Rum Cake Recipe Experiment. Part 1

Ok. So I looooove rum cake. Like a lot. I've eaten it in the Bahama's, ordered it in from Jamaica and jumped for joy when a local bbq place had a secret recipe and I could just go drive out and get a slice. However woe is me that place has closed and I am tired of spending money on shipping cake to me. So here we go. Round one.

Rum Cake
Ingredient
for the cake:
1/2 cups walnuts, crushed (optional)
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
3 tablespoons + 1/2 cup canola oil, separated (or not. Honestly worked fine for me either way. My Kitchen Aid is a beast)
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch OR ½ cup flour (I prefer the cornstarch. I could taste the extra flour when I used it) 4 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup vanilla instant pudding mix (JELLO is my choice)

3/4 cup whole milk
4 large eggs
3/4 cup dark rum (Appleton Estate Jamaican Rum)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (Don’t use imitation if you can help it. This is a recipe where you can taste the difference.)
for the rum syrup:
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 cup dark rum (Same as above or you can mix and match)

Special Equipment: One 10-15 cup Bundt pan

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour bundt pan. Set aside.

In the base of a mixer, cream the 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar and the 1/2 cup butter. Add the 3 tablespoons oil, flour, cornstarch, baking powder until evenly distributed. (should look a bit like crumbs) Mix in the pudding mix add walnuts.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, rum, vanilla extract, and remaining vegetable oil. Add to the dry mixture and mix well until combined. The batter will be smooth, thin, and pour easily. Scrape your bowl often.

Pour into the prepared bundt pan and bake for an hour, or until a tester inserted in the cake comes up clean. (1 hour and 5 minutes in my oven)

Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a rack. Let cool for additional 20 minutes.

While the cake cools, prepare the rum syrup: In a saucepan combine the butter, water, granulated sugar. Cook over medium or low heat until the butter completely melts and the sugar dissolves add rum. Let reduce slightly.

Wash and dry the bundt pan, then place over the cool cake and invert the cake back into the pan. Pour the hot rum syrup all over the cake and let soak for 8 hours (overnight). <-- This step didn't work for me at all. I think next time I'm going to soak it in a big bowl because it came out of the pan perfect when cooling but this morning it stuck and broke in half.

This cake also wasn't nutty enough for me and I think I'm going to add about 50% more rum syrup on my next go. Overall my hubby loves it but it's not quite what I had in mind. I also want to use Bacardi Rum next time. I've had a Bacardi rum cake and it was tasty. Plus like I said this is a good cake but just not what I was looking for.

The Nightmare Before Christmas and Other Misc. Thoughts

Ok. Recently I have been so swamped that I barely have time to breathe so when all my plans for a Monday went belly up I found myself with nearly six hours of free time. Chores were done. No work. Already gone to the gym. I weighed my options. I could always FIND more work that needed to be done. Or I could pop some kettle corn and have a movie marathon until my husband got home.

I started my marathon with a few episodes of Attack on Titan but for anyone who has seen it, it's a bit dark and not in the funny way. So I moved on to What to Expect When You're Expecting. Great cast list, super funny, and curbs my baby fever but by the time it's done I wanted something a bit less bubbly and that's when I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas on my Netflix queue. It had been years since I'd seen it or really thought about it. When talking cartoons with my friends who have kids it generally doesn't make the list and never understood why before now.

I was reflecting on that movie and it seems the great underlying theme of The Nightmare Before Christmas is that if you try to branch out of the place society has created for you, you will make people suffer and ultimately fail until you move back into your place. Wait, what? Was that really the concept that they wanted us to take from the movie. Society will put you somewhere and you better stay there? Now I'm not sure if I want my own kids watching that, you know, once they actually exist.

Of course this couldn't be allowed to stand. I loved this movie as a kid. I don't think I came out to scarred for watching it. I attempted to try and find something redeeming about the message that this was portraying and I'll admit I came up with slim pickings. The best I could do is change it from 'your being punished because you branched out' to 'we are presented with a protagonist who learns to be happy with what he has in life and with this enlightenment he is greater fulfilled as a self conscious being.' That's an ok message but I guess it's not the worst thing cartoons has thrown our direction.

I burst out laughing when I heard Disney finally made a cartoon about sisters bonding and the concept that you shouldn't marry the first good looking man you meet. Pat yourself on the back Disney. I'm proud of you.

Have a lovely weekend. I'll try to be a little more insightful next time. Maybe. We'll see how it goes. I might give you a rum cake recipe instead.

-Amanda

Pokemon X

I know it's a bit dated as this game came out last October but I just got a 2DS last December so it took me some time to finish. That being said I had a lot more fun with the game than I have had with Pokémon in a long time. It's not my favorite by a long shot but it was wonderful to finally see a graphic update which I've been waiting to see since I was eight. This is going to be a short blog so let me break it down into how I felt.

PROS:

Graphics update- where have you been all these years?

Finally a new plot- you're still trying to become the champ but it feels like more of a side effect, like why not, I'm here anyway.

Mewtwo - always a pro in my book

Getting to change my clothes, contacts, shopping, haircuts. It was a nice change of pace to see that I was forever trapped in clothes that were mediocre.

A new type. Oh hai there fairy. We've been waiting on you.

They changed the way that caves and flash work. <3

You can Ride Pokémon.



CON:
The game was too easy. With getting xp share so early and changing the way it worked I got a team of six that was always 10-15 levels above the enemies. It was a bit of a bummer to never be challenged.

The Pokémon Safari. I was thrilled when I heard it was back. However you need a friend code to ender and each friend code gets you three Pokémon of a type. So example. I added my hubby and got access to wander a small patch of grass that was hiding three fighting Pokémon.

I have always hating Roaming Pokémon. Enough Said.

I count it as a con that I got to the elite four and every Pokémon, except my legendary, was a classic Pokémon. It was part nostalgia. However I also found that out of the Pokémon I caught they were just better. I ended up abandoning my fire starter in favor of a Charizard.

Maybe age is catching up to me but I only clocked 45 hours with this Pokémon game. It took 15 years but I might be outgrowing Pokémon?

A Serial Reading Novel Experiment using Little Dorrit By Charles Dickens

Little Dorrit was a serial novel that fascinated the Victorian world. However as systems of communication expanded and the process of creating physical books became cheaper and more standardized the process of reading a serial novel began to die.
              The serial novel was a brilliant move at the time because it allowed an author to judge the audience reaction to a story or particular character of the month and mold the next installment of the story to fit the needs of the audience. The story also had the added advantage that there was no complete copy until it was finished in print. A person could not have already read ahead of you and was incapable of ruining the ending until the last monthly installment came out making each segment an effective cliffhanger. Many people, myself included, will continue to read a story even if they do not care for it because it is human nature to want to know how a story ends and what fate awaited the characters. The serialization also created a communal aspect to the story that must have been vital during the Victorian era.
              Given that there was no television or internet the people of the Victorian era had a much more limited spectrum from which they could find entertainment particularly if one wanted to stay away from aspects or was too young to be a part of the drinking or gambling culture. Dickens work was a family friendly equivalent to a popular tv series. Each installment could be read in a family setting each month and then it could be discussed. Just as now people enjoy talking about their fates and speculations of a favored character the serial novel allowed for the same kind of interaction.
              Unfortunately since I have lived in a world of instant knowledge attempting to read a novel in this format was often more of a trial than I received pleasure from. The story is set up in such a way where each segment is meant to draw in the reader by introducing dozens of little plot concepts and the audience receives very little about the character for whom the book is named. Little Dorrit herself can be seen as the heroine of the story however it isn’t until the final chapters that I feel as if I understand the character. The Leader aptly points out as early as 1855 “Of Little Dorrit herself we as yet only get the vaguest of glimpses” and I feel this persists until the end. Also each character tends to fall into an easily typed person so that a reader could identify the characters with people they would know in real life. When reading through the book it was easy to identify people I know that had traits very similar to those of Mr. Dorrit or Pet. By allowing these characters to be easily identified it loses quite a bit in the modern era. For Victorian era novels this was an essential aspect as posted in The Athenaeum “No man has been more true to English subjects than the author of “Little Dorrit””.
              There is so much exposure to generic characters through film and various other media that there is little joy in reading about them. The modern era has been conditioned to look for the extraordinary in people as well as a more personal experience where they can follow a primary protagonist on a journey of change and come to a satisfying conclusion. Little Dorrit does not permit this. There are too many characters with too great a disconnect to ever feel anything more than a meager intrigue at what will become of this cast. The Victorian era was a much more social time where there was less of an emphasis placed on the individual and I imagine this is because of the larger effort that was required to connect with a singular person rather than their family and their station.
              Another aspect of the serial novel that I found unfortunate is the aspect that I am typically a fast reader. I tend to read a novel until I have completed it and I try to do that in one day whenever possible; though I admit it took me a whole weekend to read the final Harry Potter book. I think this is another problem of the modern era. Being able to buy books for a quarter a piece second hand or rent a stack from the library takes away something away from the amazing process that an author had to endure to produce a serial novel in the Victorian age. “[The] interactive relationship with the public, the possibilities of change and modification in the light of changing patterns of sales and audience response” put an extraordinary amount of pressure upon Dickens when he was working to meet deadlines and expectations (159).
              In many ways the serial novel is a tribute to the concept that patience is a virtue. Even one of my favorite authors, Steven King, noted during his serial novel experiment that internet uses have the attention span of “grasshoppers” and I concur with this assessment. As I stated before in this age people have become accustomed to getting information when they want it whether or not the ending of their story has been officially released. Serial novels require a long term investment from readers and in this age fewer and fewer people are willing to make that investment. Time is considered to be money and time wasted waiting for the next piece of the story is time that could be spent on another project that doesn’t have the same constraints until the entirety of the serial is published. As Barndollar and Schorn’s article explains, the cost benefit analysis of serial novels shows that those most likely to profit from the experience would be specialists, such as ourselves, who are looking to study literature and culture in all its forms.
              In short I believe that reading a serial novel in its original format is a worthy experiment for anyone with the time and patience to attempt it. Unfortunately, this format is no longer capable of being the primary format in the modern world without a drastic reformatting to enforce the personal connection that new readers are looking for.