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Springerle Experiment – Take 2
I’ve been terrible about updating this post, but it’s been a squirrely week for me. I made a batch of Springerle last weekend, with the recipe coming from Ken Hamilton, The Springerle Baker. His recipe is pretty huge, I found out. You really never think about how much mess can come from 6 cups of powdered sugar and 8 cups of flour. I followed his full-length recipe, not the shorter quicker version. This was also the recipe which made me realize I SO NEED A STAND MIXER. My poor little hand mixer got quite the workout. I figured I was starting out well with the eggs!
It took QUITE a lot of work to get all the ingredients in. I had to use numerous bowls to handle the sheer amount of dry ingredients, along with all the sifting involved. WHY I DID NOT JUST CUT IT IN HALF, I’LL NEVER KNOW. Anyway, the dough turned out quite nice. I used the same amount of almond oil in this batch, as I did my original one. Since the batch was SO HUGE, the almond oil was perfect. As an aside, almond oil and almond extract are WAY different. The oil is SUPER concentrated. Seriously. You have NO idea until you actually work with this stuff. But it sure did make for a pretty looking and smelling dough.
Shiny and silky, eh? At this point, it’s actually still a bit sticky, even letting it rest and letting the flour work itself out in the dough. You did know that is why you let dough rest, right? MAGIC THINGS ARE HAPPENING. Once rested, it’s time to start working in the flour until you have a dough which will hold an imprint from the Springerle molds, but not actually stick to them. Or the rolling pin and mat, either.
This is actually one of my favourite parts. I love working the dough. It’s quite the soothing process. And I say this as someone with ZERO patience. This is why I do not often bake; I have a hard time waiting on anything. It’s almost like this dough is more tactile than others I’ve worked with, for regular cookies and such. Maybe it’s because this process is so ritual driven in many ways. Once I had the dough where I wanted it, I decided to try using the extra powdered sugar for the molds. Since flour gets all gooey and cakey with water, it can make for a pain in the arse when things get sticky. With sugar? It’s easily dissolved in water, so you can clean the molds easily. At least, that’s what I read on the internets. ONE NEVER KNOWS IF ONE IS BEING TROLLED.
As it turns out, I was not being trolled! The powdered sugar was quite easy to work with and the dough pulled away from the molds quite easily. The heart mold is pretty shallow, compared to the cat mold, which has the deepest imprinting. All three of my molds turned out great imprints and next to no sticking at all with the powdered sugar.
I also learned that I should bake like-sized cookies on the same sheets. I put all the heart-shaped cookies on one pan. The original recipe for Springerle calls for putting anise seeds under the cookies, with that being the only flavoring. Since most Americans are not fans of Anise, I’m using almond oil. And on the hearts, I sprinkled unsweetened cocoa powder on the parchment paper. For the pan of kitties and ladies, I sprinkled cinnamon on the parchment paper.
I let these sit over night, about 16 hours as it was a chilly and not very humid day. They rose pretty well, and the designs stayed in them while baking. I overbaked the kitties/ladies tray just a bit, but the hearts were perfect. After cooling, I put them all in plastic bags and took them to work.
While everyone was impressed with the designs of the heart cookies, the others were favored for the cinnamon flavor. I held back a whole bag of them, as the flavor is supposed to “ripen” for a week. I took them up to game day at the pub, where lots of people ate the kitty cookies. The flavor did settle in better, and the texture was fantastic. I was asked for the recipe already, and my game group said they’re happy to be my “beta” testers for future batches of cookies.
I started another batch this morning, but using a different recipe, along with some different techniques about working the dough and working the designs. Also? I totally need to crowdsource the money to get a KitchenAid stand mixer. I could send everyone cookies in return. Especially after I start the PAINTING of them! Once I get the recipe I’m happy with and get all the flavors set I want to try, I’ll be sending out lots to people to test.
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,800 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 5 years to get that many views.
Vending Machine Kitty!
I don’t think I’ve told the kitten story all in one place. It’s played out over the last 2 months via Facebook. It started when Barry found a kitten at work, under some vending machines….
He immediately took the kitten to the vet. The kitten got a flea dip and they gave him all sorts of tests. Guesstimated his age at 3 weeks. Once he went through all the Vet stuff, Barry brought him home in towels. The kitten could barely stand up. He was skin & bones. No muscle strength at all.
We put him in a box all wrapped up. Since the kitten was wet and shivery, I grabbed a heating pad. I turned it on very low and put it under the box so not to overheat the wee kitty.
He managed to get out of his box and get some milk on a saucer. He didn’t like it in the dropper. He climbed back into the warm box when done.
We held him a lot, letting our warmth and bodies be comforting.
When we weren’t home, we’d leave him locked in the back bathroom with a wee kitty litter box, soft kitten mushy food, and the warm box. This is how he slept when we weren’t holding him.
I loved taking pics when he was cuddled on me.
He started moving around more on his own. When he did, he found and made a mess of the regular cat food.
As you can see, he’s picked up quite a bit since then. Still his favorite thing with us.
This is usually how I find Barry and the kitten when I get home from work.
This is what he looks like now:
We’ve got more photos and videos of him that I haven’t uploaded before. He’s also got a name. I call him Rocket. When he found his legs, he would (and still does) ZOOOOM from room to room following you. Well, you end up following him. He runs and zooms off everywhere. We also call him Shadow, since he follows Doodlebug everywhere. Which is kinda funny, as Dood used to to that to Bubastis, much to her loathing. Now he’s got his own pest. 😉 Barry says that all cats should have a middle initial, so he’s Rocket J Shadowcat. I just call him little kitty. 🙂
The Dani goes to Germany
Unless you’re following me on the Facebooks or the Twitters, you have no idea that I just visited Germany. For that matter, a brief visit to France, and traveling in Switzerland. There’s a whole bunch of things happening in my life which have me lower than I’ve been in *years*. So, my good friend and colleague, Iain, brought me over for a visit!
You can see some of the photos I updated on my public Flickr account. Apparently, I’ve hit my monthly upload limit so the rest will have to wait until January.
I had visions of writing a most excellent travel diary, but I have failed. I’ve got a cold right now, so I find that I don’t care. 🙂 I suppose I could share a bit of my favorite bits of the trip. First, Swiss Air is quite delightful. Such polite people, plus I had an empty seat next to me on the trip over. SCORE!
I arrived in Zurich, and waited for Iain to show up, so we could catch the 3 different trains we’d need to get to Villingen, where he lives. Coincidently, it is also where the game I work on, Bullet Run, is developed. Yes, I’m working on a First-Person Shooter game. I’ve found that even tho I’m crap at it, I have a lot of fun playing with the community. And they think I’m just as much of a dork as they are. Heck, my main leader in my community is a very funny Brony. At any rate, I’m digressing like a sick person. *WACHOOO*
I was happy that I had picked up a HYOOOOGE puffy down warm coat for the trip, because it was cold as cold balls. I was actually okay wandering about in a hoodie with layers of tights/socks. Until it RAINED AND SNOWED. Fuck it; it was big awkward bulky way-too large coat for the rest of the trip.
We pretty much spent the first couple of days just hanging out, listening to music, enjoying good beers (‘natch!) and foods. We played some board games; I gave him a copy of Flame Wars: The Card Game of Extreme Moderation, which I had backed on Kickstarter. I also left him my copy of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre since I can easily get another copy here. He introduced me to Kamisado, which I immediately loved. He helped me order it at the LGS. He also helped me order Mord im Arosa, which I had played in Austin at my game meetup. One of the women brought it to the event; she picked it up at some sort of board game swap. And the person who had it originally, picked it up when they were in Essen for the big huge board game show.
Anyway, we also wandered around town looking at neat buildings/art. We went to the Franciscan Museum Villingen, specifically for the Magdalenenberg, the Iron Age chieftain’s grave. IT WAS SOOOO COOOL.
We also wandered over to the Acony office, where I could say hello to the devs I had already met, and meet the rest of the team developing Bullet Run.
Some of our other travels:
Stuttgart for the Die Wel der Kelten aka The World of the Celts. Centres of power – Treasures of art exhibit. It was AMAZING. Too bad we were not allowed to take photographs, as there were some stunning pieces. We also continued on looking at the rest of the museum, featuring the history of Baden-Württemberg. I also had my first tasty Glühwein. In the pouring rain. Whilst freezing.
Which lead to MORE Glühwein drinking after we missed our train back home.
Alsace, France. My goal was to see many more awesome Medieval buildings and check out the Christmas market. Oh, and drink some tasty, tasty Alsatian Beer.
You could say I found both. Okay, so Leffe is Belgian, but I did have a tasty Croque Monsieur sandwich!
Esslingen: We went here specifically to catch the Esslingen Medieval Christmas Market. It’s side by side with the regular Christmas Market, but much more interesting! Well, the most interesting is that it is actual Medieval reenactment, which is awesome. Music, shows, foods, and games. It was fantastic. Of course, more Glühwein and Schwartzbier!
I think I enjoyed this Market the most, being the history dork that I am. I captured lots of photos of the same buildings, because they were so beautiful. Rugged handsome men stoking fires was pretty awesome, too. 🙂 Rawr. The great part about doing all this with Iain is that he’s a reenactor history nerd, too, so I don’t have to explain /why/ I loved it so much.
After a heap load of touristing, it was nice to chill back at his place for the rest of the trip. There were so many fantastic moments, and I’ll treasure this trip forever. It was good to leave my stresses behind (which are many; some I’ll share this coming week) and get inspired and invigorated. Right now, I’m ill with a cold and drank way too much beer at game day. I’ll just leave you with one of my fave sights from Stuttgart.
Blog Update – Conjecture Con Schedule
I suppose the easiest way to get back into the habit of writing is to just do it. I know, you’re amazed by this discovery. I’ve been a naughty naughty girl by ignoring my blog, especially since I’m always complaining that I have way too many things to say. This post will be pretty simple. I’m coming into the downswing of convention season and I have two more to go. One for pleasure, the other for work. Of course, the work one will be pleasurable, but I won’t be lollygagging all over the place like I will at a con I’m not attending for work.
First up is Conjecture/ConCord 2012.
It runs this weekend, Friday-Sunday. I’ve never been to this convention, but smart people I like tell me it is a good local event. I decided to submit some panels; one of them was chosen! I volunteered to be on others, with a total of 3 panels over the weekend. Here they are:
Breaking Down the Culture of Misogyny in Online Gaming – Sat 10/6 3:00 PM
With increased awareness of the levels of hate and harassment that female gamers face for instance, the backlash against Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter project, and the tracking of misogynistic comments documented on fatuglyorslutty.com , what are ways for both male and female geeks to effectively combat misogyny in geek culture in general, and specifically in online games?
I’d normally take issue with “female” gamers versus calling us women. However, since men are referred to as “males”, it works for me. We only have one hour, so I don’t know if we’ll get to touch on gender issues as well. If I’m lucky, we can continue the discussion as a “stealth” panel, after the main discussion is complete. I love taking conversations out to the halls, the pub, or coffee shop, to discuss the topics further. Cross fingers!
Game Community – Sun 10/7 11:00 AM
Game communities have grown beyond small game clubs, web forums and IRC as social networking has become integrated with game companies and created even more game communities. Our panelists will discuss social networking and creating a positive community via chat tools, web forums, Twitter, Facebook and 3rd party news/blogs.
This is the panel I submitted! It’s a big passion for me, of course. I love to help people who want to be a part of game communities and those who want to create them. I’ll be talking about my own experiences finding people to play board/card games with and leading groups in Meetup.com and such. It’s not hard to run a game group, but it is a /lot/ of work. The best part is when you find others who are just as passionate and you can build an amazing team. You don’t have to like people to create an amazing experience. Pick others who are just as passionate as you; you may find that you have more in common than you thought.
Star Wars: The Very Expanded Universe – Sun 10/7 2:00 PM
Six films, five made-for-TV movies, five animated series, a huge number of tie-in novels, comic books, and games, and a possibly huger number of fan films recognized by Lucasfilm since 2002 in The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, later the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge), plus toys, trading cards, and then all the fanart and fanfiction — what (other than clever marketing) has driven the development of such a vast body of work? Why do we keep buying, and making, more of the Star Wars universe?
Outside of the poor writing in this panel description, I’m very excited about this panel. Anyone who knows me will hear or see something Star Wars in my every day life. Whether Twitter, Facebook, or just IRL blathering, I’m surrounded by Star Wars. I laugh along with the absurdities, I cry while reading the novels. Okay, some of them I cry because they are terribad pieces of literature. I have been emotionally attached to Star Wars since I saw it in the theaters so many years ago.
The only misgivings I might have about this panel is that I’m the only woman on it. You better believe I’ll be all up in some people’s grill if they start mansplaining to me like Genevieve Valentine experienced at ReaderCon when she was the only woman on a FrankenStein panel.
Let’s face it. I’m gonna totally nerd out on this one.
The other thing I want to highlight is the Backup Ribbon Project. I’ll be bringing Backup Ribbons to the event. Find me wandering around and I’ll have one for you. Want to know more about the Backup Ribbon Project and how you can help? I’ll be your girl! I’ll be happy to pass them out at the “Breaking Down the Culture of Misogyny in Online Gaming” panel if you want to know how to find me.
Games for Sale!
This Saturday, we’ll be selling a bunch of games, mostly older. We’re gonna have two spots on a table at the MidSummer Game Swap. Here is our current list of games for sale:
RPG:
Dystopian Wars rulebook
Dungeons & Dragons (that weird fake 2nd edition that came out later. *grin*)
Just a few of the games we’re selling.
Board/Card games:
Prussian Army
Panzer General: Allied Assault
Marvel Super Heroes basic set ( seems to be missing map )
Roman Taxi
Shootin’ Ladders
Crappy Birthday
Fred: What would Fred do
Cranium
Hoopla
Rapscallion
Eye for an Eye
Starfarer of Catan ( with expansion )
Traveller small box set,
OriginalRocketville ( nib )
Axis & Allies DDayAttack! ( With expansion)
Munchkin, Star Munchkin, Munchthulhu, Munchkin Zombie
POWER “The Game”
Buck Rogers Battle for the 25th Century ( TSR)
Diplomacy ( Avalon Hill 2003 )Risk ( 60s, wooden pieces )
Macho Women With Guns ( +3 expansions )
WFB Beastmen Army Box set from ?’07-ish.
Alibi ( Mayfair )
Pirates Quest for Davy Jones Gold ( constructable card ships game )
Minatures:
Al Muktar’s Desert Dogs
Galrauch, First Chaos Dragon
Dark Emissary
Albion Truthsayer
Chaos Knights ( 8 or so, 6th Edition era )
Chaos Marauder Horsemen ( 7, 6th ed. )
Flesh Hounds of Khorne ( 3, older ones )
Rogue Trader era Land Raider
Hounds of Chaos ( a dozen, older )
A box of misc Space Marine parts ( 12 scouts, a bunch of random characters Blood Angels, Grey Knights )
Adeptus Arbites ( 6 )
Protectorate Reckoner
Protectorate Temple Flame guard
Trollblood Scattergunners
Protectorate Devout
Protectorate Deliverer Sunburst
“D” is for Donna #AtoZChallenge
Growing up, I always liked my first name. It is a pretty name and combined with my middle name, kinda rolls off the tongue. Except for when mom yelled it when I was in trouble. Then it sounded like I should run and hide. Hah!
When I made it to middle school, it was the first time I had ever had classmates named Donna. There were numerous Donnas in my class and even a Dondi, which was odd. That’s one of my mom’s pet names for me (which she still uses even though I am 47 years old) and I liked it. She was an okay girl and I think she was nice to me. But some of the other people with my name..weren’t.
I remember asking people to start calling me by my middle name. Mostly in my own head, in my own stories, and imagination. I hated my name so much and wanted to change it. I knew it was a dumb thing, because I had always loved my name.
I also was very tired of people singing “Donna” by Ritchie Valens. I still hate that song. I also hated “Donna the Prima Donna” by Dion. Thankfully, it was never sung to me that much. *shudder* There is one song called “Donna” which is a big favorite. It is “Donna” by Art of Noise. Man, that “Into the Battle with the Art of Noise” is still my favorite album of theirs.
As I got older, I didn’t mind it as much. When I did run into other women named Donna, they were a very very nice. Many just as persnickety as I am, with difficult personalities. Really. I can be difficult. It didn’t bother me as much because none of these people were mean to me; they didn’t fit what I thought someone with my name would be like. Rather, what other girls named Donna were like.
When I discovered Ye Olde Internets, I started using the handle Danicia. I used it /everywhere/ and met heaps of people through Usenet. Yeah, really old school there. Everything was using Danicia. You couldn’t find me by my real name…ever on the intartoobs. Well, until I had to use my real name while working for BioWare.
I’ve known people for over a decade who still don’t know that my real name is not Danicia (dan-EE-see-ya), but is Donna. I’ve kinda gotten used to it by now; rarely does anyone still call me Dani. I’m asked if I have a preference; I don’t. They’re both me and I love both names.
“My name is Raymond J. Johnson, Jr. Now you can call me Ray, or you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny, or you can call me Junie, or you can call me Junior; now you can call me Ray J, or you can call me RJ, or you can call me RJJ, or you can call me RJJ Jr.” ultimately ending with, “but you doesn’t hasta call me Johnson!” – Yes. I am that old.
Extra Life Charity Fundraiser & Community. Donate Now!
I’ve seen the Extra Life chatter around the internet and decided I was going to participate this year. Not only that, I’m inviting in the Community Managers Group to join me in a team goal.
I know I talk about the not-so-awesome aspect of some gamers & gamer culture. However, there are a lot more awesome gamers out there than jerks. And when it comes to charity fundraisers, there are a lot of great people doing great things.
This time, I decided to join in. I’ve donated to Child’s Play before, especially sponsoring the Cookie Brigade at PAX Prime & PAX East. There are so many inventive ways for geeks & gamers to be involved and now I’m going to be doing my part.
You can help me reach my goal by visiting My Donation Page If you are a Community Manager, you can help by joining our group.
I will be sorting out my list of games so you can track what I’m playing. I might live broadcast some of it, and there will definitely be pictures. You can track my games from watching my Twitter feed or following me on Raptr.
Hope to see you get involved!
Speak Out With Your Geek Out – Stripey Socks & Geek Attire
I’ve always dressed a little different from other folks. Half is that I have no sense of fashion and the other is that I really like to wear things which make me happy. I’ve only been half aware that I might be dressing oddly, and have continued to simply ZOMG SHINY through my wardrobe through the years. My family has always kinda followed their own weird piper, so to speak.
I’ve had freaky hair, freaky clothes and have never been embarrassed or felt odd about it.
I word the oddest things and was happy with it. Very happy. Most of the times I had my picture taken in my oddest close, I have the happiest smile.
I never quite wore appropriate clothing for my activities. Seriously. Just doing my own thing.
I had been attending renfaires since 1982, but didn’t dress up until the late 90s. My attire was pretty crappy at first, but after hanging out on Usenet (Yah, I’m old), I kinda hit my niche with hot pink attire. And eventually added neon green, as more people started getting wacky in their renfaire get ups. I’m the furthest you can be from being girly; the hot pink thing was a huge inside joke. My mom thought it was humorous; I think she was happy just to see color in my wardrobe after the YEARS of nothing but black clothing.
I had a bit of a change happen to my wardrobe, once online shopping hit. I was happily buying from ThinkGeek shortly after I moved out to Virginia in 1999. Since they were local to VA, I was familiar with them as I worked with Fraize at Dell and had met Regan through renfaire. My shopping really kicked in somewhere in 2003. Tshirts & toys for myself. Tshirts for friends & boyfriends. I still do so. Hah! I have a couple of photos up there on the site. I always forget to send them in. I still owe them the lightsaber chopsticks picture.
Fast Forward. So, I had joined a social network site which has some blogging in it. I found that when I used the blog, I met more people. I met a TON of great people in Seattle from the site; some who are close friends today and even attended my wedding! I’m used to people slagging on me for being weird, fat, having a big bumpy Italian nose and whatnot. But a gal named “Computer Barbie” posted the following:
I know a group of women who commiserate for hours that men will not commit, but they will not spend 13 minutes putting on make up. They wear nerd clothes too. One of them wears a boys student coat, androgenous moccasins, androgenous pants. She looks like she has long grey side burns. She pushes her hair behind her ears. 1 lock falls in front of each ear. That is the only part that is grey. Another wears Circus Socks [multicolored socks]. These women are Fashion Casualties. These women are middle aged but successful. These women claim to have boyfriends. JMO
As someone who LOVES awesome socks, I was kinda butthurt in a humorous way. So I blogged about it. Turns out a bunch of other women, from their 20s – 50s (and younger/older) also love their nerd clothes, their stripey socks. So a silly sock club was born. Many of us started buying MORE socks, because we wanted to day, You know, we dress for OURSELVES, not for you. Just because you think we’re too old to dress for happiness, doesn’t mean it is wrong.”. We all started posting pictures of our socks as we bought them, and the term “Sock Prawn” was born. You know. Wait. This is the internet. I don’t have to tell you.
I discovered Sock Dreams and Sock It To Me Socks, both in Portland, Oregon. I started shopping from SITMS because Holly, proprietor of Monster Art & Clothing sold her socks.
We started having Stripey Sock Meetups. We bought each other socks. Friends & family started buying us socks; it became the thing to do.
Not all socks we love are stripey. They can have all kinds of textures and patterns.
We love our socks. We love our geekiness of all kinds. Not everyone who’s a sock person is a gamer. Not every sock person is into fandom. However, we are all pretty geeky about a good many things. We’re made up of food geeks, history geeks, tech geeks, gamer geeks, glitter geeks, renfaire geeks, music geeks. No matter what your geeky stripes (hah!), when you run into a sock geek, you have an instant bond; something to talk about and share.
I LOVE MY SOCKS! GO OUT AND LOVE YOUR SOCKS, TOO!
Hot Pink Freak 
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