budapest red ... oh noes!

well, now i have something to remind me of hungary...my hair color. this picture makes it look less garish, (thank you mr. sunshine!), but it really is budapest red.

millions of women all over hungary, old and young alike, all sport the same hair color. you would think that with the fall of communism there would be zillions of hair color options flooding the market. that's what capitalism offers, right? more choice in hair color? maybe there are more colors available but the only one women buy is a freakish dark purply-red one.

in the hair color aisle, i looked at so many different boxes and they all looked more or less the same. i had a fleeting thought that this one might be too close to budapest red, but when compared next to some others it looked like a safe bet. but no. next time i will heed the small voice in my head that says "orange, not red."

quasi-failure

the lovely and multi-talented vera obliged me with the recipe for failure cake, so named for its finicky-ness for actually forming a cake. i had a lot of plums, why not make failure cake?

i haven't cut into it yet, but i am pretty much certain it is a failure. the plums were very, very ripe. i added cornstarch to them and even drained excess liquid from the fuckers, but i fear the top crust of the cake hides a goopy, soupy mess of an interior.

however, all is not lost. i ended up with some extra batter (i have lent my springform pan to arlie, so i had to improvise with some other smaller baking vessel) and i pretty much love any food baked/served in a ramekin, so why not combine the extra batter with a ramekin and see what happens? success cakelettes happen, that's what!

having used all the plums i looked for something else and found a too-ripe-for-eating-unless-you're-gricklepants-banana and sliced that up. poured the batter on top and baked it. it's pretty darn tasty, especially since the batter had a bit of cardamom in it. i see many failure cakelette experimentations in my future...

morning scones

we had an abundance of half & half in the house so i have been wanting to find ways to use it up. or maybe i just wanted another excuse to make scones. and use some of the delicious lavender cherry jam vera gave me for my bday. on a super beautiful morning.

whatever the reasoning, i made scones. i decided to smear the round disc of dough with the lavender cherry jam and then folded it in half. i was in a bit of a rush to get them into the oven so that gricklepants and i would have ample time to eat them before he had to go to work, so i probably could've arranged them better prior to baking. they kinda fell over and the jam exploded out. i'm not too picky, though. they were delicious.