The Domestic Scientist

…. for MINIATURE Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness.

For my birthday I was originally going to make a Pinkie Pie cake, but after watching the MMMMystery on the Friendship Express episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness just sounded so delicious, I had to make it. And let me tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Cake are geniuses! While I had to make some guesses as to the flavors used, all that pink and yellow said strawberry and lemon to me. This was one of my favorites cakes so far. Tart lemon frosting, slightly crunchy and silky meringue layers, marzipan with it’s definitely unique flavor, all mellowed out by the strawberry cake. *nom*

Here’s a pic of the inside:

And for those of you that haven’t seen the episode, here’s a reference pic:

You can now see where the Miniature part comes in. As much as I love celebrating my own birthday, I didn’t think I needed a 6 foot tall monstrosity!

Wanna make one for yourself? Awesome! Here’s how I made mine.

Cake: Just box strawberry cake. (Sorry, cake elitists!)

Meringue layers between the cake: I used this recipe. The only change was the size of the meringue. I marked the size of the cake layers on parchment paper and filled the circles in with the meringue and then baked them. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Frosting: Lemon Mascarpone Icing
2 8 oz. packages of Mascarpone Cheese
About 6 cups Confectioner’s Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon Lemon Extract
a smidge of yellow food coloring

Put the mascarpone in a mixer and beat until smooth. Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar until the frosting is the thickness you like. Add the lemon extract and food coloring and mix until even.

Marzipan Fruits and flowers: Store bought marzipan and food coloring. I used this tutorial: How to Make Marzipan Fruits Candy.

The rest is easy! Bake the cake in layers, then put a really thin layer of frosting on one layer, put the baked meringue on top of that, a little more frosting, then another layer of cake, and so on and so forth until you have the entire thing together. Frost, decorate, and you have your very own Mascarpone Marzipan Meringue Madness! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go Pinkie Pie the rest of that cake. As in eat it ALL. Nom nom nom.

In case you didn’t know, my other half has a podcast with two of our close friends, Brooke Fox and Stephen Granade, called Disasterpiece Theatre in which they try to come up with movies that are so bad they become hilarious. Hilariously horrible. They’ve even had a couple of celebrities on there like Colin Ferguson, Misha Collins, and Nicole de Boer. Stephen and Alex play the roles of Hollywood executives and Brooke tries to keep them in line. Hilarity ensues.

And if that wasn’t cool enough, we have started making videos for your entertainment pleasure! Here is the first one we have done so far:

So excited! We have a few more in the works, so be prepared for movie inspired hilarity!

***BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD***

I am seeing a LOT of hate out there for how Mass Effect 3 ended. I totally understand why people are upset. As players, we put a lot of emotional energy into these games. I wanted nothing more than to retire to that desert island with Garrus with our little adopted Krogan baby and live happily ever after. As the credits started rolling, I will admit I cried harder than I ever have with any work of fiction. Maybe if I combined the deaths of Dumbledore, Sirius, Doctor #9, Mufassa, and Ellie from “Up” I could experience the same level of heartbreak I did during the course of Mass Effect 3. Maybe. It’d be a close call.

The ending people seem to want was Shepard kills the Reapers, everyone goes back to their planets, and life continues on as it did before. Settle down with your love interest and retire. Sure. I understand that. But I think that option is a little too “fairy tale” for a military game. The best possible ending offered was that Shepard destroys the Reapers, barely survives, the FTLs get destroyed no matter what you do, and the Normandy (along with your love interest) is stranded on some jungle planet. Then again, that could have been Earth they landed on… not sure what exactly happened there. Anyhoo!

That being said, the entire galaxy was at stake. The prices people pay to save it have to be high. I think the writers made some very gutsy decisions and while right now, those decisions hurt, I think later on Mass Effect 3 will go down as some of the best and most daring writing in this generation of games. Shepard’s story is one of sacrifice and heroism. War isn’t easy; it doesn’t have a happy ending. You do what you have to do for the greater good.

So while Mass Effect may be over, the story lives on in my imagination. There wasn’t a lot of closure for some major issues in the end, which on one hand is very frustrating, but on the other very fitting. Shepard couldn’t see the future, so why should I? So I’ve decided to fill in the blanks. In my mind, since the majority of the galactic force was in our solar system when the FTLs went down, we have started a new civilization with all the advanced races recognized. And with all these great minds working together, we will rebuild the FTL drives in time. Eve will have reformed the Krogan into a less violent race. The Geth will help us advance technologically faster than we could on our own. Salarians, Asari, Turians, and Quarians, all within one solar system, working together to start anew. And Shepard comes out of the wreckage and throws all she has into finding the Normandy and Garrus. I will find that sexy cat-bird-lizard-man again, if it’s the last thing I do.

Something else I’d like to say that’s kind of related. I’m really disappointed in the people that have effectively “turned” on Bioware. I’ve seen comments saying they never want to play another Bioware game, random threats of violence, name calling, and other forms of cyber bullying. I’d like to remind everyone that is a fan of Bioware that they have entertained us for years. Bioware has made some of the best games this decade. They have changed the face of roleplaying games forever. And what they have done for the female and LBGT gamer community with their story lines and character development is ground breaking. Even if I hadn’t liked the ending of Mass Effect 3, I would never turn on them with such hatred and spite as I’m seeing from other people. I want everyone to remember that the people behind Mass Effect 3 are people, too. As someone who has read horrible comments about her own work on the internet from total strangers, I can tell you how crushing it is. I’ve put my work out there for people to hopefully enjoy, and when they don’t enjoy it it’s sad, but when they start calling me names and a talentless hack, that hurts. Really, really hurts. I tried my best, but no one can please everyone. So remember - if you wouldn’t say it to a person’s face, don’t say it on the internet.

That title probably doesn’t make any sense to you. Unless you’re in my World of Warcraft guild. Which is named “Molten Core Swim Club*.” But I bet you understand it now after reading those three sentences! You’re so smart.

Anyhoo! To celebrate some of our guildies finally kicking Deathwing’s** ass and the end of a really awesome year, I made them a cake!

This was soooooo much fun to make! Alex, the greatest husband ON THE PLANET, bought me an airbrush for Christmas. Normally, I would have been crushed when 4 of the 6 original horns just wouldn’t stay on his head, but the excitement about painting it overrode the normal cake depression I get when stuff goes wrong. (Cake depression - that’s serious stuff, dude.)

But back to the cake! Wanna see what happens when you let your photographer husband take pictures of cake?

That’s an effing epic cake!

And then we feasted on our kill! BWA HA HA HA!

Turns out Deathwing is delicious. All that lava and stuff is just because he’s fresh out of the oven.

So from all of us, to all of you, Happy New Year! May 2012 be be full of fun, friendship, and the slaying of many dragons!!

*If you’re looking for an AWESOME Guild, we’re recruiting new members! We’re small, but hilarious and nice! On Thunderhorn - look up Cyanida *wink*

*Deathwing: major baddie psycho dragon from this Expansion of World of Warcraft. Destroyer of the realms and all that. Total jerkface.

I’ve been looking for a nerdy tree topper for years. For a while, I had Godzilla, who was nice, but I felt it was time for a change.

When I thought of this a few months ago, I thought I was being SOOOO original. Turns out a lot of other people on the internet had the same idea this year. Nice to know that there are other people out there as weird as me!

I made her out of Paper Clay. Best stuff EVAR! The first time I used it in making Bianca for Dragon*Con it was really fun, but I didn’t quite understand the potential it had! Underneath the clay is a skeleton of Styrofoam and wire. And a rather silly M&M Mini’s tube in the middle to keep her strong on top of the tree. But hey, I’m recycling! Here are some other, closer shots of it.

Anyhoo! Everyone have a Happy Christmas! And may all your angels, um, be not weeping?

*BLINK*

My husband is a pretty silly guy. One of his favorite movies of all time is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. After he got it on Bluray, he became like a Scott Pilgrim evangelist. Anyone that stepped foot in our house that hadn’t seen the movie, was forced persuaded to watch it. I only kinda minded, since I love the movie as well. If you’re one of the few people on the planet that hasn’t seen this movie, yet, you may not get this joke:

This is what I made for Alex for Valentine’s Day. If anyone is thinking “Valentine’s Day? It’s July,” yeaaaaah, I know. I just finished it last week. Procrastinate? Me? Ha!

I made the pattern based off the pixel art from the video game for the movie. (On a side note, the game is ALSO really fun!) I changed a couple of colors on Ramona and the hair color on Scott to be a little more representative of Alex and myself. Although if we could fly through the air for an epic kiss, I’m pretty sure it would end up with a couple of bloody noses and black eyes. I’m not exactly graceful. Or coordinated. *sigh* Oh well! Anyway! Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day, people!

For my birthday I decided to be crazy-go-nuts on my own birthday cake and really push my boundaries as a novice baker. I figured since the only one to disappoint is myself, no harm in trying something that can fail horribly, right? And ya know what, I didn’t do too bad:

Click here to go to Flickr and see it larger.

I decided to use while molding chocolate instead of fondant. It’s almond cake and rice krispie treats with modeling chocolate for the cake and gumpaste for the Daleks. Did you know modeling chocolate is remarkably easy to make? I did learn that you can’t paint it like fondant. It acts like a waxed car. But it tastes DELICIOUS. I mean, who wouldn’t love cake covered in chocolate?? So yup, besides the wooden dowels, it was 100% edible! I’m quite proud of that.

I don’t know if you can see what I was going for with the flying Daleks and the base of the cake. The Daleks were supposed to be shooting at the Tardis, disguising the wooden support structures under their “exterminate” rays. Well, one Dalek fell off during the cake move to the table, and I ran out of time to really disguise the wooden dowels and add “battle damage” to the Tardis. The second detail that I was going for that didn’t work out was the base cake decoration. I wanted to have the entire bottom of the cake embossed with the design from the Master’s pocket watch, but only got the top of the cake. When trying to make the chocolate go all around the cake, it broke, and since it was already contaminated with icing, and I couldn’t disguise the cracks easily (and it was 2 am by this point) I just covered it with frosting instead.

This was a wonderful learning experience, and I want to revisit this design again. I think now that I’ve done it once, I can really knock it out of the park next time. Not sure when “next time” will be. Not too many people are nerdy enough to request a Dr. Who cake!

But the best thing about my birthday party? All my new friends came! It was a little hectic since my house is tiny and we all have kids, but I just want to thank everyone that came. You all have made my life so incredibly wonderful and having you all together at once just made my entire year. Thank you.

I think Twitter has ruined my desire to post stuff here! I just realized I have made 2 cakes and taken dozens of pictures and not posted any of them here. Well here’s a cute pic to hold ya over until I get my act back together!

FYI, Ari has made PHENOMENAL progress at the Riley Center. He uses new words all the time, and has 5 words he uses regularly and unprompted. My kid rocks!

Wanna know what’s awesome? Dinosaurs. And it looks like they’re taking over Etsy! They’re marching on however they can! They’re coming by land!

Dinosaur on a Bicycle by Dark Cycle Clothing.

And by SEA!!

Raptor Rides the Whale by Winged Beast Outfitters

And it looks like they’ve recruited the robots! Oh god, this is worse than I thought. We’re doomed!

Robot and Triceratops by Happy Family.

Ooooh, wait a second, it seems they just want to have a slumber party! Awwwww.

Sleepy T-Rex by Critter Jitters.

Poor dinosaurs. They’re so misunderstood.

I love Etsy. Whenever I get bored, I’m usually window shopping there. So much creativity in one place! Also a lot of really crappy stuff, but I’ll leave the commentary on those items to Regretsy (another site I spend a lot of time on when I’m bored). This week while looking around for Valentine’s stuff, I found a LOAD of geeky Valentine’s Day cards. Since you all are a buncha nerds as well, I figured you’d enjoy these as much as I do:

Here’s a card for all the FPS players out there from bsangel.

bsangel has many more gamer cards that you should go check out! Like this set of 6 gamer Valentines with saying like “I’m like a plasma grenade. Let me get on you and you are guaranteed to explode.”:

This set of 6 cards from candyspotting will have something for every type of nerd in your life:

Fosten Designs has a binary card for the true computer nerds out there:

A little love for the font nerds out there from upup. I’m looking at you Misty! You should also check out the rest of upup’s store. Some really beautiful design work there!

A nice, but a little naughty, greeting for your gamer from Paisley Dog Press.

And last, but not least, a card from Antemortem Arts for anyone you know what has spent any time on the internet in the last few years:

Maybe there’s still time to get these before Sunday! I hope everyone has a fun Valentine’s Day!