Enjablog

Congrats to Brandee & Kain who got married this weekend!

And for everyone else, here are the recipes I used for the bridal shower cupcakes:

Oreo Cupcakes (modified from Bakerella)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup natural unsweetened cocoa
1 1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup hot water
24 Oreos, plus more for crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line tray with baking cups.
Place one whole cookie in each cup or break apart at least 24 cookies and place the broken pieces into each cup.

Mix the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl using a wire whisk.

Add the eggs, oil, vanilla and milk and mix well until thoroughly combined. Add the hot water and mix until combined.

Transfer the batter (it will be very liquid) to a large measuring cup and then pour batter into each baking cup so it’s about three quarters full. You should have a little left over.

Bake for 16-18 minutes.

Notes: For the raspberry cupcakes, I substituted 2Tbl raspberry syrup for the vanilla (could’ve used more). Next time I would use butter instead of oil. This was a little dense to me.

If using whole cookies, err on the low side when filling the cups. Mine came out all lop-sided because there wasn’t enough air flow for the batter to bake completely underneath the cookie and they all had these tumors… which I was forced to break off and eat.

Cream Cheese Oreo Frosting (modified from Cupcake Project)

12 oz cream cheese, chilled
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup crushed Oreos
2 Tbl flavoring

Whip cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy.
Add sugar gradually.
Stir in cookie crumbs.
Add flavoring to taste.

Notes: I definitely would add more flavor to the frosting next time. I thought the flavor was a little weak. I used creme de menthe for the regular cupcakes and raspberry syrup for the raspberry cupcakes.

These are definitely the prettiest cupcakes I have ever attempted. And people liked them well enough, so I’ll be keeping this around to try again!

We started off Wednesday morning going into historic Mystic. Given how much there was to see at the Seaport, we decided not to try to hurry through and just visited the gift shop for some presents for our family and friends and walked around a bit to see what there was in the area.

I ended up buying this awesome whale bottle opener for Ian, which I thought there would be a possibility he’d hate. You know, because it’s a little hideous. But I went ahead and bought it because *I* thought it was awesome. In retrospect, I think the Bloggess is having a big influence on my life of late (reference: Zombie speech that came out the same week I got the announcement for Survive Alexandria and her anniversary present for her husband). Anyway, Ian’s coming around. I’m sure he’ll cherish it when I’m dead.

We ended up leaving Mystic mid-morning, so it was too early to try Mystic Pizza before we left. It was ok though, since neither of us had even heard of the movie until we told people we were visiting Connecticut.

Next up: USS Nautilus! This was Yenny’s first time on a submarine. So fun! The Nautilus, for some reason, had been filled with Navy mannequins. They were kind of creepy and scared us a few times when we peeked around a corner only to find a mannequin hiding in a bunk or eating a mashed potato sandwich. (I’m not sure if those were standard rations; there was no placard addressing that question.) From there, we made our way through the sub museum and played around on the weapons they left lying around outside.

We swung by the Coast Guard Academy on our way out of town and stopped in at the New London Post Office to drop off some postcards. Apparently, we’re a dying breed. They ran out of postcard stamps at the desk and had to go rummage through the safe in the back to find enough stamps for me.

On the drive back up to Hartford, we passed a correctional facility, which we had passed a handful of times in the past 24 hours going back and forth from the casino and looking for lodging. Yenny was really intrigued by this, but there was a sign that clearly directed people not to stop near there, so we couldn’t take pictures. I got this blurry video instead:

During the rest of the hour to Hartford, I read through the tourist booklet we picked up at the airport. Included in the Hartford landmarks was a Trash Museum. We decided this was a definite destination for us. While doing some research on my phone to find out their hours, entry fees, etc. I discovered that there was also a Garbage Museum in Stratford, but they got shut down last week. I guess people weren’t as interested in garbage as they were in trash.

As it turned out, the Trash Museum was their main recycling facility. There was a viewing area where you could see the tipping pit, the conveyors that sorted the different materials, and some of the finished bales. They also had cameras throughout the facility so you could see from the viewing area what was going on in other areas. We had perfect timing and got there just in time to see 2 trucks unloading in the tipping pit.

We might have spent a lot of time there, so we didn’t have time to tour the Mark Twain House or Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house. I had no idea they were neighbors! We did have enough time to go walk around the area and drive through downtown Hartford before heading to the airport.

And, in case we missed it, the airport was kind enough to have a Lego replica of the Mark Twain House.

While reading up on Connecticut, Yenny and I found out about a Connecticut Hot Dog Tour. Capitol Lunch was in New Britain on our way out of Bristol, so we stopped in there for hot dogs with some of their famous sauce (you can buy it by the pint!). Their hot dogs were more like the European style with a stronger casing and the sauce was good, but not all that different from a chili dog.

From there, we decided to head toward the casinos and find a place to stay for the night. Then we saw a sign that said something about a beach, so we made a detour. We didn’t actually find any public beach area, but heading toward the water, we saw a house for sale and stopped to take a look.

Had a pretty nice front yard:

We got back on the road only to stop a few minutes later at the Hoxie Scenic Overlook:

Once we got closer to the Mohegan Sun casinos, we started calling hotels. Turned out a lot of places in the area were just getting power back. The Stop & Shop was all out of perishables and ice. The casinos (and their expensive hotels) had power, but none of the nearby hotels had power/rooms available. After calling around a bit, we decided to backtrack and head toward Mystic to stay the night. They had hotels with power, but the rest of the town was still in the dark.

We decided to eat in town before heading back to the casino. Yenny suggested finding a place with lobster rolls, since neither of us had ever had one before and we’ve been hearing a lot about them recently. The Sea View Snack Bar sounded promising, so we stopped to check it out. Not only did they have lobster rolls, but they also offered scallop rolls! I preferred the scallop roll, though that could just be because I have a thing for tartar sauce, but they were both very good. Not chase a DC food truck down good, but enjoyable. *cough*Katie*cough* ;)

We spent the rest of the evening at the Mohegan Sun. I wandered around a bit exploring the building while Yenny gambled. There were 3 casino areas, waterfalls, restaurants, and shops in the middle region. Set off from the central area were a convention center, an arena, and a hotel. After I circled the area, I tried my hand at video poker. Not much better odds than the slot machines, but made a whole lot more sense to me. I lost $17.46 over the course of about 2 hours. Not my best, but I got my entertainment value out of it, so I’m ok with that.

A couple months ago, Yenny found a cheap airfare deal and we decided to take a trip somewhere neither of us had ever visited before. Of the destinations offered, Connecticut was at the top of both our lists as unvisited (which I later realized was untrue for me) and unlikely to have other opportunity to be there in the foreseeable future.

We left early Tuesday morning, only to receive a call at the airport letting us know that the B & B we had a reservation with had no power and the phone lines were out. We’d have to find somewhere else to stay. After calling around and getting [accidentally] hung up on a couple times, we decided to take a page out of Sonny’s book and just go on with our trip assuming everything would work out.

We headed straight for Bristol after picking up our rental car. First stop: ESPN Plaza. This turned out to be a bust. Despite our research, it turns out it’s not open to the public and you have to contact someone in advance to go on a guided tour.

Undeterred, we moved on to the next destination on the list only to be distracted by this… skyline:

After driving around for a bit, we circled our way toward the building and discovered it was the Otis Elevator Research Center. At which point, we further noticed that this building has no windows. There are some vents along the side of the building, but the front and back was practically all solid concrete.

We hung out there for probably an unreasonable amount of time before heading over to the Clock Museum. We got there just before noon, so the woman at the information desk recommended we visit the tower clocks first. Great suggestion! It was interesting to stand in a room full of antique clocks ringing for the better part of 10 minutes. (Since not all the clocks were set exactly right.) I tried to catch some of it on video, but I don’t think the recording captures the full effect of the various clocks and the on-going resonating that came from some of the chimes.

After the clocks, we drove farther into town to see the Carousel Museum. Extra bonus? Combined with the Carousel Museum were a Museum of Fire History and a Greek Culture exhibit.