Hideous Glass Mosaic Candle Holders

These are single handedly the most awful hideous things I've ever had a hand in making. That includes the doubly pink scarf that looked kind of like the Barbie aisle in the toy department puked all over it. I'm not entirely sure why I thought these would be a good idea. I tend to always think things of this nature are sort of ugly. I was kind of hoping the residual fondness for things you make yourself would overwhelm my usually negative feelings about these sort of things. That totally didn't happen. Of course, these aren't done. I still have to sand the grout. But to be totally honest, I'm mostly going to be hoping I sand the grout off completely, because they were much classier looking when they were just candle holders with bits of glass glued to them.

White Chocolate Malted Ice Cream

This is probably my least favorite flavor of all the ice cream I've made so far. There's something about the combination of the malted power and white chocolate that just makes it a bit cloying and hard to take. However, this ice cream went pretty well with a cherry pie my sister made, because the tartness of the cherries cut through a lot of the sweetness of this ice cream. I don't have too much to say about this, probably because:
a) I made this last week
b) I'm currently in the process of dying of the plague/ whooping cough
If you want to try your own hand in it, or have a cherry pie that this would go tastily with the recipe is here. This was a variation on the chocolate ice cream, which might be better.

Cowboy Bebop T-Shirt

Those the Gods wish to destroy they first make think it's a great idea to stencil Spike Spiegel onto a tshirt. Oh my god, this was the most hideously awful stencil to to cut out ever. In all seriousness, it took me at least three hours to cut out this stencil, and I may have left off a couple of the fingers on Spike's right hand, (well, my right, his left, I guess. The one holding the cigarette either way). All I wanted to do is just cover up the stain that was on this shirt I found, and I thought Spike's afro would do the job nicely. Also, it provides me with the opportunity to air my opinion that Bebop is the second best name for a ship ever. (The Belafonte is the best name for a ship ever). I can't honestly say I recommend anyone else trying this, unless they possess superior patience and dedication to the Bebop cause, but if you do, here's the stencil. I flipped it in photoshop. (That version is here.)

Baklava

Baklava is definitely one of the more tasty things you can possibly imagine. After making baklava ice cream twice last week, I decided i had to try making the actual stuff. The fact that I had a shit ton of fillo dough to get rid of before it spoiled was in no way an incentive to get that done. None at all. The recipe I used was for Turkish baklava. I found it here. You can tell the difference because the Greek baklava is generally made with walnuts and honey, and middle eastern style baklava generally is made with pistachios and a syrup of sugar and water. I had heard rumors that baklava was a seriously time consuming experience, and it was for me, but I think the time it takes to do this could be seriously shortened. For instance, I didn't really think to get the pistachios ready beforehand, and so I had to sit and shell them all right then. You could probably cut down on time by buying unshelled pistachios, or doing this beforehand while you watch tv or something. It's not really taxing work. If not for that, other than baking time, I probably could have gotten this done in an hour or so. Also, I recommend not cutting the pieces as huge as I did 'cause they're drippy and hard to carry that way. Alternately, you could not put all the syrup in with the baklava and that might also make it not drippy. All I'm saying is that it dries white, and you don't really want that on your pants. Not that I know this from experience or anything. Other than that, this is pretty tasty.

Milano-esque cookies

I love the Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. They're super tasty, and also they have chocolate in them in a dose I can totally handle. Also, they are pretty much the tastiest thing to eat while drinking Chai, milk and cookies style. So, lately, whenever I start to like something, my first instinct is to see if I could make it myself. So I was googling Milano cookies, and i found one recipe that was completely strange and called for almonds. I was going to make them, and so went on The Great Almond Adventure of 2007. However, the next day I found this recipe which looked much more accurate, and as far as I can tell tastes much more accurate than the almond involving one would have. I have to say, these seem to taste a bit nuttier than I remember Milano cookies tasting. Now first of all that's strange, because there aren't actually any nuts in the recipe. But I randomly hypothesize that's entirely because of the brown sugar in the recipe and I think you might get better results if you used regular sugar. I'd have to test that out to be sure, and in the mean time, these are quite tasty themselves.



Here's the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 C. butter, softened
3/4 C. light brown sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 C. all-purpose flour
1 T. butter
1 C. semisweet or milk chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325ºF.

In a bowl, cream together the 1 cup butter and sugar. Add vanilla
extract and flour; mix until smooth. Shape level teaspoons of dough
into log shapes. Place on cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake for 17
to 19 minutes or until golden brown. Cool.

Microwave chocolate chips and the 1 tablespoon butter for 2 minutes;
stir until smooth. Spread chocolate on flat side of cookie and top
with the other

Baklava Ice Cream

I found this recipe at the Desert Candy blog. Apparently the woman who runs it went through and tried to make 20 different types of ice cream in twenty days. I can do nothing buy admire her audacity, especially since I'll be mining her hard work for tasty treats for the next couple of weeks. Also, she's clearly learned the art of taking attractive food pictures, a feat I fear I will never master. It's always "Look! It's ice cream! In a bowl!" Of course, methodology could have something to do with that. I'm sure she probably puts a lot more thought into taking the picture than I do. Mainly because my thought process is "I'm going to have some ice cream. Oh, I should probably take a picture for the blog first." *picture snap* It's kind of a shame because I feel like I'm letting the food down. I'm looking at the picture now, and the ice cream doesn't look particularly tasty. However, that's clearly not the ice cream's fault, because it is particularly tasty. So it can only be my fault.
Anyway, the only advice I could recommend is that she suggests crumbling actual baklava and putting it in the ice cream, and that seems like a sensible option unless you randomly have fillo dough in the house. You use a tiny portion of it, and it's a complete bitch to work with, as I found out this afternoon. However, the walnut crunchy bit is particularly tasty, and would probably also work well on an apple pie or something.

Guitar Hero T-shirt

This is pretty much the sweetest t-shirt I've made yet. I was secretly kind of hoping that it wouldn't have turned out as well as it did, because then I wouldn't want to keep it as much. I keep telling myself the blue isn't as noticeable as it could be, and it's kind of a bullshit excuse, but it helps. However, I have an obligation to not be a bastard and actually, you know, give people the presents I made them, no matter how much I wish I didn't have to. I found the whole stencil on Craftster, but I uploaded it to photobucket here. However, this stencil was a lot smaller than I wanted it to appear on the shirt, so I divided it in half and made it larger. The top half is here, the bottom half is here. I also turned the black areas grey so that it took less ink, 'cause I'm a bit thrifty that way. The fret keys I just painted freehand, which is why they're a little uneven.