Where the ladies at?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my future in a field that is pretty male dominated. Historically, music has been a man's business in almost every aspect. In the past century or so women have made large advances in this respect, but in a lot of music related careers we are still vastly outnumbered.

Thanks to blind auditions, female participation in orchestras has greatly risen over the last few decades. However, there is still a large gap between the number of males and females on the podium (according to this article, American orchestral conductors are 80% male).

In composition as well it seems that we are outnumbered. I recently discovered that I've never played a piece in band written by a woman. After a search on the wind repertory project, I found a total of 29 female composers of band music, versus 706 men. Perhaps this is because historically there haven't been a lot of women trained in composition, and that wind ensembles were very male exclusive for most of their history.

What I think we should do is celebrate the few women who do advance in these male dominated fields, and hopefully they will inspire the next generation of girls to pick up a baton, or try out their school's copy of Sibelius. So today I'm going to list a couple of the cool female composers of band music that I've recently discovered.

Summer!

Well, I am now the proud owner of a high school diploma. Let the summer of baking/flute playing/weird craft projects begin!

Cake, feat. my cat coming down the stairs

It is blueberry season here in Ontario! Today some family came over to visit, and I was in charge of dessert. 

It's this recipe for a one layer vanilla cake. Usually what I would do is just whip up a bunch of heavy cream and dollop it on, but sadly we didn't have any. Instead, I made a simple syrup of lemon juice and sugar, then added to that 3/8 cups of icing sugar. This made a nice glaze to go in the middle. Then I made a cream cheese icing (1/8 cup butter, 1/8 cup cream cheese, about 3/4 cups of icing sugar, 1/8 tsp. ground vanilla beans, milk as needed) to spread on top. After that I just dumped on a bunch of fresh blueberries. It was pretty darn good. 

I've also been doing a lot of gardening lately. I took charge of the vegetable boxes this year, and it is extremely fun. I'm growing a whole bunch of things, including two varieties of tomatoes, red and green lettuce, onions, herbs, cucumbers, swiss chard, rhubarb, and watermelons (we'll see how those turn out). 

I found the first flower on my tomato plants this afternoon! 

Rhubarb slowly taking over the planet

I'm also very proud of my small basil pot. It's my favourite herb, but one that I've had very little success in growing over the last few years. I caught some earwigs trying to munch on it yesterday, but I seem to have gotten rid of them with a solution of dish soap and water. Fingers crossed!

So far summer 2014 is very successful. I think it was worth the wait. And I'm only on week one! 

E

FUTURE

Well, it looks like my high school career is very soon to end. Tomorrow is my last day of school, and the day after that I graduate.

By chance this afternoon while cleaning out my closet I stumbled on a letter I wrote to my future self at the beginning of grade nine. It was quite enlightening.

"Dear Future Self,

I'm fourteen this year. I have braces, I'm a flute player, and I opened a letter today from myself at age eleven. It was weird. She told me not to smoke. Duh. 

I'm wondering what I'll be like at age 17. Am I tall? Am I still into music? Do I have nice friends? Have I dated boooys?

What will I be? Will I have decided what to study? Have I gone to Paris? Did I go back to music camp?

I hope you made the right choices. I hope you're happy. Keep your head up, there's only one shot at life."

I thought I'd grace her with a response:

Dear past me,

I'm eighteen this year! I also have braces, but they're coming off next week (praise the lord almighty). I'm also a flute player, but I play piccolo and piano too! You'll be relieved to know that I don't smoke. Duh.

I guess I'm kind of tall now, 5'4'', not bad. I'm still very much into music. I have a bunch of lovely friends, some of whom I'll be very sad to be parting with soon.  I dated a booooy for a while. It was a good learning experience.

I don't really know who exactly I am at the moment, so I can't really answer that one. I've decided to study music education! I haven't gone to Paris, but I've been to Shanghai (which I've heard is one of the fashion capitols of Asia, so almost the same thing right?), and I've lived in Quebec! I did go back to music camp for one last summer in grade ten.

I hope I've made the right choices too, but I'm happy at the moment, so I think so! I hope that you'd be proud of me.

Love,
Future E

P.S. Please learn to use semicolons.

You know, I'll be sad to leave high school. But I think that letter was exactly what I needed to see today. Providence? I've grown a lot (more in a mental sense), and accomplished a lot in the last four years. Yeah, it's nostalgic to have to leave a place, and it's a little scary to think about the future, but things usually turn out. Just gotta keep that head up. Thanks 14 year old me.

Hope I don't trip on my gown on the way up the stairs!

E

Father's day cake

See? I told you that the regular obsessive baking posts would return soon.

Today I made a cake based on a beautiful one I saw here a while ago. Mine is quite a bit smaller, as I only made one layer, but I think that doing so made my first shot at the surrounding chocolate cage a bit easier. I would recommend doing the same to any other newcomers to chocolate decorations.

The cake was for my dad, as today is father's day here in Canada. My father is a big fan of all things chocolatey (a trait he passed on to me), so I thought this would be just right!

My dad's a pretty great guy, even though I don't tell him that enough. He and I have a lot in common. We both are foodies at heart, and often try out new restaurants before my weekly flute lesson. We both are huge fans of live music, and like to go to festivals in the summer time. We're both interested in history and morality, and he's one of the few people I feel comfortable sharing my philosophical musings with. He's also an extremely hard worker, and a person who's determined to do what's right.

So thanks dad - for trips to the gum store, teaching me how to ride a bike, for eating my early attempts at baking (and saying it was delicious), for the concerts, and for always being enthusiastic and encouraging.

Hope you like the cake.

xoxo E

Shanghai and stuff

(I think my photography skills are indeed improving)

Hi, it's me again. Sorry it's been a couple months (whoops). Life's been pretty crazy. I'll be back to posting pictures of baked goods with unholy amounts of butter in them soon I promise.

Crazy thing #1 - I recently went to Shanghai for music related reasons and it was really cool.

Shanghai is really a city of contrast. There are some of the tallest buildings in the world (pictured above), but smack in the middle of the city is 'old Shanghai', full of buildings built hundreds of years ago. Some buildings are in the traditional Chinese style, and some look like they belong in a major European city. There are Prada stores and Starbucks, but if you drive for five minutes you can find people living in shacks next to demolition sites.

My travelling friends and I were visiting on the generous invitation of the Chinese government. We played a bunch of concerts, and found that the local people really loved classical music, and were extremely enthusiastic audiences (much more so than I ever saw back home!). We also had lots of time to explore the city - here's some of the stuff I saw.

A really long street filled only with music stores

Good advice

A Buddhist temple built in 200 AD squashed next to skyscrapers

Crazy thing #2 - I am graduating soon (and related things)!!!

As soon as I got home from Shanghai, I had a lot of end of year/graduation things hitting me up the back of the head. I played in a bazillion concerts, wrote a harmony exam, went to provincials, and locked myself in a practice room for a while. School is almost done now, and I'm graduating very soon! I'm very excited for a summer of baking and fluting before university starts this fall!

Anywho, regularly scheduled programming should be returning soon as school is winding down.

Good luck on the final stretch to fellow highschoolers,

E

Flower cupcakes for spring

(photography skills improving somewhat??)

Sometimes  I bake cakes and things for family friends to make a bit of money. These were for a lovely grandmother's birthday. I wasn't quite sure what she wanted, so I just made what I was in the mood for - spring!

As well as showing off my recent handiwork, I though I'd share some tips about cupcake decorating I've figured out over the years.

1. You can't really go wrong with American buttercream. 

While Swiss-meringue might be the bomb on wedding cakes, there's really nothing like a big bite of pure sugar and butter on top of a cupcake. Along with the taste factor, it's also really tough to screw up this kind of icing. 

I like to start with either 1/2 cup of softened butter, or 1/4 cup of butter and 1/4 cup of vegetable shortening. From there, you can pretty much do anything you want. Alternately add cups of icing sugar with a tablespoon of milk until you reach the desired consistency. Then, add flavouring (vanilla? cocoa? marmite?), and/or food colouring. How thick you want it really depends on what you're doing with the icing. To get the icing to keep its shape on the cupcakes, I tested it by lifting up the beaters and seeing if it held in place for 30 seconds or so. 

2. Good piping tips = pretty cupcakes 

Some people have been able to magic beautiful icing shapes out of plastic bags, but for me (and probably for beginners) it's much easier to just invest in a nice icing tip and piping bag that you can reuse many times. For these ones I used the wilton "1M Swirl" tip. To make the rose shape, start icing from the middle and spiral your way out. 

3. Fondant isn't the enemy 

I used to believe that fondant was extremely difficult to handle, disgusting, and to be avoided at all costs. That was until I figured out how easy and affordable it was to make marshmallow fondant at home. It's a dream to work with, and costs a fraction of the stuff you buy at the store. Use it to cover the tops of cupcakes, or use cookie cutters to cut out little flowers like I did.

Happy cupcaking, and a very happy Easter to those celebrating!

Aurora awakes

Well, spring has come to Ontario. Kind of. It snowed this morning, but I'm getting good spring vibes. Plus I read that it's going to be 17 above on Friday. So, SPRING! 

 Life's been interesting lately. Also very busy, hence the non posting. I found out last week that I've been accepted into my two top universities, so HURRAY! I'll be studying music education this fall! Audition success! 

Now that my school schedule has cleared up considerably, I've also had a lot more time to practice, which makes me very happy. 

Lately I've been thinking back to last May when I was part of a really cool auditioned wind orchestra for a week. It was intense; we had about nine hours of rehearsal sometimes. There were also only four flutes, and I was the only person on my part, so there was a lot of pressure to get things right. But we also did things like visiting the Toronto Symphony's dress rehearsal, listening to the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and eating way too much pizza. I got to play some beautiful music (including 'Aurora Awakes') with a lot of incredibly talented people.

So I have a lot of hope for the next six years of my life, if it can be anything like last year. I'm so lucky to be able to study what I really love. 

Regular obsessive baking posts will return shortly. 

Happy spring,

E