There comes a time when one says, “Man, I wish that was me jumping into that frigid body of water!” Well, my time has come and on January 14th at Winterfest in Chesteremere I will be doing the Polar Bear Dip raising money for YELL (Youth Encouraging Lasting Leadership). YELL is a version of Town Council representing the youth population in Chestermere and Southeast Rockyview. YELL provides a voice for the youth group and helps them achieve their goals while encouraging personal development. I invite you all to come out and enjoy this festival hosted by the Town of Chestermere. There will be plenty of activities at the Rec Centre and Anniversary Park.
The day will kick off with a pancake breakfast and there will be fun activities in the Rec Centre like face painting, Wii Mario Kart, and a monster slide, races. The Polar Bear Dip will start at 12:30 and the day will end with the annual hockey game at 2:30. Click here for a detailed description.
If you would like to make a donation to YELL please email me at hernameisan@gmail.com.
Thank you in advance and I hope to see you before and after I emerge from the plunge!
Makes about a 2 dozen mid-size cupcakes
1 1/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 cup milk
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved*
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup sugar
Coffee-Marsala Syrup*
Mascarpone Frosting (see below)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, for dusting
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Heat milk and vanilla-bean pod and seeds in a small saucepan over medium heat just until bubbles appear around the edge. Remove from heat. Whisk in butter until melted, and let stand 15 minutes. Strain milk mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl, and discard vanilla-bean pod.
With an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk together whole eggs, yolks, and sugar. Set mixing bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk by hand until sugar is dissolved and mixture is warm, about 6 minutes. Remove bowl from heat. With an electric mixer on high speed, whisk until mixture is fluffy, pale yellow, and thick enough to hold a ribbon on the surface for several seconds when whisk is lifted.
Gently but thoroughly fold flour mixture into the egg mixture in three batches; stir 1/2 cup batter into the strained milk mixture to thicken, then fold milk mixture into the remaining batter until just combined.
Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until centers are completely set and edges are light golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.
To finish, brush tops of cupcakes evenly with coffee-marsala syrup; repeat until all syrup has been used. Allow cupcakes to absorb liquid 30 minutes. Dollop frosting onto cupcakes; refrigerate up to overnight in airtight containers. Dust generously with cocoa powder just before serving.
*Instead of using vanilla beans I used vanilla extract and Sherry instead of Marsala. If your cupcakes don’t rise like regular cupcakes you’re still okay to continue. I’ve made these cupcakes several times and all times they have been well received!
Mascarpone Frosting
Makes about 2 cups
1 cup heavy cream
8 ounces mascarpone cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
With an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk heavy cream until stiff peaks form (be careful not to overbeat, or cream will be grainy). This will take about 7 minutes. In another bowl, whisk together mascarpone and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Gently fold whipped cream into mascarpone mixture until completely incorporated. Use immediately.
Happy baking 
Makes about 2 dozen small squares
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups strawberry jam, or other flavor
1 cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with butter, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Grease the parchment, and coat the pan and parchment with flour; set aside. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. On medium speed, add eggs and peanut butter; beat until combined, about 2 minutes.
Whisk together salt, baking powder, and flour. Add to butter and peanut butter mixture 1/3 at a time on low speed until just combined. Add vanilla. Transfer two-thirds of mixture to prepared pan; spread evenly with spatula. Spread jam on top of peanut-butter mixture. Dollop remaining third of peanut-butter mixture on top of jam. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts.
Bake until golden, about 40 minutes, rotating half way through. Transfer to a wire rack to cool; cut into squares.
This is one of my favorite recipes because it’s easy to make and you can play around with the recipe. I have experimented with the flour and baking time and found that 2 2/3 cups worked best as it resulted in a softer square that wasn’t super heavy. The original recipe calls for 3 cups of flour and a baking time of 45 minutes. I’ve also used crunchy peanut butter instead of smooth and loaded on various mixtures of jam. This recipe allows for the mad scientist to come out and play so have fun!
For this assignment we had to write a Chart of Competencies for Information Design.
I wanted to incorporate design elements like the rule of 3rds, CMYK, and white space.
Program used: Indesign 5.5
COMM1610′s final assignment was to create a DVD sleeve for all the assignments of that class. That was pretty much all the instructions we got and so you have “absolute” freedom to design whatever your heart desires. The tiles on the sleeve represents each assignment I did with the black tile (being the 6th assignment) incorporating everything. Again I tried to embrace white space and played with CMYK and RGB.
Program used: InDesign 5.5
I created 2 sleeves…. and personally like the “clones” (below) better but chose the design above as it follows the rules we learned in class better. I wonder how I’ll feel about this decision years from now… Although the two designs are completely different visually and even the feeling you get from them is completely different, the “clones” design came from the blocks above. The meaning in the “clones” is that school is the institution that gives you the “tools” you need to function in society. We are all produced the same and conditioned the same in every outlet available. The assignments and conditioning shapes the girl in the green (me) however, I’m not a clone. If you you look closely, the hair on the right shoulder is slightly longer than the left; to me that symbolizes imperfection as nothing is perfect… ever… as well as someone who is different. I also really like this design because it’s kind of dark and creepy
Programs used: Illustrator and InDesign 5.5
P.s. I really do like school
This picture was taken at San Francisco’s MOMA
Someday I would love to have a typewriter!
The first time I used one was at Market Collective during Valentine’s time. It was an amazing feeling and there was so much creativity that wanted to escape; it’s like when you have an amazing pen and all you want to do is write even though you don’t know what to write about….
It’s that time of year when Christmas is fast approaching – it’s basically here next week!!
This Saturday, December 17th, Chestermere will be hosting its annual Christmas on the Lake at the Town Hall from 11:00 am to 3:00pm. There will be cocoa and pictures with Santa in the library, a kids shopping and wrapping center where they can get gifts for their friends and families, and a silent auction for gingerbread houses and beautiful gifts like a centennial Calgary Stampede Belt Buckle! Proceeds from this event will go to Christmas with Dignity with is a committee that helps families in need year round by connecting them to appropriate resources and financial aid.
If you’re looking for a small town thing to do this Saturday come out to Chestermere and support Christmas with Dignity.
I’ll be “Vanna White-ing” the silent auction so make sure you say hi!
For this assignment we had to create a poster for the play Twelfth Night which we be playing Spring of 2012 at MRU. The only restriction for the poster was that all the elements – texts, had to be on it. That can be challenging as you may want focus on certain things and can loose that focus because of the texts. The biggest challenge of this assignment was not knowing what era the play will be in. Not only was this an assignment for a COMM class but there is also a competition component, the selected poster will be used to promote the play.
Tools used: SkectchBook Pro, my brand new early Christmas present (Wacom tablet), Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign 5.5
P.s. Thanks A. Chu for the awesome gift!! and THANK YOU P. Brooks for your awesome feedback!!! Got this poster called “Timeless” ( it made me want to fist pump but as we were in class in font of the set designer I knew that that would have been inappropriate and Dan for your excellent photoshop skills
For our 4th assignment we had to do a typographic poster.
I chose to do the first few pages of The Gargoyle and it’s one of my favorite books.
Programs used were Photoshop and InDesign 5.5
After doing this assignment I definitely appreciate all the effort that goes into creating page spreads. The biggest thing I took away from this assignment is that it can be a perfectionists’ nightmare when they’re trying to arrange texts according to typographic rules.
Good thing I’m not an extreme perfectionist!
This picture was part of a class discussion
I really liked it
I hope it makes you think…. for a bit
