Aquarionics

Yes, another minor redesign to deal with all the whining about the last one :-)

Me and Aquarius still don’t agree on Project Looking Glass

(This follows on from a minor discussion we had in LugRadio 6 and at various points since, where Aquarius thinks Sun’s Looking Glass is “Pointless Wank”, where I think it could be a genuinely innovative new way of looking at a GUI)

I will not redesign my website.
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I will not redesign my… doh.

A recipish

You will require:

• Bowls.
• Time.
• Effort.
• An Oven.
• A nine inch cake tin. Preferably one with a loose bottom.
• Greaseproof paper. Not tinfoil.
• All your base:
  • Bikkits.
  • Cinnamon
  • Nutmeg
  • Butter
  • Brown sugar.
  • The creamy goodness:
  • Cream Cheese
  • Sour Cream
  • Double (Heavy) Cream
  • Sugar
  • Flour
  • Vanilla Extract

• Eggs

Madness

Take your cake tin and line it with something. The recipe recommends butter, but this doesn’t work terribly well. Last couple of times I’ve tried Tinfoil. If you really, really want to use tinfoil, then do, but the shear effort it takes to line the cake tin in tinfoil would be better spent walking to the local supermarket and saying “What ho, fine supermarket, sell me one roll of your fine grease-proof paper, if you would be so kind”, including the resultant time spent in a place with nice friendly walls.

Cream Cheese

3×8oz packets of cream cheese. You can use spreadable “soft” cheese for this too, but if you see something that says “Cream Cheese” buy that instead.

Cream

You will need a whole cup of each of sour and double (which Americans call “Heavy”) cream. Shockingly enough, an official ‘cup’ is about a the size of a cup, or about half a pint. It’s important to note that this is one of the middle size of cream availability, or close enough to it for jazz. If your moronic Helpful Local Supermarket Delivery Collective are stupid enough to supply you with the smaller size, take the time now to go forth and send a minion to fetch more stuff, whilst you play Freeciv and wipe out the evil empire of Sainsbury’s with a tactical nuke.

Bikkits

Bikkits in this case are defined as “digestive bikkits” if you’re British, Graham’s Crackers if you’re American, and “the crumbly dark brown ones that may usually be covered in chocolate” if you’re neither. You’ll need about a cup of these, too. How do you measure a cup of a non-cup-shaped solid substance? This is simplicity itself. Take an amount of bikkits, and hit them with a hammer until they fit into the cup. This strategy works with most things.

Stage Zero: Oven.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)

Stage One: All your base

Get about five tablespoons of melted butter. You can do this by putting about half a block into the microwave and nuking it for a minute or so.

Summon all your hopes and dreams that have been dashed upon the hard rocks of reality, and apply the resulting frustration to a small tower of biscuits until they break down into their component crumbs. Add these to the yellow goo, mix in 3 table spoons of brown sugar, a tablespoon of cinnamon and a tiny, tiny amount of nutmeg (The recipe said half a teaspoon. This is accurate if you really, really adore the taste of nutmeg) and stir until it’s consistent slush. Pour this slush into the bottom of the cake tin and bash until it’s level and coats the bottom of the tin. Personally, I recommend using a potato masher for this task. Hit it and make it as level as you can, or until you get bored. If you realise at this stage that you’ve totally forgotten to add the sugar, then sprinkle it over the top. Bung the kit and caboodle into the oven for 10 minutes. Or, ignore the oven bit entirely and do the next bit.

Stage Two: The Topping

Bung the cream cheese and a cup of white sugar into a bowl and vent frustrations for a while, or put it into an electric mixer. Either way, you want smooth gritty stuff.
Add both types of cream (A cup of each) and attack.
Add a tablespoon of Vanilla extract, and three tablespoons of plain white flour.
Attack mercilessly until it begs for forgiveness.

Now, wash your hands.

Take the index finger of your right hand, and swipe it though the mixture. Now lick the cheesecake stuff from your finger. This is important, because it tastes really nice, and we’re about to add raw eggs, after which you really shouldn’t eat it until it’s baked, so savour it for now.

Add the eggs (Three of them) one at a time, avenging your lost loves upon the ghost of cheesecake past between each egg.

Pour the pure white fluffy white goo upon the dark, forbidding ground of the Biscuit Mix That Time Forgot and bung the entire unholy creation into the Place Of Heatedness for an hour to an hour and a bit before you withdraw it from its personal hell and place it into the Place Of Coldedness.

Here you must suffer Hell, for you must remain aware that there is a freshly baked cheesecake in the fridge, but you must leave it pristine and uncut for at least six hours. Hell is a cheesecake you cannot eat.

After that, you can top it (For example, melt half a packet of chocolate with a small tub of cream and pour it over the top and let it set) and eat it. I’d provide a picture here of what it looks like, but there isn’t any left…

Epic.

Terribly, Terribly epic.

Contains epicosity.

Epicality.

Epicness.

Arse-numbing, “Woo cool” inducing, “I never need to read the poem” thanks-giving, Epic.

Also, it contains a moment which totally needs giant kittens bouncing down the hill.

Troy in fifteen minutes is really funny; Jedit’s review is really accurate; and IMDB is really, really comprehensive as ever.

Also: LoneCat didn’t recognise Sean Bean, despite looking exactly like Boromir, which is silly.

Today has been stressful.

This evening a thing that I do has fallen from the ranks of “Fun” to “Why do I do this” to “Take my ball and go home” in a matter of about seven minutes, because of which we didn’t get out of the house in time to see Troy (We’ll go tomorrow) and so instead of sitting relaxed in a cinema seat going “Oh my god he’s girly”, I’m making Cheesecake. I like making Cheesecake, it’s antistressful. Actually, I like cookery in general, and writing up recipies even more. In case you’ve missed this particular (and one of my favourite) facets of the Aquarionics Empire, I will remind you of the various Recipish things that have happened.

Tomorrow there will be another.