With the advent of stay-at-home orders to try to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus this spring, I came up with a plan for staying busy and productive (see this previous blog post for more). The "quarantine task jar" was nice in theory, but its random nature has smacked me hard in the face with the seeming frivolity of the earliest selections drawn from it. It started strong, sober, and promising: repairing the misshapen and uneven tiles of my grill area patio pad. There are tons of serious and important to-do items in that darned jar. I had also mixed in fun and enjoyable projects, in much smaller numbers, to help break up the monotony and to offer lighter tasks. So this first week I seem to have drawn quite a string of those lighter enjoyable tasks and I'm a little frustrated that it's not imposing on me the disciplined tackling of long-put-off chores. What, you may be asking, was the task jar slip drawn last Friday? "Make Carrot Cake Shells." That "to-do" item follows ones that had me (1) do a little research on the availability of some of the old University of North Carolina School of the Arts student films, (2) make homemade ice cream, and (3) watch a movie. At least there was a day of weeding that was compelled in the early going but for now I think it's lulling me into worse levels of productivity than existed before making the quarantine task jar!
Anyway: on the evening of April 3, I made a speculoos mousse and left it to set up overnight in the fridge. The next morning, I prepped and baked carrot cake shells (or cups, if you prefer), using my special baking pans that I got not so long ago. By mid-morning the cake shells were ready to be filled with the mousse and then about half of the finished batch got delivered to neighbors down the street. These were really pretty good, as well as sort of trippy to look at. Are they likely to show up as regular dessert features at the Roediger House? Probably not. But they were a fun treat!
"Speculoos Cookie Butter Mousse," from Erin Vasicek of TheSpiffyCookie.com. [Published 23 February 2015]
Based on "Copycat J. Alexander's Carrot Cake," from Jamie of MyBakingAddiction.com. [Updated 19 April 2019]
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