to get one, save it for me! 

But overall, save for Saturday night, I’ve been doing really well. It’s quite the exercise in willpower, honestly. I threw all that out the door on Saturday because the Broncos were playing! And then the Broncos were losing! And then Elizabeth dropped a bomb on Kendall and I, and then I dropped a bomb on Kendall and then Kendall dropped a bomb on Elizabeth and I – and suddenly instead of going home we were going to Montana, where there are fizzy blood orange tequila drinks.

So forget Saturday.

There have been some pretty awesome things on the menu lately – in particular, Day 5′s pumpkin and shrimp curry, which was also our lunch on Day 6. Dinner on Day 6 (which I scarfed down at midnight) was soba noodles and clams in a sake broth – light, refreshing and fantastic. That was also lunch on Day 7. Breakfast on Day 7 was pancakes! with homemade applesauce and dinner was a roasted vegetable curry.

Dinner on this cold, snowy and potentially even SNOWIER evening is a warm Moroccan chickpea, lentil and lamb soup which I will happily eat again for lunch tomorrow and would definitely make again. This was served with a side of cumin-roasted carrots and leftover orange-scented bulgur from last night as well. Bulgur! Never had that before. This cleanse is also culinarily eye-opening.

We unfortunately will not be getting our New Roots Organics bin of produce this week on account of the snow, which is frustrating because it means yet ANOTHER trip to the store. I know that when we started I had said that I wasn’t feeling the pinch of the costs for the cleanse, but we had to do all of our shopping for the week at QFC and everything costs more there and I’m super annoyed about it.

Well friends, that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. I’m willing to bet $100 that she (or any other girl who proclaims that she doesn’t care about Valentine’s Day) will surely care by the time February 14th rolls around and none of the following items arrives at her doorstep or desk: flowers, a card, or chocolate. Especially when everyone around her will be getting all that stuff.

So here’s my advice: guys, at the absolute minimum, buy a frickin’ red rose at the grocery store on the corner or from that guy who walks through Belltown at night selling roses and give it to your girl. Or buy a box of chocolates – chances are you’ll get to eat some of them, so really you’re buying them for yourself.

If you’re traditional and feel like splurging, buy a dozen roses. And go to dinner- but you better make a reservation and be prepared to watch couples who are more in love than you make you feel awkward. Hopefully a few who are less in love than you so you can judge them. But whatever you do, DO NOT propose on Valentine’s Day. That’s tacky and also stupid because you’re doubling up on celebrations.

Now, I’d just like to be clear that I would not be happy with the traditional roses and dinner combination because I like to be different and superior. So if I were celebrating Valentine’s Day, these are items I would like to receive:

Source: fab.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Artisan Marshmallows from 240 Sweet - you bring the mallows, I’ll make the hot chocolate.

Source: oldtomfoolery.com via Sarah on Pinterest

This card because it’s clever and generally how I feel about the words “I love you”. Recommended for relationships of 4-6+ months.

Source: make-it-do.com via Sarah on Pinterest

Red paper. A few rolls of Rolos. A black pipe cleaner. A card. A child could make this. That’s okay with me.

Source: fab.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I mean, this is just funny. You’d have to know how to cross-stich, I suppose, and you couldn’t REALLY hang it anywhere but it’s still awesome.

The evening wasn’t a complete loss: prior to Tour de Vance, I had my second of two allotted cocktails at RN74 with my really really really good friend Dana. I have to admit that I was kind of intimidated by all the hype around the restaurant and had for some reason convinced myself that my wallet wasn’t big enough to afford to go there, but they actually have very reasonable happy hour prices and it’s a great space and the servers wear plaid shirts and jeans so it’s pretty much the opposite of intimidating.

But back to the food for the day. I skipped breakfast because I was running late and couldn’t decide on an outfit that would seamlessly transition from working in the office (in a cubicle, shoot me) to happy hour to the party. It was supposed to be some more of that hot cereal with walnuts and blueberries, but I held out until lunch and had leftover beet soup, a butter lettuce salad with pepitas and cranberries and leftover tofu with bok choy and carrot-brown rice pilaf. It was, as the Bon Appetit blogger writes, a “generous” lunch.

I wolfed down a snack around 3:45 of rye crackers and avocado because I thought it would help stave off hunger pains for the rest of the afternoon, which it did.

After wailing about how we have TEN DAYS left of this, I’m now sitting on the couch watching Teen Mom 2  while Heather makes dinner: apple cider (well, apple juice) glazed chicken with an apple-fennel salad and roasted broccoli rabe.

I leave you with this cute pic from tonight’s event: Support Equal Rights Washington as the Washington State legislature is on the verge of voting to approve gay marriage!

Cherry, Sarah and Dana at Equal Rights Washington's "Engagement Party" at Tour de Vance