At first I was skeptical. Wouldn’t fermented lemons taste weird? Plus, I’m not a huge fan of honey. (Please ignore that fact that I buy honey by the gallon to make vats of mead.) However! I do love my ginger lemon tea and the fermented lemon method sounded simple enough — stuff lemon slices into a jar, top with honey, and let sit on the counter for two weeks — that I figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it.
At first I used the lemon honey to sweeten tea, but then I started skipping the tea bag all together — just hot water with a lemon slice and a couple spoonfuls of honey — and liked it even more. The clincher: my husband, a non-tea-drinking man actually requests it.
I got the recipe from Kate over at Venison for Dinner. According to her, the honey is supposed to actively bubble while it’s fermenting. Mine doesn’t, and I’m not sure why. The first time I used local honey from friends of ours, and the second time I used half local honey and half Costco honey, and it acted the same. I decided I don’t care, though. Bubbles or no, it’s still good.
I added a pile of fresh ginger the second time around
A few observations:
The lemon flavor is mild, as is the ginger; honey is the predominant flavor.
There’s no fermentation funk. Instead, the flavor is simply fuller. More robust. Umami-ish?
Once lemons are added, the honey becomes quite runny.
This tea is both warming and nourishing, like a food.
Boiling water kills the good stuff in the honey, so if that matters to you, just use warm water.
Curiosity #1: When mixing the honey and warm water, there’s a cap of froth — from the fermented honey?
Curiosity #2: Lemon slices in the tea sink to the bottom instead of floating.
Come summertime, I bet this would be good mixed with seltzer water and ice.
Kate adds hot chilis to some of her jars; I think fresh thyme would be nice.
P.S. People, THIS MUG. A family friend (and distant relative by marriage) learned that I’ve been hankering after an oversized ceramic mug and gifted me this glorious beast that she made with her own two hands. I drink out of it almost daily (fermented lemon tea, naturally).
3 lemons, washed well and thinly sliced, pithy ends removed 3-4 cups honey
Pack the lemons into a quart jar. Top with honey. Ferment the lemons on the counter at room temperature for 2-4 weeks, flipping the jar every day or so to keep the contents mixed. Loosen the lid once a day to “burp” the jar (for those of you who actually get some lively fermentation action). To serve, fork a couple lemon slices into a mug. Add 1-2 tablespoons of honey. Top off the mug with warm-hot water.
Variations Ginger Lemon Honey: add about a half cup of fresh ginger slices along with the lemons. Hot Lemon Honey: add a red chili, or some dried chili flakes.
For a long time now I’ve been needing a desk upgrade: a monitor or two for video editing, a place for my laptop, a keyboard and mouse, etc. My little kitchen nook, while perfect for housing my laptop during the day for quick researching and emailing, isn’t exactly great for video editing and graphic design.
But where to have an office? All the logical spaces were either upstairs or in the downstairs bedroom, far removed from the hub, the heat source, the couches and all my other work projects. But I didn’t want visible screens in our main living space, either. I don’t like how screens pull focus. How cold and ugly they look. How antithetical they are to cozy vibes. (Thus the reason we’re laptoppers: we close them and they disappear.)
And then I hatched an idea: a floating desk with doors that closed! So for my birthday, my husband promised to make me a desk. (My birthday was in September; the desk manifested over our Covid/Christmas break; I am not fussing.) After weeks of conversation, research, and a few sketch-ups, my husband started building.
while racked with Covid
But because I’d never seen a floating desk, let alone used one, I had no idea whether or not we were on the right track. Would it look stupid? Would it actually work? Would I like it?
That we also had to make cluster decisions for monitors, number of screens, desk chair, lighting — and thenI smashed my laptop and we had to buy a new one — only added to the cloud of bewilderment. . . and the panic that comes from a hemorrhaging bank account.
smashed laptop, monitor #1 that we later returned, a too-high shelf, a temporary lamp
Over the last few weeks, we figured out the size of the box and where to hang it on the wall (and then we knocked it down a few inches). The sliding drawer and the height of the interior shelf. The doors. The hardware. My aunt had given us one of her chairs which I was going to put up in the library, but then I realized it was the perfect height (with a pillow) for my desk, and it was comfortable and pretty, so I adopted it for my desk chair.
light installation, new monitor, lowered shelf, new computer
The desk still isn’t totally done. The interior lighting feels harsh so I’d like to install a lamp somehow. The cord situation needs to be streamlined. My husband’s gonna build a little shelf to raise up the laptop and to hide techy randoms. I like a couple slim shelves hooked under the main shelf to hold scrap paper and a notebook. We might hang a little holder or two on the interior wall (though nothing heavy — don’t want to risk another smashed computer screen!). I need bluetooth earbuds. I day dream about a creamy-white sheepskin throw rug to define the space and keep my feet cozy (but then it’d be tricky to scootch the chair, so many not).
So how do I like it, you ask? WELL. Let me tell you! When it’s time to get to work, I open the desk doors and pull up my chair and — BOOM — I’m in my office. When it’s time to unplug, I turn off the screens and lights, shut the doors, and the office disappears. The separation is magical. The desk is simple enough that it feels accessible, yet complicated enough that it prevents me from getting sucked in willynilly. It’s exactly what I wanted.
Now my husband’s desk is directly behind mine, on the other side of the room, with the wood stove between us. Neither office nook stands out. In fact, when I told a friend who has been to our house many times about our office arrangement, she was like, Wait, where’s your husband’s office?
This photo’s for you, Alyson!
I love that both spaces are tucked into the center of everything and yet feel kinda hidden in plain sight.
P.S. My new tech — this computer (but 12 core CPU, 18GB core memory, and 2T), this monitor, this keyboard — is finally up and running and it’s such a wild improvement that I don’t really know what to do with myself. (Actually, not true. I know exactly what to do: double the amount we save each month for tech because $$$.)
This year my niece turned 16 so I told her parents I’d like to surprise her by making a birthday cake. Yes, please, the parents said. (And then I learned from my mom that my niece was miffed at her parents for not letting her make her own cake, ha!) I fretted for weeks over the cake, trying to figure out what design, what flavors and fills, where to find models to learn from, how to make individual components, what special ingredients and tools I needed to order, etc, etc. Eventually I settled on a painter’s tableau, of sorts, modeled after her upstairs bedroom studio: I’d cake a painting and several accoutrements.
But I couldn’t find an exact cake to copy (as I had with the snake or the dragon eggs), so I was finally forced to accept the fact that I’d have to create the cake as I went. I’ve done this before and I hate it. The amount of brain energy that gets expended when I’m up to my eyeballs in Not Knowing What I’m Doing is all consuming. O the stress!
A couple weeks before Cake Delivery Day, I made a chocolate sheet cake (I’ve got a new recipe that I’m crushing on), and a half sheet pan of hot milk sponge that I saturated with lemon drizzle, and then I popped both in the freezer. (And then I made a second pan of hot milk lemon drizzle sponge because I still wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing and I didn’t want to come down to crunch time and have to halt production to bake more cakes, ya know?) I ordered stem wires for flowers. I watched YouTube videos on painting directly on buttercreams. I researched various buttercreams. I made a chocolate cremeux for the chocolate cake fill, and I made the raspberry and vanilla fills for the lemon cakes.
My niece’s birthday is on Christmas Day so I reserved all of the 23rd and 24th for assembly. And it’s a good thing I did, too, because I worked frenetically all day both days, barely even stopping to eat (which is not like me at all) or take photos!
The first day I shaped and assembled the cakes. This involved slicing the chocolate cake in strips and sandwiching them together with the chocolate cremeux.
I cut the two lemon sponges to make the painter’s palate, a pottery vase, and a mug, sandwiching the layers with the raspberry jelly and creamy vanilla whip, and I dirty iced all the cakes with Italian meringue buttercream.
I also made a Russian buttercream that didn’t turn out (because I went too far when neutralizing the creamy color with purple dye and turned it a greenish hue), I made a batch of fondant.
Day Two my husband said my painter’s palette, which was modeled after the 11-inch microwave plate my niece uses for her real-life paint palette, looked like a hubcap so I cut the whole thing in half horizontally. Now parts of the cake were missing its raspberry fill and creamy whip and it still looked like a hubcap, but oh well. I cut the discarded bottom half into quarters, stacked them up with the raspberry and cream fills and slopped more cream whip on the outside for an extra “garbage” cake that they could eat later, if they wanted. I dyed fondant (this might’ve been the first day? can’t remember): blue for the vase, white for the mug, peachy-tan for the picture frame, and then I painted it all with gel colors mixed with vodka.
On Christmas Eve day I painted the actual painting: two peonies with leaves (that weren’t the correct kind but I didn’t care). I used just two colors — dark pink and green mixed with vodka. (Here’s where I got my inspiration.)
The palette didn’t end up looking very much like my niece’s palette, but painting on buttercream is an inexact science and good enough is good enough.
I made a batch of gum paste and a batch of gel paste for gluing things together (both recipes are at the bottom of this post), and then I spent hours tediously and very incorrectly making peony petals and leaves and paintbrushes.
The paintbrushes had a distinct Berenstain Bear vibe, I thought. (Also, phallic.)
The paintbrush holder was a mug modeled after one of the mugs in my niece’s studio. Since the one I was copying was missing its handle, I made gum paste handle nubbins, as well as the decorative jalapeño on its side.
IN OTHER WORDS, I rolled, cut, painted, and glued for hours and then I declared it done.
The following day, several of us tensely and slooooowly drove the cakes over to the birthday girl’s house while she was out on a brief “remove her from the house” driving lesson. We arranged the cakes on the table, and then my sister-in-law called my brother to tell him it was safe to return.
I stayed long enough to see her reaction and take photos before skedaddling, but I later learned from other partygoes that they only ate the scrap cake that afternoon — they didn’t even cut into the actual cakes! — which made me laugh.
(I have also since learned that all the cake has been consumed.)
Back home, I cut up the bits of leftover cake and slapped them together to make petit fours.
Newsflash: having bite-sized cakes always at the ready is a dangerous practice. Don’t get in the habit.
***
Gum Paste Adapted from . . . I don’t remember!
Gum paste is a stiffer version of fondant, used to make all sorts of decorative shapes like flowers, fruit, people, paintbrushes, whatever.
I did not have any vegetable shortening; instead, I kneaded it thoroughly to soften it before using (and once I defrosted it in the microwave for a few seconds to speed it along). It worked fine.
450 grams confectioner’s sugar 2 tablespoons tylose powder 1 tablespoon meringue powder ½ teaspoon cream of tartar 2 tablespoons corn syrup ½ teaspoon vanilla 3 tablespoons water 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
Sift together the first four ingredients into a bowl. Combine the syrup, water, and vanilla in a saucepan and heat until runny. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix thoroughly, kneading until combined. If the mixture is impossibly dry, add a little more water, a teaspoon at a time. Coat with a very light schmear of vegetable shortening. Wrap in plastic and store in the fridge. Allow the gum paste to rest overnight (or for a few hours) before using.
Piping gel is an edible “glue” that is used to adhere fondant to fondant, and fondant to cake.
½ tablespoon plain gelatin powder ½ tablespoon water ½ cup white corn syrup ½ teaspoon vanilla
Measure the gelatin and water into a small dish and soak for 2 minutes. Microwave briefly to soften.
Add the gelatin to the corn syrup: the gelatin may be clumpy, so consider combining the gelatin with a small portion of the syrup to get it incorporated before adding the full amount of syrup. (A few gelatin clumps aren’t the end of the world, though — just mash them with a spoon, or remove them from the gel.)
Heat the syrup and gelatin until it is runny and uniform. This takes just a minute or so, and it doesn’t get very hot — I heat it on the stove top, but the microwave would work, too. Stir in the vanilla.
I don’t know how well the leftover gel paste will last — I’ve always tossed it after a project — but I’m currently storing some of the leftover gel from this project in the freezer, so we’ll see how that works.
