Creme de la Creme

Yesterday Emily and I made delicious creme brulee! Now this isn't your typical creme brulee. Instead of caramelizing the top, we did a recipe that puts a cookie on top. An amazingly delicious Belgian cookie.

Speculoos Cookies and my little Ramekins

It called for a Belgian cookie called Speculoos. Emily bought some while she was in France, so we had the real thing (By the way, Emily also has a blog. It's called Movies and Mayhem. Check it out here)! The recipe was also French, which meant we spent the morning converting measurements and translating before we could get started.

Emily bought an amazing little creme brulee cookbook while she was in France, so this shouldn't be our only creme brulee adventure this semester. If you don't have time to run to France or Belgium to pick up cookies you can try the american version which happens to be sold at Walgreens. I'm definitely going to try and find these once we run out of the ones Emily bought. They taste kind of cinnamon-y, almost like a graham cracker (except classier? lol). At least that's the best comparison I could think of.

Here's the recipe we used:

Pots de creme a la vanille et speculos (Makes 4-6 servings)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Whipping Cream

1/2 Cup Milk

Just under 1/3 cup sugar

4 egg yolks

Vanilla (just under a tablespoon)

4-6 speculos cookies

Put milk and vanilla in a saucepan on low heat.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks and sugar together. Add the whipping cream and mix well. Little by little, add the hot milk/vanilla mixture to the cold mixture in the bowl. Put in the fridge for at least two hours.

Set the oven for 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the contents of the bowl in your ramekins. Place the speculos cookies on the top of the mixture in each ramekin.

Bake for 60 - 75 minutes.

When we put the ramekins in the oven we placed them all on a cake pan together, so we wouldn't have to worry about them wobbling around or getting to messed up when we took them out.

This is what they should look like when you take them out of the oven.

Put in the fridge for at least one hour before serving (2 hours is probably a safer bet). Then you're done!

Emily showing off our finished creme brulees. They looked just like the picture in the book; we were so proud of ourselves :)

Now Eat!

We had so much fun making these!

Currently catching up on: Modern Family

Back to School

I'm back at BYU. For my last semester no less. It's weird to think this could be my very last first day of school! So far the semester has been going pretty well. My classes are going to be a lot of work, but they seem interesting.

I'm taking Shakespeare, Adolescent lit. writing class (this is the same class I took last semester, but with a different teacher), British literature during the enlightenment, Art History (Part Two), and the senior course. The senior course subject varies by teacher and semester. This year I got a great professor who I've had before, and the subject is American Mystery Novels in the 30s and 40s. It's been really fun. I've already read one novel, The Maltese Falcon. We are also watching the movie in class.

So in honor of school starting up again I thought I'd compile five of the most memorable back to school movie scenes:

1. Never Been Kissed.

It's hard to be popular. Especially when your coworker tells you to wear a white feather boa outfit and you spill chocolate milk on yourself. Poor Josie.

Josie: That'll teach me to wear white jeans after labor day.

Popular Girl: I don't think you're supposed to wear white jeans after 1983.

2. Full House. Ok so technically this is not a movie. It's a sitcom.

But I can't help remembering DJs first day of high school. It was pretty awful. She wore the same outfit as the teacher and had to eat her lunch in a telephone booth. Alone. But because this is a sitcom, this horribleness lasts for one, two days max. Then DJ adjusts to the new school, and gets over all her awkwardness.

Update: I found a synopsis of this episode online. And it was the first day of seventh grade, not high school.

3. Nemo!!! I wasn't quite as excited as Nemo for the first day back, but I do love starting a new semester. It's always fun to go to all your new classes. Here's the clip of Nemo getting ready for his first day of school.

4. Mean Girls

So I love the first day scene in this movie, it does the whole introducing the high school cliques thing well (kind of reminds me of the first scene in Ten Things I Hate About You as well). I also love all the first day scenes with Cady and her parents. I threw in one of their conversations below.

Parents: Hey. How was your second day?

Cady: Fine.

Parents: Were people nice?

Cady: No.

Parents: Did you make any friends?

Cady: Yeah.

5. Footloose:

Ren has this conversation with his mom:

Mom: You about ready to go?

Mom: You gonna wear that tie?

Ren: Yeah.

Mom: I think you might want to dress down for now.

Ren: Why? I like the tie.

Mom: September, when you go to college, you can dress like David Bowie.

But you know what? He does wear that tie and he becomes one of the best things to happen to that town! Thus Kevin Bacon has taught us an important lesson: Be yourself, the rest will happen. Also, challenge any anti-dancing laws that get in your way.

Honorable Mention Back to School Movie Moments: School of Rock, Harry Potter ('Cause who wouldn't want to go to Hogwarts? lol), Sky High (mostly I just remember that their school bus is like a roller coaster ride), plus all those inspirational education type movies

Currently: adoring Ingrid Michaelson and obsessing over my kindle

Currently Reading: Red Harvest

Four Weddings and a Cupcake

So you may have noticed that lately I've been on a blog vacation. Well for the new year hopefully I'll keep up with my blogging goals and have no more of those! lol

I had a lovely winter break in which I spent time with my family, attended a few wedding receptions, caught up with friends, practiced my cake decorating skills, and actually found time to relax :)

Thanks to my good friend Kimberly (who also has a blog yay!) I got to try a few fun baking and decorating things this break! I had never made cake balls before so Kimberly helped me make some. We used chocolate cake and a coconut icing so they tasted like german chocolate cake. Yum. We also made these cool chocolate chip cookie dough balls. They taste like cookie dough, but they don't have any eggs in them. You dip them in melted chocolate just like a cake ball.

She also gave me some fondant to experiment with. It was really fun to try this out, especially since I was also watching Cake Boss during the break with my mom. I forgot to take a picture but I ended up making a cute little mini cake and using the fondant to cover it. I meant to do more complex decorating, but then I got hungry and cute myself a slice. Oops.

This is Kimberly's adorable daughter, Leslie, at our friend Karen's wedding reception (thanks to my sister who remembered to take pictures over the break!).

Sadly not all my baking experiments went well. Earlier in the break I decided to make cupcakes. I made a big batch on night with no problems and told my family not to eat any because I wanted to decorate them. The next morning I went to the kitchen and found that almost all of my cupcakes were gone! There were only 5 or 6 left.

I immediately asked "Who ate my cupcakes?!" Everyone denied eating them and then all of sudden we all turned and looked at our dog, Bella, who looked especially happy. I realized that the night before I forgot to put plastic wrap on the cupcakes so it would have been easy for her to get them off the counter. Later that day my Mom found a cupcake wedged in between some of the couch cushions. I guess Bella was saving that one for later. Ha ha oh well! At least I still had a few to practice decorating with.

The cupcake thief!

Currently reading: The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett (I'm taking a detective noir fiction course this semester)

Currently Obsessed with: My Polaroid camera. I'm out of film right now, which is probably for the best, because I just want to take pictures of everything. Also I'm completely obsessed with pomegranates right now! love those.