There's Still Hope for Local Coffee

I am now completely situated in my lovely apartment down in DC. The only bad thing is that it's on the top floor so right now the hurricane is kind of pummeling our windows. It's fine. I just am not too fond of the leaking windows in my room. The location, however is great- I've got the National Cathedral down the street, which is actually missing a couple spires from the earthquake earlier this week (DC is just not doing so great this week), and there's a Mexican place down the block! Oh and it's not too far from campus. Not important though.

So one of my flatmates is from Milwaukee, which apparently is a cool city, even if it is in Wisconsin (old Midwest rivalries never die). He brought some coffee from over there for us to make in the apartment. And it's REALLY good. I asked the back story, and it was actually very interesting. This place, Alterra Coffee, was started in 1993 (I did some more research. I'm a historian, what do you expect?), roasting and brewing their own coffee. The following year they opened a cafe, and it built up such a base of regulars and people who loved their good coffee that they now have around ten different cafes throughout the city, as well as at the airport. They have successfully kicked out the Milwaukee Starbuckses, and other cafes and restaurants who don't brew their own coffee often use Alterra's coffee. I looked up the extensive list of coffees available through Alterra and it included a whopping 36 different coffees, 16 of which are Fair Trade. The hope is that this will expand and the whole county will be using Alterra coffee rather than nasty Starbucks. I thought this was great. This meant that there was still hope for small-town coffee and that Starbucks won't take over the world. No one's going to monopolize my coffee, dammit!
I just hope that more cities follow lead and use their local resources rather than big mega-chains. In Pittsburgh, I've found that La Prima Espresso Company, in the Strip District, is phenomenal, and both of the small cafes that I've worked at in the city use them. And the great thing about these types of roasters and cafes is that people who work their really love what they're doing and love talking with people who feel the same. That's generally what Starbucks is lacking, I feel. It no longer is about the people and the coffee, the simplest thing it could be. If you're interested in Alterra Coffee, just check out the website, http://www.alterracoffee.com/Home.aspx, or if you're interested in La Prima, their website is here.

I Would Like S'more Cupcakes Please...

Did you see what I did there? S'more.... some more. Cupcakes. Yeah ok, lame joke, but that doesn't mean that I didn't make fantastic cupcakes this week.

You know you want them

Now, for those of you who would like to make your own S'more Cupcakes (or maybe the more alliteration filled name- Campfire Cupcakes), it's quite simple.
Start with a simple yellow cake recipe, which you obviously have to bake and let cool. If your recipe calls for "self-rising flour" don't make the mistake we made and think "well that's probably just normal flour". It's not. If you don't have self-rising flour, look up how much baking soda/powder you need and make sure it's in the batter. Otherwise, like us, you might end up with some fairly dense cupcakes. Luckily we realized this before making ALL of them and about 1/3 of the cupcakes turned out fine. While dense cupcakes aren't nearly as bad as dense people, they still were much better with the baking soda.
For the toppings, the icing is simply Nutella, confectioners sugar, and milk- the last two in equal parts, carefully mixed together until it turns to an icing thickness. If you don't know what that is, just buy your own frosting, you probably shouldn't be baking anyway. Now you could buy just regular graham crackers, but cinnamon ones are far superior, so we went with that. Also, because I'm a horrible person and like to see things suffer (kidding, Mom) I decided to buy Teddy Grahams. Of course, you have to pulverize whatever graham crackers you have for the topping. You could be all fancy and use a food processor, but I'm in college, so a makeshift mortar and pestle aka a cup and bowl were used to grind these teddies into tiny bits. Don't worry PETA, they weren't real bears.

So hopefully by this time your cupcakes are cooled by now. If you're lucky enough to have a cupcake corer like the one to the left, then once they're sufficiently cool, take out the middle and stuff that baby with some marshmallow fluff. Be careful, it gets EVERYWHERE. Just pipe on the icing (again, if you're lucky, you can use a pastry bag and all that stuff, OR if you're a cheap college student, a ziploc with a cut off corner works just fine too). Sprinkle with the dead Teddy Grahams and voila!! Delicious cupcakes. Stay tuned for more adventures of the baking barista

DRINK OF THE WEEK: Bubble tea. Get whatever flavor you like the best (if you're in Pittsburgh, Orient Express in Oakland has like a million flavors. I suggest Mango though). While the tapioca bubbles seem strange to many people, they're actually pretty fun to eat. And the tea itself is refreshing in this August weather. 

Got questions about baking or coffee? Just leave a comment, and I'll get back to you ASAP

Milkshakes Will Be the Death of Me

There are two different reasons why I might die from milkshakes- 1) they are one of the only foods/drinks that I cannot turn down when offered to me and 2) I have made so many of them at work that I might just cry a little bit. Let's discuss this in two parts:

I am usually a well-balanced eater, making sure I don't indulge myself TOO often (I mean, Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, and the 4th of July are all times when I'm definitely going to pig out). I've always been fairly good about rationing my dessert intake. Milkshakes cross the line and have become one of my two food weaknesses though. The problem is that I drink them so quickly that I inevitably have a huge stomach ache afterwards. Like a "why did I drink that??" sort of stomach ache. Kind of like when I eat an entire bag of Sour Patch Kids, but we're not going to get into that right now. Back to the matter at hand. If you're ever in DC, beware of ZBurger- they have 75+ milkshake flavors, which you can mix and match (though they don't advertise that). Making milkshakes, however, is not what I like about them. So if the diabetes/lactose intolerance doesn't kill me first, making ten in a row will.

The coffee shop where I work is a hotspot for the under-17 crowd for two major reasons-- our delicious milkshakes and our sprinkle cookies. I can handle making anywhere between one and five milkshakes during a shift. When my town decides to have a giant street party and we have 20, if not more, kids wanting milkshakes during my shift, then I want to die. It's not just the struggle of scooping the ice cream and blending it with whatever stuff they want in it, but I inevitably end up with something sticky all over my arm (ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, etc) or milk will go flying if the ice cream gets stuck on the blender, or all of the above. And for some reason middle-schoolers think that they deserve stuff NOW, so if it takes longer than 2 minutes to make their 4 milkshakes, then they will let you know. My other favorite thing is when I ask a group of kids who is all getting milkshakes (it's easier to make multiple than one at a time), and no one responds or they say "we're not getting anything," only to tell me when I hand their friend a shake that they all want that too.

It's probably best to just pull my hair out now

 Moral of the story: don't piss off your barista/milkshake maker. They will just be grumpy forever and hate you.

DRINK OF THE DAY: NOT MILKSHAKES. But seriously, try a fresh-squeezed lemonade. People have become to dependent on powdered lemonade crap. Nothing's better than real lemon juice and sugar water. For a nice change, put some sparkling water in for yummy bubbles!