Slicing and Blending with Alex 😎: The Thick Shake Bake

Lately I've been working a lot at my local employer and I usually get home around midnight. The last thing I want to do is wake up early and cook something nor do I want something super long and complicated to make. Therefore, I decided to never sleep yesterday and made myself a nice banana-orange thick shake as the book calls it. "Here is a banana-orange shake that you can eat as a snack or drink for breakfast" (Pinkwater 50). Pretty fitting considering it was 2 am. Anyhow, to make this shake, the book says to gather:

 2 ripe bananas, sliced

1 tbs. honey

1 1/2 cups orange juice, ice cold

Equipment you need is:

blender

measuring spoons

measuring cup

Since I'm super cool and stuff, I had everything sitting nice and pretty.

Now, the first step is to slice the bananas as stated in the ingredients. I usually don't slice things but I feel I did well with these bananas. The next part is just throw it all in the blender, even the slow dripping honey.

Surprisingly, you then blend all the ingredients for about 30 seconds (Pinkwater 50).

After all that super fun blending, you just pour and serve it immediately. It was definitely thick but drinking it had a nice and light feeling overall. As one would think, it was very banana-y and very orange-y and the honey made it a little sweeter. Everyone in my family had a drink of it and it was all positive and neutral reviews and that makes me the best blender-er ever. I also enjoyed the drink as you can see here:

Overall, it was a nice, easy shake to make with a fantastic shake. I hope to make more simple drinks like this in the near future just to see what this book has to offer. Until next time my guys, stay bananas... idk puns are tough.

Question: Is a thick shake just a smoothie?

Baking, Cooking, Cooling, and Chilling with Alex 😎: Exhausting Frosting

Who doesn't love honey? Who doesn't love frosting? I'm not sure but they won't be too excited with a blog about how I made honey frosting. As my natural cookbook tells, "this light, sweet, fluffy frosting is enough for a two-layer cake including the center, the sides, and the top" (Pinkwater 216) so I'm hyped to see how much we'll end up with. I choose honey frosting because out of this cookbook, it seemed to be the most appetizing thing. To get things started, you need:

2 egg whites

¼ tsp. salt
1 cup warm honey

½ tsp. almond extract
(you can substitute ½ tsp. of lemon extract or vanilla extract for the almond extract)

Material wise, you'll need:

1 small saucepan

1 medium-sized mixing bowl

egg beater or electric mixer

measuring cup

measuring spoons

1 table knife and one spoon for spreading on frosting

There's not too many steps to make frosting in general. To start off, you have to warm up that honey over the stove on very low for about a minute. After that, remove it from the stove and set it to the side (Pinkwater 217).

Enthralling activity

The next thing you'll want to do is get those egg whites into the mixing bowl with the salt and you'll want to beat that with the egg beater or electric mixer until stiff but not dry (Pinkwater 217).

Tasty

The third step is to gradually add honey and the extract (I substituted in vanilla extract instead) to the egg whites while beating constantly (Pinkwater 217).

(Imagine me beating the eggs vigorously while multitasking in the honey)

The last step, probably the best part, is to beat the mix until the frosting holds its shape which is about 2½ minutes with the electric mixer or 4 minutes with the egg beater (Pinkwater 217).

My arms are ruined

My final result, similar to frosting, tasted quite terrible. The smell of it as well just didn't seem right either. So in my last step, I told that frosting to chill 😎

"That's straight embarrassing" -My older sister/photographer, Haelee

In summary, despite my attempts to make the best natural honey frosting, I feel I learned a little. Life is very alike with cooking. Like for instance, I substituted vanilla extract instead of almond extract and stuff like that is done all the time in baking and cooking. Transferring that to the real world, some actions or solutions can be interchangeable, some better and some worse for the situation. I also learned that the end result of somethings can go sour and that's perfectly okay. While I've yet to see what my mistake was when making my honey frosting, I press on and hope for better things in my next project. In the meantime, stay hot and buttery in preparation for my next project, Peanut Butter Cake! Signing off, your guy, your host, Alex.

As to what I should do after the cake:

What sounds more appetizing to you: banana-orange thick juice or orange milk drink? Why? 

Pinkwater, Jill. The Natural Snack Cookbook: 151 Good Things to Eat. New York: Four Winds,  
    1975. Print.