Son of Man

My Halloween costume this year was an homage to Rene Magritte. The apple is a piece of paper taped to the brim of the bowler hat. Several French people in Salem recognized the painting ("les fils de l'homme").

I love the song "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War", and I love bowler hats.

Happy Halloween!

(Here are a bunch more photos if you're interested :)

The Scale of the Universe

This is me figuring out the scale of everything at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. You should go. It will blow your mind.

Bagel Day!

Today I decided to make my own bagels.

For a while it has been bothering me that you can easily buy a poppy seed bagel, and you can easily buy an egg bagel, but it is impossible to find an egg bagel with poppy seeds. So you need to make one yourself.

I made some plain and some with poppy seeds.

Here are some pictures (click to enlarge):

Here is the recipe I used:

Egg Bagels

Bagel ingredients:

4 eggs

2 packets of yeast

8 cups flour

2 cups warm water

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

Glaze ingredients:

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons water

Optional ingredients:

Poppy seeds or sesame seeds or whatever.

Instructions:

Mix together all dry bagel ingredients well. Stir in all wet bagel ingredients. Knead for 10 minutes.

Place dough in a greased bowl. Cover and allow to rise in warm place for twenty minutes.

Punch down the dough and divide into 30 pieces. (I did this rather unevenly so some of the bagels turned out big and some small. It doesn't really matter.)

Roll into nice balls. Punch a hole through the center of each ball and then spin it around a chopstick to make the hole bigger. The chopstick thing is my own idea and probably a crazy one.

Put them on trays and allow to rise for fifteen more minutes.

While they are rising, make the glaze by mixing 2 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of water in a bowl.

Cooking:

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Use the chopstick to drop bagels in boiling water 5 inches deep and boil for about three minutes; turn each bagel once. I did 4 bagels at once.

Place on greased sheet and brush on egg yolk glaze. Sprinkle on poppy seeds or sesame seeds or nothing or whatever you want.

Bake at 450°F for 18-20 minutes.

Don't burn yourself. Eat with honey or cream cheese.

Origami Convention!

I went to an origami convention in New York City. It was amazing. Click here to see pictures!

Slideshow:

New Hampshire

Hiked up to the top of Mt Monadnock today. I just had my cellphone camera but I was able to get some pretty good shots with it. The haze off in the distance is a thunderstorm coming!

Listen to how windy it was at the top:

Super Mario Cupcakes!

Melted white + colored chocolate in squirt bottles, plus black and
white icing for the eyes. Inspired by New Super Mario Bros. for Wii

Princess Tiara Cupcakes

Iced the cupcakes with pink icing, smoothed the icing, then put white sugar sprinkles. The sugar looks like diamonds maybe?

After these were in the cupcake holder I thought they needed some fairy magic wands, so it was back to the melted chocolate on wax paper. If you trail the ends to a point you can spike them right into the cupcakes.

Next time I think I will make the magic stars a bit pointier.

White Chocolate Tiaras

Next up in the princess cupcake series--I started these by drawing with sharpie on paper wrapped around glasses. Then I taped wax paper over the templates, melted some white chocolate, and followed the the pattern with the squirt bottle.

These set in 1 minute in the freezer. Don't forget to add the little pink pearl sprinkles while the chocolate is still liquid!

Making Cupcakes

I seem to be developing a specialty in decorating cupcakes for girls' birthday parties. Not sure why that theme in particular.

These are "princess crown" cupcakes. I made the crowns out of marshmallows--cut out the center with a coke can tube, then dyed them in yellow food coloring and let them dry overnight.

It was lots of fun!

Dark City

Shout out for the movie "Dark City".  Jennifer Connelly is beautiful.  Sorry about Kiefer Sutherland.

Terrace

Rearranging the deck chairs on the second floor of the student center
at Northeastern University

A Personal Message from Scott Brown to Me

... not!