October 9th, 2008

I visited this nice coffeehouse on TJ (Georgetown) after its round in the WP “Cupcake Wars” and at the urging of a few other people.

Overall, I like the general look and feel of this place better than Georgetown Cupcake. Its prettier on the outside and bigger on the inside (no waiting on stoops for this gal). The inside is split-level-sideways, with most baked goodies to the left and some baked goodies to the right with the coffee bar. The day we went (weekday) there were only three variaties of cupcakes: Ken’s Birthday Cake, Texas Sheet Cake Cupcake, and Carrot Cake Cupcake. On weekends there is much more of a selection.

The Carrot Cake was dan’s favorite (and in his opinion is better then Hello Cupcake’s and Georgetown Cupcake’s). The cream cheese frosting isn’t too sweet and the carrot cake bottom is the perfect combination of cake and carrot. Texas Sheet Cake is made by “putting the icing on the cupcake while its still hot” a la helpful (maybe a little too perky?) store clerk. It tastes better than it looks, but its nothing special (aka will not re-buy or crave for–ever). It tasted like those kind-of bad no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies my mom makes…

I also like the cupcake wrappers, which, though unconventional, actually help to preserve the cupcake better if/when traveling. We got a box with the plain cupcakes in it, but I saw the option of cupcake inserts (6 pc. boxes).

More interesting was the fact that this place also has an assortment of bars, brownies, breads, and doggie treats, as well as coffees that call to me from my Ballston cubicle. Some people come to Baked & Wired just for the coffee, in fact, they even have their own blend. The breads available the day we went (at very size-able pieces: Zucchini, Orange Poppyseed, and Carrot Ginger)

Seating inside is all the way in the back, and looked very comfortable and trendy. Most of the seats had been snagged already, so we sat at the one table in the coffee section of the coffeehouse.

Note to self: must re-visit to try other baked goods and their Chai Lattes!

From the Washington Post ‘Cupcake Wars’

About: Tony and Teresa Velazquez opened this little shop, attached to their graphic-design business, in 2001. 1052 Thomas Jefferson St., Georgetown, 202-333-2500; » More About Baked & Wired

The Range: Six varieties when we visited: vanilla/vanilla, chocolate with buttercream (dubbed Karen’s Birthday Cake), carrot cake, chocolate peanut butter, coconut and Texas sheet cake.

Price: $3.50. These are the most expensive yet, but they’re also the biggest by far, making them among the cheapest per ounce.

Size: Large, with generous frosting. (Average weight: 4.6 ounces.)

How do they taste?: Hallelujah, these are cupcakes! We love the folded parchment liners, which make these easier to unwrap. And then we love what’s inside: buttery, mostly moist cakes with good, simple flavors and a nice, thick layer of not-too-sweet, fresh-tasting frosting. The vanilla cakes tended to be a tad dry, perhaps from overbaking, but all in all, it was a selection we’d be happy to tuck into again.

Best of the Bunch: A truly delectable, nearly perfect chocolate peanut butter (shown above), which one taster described as “Snickers as a cupcake — and what’s wrong with that?” (Score: 8.6 out of 10.)

Price Per Ounce: 71 cents

From Washingtonpost.com, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcake & Vanilla/Vanilla Cupcake

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This is the Wall-E I got for Christmas from Danny. He sits at my desk at work inside a Starbucks cozy from Inauguration Day 2009. He looks like he’s popping out of the cardboard like a soapbox. Is he running for President? ^_^

Things I want to make:

Fried Zuchinni
Inari Really quite simple to make, I just need to find the frozen, sliced tofu and then make some sushi rice
Vietnamese Caramel Shrimp (too bad shrimp is so expensive! but ming tsai says its super healthy for you)
Baked Hot ChocolateI could have sworn I saw a vegan version of this with coconut milk
Goat Cheese/Ricotta Pancakes. I have a bunch o’ different kinds of pancakes, including Green tea, sitting in my cupboard. The name of these doesn’t sound good, but the picture + description combo makes me wonder…
Banana Pudding for grown ups. You know it’s bad to watch the FoodNetwork while working out.
Orange Cream Tart Vegan Friendly, for Ellen

I also need to try to freeze and then broil tofu. Not to mention, find this elusive seitan
Cute/Interesting things:

*Wired interviews Chara-ben (Character Bento) maker!*

Grinning Bowls of Oatmeal
Huge stuffed oreo
Kaiten-Zushi Cam (I haven’t watched this yet)

Itsy Bitsy Patisserie I just want to eat these macaroons, which reminds me of those Blondies from Bobby Flay Throwdown, Sugardaddy’s, as well as Hula Cookies that I miss from Hawai’i
Food Autopsy Photos

World Nutella Day celebrated with Gnomes + Nutella Pastries! They look so good~

Super super cute fruit video!
I want to go to this dim sum restaurant in NYC and eat their pretty dumplings

It was national carrot day Feb 3rd. (This link reminds me of I LOVE EGG and SAMBAKZA)

Customized Ramen. I haven’t watched this one yet either
Layer Tennis. This is from my co-worker (well, she doesn’t do much actual ‘working’). It’s like a game of volley-ing an image back and forth between people and the end result is always great!

So I finally got my hands on some Chinese sausage (臘腸, lop chung as we call it in Cantonese. I’m not going to go into the romanization variations). I bought it via Great Wall Supermarket at Gallows road. Lets just say that while the Chinese-ness was comforting, I like judgmental Koreans better than judgmental Chinese. At least the Korean marts have some Chinese stuff–the Chinese mart was all Chinese. Chinese signs, Chinese foods, Chinese labels — no regard for English translation here. I didn’t know the names, let alone the ingredients, of things I was looking at. I had to rely on my dusty dusty 漢字 character reading skills to get me to the right area. I also had made the mistake of visiting on a weekend. The place was packed, not to mention smelly and dirty, and not in a nice, comforting, homely way (I’m blanking on relevant examples here…). I also was looked at in a “what the heck–white girl. you’re lost” way every second I was in there. Never thought I’d want to go back to Grand Mart, Super/Non-Super H, or Lotte, but it’s true.

I thought there’d be three or four kinds of sausage there, but the whole top row of the refrigerated meats section was sausage. Lets just say… overwhelmed. I bought the kind that actually had some semblance of English on it, and I think I chose wrong. The only kind I’ve ever had was a mixture of Chinese/Portuguese sausage, and we got it from the local butcher on Maui. Let’s just say I’ll never eat this again, never go here again, and I’m never venturing in the Chinese sausage realm again without my dad or other relatives from his side of the family.

Originally, I wanted to make a Chinese sausage breakfast rice patty type meal with furikake’d rice, some sausages on top and a sunny-side up egg (or in my case, over-easy). But, I researched cooking the sausage online and people recommended cooking the sausage in the rice cooker at the same time as the rice. this resulted in both undercooked rice and sausage (or maybe just weird looking) that were then re-cooked and re-cooked again. The sausage was kinda grey-ish and I then decided to take the casing off (the casing wasn’t even cut on some of them!), cut into slices and stir-fry to try and salvage this. I knew it wasn’t going to taste good — it smelled off. I don’t know why, but it did.

I mixed the sausage slices, some onion, enoki mushrooms, napa, flax seed, and spices (rooster sauce, soy sauce, pepper, sugar), but there was no hope. I added some dried shrimp furikake to the rice, but not too much because the furikake was a tad old and let’s just say…’ripe’ (I tossed it out after this). The rice tasted okay, but I’m the type of person that likes plain rice. The sausage… I ate a few pieces but it got to a point where I started chewing one and then I just spit it out. After that, I was done. I made a bowl of cereal and called it a night.

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This week I found quite a few awesome links.
Here are some of them:

Burger Cakes (1) (2) (3)

Bonus Link! How to Eat cupcakes

I’ll be back in a few to add some more links — going to the grocery store now!