Wallpaper, Loose Blimp, Weather, Chocolate Gifts.

I now have the Jacaranda picture as wallpaper on my laptop. Looks pretty good. Not sure how long I will keep it.

Funny story about a military blimp today. Apparently this blimp was worth something like $175 billion. It is used to watch for incoming missiles. It broke loose and floated along damaging some power cables and causing a few planes to scramble presumably because they thought there was something dangerous happening. This is the link to the BBC report. These blimps are used in other countries such as Afghanistan and have certainly broken loose before.

Today has been a typical fall day, the wind was blowing and the rain was sluicing down. Needless to say all the pretty leaves are now spread all over the neighbourhood. I went out to the store after my exercise class and was really glad we could travel from our underground parking to the store underground parking. Tomorrow we are going out of town to bowl and I am wondering what to wear, I think we are going to have more rain and there will be no underground parking for us.

I had an email from Costco today telling me about their chocolate gifts. I cannot believe the prices. This bundle here is $1,649.99. I've sent for a couple of packs!!!

Freaky finger red velvet cake

Ingredients

For the red velvet cake
175g soft butter, plus extra for greasing
225g white caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp red food colouring paste (we used Christmas red from Sugarflair)
200g plain flour
50g cocoa powder (we used Green & Black's)
1½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
150g pot low-fat plain yogurt, loosened with 2 tbsp milk

For the fingers and frosting
about 3 x 114g boxes white

Method
1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. For the cake, grease 2 x
20cm sandwich tins and line the bases with baking parchment. Cream
together the butter, sugar and vanilla, then add the eggs, one at a time,
beating well after each egg, until fluffy and light. Beat in the colouring.
2. Mix the dry ingredients for the cake, and sift half onto the creamed
mix. Fold in with a spatula, followed by half of the thinned yogurt. Repeat,
then spoon the smooth batter into the tins and level. Bake for 25 mins
or until risen and springy when pressed lightly in the centre. Cool for
10 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
3. For the fingers, line a baking tray with parchment. Cut one end
from each chocolate finger. Mix 50g icing sugar, the milk and a small
blob of colouring to make a thick, red icing. The icing needs to be thick

Have a great day