This past Sunday, my friend hosted a baking party for the two of us and we spent no less than 5.5 hours in the kitchen. We were quite the domestic goddesses decked out in brightly coloured aprons with caramel sauce in between our fingers and flour in our hair. For all our hard work, we managed to make three delicious desserts (as well as a small healthy lunch to balance all that sugar, butter, and cream):
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I still consider myself to be an amateur when it comes to baked goods, but they are quite handy for bringing into work and meetings and whatnot. After all, I am not about to pull out a dish of coconut curry jumbo shrimp as finger food for my coworkers.
So the other day, I was to make something to show off my culinary skills to these professors that I was having a meeting with. I immediately thought of the unused muffin mix in my pantry, and volunteered to bring muffins to the meeting. But I’d never actually made muffins before (tiny little secret), so I was a little bit anxious as to how they’d turn out.
The mix was for a standard muffin with blueberry filling. The filling was the tricky part, since it was heavier than the muffin mix and would start to sink when I put it in the half-filled muffin cup. In the end, they turned out rather perfectly, worthy of being presented by the SassyChef.
During this orgy of tension and stress known as final exams, I haven’t been eating properly. Through no fault of my own, there seems to be no Real Food left in my apartment, except maybe my roommate’s cat food (for her cat, not for her).
However, I did buy a delicious frozen pizza from Price Choppers this past weekend. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why am I listening to this sleep-deprived chick talk about her stupid frozen pizza? She’s thinking of eating her roommate’s cat food for crying out loud – clearly, a crazy.
Well, call me crazy all you like, but Casa di Mama pizza is by far the best frozen pizza out there – and I should know, I’m a university student! The first thing I noticed is that the dough was so soft I could barely handle it when I took it out of the box. Now, this may have been because it had thawed, but usually, even thawed frozen pizza is still tough as a brick. Moreover, the pizza came on parchment paper. Delissio doesn’t come on parchment paper. McCain’s doesn’t come on parchment paper. But Casa di Mama does.
In any case, I added some toppings (I usually add red peppers because there never seem to be enough toppings on frozen pizzas) and followed the instructions on the box for heating times.
When it was done, the crust had risen into a golden halo around the pizza, with a slightly crunchy surface giving way to light fluffiness. This was comparable to some of the best pizza I have had – ever! Toppings can definitely be improved (I had pepperonis and hot peppers on mine) but the crust was really just perfect.
