"tuaw" news and stories

For the most part, I embrace technology. I use my iPod daily, am happily bound to my cell phone and spend between 10 and 12 hours a day pecking away at a computer keyboard. There are, however, a couple of places in my life where I haven't been able to surrender to the siren song of digitization. I still use a paper calender, as I like the ability to physically touch a representation of my days and scribble things in with pen and pencil.

I also keep all my recipes on paper. While I have cooked from my computer occasionally, waking up the screen with a dough-y finger to check quantities, I far prefer to hand write my recipes. Part of this attachment to paper comes from the fact that I don't have to worry if a bit of butter leaps out of the mixing bowl and the other part is due to the fact that I love cooking from the recipe cards that my grandmother and aunts originated. I think about my own future descendents and think that they'll also prefer to have a tangible representation of my time in the kitchen.

However, all that said, the sheer volume of recipes I've amassed over the years is beginning to make storage an issue and I've begun to play with the idea of recipe storage software as a way to finally get rid of the bursting file box in our second bedroom. Lucky for me, a new program (sadly for you PC users out there, it's for Macs only) has just recently hit the market that is sort of like iTunes for recipes, making the switch feel intuitive and inevitable. Called SousChef, it allows you to sort and search by name, ingredient and category. You can rate recipes and star your favorite. It makes it easy to scale batches up or down and offers an import feature so that you can pull recipes found on the internet straight into your database. All for $30. I am sorely tempted.

[via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

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Anyone who knows my family, knows that this house is a Mac house, so I thought it only fitting that my first post make it clear where my allegiance lies. This cake was made for my brother-in-law's birthday and with this group of apple addicts, I am sure I'll be getting requests to do more.

I started with two layers of French vanilla cake, with a layer of buttercream between them. Then, I went to work on achieving as close to bondi blue as possible which involved buttercream icing, a lot of blue plus a hint of green gel coloring and plenty of stirring. It's not perfect but it's incredibly close to the iMac in our den-- although my husband tells me that's not actually bondi blue either. Oh well, maybe next time.

In order to get a nice, smooth surface on the cake, I iced it and allowed it to sit for a few minutes just until it started to crust. Then I used a Viva paper towel (these seem to work the best since they are smooth) placed on the cake and gently rolled it out smooth with a fondant roller. If the paper towel pulls up with icing, just allow it to crust for another few minutes and try again.

Next it was time for the apple logo, which I wanted to be exactly right. I knew it wasn't possible for me to do it freehand so I pulled the logo off the internet, resized the PDF to the size of the cake and printed it out as a template. Once the white fondant was rolled out, I cut out the apple with an X-acto knife. Then I laid it on the cake, smoothed it out and made sure to get the leaf at just the right angle.

The birthday boy really enjoyed it but I'm not sure if eating this apple every day would keep the doctor away.