Life at the Grooming Salon...

Shockingly, working at a grooming salon doesn't mean my days are fully of wiggly puppies and doggy kisses. There are ups and downs, just like with any job. Yesterday illustrates this perfectly. I worked on a really nice lab who was super sweet and gave me lots of kisses. However, I also had a dog bite me while I was working on his toenails. And, (this is the weirdest thing that's happened to me so far), a dog peed up my arm and into the sleeve of my smock because he was angry with me.

I'm sure I'll have many more stories from the salon to share with you as time goes on. Thanks for stopping by!

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

As promised, here is my first recipe post: Cream Cheese Pound Cake!

This cake pairs wonderfully with ripe fruit and fresh whipped cream. It's also fabulous on its own, or served slightly warm with chocolate or fudge sauce. The perfect simple summer desert. 

 This is all you need for a luscious, creamy, rich pound cake: 1.5 cups butter & 1 cup cream cheese (softened), 6 eggs, 3 cups sugar, 3 cups sifted all purpose flour, 2 tsp vanilla and a dash of salt. With just a little work, provided by the ubiquitous Kitchenaid mixer, these components form the best pound cake you will ever eat.

 A pre-chaos shot. Please excuse the mess in our living room, we are getting ready to move. Grease and flour a 12 cup bundt pan. Preheat the oven to 325.

 Cream the softened butter and cream cheese together until combined.

 Increase the speed to medium and mix in the sugar slowly. Beat until fluffy. Decrease the speed to low and mix in the eggs, one at a time. Wait until each egg has been incorporated before you add the next egg.

 Next, slowly add in the flour. Once the flour is completely incorporated, add the vanilla and the dash of salt. (Note, I use salted butter, so I don't add much salt. If you use unsalted butter, you may want to increase the amount of salt you add). The batter will be reminiscent of soft serve vanilla ice-cream.

 This batter is very stiff. I've found that simply rotating my bundt pan and plopping dollops of the mixture ensures a fairly even distribution.

 Smooth out the surface of the batter.

 I invite you all to admire my thrift store vintage bundt pan in all its glory!
Give your pan one good wallop on the counter to remove any large air bubbles. Don't wallop any more than that though, or you may end up with a off-puttingly dense cake.
Bake at 325 for 1.25-1.5 hours, until a toothpick inserted all the way comes out clean.

 Here is the finished cake. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing. I find that slipping a thin rubber spatula around the outer edge of the cake gives me a smooth, rip free removal.

Top with a dusting of powdered sugar. Allow the cake to cool a bit more before devouring.

Thanks for joining me for my first recipe post. Not all of my recipes will be quite so deliciously unhealthy, but they will probably be close!

This recipe adapted from the Brown Eyed Baker. 

 http://www.browneyedbaker.com/cream-cheese-pound-cake/

Inaugural Post

Welcome!

The news may surprise some of you who read this (if anyone does), but I'm leaving graduate school. I didn't like my program. And the stress was killing me. That's not an exaggeration. For the last several months I've been in and out of doctor's offices and trying out different medication regimens. So I've opted out.

Jonathan (my husband) and I still live out West. We're not planning on moving back to the Midwest. We love where we live. So that's one fabulous thing that came out of this year-long ordeal. We also made many awesome friends in this town and would hate to leave them.

If you've met me, you will know that I'm very hard on myself and like to be the best at everything. I struggled for many months with feeling like a failure. But lying on the doctor's table in Urgent Care one Friday morning in the midst of a panic attack was enough to convince me that leaving wasn't just the result of a crappy attitude. No amount of pulling myself up by my bootstraps was going to be enough to get me through the grueling years of study and research ahead. And quite frankly, why would I want a PhD in something I wasn't passionate about?

So this blog is my way of staying engaged and continuing to write (in some capacity) while I take a step back and enjoy my early twenties. I'm now a professional dog bather and in a few months, I hope to be sent to Grooming Academy to become a trained Groomer. Being a Dog Groomer may not be as prestigious as being a Cognitive Neuroscientist, but at least I've got my sanity and my health back.

And hey, keep an eye on this blog as I test and share new recipes! Baking is an actual passion of mine and I've been known to whip up some pretty tasty treats.

Thanks for joining me on this crazy ride.