Last Friday Bobo had her birthday dinner, at Chopsticks Inn. That was good. I was reasonably hungry that night, although I’d been eating chocolate all day, so I’m not sure why… but things started off well with a majority decision to have one of the banquets. Aside from a few little dead animals at certain points – those fat shrivelled things that I think are supposed to be prawns, but look like mutant alien Scrunchies – it was good. I thieved off with a few other people’s dishes too. And had three desserts. 😆
And then there was cake. My cake, in fact. As in, one I baked. From scratch… grew the wheat myself. 😜
Okay, so I used a packet-mix cake, so sue me. The check-out chick already gave me crap about it, so there’s no one else left who could be more humiliating to say so. I don’t even know what a cake’s made of, let alone how to cook it “from scratch”. I guess there’s some flour and some sugar, and some cocoa… but if I had to just go on my gut instincts I’d forget about that bland flour stuff, and just mix sugar and cocoa, and butter. ;)
Mmmm…. La Bombé… deliciously deadly… this éclair is over one million calories. Twenty-five pounds of butter per square inch. Covered with chocolate so dark that light cannot escape its surface…
*drool*
Ahem. So, where was I… ah yes, baking a cake. Now, this is a relatively trivial task. But not when you’re in a hurry. I’d been around to my grandparents early in the afternoon to install a DVD burner for them. Unfortunately, while testing out the backup software (Nero BackItUp) that came with the drive, I found it created only shiny coasters. Damn! While I was dreading a dodgy drive, it seems it’s just that particular program; burning the same data as a generic UFS volume in Nero Express works fine. Ah well. But that wasted a few hours, unfortunately. It works now, so it’s all good… but yeah, it left me just two hours to bake a cake in. The side of the box promised it would be done in one. Pfft. I smell a lawsuit…
‘course, you can mix the cake and bake it in an hour, yeah, no worries. And you can mix up the icing while it’s baking. All good, right? Umm… no… you cannot apply icing to a hot cake. Oddly enough, icing, being a liquid anyway, melts. Of course, the luxury of time, or a pressure freezer, were not available to me. Humorously enough I did try a hair dryer, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn it to cold. 😜
So, I made do. Most of the icing melted straight off and ended up in the bin, courtesy of half a roll of paper towel. But enough stuck… unfortunately the middle of the cake also collapsed, meaning it eventually became solid icing. Which works for me, but apparently isn’t how it’s done. But a few people just thought I’d used one of those baking tins with the middle bit missing. Muahahaha… yes, that’s what I did, yes indeed… 😜
I tried to cover up the gruesome exterior with lots of chocolate sprinkles… I think that actually worked, more or less. It took two coats, though. I never thought I’d have to use chocolate sprinkles as load-bearing materials…
‘course, the real test was when we broke it out at dinner and people dove in. Most people were at least keen enough to try it, for which I commend them greatly. There were several positive comments made, and several abstainers… the conclusion being that I have many great friends, but only some of them are honest. 😉
I never actually had a slice myself… I have two pieces left, but I think I’ll pass them on to Aidan and Travis. I have a monster bowl of mousse to tackle, courtesy of Sarah, so I’m all chocolated up for a while.
I’m still annoyed that I didn’t do a cake or mousse or something for Chantel’s, though… it’s not a difficult request, for people to each bring something homemade, and I felt rude turning up with consolatory Easter eggs.
Although, I think they did go down well. I certainly enjoyed them. 😁
But anyway, Bobo’s little dinner was good. I’ve seen a whole lot of Stof this last week, which is good – I really like talking to him. He’s studied mechatronics, and worked on model planes… he also flies the bigger versions. I think he’s actually hoping to become a commercial pilot. But apparently you need 500 hours, which is rather expensive, as you can probably imagine… ah well, best of luck to him. 🙂
He also mentioned the restrictions on flight in Australia. Apparently you can’t fly a model plane above 300 feet (over ground level), nor a plane below 500 feet. Yet he’s seen a model plane come spiralling up past him at 1500 feet. Yikes. There’s no way anyone on the ground could possibly still see the model plane at that altitude, surely… we shall have to find out. 😄
Once Rob & I can get this damn video camera working properly on his plane, things’ll be a lot better. It’s really hard to control something you can hardly see. Having a cockpit view would be immeasurably helpful. Especially since Rob insists on first flying up high into the stratosphere before he’ll hand over the controls to me. 😉
I should note that I ended up getting home from Bobo’s dinner a 6:30am, on Saturday. After everyone left, at around 11pm or so, Sarah went to drop Ash home (in Frankston), to which I tagged along. Then, just as she was dropping me back off at my car, back at Chopstick’s Inn, Chantel randomly pulled up beside us. I think she’s stalking us. ;) So she jumped in and we chatted for a while. It seems to be all the rage these days, sitting around in cars ’till all hours of morning… I guess it’s one of few places which satisfies the criteria:
- Comfy.
- Warm.
- Soundproof from the vantage point of cranky, sleepless parents or housemates. 🙂
Whatever works, I guess. I must remember to put some blankets and cushions in the back of my car; it’s plenty big enough for me to sleep in, and it sure beats expensive hotels or setting up tents in darkness, that kind of thing. Most people seem to have an aversion to it, however… I guess I’ll find out why eventually, when I try it myself.
And a pool table. Then we’d never need to party anywhere else. 😉
Oh, well, I still need to hook my iPod up to the amp. But I’ll do that this week.
