So this post is a couple of weeks in the making. N and I were reunited for a weekend about 3 weeks ago at this point; we managed to do a beer review while together (see below) but the rest of the post never really came together while he was here. We’d been apart for a while at this point and wanted the weekend to be mostly between us. N felt obligated to crank out a review, so we did, but I convinced him to leave the rest of the post to me for after his departure so we could have more quality time together. Clearly I can’t be trusted.
We spent the weekend mostly in our favorite room (no, not that room, get your head out of the gutter): the kitchen. Anyone who knows N knows he’s a bit of a Gordon Ramsay-obsessed foodie, and anyone who knows me knows my apartment is too cold to function in unless I have the oven on, which has caused me to develop a bit of a baking addiction. So we picked a few dishes and desserts to bake together.
I really wanted to make homemade cinnamon rolls for some reason, so we decided to do that for breakfast. But since they take hours to rise we made the dough the night before and refrigerated it overnight, so it would only have to rise an hour in the morning and then bake. This recipe proved to be trickier than expected, as N has zero experience working with pastry dough, and I only have slightly more than zero experience. So when the roll ended up looking like this…
…does this look right to you??
And this…
…this definitely doesn’t look right. Also ignore my finger plz.
I panicked a bit. (Did I mention there was also wine while we made these? I’m sure that didn’t help). BUT…
How did this happen?
EVERYTHING WORKED OUT BETTER THAN EXPECTED. Also, to anybody reading this who also enjoys cinnamon rolls and coffee: oh my god make a coffee glaze for your cinnamon rolls IT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.
Since I’m sure one of my siblings will show this to my mother, yes we also ate “real” food. Pizza count as real food, right? Homemade thin crust, at N’s request, turned out pretty well. Apparently we did not take a picture of that, so here’s a picture of a thin crust pizza, courtesy of Google:
Pretend we made this. It looks a lot nicer than the one we actually made and it’s a nice self-esteem boost.
And for dessert, N wanted to make these baked apple rose pastries. We skipped the whole “make your own dough” bit (laminating dough is hard!) and just used puff pastry (cheating woohoo!). Making them was pretty straightforward, and we even got to eat buttery apple bits as we were making them.
Pre-baking. So pwetty.
Also pre-baking. Less pwetty. Bad angle.
Baked!
They also were surprisingly good. I think we over-baked them a tad; they were crunchier than expected, and the tops were a bit black. They were also kind of hard to remove. It probably would have turned out better in a ramekin but I don’t have ramekins (cough cough Christmas is coming cough cough) so oh well. N doesn’t usually like to try the same dish twice, but I think we’ll be revisiting this recipe in the future in the hopes of getting it right.
Though of course the best part about this wasn’t the food (unless you ask N). It was spending quality time together doing something we enjoy. It was a nice change from our usual go-everywhere-see-everyone-do-everything reunions.
And now, for the beer!
I have no idea what the picture is. Then again, none of their artwork makes sense. They’re just weird and awesome.
Three Floyd’s Moloko Milk Stout
Visual: A bit sensitive, the head continues form after finishing the pour, which by the way comes out like thick motor oil. Brownish creamy head with coffee hints that settle quickly. Dark, viscous, and opaque throughout the body. Minimal carbonation in the body. Light brown sugar tan at the peripherals of the body.
Smell: Weak, but lactose sugar comes out first. Roasted notes fill the air immediately above the drink (N thinks it’s coffee). Overall, the smell disperses weakly, though it intensifies the more you drink.
Taste and Mouthfeel: The carbonation releases a blend of malty sweetness and a significant bitter note. There’s a strange lasting taste of spiciness that prolongs the flavors and has you drinking more and more. The beer itself is viscous, but light: an effervescence. It is, however, more viscous than your average milk stout while being less than an imperial. Like carbonated honey. The head was gone too quick, but shared many of the body’s characteristics.
Overall: The spice threw us off a bit, but it works well. Maybe we’re just imagining it or mistaking the carbonation for it, but it does the trick of encouraging constant sipping. The viscosity, as M puts it, sticks to your tongue, essentially sticking the beer to your mouth. We wish it could be a tad bit sweeter; there seems to be more bitter in this milk stout than most others. M would argue for this to be called either an imperial (despite the ABV being only 8) or smoked stout. Pretty solid drink, though not necessarily noteworthy especially in the context of other Three Floyd’s concoctions (*cough *cough Wig Splitter *cough *cough). 7/10 from both of us.
intoxicatedfromafar 