My friends made these two characters—Mirabelle and her son Avery—who I thought were just so adorable. The three of us each drew this same picture of them, and it was really cool to see how they each came out!
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RBG
“[I would like to be remembered] just as someone who did whatever she could, with whatever limited talent she had, to move society along in the direction I would like it to be for my children and grandchildren.”
~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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Graffiti Tag
I’m really loving my art class so far this year. My teacher is just wonderful, and the material were covering seems like it’s going to be very fun. Online learning can’t stop us artists from doing what we love!
The first project we were assigned was this “Graffiti Tag” piece. The guidelines were very loose and we had a lot of room to be creative—exactly how I think art class should be. All we really needed to do was to display our names in a unique, colorful way using dimensional and creative lettering.
I feel like my project strayed away from the rules a little bit, but I’m still really happily with it. Like my art teacher says: if you have an idea that you’re passionate about that might not fit the rules exactly, it’s always okay to go through with it. Creativity is what’s most important!
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Site Updates
Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve posted here.
The site probably looks a little different than the last time you saw it. That’s because I’ve made a few changes, and I’d like to share a bit about that.
First of all, I was just getting so tired of the old theme. I’m a lot happier with this new layout and design! Now, it’s much easier for me to showcase my artwork.
This new site update is part of an effort to broaden my online presence as an artist. I’ve created an art account on Instagram and I’ll be joining other social media sites soon.
Next, my baking is gone. From now on, I won’t be sharing any food on this site. But don’t despair! That’s only because I have my own baking blog now: http://www.roomforbrownies.com/. So, if it’s food you’re looking for, go ahead and check that out.
That’s it for now, there’s more to come soon! You can look forward to frequent posts from me again in the near future.
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Gift for Pipistrellosatyr
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Croissants
For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to try making homemade croissants. I recall one time, not long after visiting France, that my mom and I found ourselves curious about how we could make our own croissants. My mom searched for a recipe on her phone, and I remember my surprise when we found out that they took multiple days! Though they sounded delicious, this certainly turned us away from the recipe. “Maybe someday,” we said, and looked for another…less time-consuming recipe.
Well, it seems that “someday” has arrived! COVID-19 is keeping us all home, and I’m always in need of something to keep me busy. For some reason, croissants crossed my mind, so I looked for a recipe. I found that there are actually a lot of one-day recipes—but I had my mind set on making those three-day ones I had heard of. With so much time on my hands, there’s nothing keeping me from it!
As it turns out, when the recipes say 3 days, they don’t mean a full 72 hours like I thought. If you start in the evening, they can be ready two mornings later. Realizing this on a Friday night, I frantically began baking in order for them to be finished on Sunday morning.
On the first night, I made the dough. For croissants, you actually do this in two parts. There’s the poolish (a mix of yeast, flour, and water) which you leave to rise, and later add into your mixture of dry ingredients. I’ve never made poolish before, so this was certainly an interesting new thing to try.
I was a bit panicked when I finished the dough. The recipe told me that “the dough should be soft, smooth and slightly sticky.” Meanwhile, I had a rock-hard lump. I was worried that I had accidentally miscounted and put in an extra cup of flour—but this proved not to be the case. Actually, what made the dough so stiff remains a mystery to me. Luckily, (spoiler alert) everything turned out fine.
When making the dough, I was surprised to see that only 2¾ tablespoons of butter were used. Considering that buttery-ness is one of the main defining qualities of croissants, this seemed quite odd. That’s when I realized: the butter is in a separate layer! And you wouldn’t believe how much butter is in these things! To make twelve croissants, it needed two whole sticks. A lack of butter was no longer a concern!
After leaving the dough and butter to chill overnight, I continued working on them the next afternoon. Day two was for laminating the dough—the process that creates the layers of the croissant. This is done by rolling out the dough, wrapping the butter inside, and then rolling it out again and folding it over itself a number of times (chilling for 30 minutes in between). This specific recipe called for this to be done three times, creating a grand total of 81 layers.
Rolling out the dough the first time was incredibly difficult, because both the dough and butter had been in the fridge all night. The following times were easier, although near the end the butter started peeking through the layers. This is a really common occurrence when making croissants and puff pastry, and you have to be extra careful not to let all of the butter leak out. Not that I’ve ever done it before; I’m just a fan of the Great British Baking Show.
The biggest issue I came across when making these was the cutting. After laminating them for the last time, you divide them into triangles and cut them out. However, I somehow managed to miss the fact that on the final time you roll it out, it has to be in a 43×8 in rectangle rather than a 24×8 in rectangle (which was the measurement for the other steps). This meant that the croissant triangles I cut out were way too thick. Luckily, we were able to fix this by rolling them out individually. Maybe they weren’t as pretty as the photo, but you could hardly tell after we rolled them up.
I baked them the next morning, with surprisingly no mishaps! Despite a few bumps in the road, I think that the croissants turned out wonderfully. They were flaky and buttery with perfect layers, making a delightful Sunday morning brunch.
These croissants were so much fun to make, and absolutely worth the work and the wait. I’d highly recommend trying them out for yourself. Here’s a link to the recipe I used: https://www.pardonyourfrench.com/three-day-classic-french-croissants/
If you don’t have quite so much time on your hands (or maybe you can’t bear to wait three days), the website also has a one-day and a two-day recipe.
I hope that you’re all staying safe and healthy (and not too bored) during these trying times. Things may be difficult right now, but it’s important to remember that we’ll all get through this together. In the meantime, try to look on the bright side. If nothing else, this is a time to try something different, and perhaps discover a new hobby! All from the safety of your home, of course. If you’re struggling to find something to do, baking is one thing I’d suggest. Not only is it something to keep you busy–maybe take your mind off things for a while–it’s relaxing and fun to do (at least, in my opinion). Not to mention that afterward, you end up with a delicious treat!
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Silken Tofu Chocolate Mousse
Getting groceries, as you know, has been difficult recently due to COVID-19. I’m sure you can all relate to the struggles of ordering online, and I know I’m not the only one who has received something in an order that they didn’t quite expect.
In this case, that thing is tofu. When my mom placed our last grocery order, she thought she was getting firm tofu, but of course we ended up with six packages of the silken tofu and no idea what to do with it.
Luckily, we have the internet on our side. My mom and I searched for silken tofu recipes, but you would be surprised how few we could find! Eventually, we came across this recipe for silken tofu chocolate mousse. With no idea of what else to do, we decided to give it a shot. What’s to lose?
The recipe was incredibly simple. I don’t know if it’s technically mousse, considering it’s just blended tofu with chocolate and syrup, but it was actually better than I thought it would be. Not exactly like mousse, but that’s to be expected. The consistency was much more liquidy than that of mousse—definitely not as light and fluffy. However, my family enjoyed it regardless. My mom compared it to pudding. Slightly-melted chocolate ice cream was what it reminded me of.
We actually made this silken tofu mousse last Thursday, but with my dad working from home, there hasn’t been an opportunity to load the photos from my mom’s camera onto the computer.
Speaking of the photos, I wanted to mention that this was a dessert finished during daylight hours, so we were able to get some nice pictures! Aren’t you proud of me? Sure, it only took about five minutes to make, but that’s irrelevant. Anyway, our little photoshoot actually had to be quite frenzied, because the berries were sinking into the mousse! As I’ve mentioned previously, groceries have been hard to get—particularly fresh fruits. The recipe recommended that you garnish the mousse with fresh berries. We didn’t have any, of course, but were lucky enough to find some frozen berries in the freezer. Unfortunately, this meant that they melted into the mousse, creating little rings of berry juice around themselves. That’s something we’ll choose to ignore…
I suppose that in times like these, you just need to make the best of what you have!
Here’s the recipe, in case you’re interested: https://aseasyasapplepie.com/silken-tofu-chocolate-mousse/
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Carrot Cake
A few weeks ago, I decided that I would be making carrot cake for Easter, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for the day to come ever since. Due to a shortage in ingredients (the Coronavirus outbreak has not made getting groceries easy), I haven’t been able to bake as much as I would like to lately. Flour has been especially low, and we’ve been saving it up so there would be enough for me to make this special dessert! Luckily, we were also able to get more flour in one of our recent grocery orders, so now we have plenty for future baking.
I don’t recall ever having carrot cake before now, so what made me crave it, I’m not really sure. The most likely answer is the magic of Pinterest. I could browse it for hours, just staring at all of the mouthwatering recipes and food photos. When I discovered a carrot cake recipe, I knew I had to make it. It just looked so good!
Easter, I realized, was only a few weeks away. And so I waited…and waited…until finally, the day came!
Now, I tend to bake in the evenings, which has led to some mishaps. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ll start baking something too late and work on it far into the night before I finally have to give up and continue in the morning. It doesn’t help that I’m probably the slowest baker you’ll ever meet. (I have to check and re-check the recipe every few seconds for fear of messing something up…I can’t help it!) I guess this just goes to show that I would not make a great contestant on any of those baking shows.
Anyway, when I do finish a bake in time, it’s usually too dark outside to get any good photos! My mom is a photographer, but there’s not much she can do when there isn’t any light.
So this time, I was determined to start early, and finish during daylight.
The recipe was pretty simple. I mixed up the batter, making half of the original recipe. After all, there are only four of us in my family, and we can’t very well share the cake with anyone! So instead of using two 9-inch pans, I made mine in 6-inch pans. It came out as an adorable little cake!
This carrot cake is actually the first cake I’ve ever made (I’m not counting cheesecake). Frosting it was the hard part, so my mom helped me out a lot with that part! The good thing about carrot cake is that the frosting doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. And it definitely helped to cover the outside in crushed pecans.
Onto the matter of taste! Like I said, I was looking forward to this for a long time, and I was not disappointed! The cake itself was incredibly moist, and not too sweet, balanced out perfectly with the slightly tangy cream cheese frosting. I found myself longing for more as soon as I finished the last bite. This is definitely a recipe I would love to make (and eat!) again.
If you’d like to try the recipe for yourself, here’s a link! https://www.livewellbakeoften.com/the-best-carrot-cake-recipe/
I hope that you all had a lovely Easter! Stay healthy and safe!
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Gift for Emma
Today is my friend Emma’s birthday, so of course I had to draw something for her. She’s working on a webcomic, and this guy is the main character! He was certainly…different…to draw, and I had a lot of trouble shading his ears. Originally, there was a city scene background, but I jut wasn’t satisfied with it. I’ll have to practice my background and perspective skills.
I think it turned out pretty well, though, and I’m quite happy with the way the clothes turned out.
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Hoofs
DeviantArt was hosting an April Fool’s Day event where they asked everyone to draw this goofy character, Hoofs. Probably the strangest thing I’ve drawn in a while, but fun nonetheless!