Rainbow of cake

My adventures in cooking recently haven't been too, well, adventurous. The other day however, in my quest to become a baker extraordinaire, I delved into the magical world of rainbow cakes! They are not that tough to make (dyeing white cake...not that hard) however, I have also never made said white cake (who eats white cake anyways?) so i scoured the internet for a recipe that didn't require lots of effort as I had two sets of little hands helping me as well, Little J, and the neighbor girl. I found this recipe. Little J and NG helped me dump flour, mix and create general chaos as I separated eggs and whisked everything into perfection! 

Next came the hard part. Actually dyeing it. Swiss food coloring? SUCKS. Like MAJORLY SUCKS. But I had to make do. At this point I really wanted to get out the wilton gel food coloring that I have at home. It makes AWESOME colors. So if you are in the U.S. go get some. and dye everything. it's sooooo cool. sorry. Anyways, my little helpers were obsessed with the dyeing. I would put in the dye and they mixed (and ate) as fast as they could.  We talked about the rainbow (regenbogen) and what colors were in it and which colors came when (I know, a teaching moment, you should all be proud!)

mixing the dyes. Note the fingers....

Adding some colors

Final color placement.

I then put the cake batter colors in the pan in order while the girls shouted out the next color. I was not so sure how the cake was going to turn out but hoped it would be fine! I put it in and 45 minutes later out came a pretty decent cake! The girls loved it and friends deemed it pretty decent making my venture a success! To change, I would make more of the red batter and orange batter than the other colors as you couldn't really see those colors and more vibrant colors.

nervous about it? 

finished product!

check out them colors! and blue icing (although the icing sucked. I need to make not so sweet icing.)

Children's Birthdays

My host dad recently said to me that in life the most stressful thing when you have children are the kids birthday parties. Will they be enough fun? Will there be lots of meltdowns? Will it be too long? Too short? I had my first experience planning a child's birthday this past week when I was given 3 days notice on planning a birthday for little J who had just turned 5. 3 DAYS. If I had more time I think I could have pulled off much more but maybe only 3 days was for the best? I reached back into my memories of my own birthdays and pulled out some fool proof ways that the kids could have fun. First off? TREASURE HUNT. Everyone loves a good treasure hunt.  H (my host mom) and I planned the treasure hunt to go for about 45 minutes through the neighborhood including a stop at a playground and some forest area for the kids to run around in (we apparently did not need the forest area for running around as kids were sprinting between clues!) They ended up finding their goody bags and some sequins to put on their craft. oh yes, the craft.

We decided to make masks for the birthday. H bought some feathers, sequinsy things, colored pencils, and glitter (because you can't have a girls birthday without it!) The kids ended up each making a mask which they wanted to spend more time than we were able making sure it had just the right amount of glitter (read: dripping off the mask) feathers surrounding it and little sequins everywhere. Julia and Mimi are still making masks even days after the party, clearly should have thought of this earlier in the year!

Overall? The party was a success! My cake was well received by the kinder (luckily!), and they all seemed to have had a good time.  Not too stressful, no meltdowns, and no accidents. And another thing to add to my resume. Birthday planning MASTER. (Just kidding!)

6 Month Review

Whew! I have reached my 6 month mark! the day after my birthday too! I can't believe that 6 months ago today, I had just arrived in Switzerland, ready for new adventures.  In the past 6 months I have in no certain order

• been to 8 countries!
• watched a kid poop their pants and sit in it
• made some totally awesome and crazy friends
• learned some German
• learned the Swiss ways of transportation
• gotten lost numerous times
• traveled by myself
• traveled with friends
• gone skiing and snowboarding
• played 1450235 games of rat-a-tat-cat
• played 1450234 games of go fish and tag
• gotten millions of hugs from two adorable little girls
• experimented with cooking having a few fails and luckily a few more successes!
• painted by the river (well sort of)
• seen my brother and sister in law more than I have in the past 6 years!
• celebrated Christmas away from family
• stayed up way too late to watch the Superbowl
• celebrated my birthday on a different continent (3 and counting now! well if you count celebrating it in international waters/Africa...) 
• watched a fire parade (post coming soon!) 
• read about 25 books. 
• become a regular at a bar...(never thought that would happen...)
• and so much more! I'm so excited for the rest of my time here! I can't believe i'm more than halfway done!

peirogi (Or how I impress you with my ability to read a recipe.)

Disclaimer: photos will be there sooon. It's a matter of uploading which takes FOREVER. 
 I cook about 4-5 dinners a week and 3-6 lunches a week. One of my goals for New Years was to be a little more adventurous in my cooking. Luckily the family is pretty open to my experimentation! Last week's adventure? Peirogi. My first foray into Polish cooking and oh my GOODNESS was it time consuming. Start to finish? about 2 hours and 45 minutes. I pulled the recipe off of the web from allrecipes.com one of my go to places for inspiration for dinners, because let's face it sometimes I just have no ideas at all.  It called for Sauerkraut filling but I just made the mashed potatoes filling.

First I made up the dough. Pretty basic dough with the exception of sour cream which I have never used in my limited experience with dough.

This was followed by making the mashed potatoes. It called for 2 cups of mashed potatoes so I guessed and took out about  medium potatoes. It was a little more than i needed but was fine for leftovers! I added the onions and let them get cold out in the snow while I rolled the dough out and cut out circles. I think this was the hardest part. The dough got really stiff and harder and harder to roll out as I cut out circles and re-rolled it. But in the end it turned out okay!


After boiling them AND frying them they were ready to go!

Verdict? Family LOVED them. we used sauerkraut and sour cream to top them with and they were delicious. However, I think that this should be reserved for special occasions because watching them be devoured was slightly sad as my 3 hour project was suddenly gone!

recipe: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/pierogi-polish-dumplings/Detail.aspx