Small Talk: The Quiver

[BunsenBurner]

14 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

So quiet on this forum these days! I leave you with a pic of my interpretation of a tiramisu cake, one of the few coffee products I consume. Excuse the missing coffee balls in the bottom row. I forgot to count how many I had before I went ahead with the decorating.

I love making tiramisu but never like this. It looks divine. I use Kahlúa and coffee in mine. Now I  want to try this. My tiramisu and Blue Bell ice cream are the only 2 coffee desserts that I will eat.

Edited August 30, 2017 by BunsenBurner
I used make 3 times

[Mellowyellow]

@BunsenBurner it's not a true tiramisu but rather my interpretation of it (I have a terrible habit of bastardising Italian food!). The cake inside is a coffee chiffon cake with shaved chocolate flakes scattered in the batter, cream is mascarpone cream that's been whipped with Kahlua and coffee and some toasted almonds around the cake for crunch. 

I sometimes make the more classic version with the sponge fingers that you dip in the coffee alcohol mixture. 

[BkWurm1]

I have the urge to make a request so I can drool vicariously from a distance.  What other favs do you make?  

Also, you made your little sister TWO b-day cakes a year? 

[Mellowyellow]

Blackforest (previously posted) is a favourite of the boys. Calamansi curd cake, chestnut cream cake, Mango macadamia cream cake, Mummy Pig's Strawberry Cake, Raspberry cream sponge are a few others. 

We tend to like fluffy cakes with some kind of  fresh fruit and cream. Hehe I won't list my bakes or else I'll be here forever!

Yes 2 cakes each year when she was in primary school.  One to take into class and one for us to eat at home. 

ETA: banana caramel cake as well! Banana chiffon with caramel whipped cream and caramel drizzle

Edited August 30, 2017 by Mellowyellow

[BkWurm1]

You ever watch The Simpsons?  You know that sound Homer makes when he sees doughnuts?  Yeah, that's me right now.  

[lemotomato]

That sounds amazing, @Mellowyellow. I bake as a hobby, but I stick to cupcakes because I don't have the patience or skill to spend time decorating a whole cake. Your family is lucky to get to eat all those goodies you make!

[Jediknight]

2 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

You ever watch The Simpsons?  You know that sound Homer makes when he sees doughnuts?  Yeah, that's me right now.  

You eat like a duck?

[BkWurm1]

13 minutes ago, Jediknight said:

You eat like a duck?

Whoosh!  What does this mean? lol

[Jediknight]

2 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

Whoosh!  What does this mean? lol

It's a Simpsons reference.  In the episode with Frank Grimes, or Grimey, as he liked to be called, Grimey saw Homer eating and said Homer ate like a pig, and Lenny said that pigs tend to chew, Homer ate more like a duck.

I'm sorry, I just saw an opportunity to make a Simpsons reference.

[Mellowyellow]

I am preparing myself mentally to stamp a bazillion confetti cookies for the kidlet's preschool class next week. Stamping cookies is a special kind of hell for all bakers out there (or maybe it's just me). Only comes second to taking wedding pictures on my list of worse things to do ever (non tragic/bad things that is)! 

Wondering if I should invest in princess cutters for the girls. I know we should all be gender neutral etc but they ALL dress up as princesses on dress up day. I only have dinosaur and truck stamps! 

[statsgirl]

Why do you have to stamp cookies for the class?  Couldn't you just whip out your cake decorating kit?

At four, my daughter was obsessed with dinosaurs.  She even had one to cuddle up with a baby Gobisaurus.

On 8/29/2017 at 9:49 PM, Mellowyellow said:

Come to Sydney and I'll bake you your favourite cake!!!!!! The decorating actually only takes about an hour all up and that includes toasting and cooling the nuts, whipping and flavouring the mascarpone cream, dividing the cake into 3 layers, assembling the cake, piping. Those volcano things are just straight from a piping nozzle! 2 mins at most to get a ring of piping!

Good luck with your course! Hubby did some research with other parents and discovered that the way they teach kids maths has changed significantly. He's now looking into seeing what course/s he can do so he can prep himself for when the kidlet hits school. I'm like "Can we not just hire someone darling?"

I don't know why they keep changing how they teach maths.  It doesn't seem to be helping the kids any.  Some things can't be made more fun, like learning your times table. If you want fun math, try baking.  Or playing storekeeper.

I thought of your husband today when the results for the provincial math tests came out.  At grade 3, over 60% of the kids were meeting the standards.  At grade 6, it was barely 50%. The math education prof said that it was a combination of kids being given calculators too early (hold off till grade 4 instead of letting them use them in grade 1) and the teachers themselves not having taken a math course since grade 11.

Your husband is doing the right thing.

I'm on my way to Sydney just as soon as I can find out how to get the few thousand dollars it costs.   My favourite cake is a Dobos Torte, although I'll gladly take the cake in the picture. Or really, any cake at all.

[Mellowyellow]

@statsgirl I'm holding his birthday party at one of those soft play centres (please don't judge me! I can't handle a bunch of kids at my house!!!!!) so he can only invite some of the kids in his class. I was going to bring a cake in for the other kids (well all of them) but his teacher said it's best to bring something portioned like cupcakes. Then I was thinking out loud and rattled on about confetti cookies in shapes and his teacher was like "Ohhh the children will LOVE that" so now I am stamping confetti cookie and making it into little packs for them! The novelty of shaped cookies will make them happy though so I suppose it will be worth it.

Are your provincial math tests a national thing? We have NAPLAN in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9. Half the parents are like "Kids cannot be measured by standardised tests" and the other half are like "It's part of life, deal with it."

OMG You've opened a can of worms with me when it comes to schooling. We're trying to get him into a Selective High School for the gifted. Basically this involves being tutored as soon as you hit grade 1. You take the entrance test in year 6. Selective is like cheap public schooling for super intelligent kids. Even if you are not that academically bright and lag behind it's nice to go to selective because most of the kids are nerdy and not violent, less drugs etc. They all tend to have really involved parents. Even our best private schools can't compete academically with selective schools. 

Hubby who is normally sensible and super chilled said the other day "If we don't get him into selective school we have failed. It's game over for us as parents."

I go to the hairdresser and the lady who washes my hair is raving about how her kid needs to get into selective! I'm finding it very stressful and I only have a 4yo! Lol sorry for the rant! 

[BkWurm1]

17 hours ago, Jediknight said:

It's a Simpsons reference.  In the episode with Frank Grimes, or Grimey, as he liked to be called, Grimey saw Homer eating and said Homer ate like a pig, and Lenny said that pigs tend to chew, Homer ate more like a duck.

I'm sorry, I just saw an opportunity to make a Simpsons reference.

I feel I've failed as a Simpsons viewer.  In my defense, there are A LOT of episodes to remember, lol.  Good reference.  

32 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

 

I don't know why they keep changing how they teach maths.  It doesn't seem to be helping the kids any.  Some things can't be made more fun, like learning your times table. If you want fun math, try baking.  Or playing storekeeper.

 

 

I swear some of the time at least they are making things more complicated than need be.  I was "watching"( aka the show was on and I was doing other things but may have been actually not doing other things because I started watching) some cartoon kids show on PBS with a little girl and her cat.  In the midst of the homages to famous painters and their style of painting, she needed to figure out how many paint cans she needed to finish her painting.  

Instead of doing simple subtraction of what she had from the total number of cans she knew she needed (as some of her supplies got knocked over and spilled), they did this weird graph thing that involved so many distractions IMO from the actual math I never did completely even understand what was going on with it.  

When I would try to help my nephews with their math in primary/grade school, I could get the answers, but not the way the teacher wanted.  And then I couldn't even get the answers, lol.  

Still, I think I'm grateful I was born too early to have been taught the "new math"

[BkWurm1]

10 minutes ago, Mellowyellow said:

Half the parents are like "Kids cannot be measured by standardised tests" and the other half are like "It's part of life, deal with it."

The problem with standardized tests seems to be the habit of schools to start only teaching to the test since that's what they get judged on.  All the other more intangible but important things start falling to the wayside.  

Finland I guess is like top of the heap for schools and they don't do any testing of that sort.  They also don't believe in homework.  Maybe if the Selective school doesn't work, you could just relocate!  ;)

[Mellowyellow]

3 hours ago, BkWurm1 said:

The problem with standardized tests seems to be the habit of schools to start only teaching to the test since that's what they get judged on.  All the other more intangible but important things start falling to the wayside.  

Finland I guess is like top of the heap for schools and they don't do any testing of that sort.  They also don't believe in homework.  Maybe if the Selective school doesn't work, you could just relocate!  ;)

haha I've joked about it to hubby! 

We're actually going to send him to a more "chilled" primary school. It's got all the "all rounder" things going for it but it is not logging very high NAPLAN scores. Plan is to for us to monitor the standardized stuff to prep him for Selective. haha took us many long nights of sitting around and discussing it to come to this agreement.  

*sigh*

I tell myself it is just one stage in what is hopefully a long life. It's important but not everything.  

[BkWurm1]

12 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

I tell myself it is just one stage in what is hopefully a long life. It's important but not everything.

And you'd be right.  Just being involved parents means your kid already has an advantage no matter where he goes.  

[statsgirl]

I don't understand why they have to change things to something different.  If it worked for Galileo and Isaac Newton, what's wrong for using it for today's kids?

When they moved away from teaching reading using phonetics, there was a big spike in children being diagnosed with dyslexia.  My sister-in-law was taught to read by looking at the shape of the word; for years she had trouble differentiating "squirrel" from "surprise".

23 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

OMG You've opened a can of worms with me when it comes to schooling. We're trying to get him into a Selective High School for the gifted. Basically this involves being tutored as soon as you hit grade 1. You take the entrance test in year 6. Selective is like cheap public schooling for super intelligent kids. Even if you are not that academically bright and lag behind it's nice to go to selective because most of the kids are nerdy and not violent, less drugs etc. They all tend to have really involved parents. Even our best private schools can't compete academically with selective schools. 

That seems ridiculously complicated. Why can't every child go to a school where kids get enough attention and enough mental stimulation?   It's what's best for society as a whole.

In my city, the gifted program in the public school system used to be that kids in the gifted program would be in the regular program Monday to Thursday and then on Friday they would do something enriched. You got into the program by asking, no testing, no proof required. Then they changed it a few years ago to have a separate fulltime gifted program and you had to score 135 on the IQ test to get in.  The kids were in it like The Big Band Theory Jr., and the kids who scored 115 to 135 on the IQ tests remained in the regular program, bored out of their minds.  I think it ended up being less for both groups of kids.

23 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

 I'm holding his birthday party at one of those soft play centres (please don't judge me! I can't handle a bunch of kids at my house!!!!!)

I've done that!  It's very popular here, especially when there are lots of kids.  Movie theatres have rooms for the cake and presents after the movie, so do skating rinks and swimming pools.  Even laser tag and climbing wall  places have birthday party rooms now.  Just think of your future parties .....

How did the party for the 4 year olds work out?

[Mellowyellow]

2 hours ago, statsgirl said:

I don't understand why they have to change things to something different.  If it worked for Galileo and Isaac Newton, what's wrong for using it for today's kids?

When they moved away from teaching reading using phonetics, there was a big spike in children being diagnosed with dyslexia.  My sister-in-law was taught to read by looking at the shape of the word; for years she had trouble differentiating "squirrel" from "surprise".

That seems ridiculously complicated. Why can't every child go to a school where kids get enough attention and enough mental stimulation?   It's what's best for society as a whole.

 

What's confusing me is that some things they make the kids memorise (in this case lists of sight words for us) and then with maths they are doing this bizarre thing with charts and jumps and they don't memorize their timetables anymore.

I completely agree with you regarding the bolded bit! But most likely nothing will change so we just have to play by the current system. The tutoring industry for young children is very lucrative here. I used to get badgered about why I didn't have a second child when he was younger. Now people tell me it's good I have one. Less tuition fees!

3 hours ago, statsgirl said:

I've done that!  It's very popular here, especially when there are lots of kids.  Movie theatres have rooms for the cake and presents after the movie, so do skating rinks and swimming pools.  Even laser tag and climbing wall  places have birthday party rooms now.  Just think of your future parties .....

How did the party for the 4 year olds work out?

Must be his age! All the parties we've gone to have been soft play centre ones.

No party yet! Cookies for the class next week and party later! Should be fine since their parents will be there and we don't need to clean the house for guests. We did his first birthday at home. Big extravaganza to tell the world we survived the first year of parenting! There was a whole roast suckling pig! I am craving the suckling pig though..........

[Mellowyellow]

22 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

 This is what happens when you drink too many Coke Zero's during the day.  

Can you still get Coke Zero? They said they are retiring it and replacing it with that hideous Coca Cola No Sugar.

[BkWurm1]

12 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

I used to get badgered about why I didn't have a second child

Good grief.  And he's only four.  They should have at least assumed you wanted to space them out so you could recover before they started in on you.  Lol.  

 

12 hours ago, Mellowyellow said:

Can you still get Coke Zero? They said they are retiring it and replacing it with that hideous Coca Cola No Sugar.

No, no more just Coke Zero.  They call it Coke Zero Sugar here now.   Yesterday was my first try with it.  I'd been out of Zero for a while so I didn't wait for them to actually chill like I usually do and warm, I thought they were pretty good but taste changes at different temps and after eating different foods.  I'll have to see if I keep that opinion as time goes on.  

[Morrigan2575]

Wait what?! Coke Zero is going away? I love Coke Zero ?

Edited September 2, 2017 by Morrigan2575

[Mellowyellow]

@BkWurm1 they like their babies close in age here. As soon as he popped out I had randos asking me if/when I was having another one. Good thing is now that he's almost 5 people just give me sad looks like I missed the boat on a second one.

Is the new coke a different taste? One of our big supermarket chain refuses to stock our version of the new one because it tastes bad! I wonder if yours is better. I loved Coke zero. Thought it was as good is sugared coke.

[BkWurm1]

8 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

Wait what?! Coke Zero is going away? I love Coke Zero ?

Yup.  Replaced with a different formula already in existence in other countries.  The new one looks pretty similar.  It's now Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.  The first two I had were better than what I remember my old Zero.  The third one not as good.  More bitter.  All from the same case so I assume like before some will taste good and some not so good and it will depend on what you most recently ate.  (I had a KitKat, of course, it was going to taste terrible after that but I wanted bubbles!)  

[Sakura12]

I loved Coke Zero. However the county that I live in passed a  penny-per-ounce sweetened beverage tax that includes any beverage that is sweetened with sugar. I guess that's one way to get us to stop drinking sugary drinks tax us for it. 

[BkWurm1]

But Zero had no sugar.  It had no calories.

Edited September 2, 2017 by BkWurm1

[Sakura12]

Coke zero has aspartame, which is on the county's list of noncaloric sweeteners.

[statsgirl]

Is stevia on the list too?  And Xylitol (which my dentist recommended).  It seems like a law that would be difficult to enforce because it's so judgemental.

[Sakura12]

Stevia's on the list. I don't know about the other one. It's such a controversial tax, if you buy powdered mixes they aren't on the tax. My city is still trying to fight it.  It's only one county though. If drive to the next county over they don't have the tax. If I want Coke Zero I can drive to go get it.

[BkWurm1]

4 hours ago, Sakura12 said:

Coke zero has aspartame, which is on the county's list of noncaloric sweeteners.

So the tax is on anything that is sweet?  I thought the problem is the calories.   Wouldn't that include all juices and basically all drinks minus water, milk, unsweetened coffee or tea?  It's basically a beverage tax.  What country is that in?  

Edited September 2, 2017 by BkWurm1

[Sakura12]

59 minutes ago, BkWurm1 said:

So the tax is on anything that is sweet?  I thought the problem is the calories.   Wouldn't that include all juices and basically all drinks minus water, milk, unsweetened coffee or tea?  It's basically a beverage tax.  What country is that in?  

They are calling it the Sweetened Beverage Tax, so basically any bottled or canned beverage that's been sweetened. It's only for Cook County which is Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.  I can drive to the next county over and they don't have the tax. They are pretending it's for health benefits when the IL Government really hopes to make money off it. 

Edited September 3, 2017 by Sakura12

[Mellowyellow]

Hehe I read it as you driving to the next country and I was like "Omg where does this person live that she's driving to the next country!"

I know you can do it in Europe or say Malaysia and Singapore but it seemed like so much trouble for soft drink?

[Morrigan2575]

37 minutes ago, Sakura12 said:

They are calling it the Sweetened Beverage Tax, so basically any bottled or canned beverage that's been sweetened. It's only for Cook County which is Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.  I can drive to the next county over and they don't have the tax. They are pretending it's for health benefits when the IL Government really hopes to make money off it. 

Ah, like Bloomberg did in NYC. 

[statsgirl]

I think Bloomberg's heart was in the right place because medically speaking, sugar seems to be the new tobacco.  Plus there's that scandal were the sugar companies paid the research scientists to fudge their data so that fat ended up being the villain when it was really sugar.*

But applying it to any sweetener while not taxing things like Kool-Aid which is almost pure sugar seems either silly or a tax grab.

*some schools here have removed bottled soft drinks from schools entirely and you can only buy bottled water or milk.

[Mellowyellow]

I so agree sugar is the new tobacco. Everyday I see articles on the 1000000000 ways it'll kill you. 

What's everyone's take on it? I'm a believer in dying happy so I'm not giving up my dessert and tea every second night.

I eat butter, full fat dairy and crackling too. Going to be sooo dead!

[Sakura12]

They hope to make 67 million from this tax this year. Saying it's for health reasons benefits them more than saying they are looking to profit from it. 

[bijoux]

6 hours ago, statsgirl said:

Is stevia on the list too?  And Xylitol (which my dentist recommended).  It seems like a law that would be difficult to enforce because it's so judgemental.

I have never heard of Xylitol. What are its benefits according to your dentist?

[statsgirl]

It's in some chewing gums. According to my dentist, it has a different chemical configuration than sugar so it doesn't cause tooth decay like aspertame and other common sugar substitutes do.

[BkWurm1]

On 9/2/2017 at 8:36 PM, Mellowyellow said:

I so agree sugar is the new tobacco. Everyday I see articles on the 1000000000 ways it'll kill you. 

What's everyone's take on it? I'm a believer in dying happy so I'm not giving up my dessert and tea every second night.

I eat butter, full fat dairy and crackling too. Going to be sooo dead!

I think common sense needs to rule.  Everything in moderation and all that crap, lol.  It's not poison.  Just don't live on the stuff.  

And as far as I know. butter is better for a person than margarine anyway.   My high school science teacher used to say anything you could toss into your trunk and come back to a week later and it is basically unchanged should not be something you eat. 

[bijoux]

My mom's 60th is coming up so I'm looking for some ideas on how to have her birthday cake decorated. Something in the understated family, she's not really flashy. Primarily I'm looking towards @Mellowyellow, but others are certainly welcome to chime in. So far, this is the one I like best of what I've found.

[Mellowyellow]

ohh that's pretty!

Naked cakes are all the rage! Took me ages to warm to these but I can see the appeal now! Last year while decorating Kidlet's birthday cake I miscalculated the icing content. Had a hysterical phone call to Lil Sis who told me "Oh just make a naked cake. They are all the rage." I was like "WTF are you trying to be funny!!!! This is not the time to be funny." I made more icing but she was telling the truth!

I like ruffles as well (easy to do!) but depends if your mum likes frufru!

ETA: Not my pics!

Edited September 6, 2017 by Mellowyellow

[bijoux]

No, she's not the frufru type. :D This ombre thing looks pretty nifty.

[Mellowyellow]

Not relevant to your request but since we are talking cakes I just made these based on the kidlet's request! Fresh cream which does not hold well! 

[Morrigan2575]

When I was a kid my mom used to make 2 cakes for my Birthday, the kids got the Triple Chocolate cake (cake, icing, filling) and, the adults got a delicious Peaches & Cream cake (yellow cake, sliced peaches, homemade whipped cream.  As an adult I much prefer the Peaches & Cream cake, all that chocolate is way too sweet.

 

@bijoux how about something like this? I like it cause it looks like a hat plus it's purple

Edited September 6, 2017 by Morrigan2575

[Mellowyellow]

If she likes chocolate

[bijoux]

Thanks for the suggestions. We're browsing autumnal themes at the moment. :D

[Mellowyellow]

2 minutes ago, bijoux said:

Thanks for the suggestions. We're browsing autumnal themes at the moment. :D

Please post a pic of the cake when it gets made!

[bijoux]

Of course.

[Guest]

Are you making the cake yourself, @bijoux?

[bijoux]

No, I'll pay a friend of mine to do it. She does it semi-professionally. I'll have other stuff to do with the guests and preparations plus she's better at it than I am. Particularly the decorating. 

[lemotomato]

1 hour ago, Mellowyellow said:

Not relevant to your request but since we are talking cakes I just made these based on the kidlet's request! Fresh cream which does not hold well!

How about making stabilized whipped cream instead? It's just whipped cream with some gelatin beaten into it. The taste/texture is like the frosting Chinese bakeries put on their cakes.

Edited September 6, 2017 by lemotomato