Twinkies Tuesday

LET THEM EAT CAKE: One of the first things I saw this morning was a Facebook post from Trophy Cupcakes declaring it National Cake Day.

So, when CJ asked me a few minutes later if we could try to make homemade Twinkies today, I quite naturally had to say 'yes,' right?

There are a million Twinkie knockoff recipes on the Internet. Last night, Christian found one on a site called Leite's Culinaria. We decided to give it a go.
The first thing we had to do was make Twinkie molds, for a Twinkie's not a Twinkie unless it's shaped like, well, a Twinkie.  The recipe had a link to a video of a man who has made a mint in the knock-off-recipe realm, Todd Wilbur. The video was helpful in showing how to take rectangles of foil, fold and mold them into the oh-so-familiar little loaf shape. It involves a small spice jar.

I had Annabelle read the many, many steps of the recipe to me. Sifting the dry ingredients, melting the butter, whipping up the egg whites, whipping the yolks, combining the dry ingredients, yolks and whites and gently mixing them and then immediately pouring the stuff into the foil molds we'd painstakingly made.

I had the molds all filled when I spied it on the stove top - 'it' being the pan where we'd melted the butter and mixed in the milk. AAAAAAAAAAArgh!

And it wasn't like we could just pour the batter out, mix in the butter, and pour them back in, as the little aluminum tins had to be generously greased before the batter went in.

So, back to Square One.

The second go round was a bit faster and, fortunately, they seemed to turn out just fine.

While they cooled, we whipped up the filling. There were lots of filling recipes on the Internet, too. The one suggested by the Twinkie recipe we used would probably have been delicious, but I wasn't keen on stuffing our Twinkies with fluffed up raw egg whites.

So, I searched for another alternative, with a requirement being the ingredient list wouldn't mean another trip to the store for us. We settled for a "flour frosting" recipe billed to be a great Twinkie filling. It was tasty, but I not a clone of the authentic filling, to be sure.

The kids had fun rooting out three holes in the bottom of each cake, and then filling them, using a pastry bag.

In they end, they were both thrilled with the result.

I thought the things were waaaaay more work than they were worth. Hopefully some day soon, the hungry masses will be able to buy bona fide Twinkies at the grocery store.

By the way, when I Googled "National Cake Day" tonight, imagine my surprise when I found out it was actually YESTERDAY, the 26th. Oh well. ...

GET IT TOGETHER: Our travels today took us to IKEA, where we had to get a number of little items for the ongoing transition of Annabelle to her new bedroom. One of the things we bought today was a new laundry basket for CJ's room. It's basically a box of fabric over a wire frame. When we got home, I handed the thing to CJ and told him to put it together. That was interesting.

The instructions showed three simple steps for assembly. For quite some time, CJ chose to ignore those instructions. Can't really fault him for that, since many people probably would have done likewise.

However, when he passed the 10 minute mark and was no closer to having an assembled laundry basket, I basically forced him to read the instructions. He was able to assemble it within a couple of minutes then, much to everyone's relief.

NERD HUMOR: Seattle Science Festival posted this graphic today on its Facebook feed today.

I called the kids over to the computer and was happy that they both started laughing, knowing that mass x acceleration = force.

CRACKED UP: Bad news, NASA fans. We've had our eyes on the Orion crew capsule for years now. Hailed as "America's new spacecraft for human exploration," we've watched cool drop tests, in preparation of post-mission splash down some day.

photo credit : NASA

We've checked out a scale model of Orion at Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.

                                                                                                 photo credit : Me!
And we've pored over photos of it being built to exacting specifications.

                                                                         photo credit : NASA
All of this, with the anticipation that Orion will be strapped atop a rocket and carry NASA astronauts to space - beyond low Earth orbit - in the hopefully not too distant future. Presently, 2021 is talked of as the targeted year for a crewed flight to launch aboard Orion from KSC.

Now, we're hoping that future isn't even more distant after learning that during a recent "proof pressure" test (pictured below), Orion developed some cracks.

                                                                                               photo credit : NASA
Florida Today reports that NASA is now working to diagnose the cause of the cracks, and repair them, with a second load testing to be held early in 2013.