by the hours i keep

There is some wild stuff happening at work that I can't talk about yet, but it is exhausting. But people liked the cupcakes! I found the whipped ganache/cream cheese frosting combination kind of meh overall - the cream cheese overwhelmed the chocolate and mostly what I got was sweetness instead of flavor, so I'll have to try something different if I do the 2-flavors-in-1 thing again. All the cupcakes themselves were good, though. I'd recommend any of the recipes I linked to on Sunday, though I did find that I didn't get equal amounts of chocolate and vanilla batter so there was always more of one left at the end, even when I did more vanilla and less chocolate in each cupcake (which is how it's probably supposed to be, I think).

Anyway, I won't be back there again until late October, so I think for that I might go with orange cranberry and a different apple cider recipe than I have been using the past few years, and really lean into fall flavors. I guess we'll see! Because my niece also wants to get together one day next month to bake so if it's that weekend, well, I will choose that over baking for work. (Meanwhile, another niece wants us all to learn to play mahjong? which I am not opposed to, but I'm also not going to make an effort to figure out the scheduling. I'll just show up when they tell me when and where. I'm just glad they want to hang out with me.)

Today, I tried that SK pizza recipe again, and I didn't put the cheese on until 10 minutes in, but it still overcooked. I guess next time I'll try putting it on with only 10 minutes left. I still have half an open jar of passata, and it's so easy to make, so I don't see why I wouldn't try again. I whisked the dough together at the end of my lunch hour and let it rise from 3 - 4:30, then did the second 30 minute rise, so it went in the oven at around 5 and was ready to eat at 5:30-ish (I let it cool for about 10 minutes first so I could handle it). You use so much olive oil that it just lifts right out of the skillet, too. It's beautiful and delicious! I Just wish the cheese didn't get so overdone.

And somehow, I still don't have a pizza icon! I should fix that.

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Made Smitten Kitchen's simple crispy pan pizza this afternoon, and 30 minutes at 450°F is slightly too long in my oven for the cheese (pic). The crust is nicely crispy, and I spread some fresh burrata on top of the slices I ate, but I think maybe 5 minutes less, or maybe add the cheese 10 minutes into cooking to keep it from being too well-done, would work better.

In the middle of that, I tried starting on one of the cupcake recipes I wanted to try this weekend (my Instacart delivery arrived with my eggs early on in the delivery window), but I got distracted and did something wrong while weighing out my ingredients (I didn't hit tare at the right time and ended up not adding the right amount of flour, I think?), so I just pitched the half-made batter. I'll start over tomorrow and pay closer attention. *hands*

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TV!

Lanterns: ( spoilers )

Ted Lasso: ( Yes & Baby spoilers )

Slow Horses: ( season 6, episode 1 spoilers ) I'm glad this show is back! Somehow it is not subject to the weird neuroses keeping me from watching new seasons of like, everything. I just want more! *hands*

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