cinnamon coffee

Hair black as coffee and it unfurls in caffeine-driven curls,
while from obsidian eyes cinnamon sparkles down her cheeks to meet shades of desert rose
(and they match the energy of her mind and the temperament of a day of gale-force warning)

Black thunder clouds of cynicism and sarcasm alternating with iridescent soap-bubble lightness of deep southern-blue skies,
from time to time suddenly expelling a shooting star of childish-sweet glee, an expression of delight at the sight of something big-eyedly cute
(and though these seem mismatched and incoherent they all are sugar-fuelled)

Black tea in a white mug and donut-ringed fingers clicking away the hours,
steaming paper clouds exhaled on cold cashmere scarf days and bleeding ink from sandy feet wandering deserts of malls
(and she works hard to match herself to her belief in the possibility of having it all)

~

Sorry for the weird, random line breaks. I haven’t found a way to decrease the font size and making the text area of the layout wider yet without paying for an upgrade to tinker with the CSS; for now I solved it by using copy-paste from my normal text editor with a slightly smaller font size.

homemade candy

After trying to make halawa (sugar paste for hair removal) and getting the texture right but finding out I don’t really like using it (takes way too long) I decided to put my new skills to a better use: sugar candy!

This morning I created a random mix from sugar, lemon juice, honey, and mint extract which really turned into candy while the flavour was a little … interesting.

When I came home in the afternoon I decided to do something simpler first. I stopped at the grocery store to get some lemon extract, raspberry jelly powder, cane sugar, and cream.

First serious try was lemon candy (yellow candy in the picture above): I melted white sugar and lemon juice, then added lemon essence. Pour on cold plate, move around, pull, cut into pieces.

Second batch was raspberry candy (pink): remains of the lemon candy mixed with more white sugar, lemon juice, and half a bag of raspberry jelly powder.

Third kind of candy is some sort of medium-hard caramel (in the right jar on the picture above): I took a fresh pot, melted unrefined cane sugar, and added some cream so it wouldn’t get rock hard. It wasn’t stretchy like the first two recipes so I had to shape the single candies by hand instead of simply cutting a string into pieces.

The fourth and last sort was toffee, which turned out a little to crumbly: made from cane sugar, cream, and butter. Maybe I should have let the sugar melt completely before adding cream and butter? Nevertheless it tastes great! I just put the bigger parts on a piece of parchment paper and filled the crumbs into a glass container to use it as a dessert topping or something like that on the next occasion.

As you can see from the picture, I had to put some powdered sugar in the jars and shake them to keep the candies from sticking together. It was my first idea for solving the problem and luckily it worked at once.

Only one downside to the whole endeavour – I forgot to set a timer for the pizza I had put in the oven and remembered it only after the third batch, so it was all burnt (still I ate half of it as I was really hungry by then). So I’ll have some ramen now and afterwards go watch the second half of the soccer world cup game Germany vs USA with some friends at church.

Have you ever made candy yourself?