Science Cookie Cutter Set Giveaway!

Happy Monday, everyone!

We're giving away a set of cookie cutters today!

You may remember this set from the last science cookie roundup. They're made by scientist Sherry of sciencecookiecutters.com and she has kindly offered to give away a set to one of the blog's readers.

Interested in baking up your own nerdy cookies?

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Birthday Giveaway Winner & Steak!

Why yes, I did recycle this image.

Afternoon folks!

Wrapping up the giveaway today. I opted not to cut out hundreds paper slips this time, deciding instead to use Random.org's number generator. I hope folks will forgive me and my lack of pretty photos to accompany the drawing.

However, I do have pretty photos of what I've been doing with my birthday gift, the SousVide. The results where a bit better than the EasyBake oven (which is now the property of the Little Humble). Up until this week I had never tried a SousVide steak, but I had heard many amazing things about it.

So, is the hype true?

Being able to make steaks like this fills me with a sense of tremendous power.
As though I could make hungry, carnivorous men do anything I wanted... anything.
Even fold laundry.


Yes.

So good, that while I was having my lunch of SousVide test-steak, I was sending text messages. Knife in one hand, phone in the other, telling folks I was eating the most amazing steak and maybe using one or two choice curse words for emphasis.

Coarse Sea Salt, Cracked Pepper & Butter
The basics, ready to be dropped into the warm water bath.

Who would of thought a steak cooked in a pot of 130°F water in a plastic bag could be so uncannily tender and good? Quickly sear the steak in a hot cast iron skillet with a little butter and... nom.

No doubt, this machine being offered up to home cooks strikes terror in the heart of steak house restaurants everywhere.



Granted, the machine is really expensive as far as kitchen appliances go (serious $$$). Had it not been given to me, I'm not certain that I would have bought one, as it seems like an extravagance for someone who eats meat rather infrequently (though, I'm sure it's usefulness isn't limited just to perfect steaks).

For folks who wish to try cooking SousVide style without the price tag, I'm almost certain that you could do the exact same thing with some patience, a Foodsaver, and a good digital probe thermometer. In fact I see it being done here, here and here.

Sous vide for the steak hungry masses!
(and for those who need their laundry folded for them)

---

Okay, let's get down to the birthday Giveaway! Sorry to keep the anxious folks waiting while I talked about steak.

So, last week I collected all of the entrant's IDs/Email addresses and added them to a rather lengthy spread sheet. With one quick click at Random.org, I selected the my Birthday Giveaway's winner...



Number 145! Come on down!

Let's see... the lucky person occupying the 145th cell on my spreadsheet was...

Jamie! Congratulations.

Hello again, and happy birthday!

The one thing I really need is a new knife set. My boyfriend and I recently moved, and as we no longer have roommates, we no longer have their fantastic knife set. My mom has offered me her old knife set, but I think that thing is older than I am, and the years have not been kind to it.

I'm currently a student (studying molecular and cellular biology! and my boyfriend is on the job search, so we don't have much money to drop on a nice set. I follow you here and on facebook. Thanks!

Jamie

Jamie, as someone who has gone through her fair share of decent quality knives (sets of J. A. Henckels, Global, Wüsthof and Shun) I'm a big fan of my Globals and the ridiculously sharp edges I can keep on them. They cut far better than some of the more expensive chef knives I've worked with. They have great balance, they're light weight so my hand doesn't tire out and with maintenance, they're sharp as a scalpel. A bit dangerous, actually. They glide through food so easily that I actually cut myself a few times when I first started working with them.

Cooking for engineer's has a great writeup on knives for folks shopping around.

Happy shopping Jamie! I'll be in contact via email soon.

To everyone else, thanks for taking the time to read my blog and enter. I really enjoy seeing folks come out of the woodwork to talk about kitchen gear and things they want to make (am I weird?). Jerry, get that Chef's Choice sharpener, I have it and it rocks. Dimi, the set of copper canelé molds is exactly what I would have spent the certificate on. They're just not the same when made in silicone (sigh).


To CSN, thanks again for letting me host a giveaway from your site.

I'll see everyone tomorrow. I have something yummy prepared.

-- Ms. H

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Birthday Giveaway!

Happy Monday everyone!

Today Ms. Humble turns thirty.

That's right, it's my birthday and I'm absolutely not baking a cake today. I'm just going to eat it. Lots of cake to celebrate my inexorable march towards death. Woo!

It is a princess cake, if you're curious. My absolute favorite.

So before I get out on my thrilling birthday errands (like going to the DMV to renew my drivers license, ugh) I'm going to do a quick post. A birthday giveaway!

CSN contacted me, asking if I would like to do another giveaway or review. So I have yet another $150 certificate to spend as I please and once again, I'm going to give it away to my readers since, based on the last giveaway, you guys need A LOT of stuff.

So a $150 gift certificate! For the winner to spend as they please. I will note once again that the certificate doesn't cover shipping costs but most of the stuff on CSN has or qualifies for free shipping anyway.

We're going to do basically the same thing I did last time. For fun I'm going to ask you: What would you buy with $150? CSN.com stocks just about everything you might need for the full life cycle of your cooking. Everything from a simple silicon spatulas to a full dining room set to serve it in.

So, what do you need for your baking projects?



So think about what you would like to win and leave a comment below including:

• Your email address (you're welcome to obfuscate it to avoid spammers, just include it. Please. )
• What sort of baking/cooking from their housewares store that you really want or need. A copper bowl, a fancy french oven, some new knives or that huge dining room set?
  
• If you follow my blog, or start following my blog, I'll enter your name twice into the drawing. That would be the little Follow link on the right with the 2000+ other folks. You'll be in good company, don't worry. If you also follow/like on Facebook I'll enter you three times. Just be sure to mention this when you enter (To be fair, I will be verifying that the winner was entitled to however many entries they got).
• If you can't comment (due to technical issues, etc), email me. I received a few entries via email for the last giveaway and I did count them--even if I didn't find the time to reply--and I will count them this time too.

This time I'm going to open the giveaway to ALL of my readers. Even those of you who live in countries far, far away. Countries that CSN doesn't ship to. I'm willing to act as middle man and ship it to you free of charge.

For my readers outside of the U.S. and Canada: Since shipping packages internationally can get ridiculously expensive (often costing more than the contents of the package, as I've learned shipping things to my mother in the U.K.) I'm going to put a few limitations on this. I hope my international readers understand.

• You have $100 to spend as you see fit at any of CSN's stores (I'll cover any costs of shipping to my home) we'll coordinate all this via email.
• The item(s) you choose MUST fit into a 12" x 12" x 5.5" box and be under 20lbs. This should be easy to do as CSN generally lists the weight and dimensions of its items.
• You are responsible for any duties, fees or other customs requirements that your government imposes.
  
• I will cover the cost of shipping and insurance (if available), etc.
• While I will do what I can with the shipper to prevent/fix it, I am not responsible if the package is lost, stolen, opened, damaged or eaten by monsters while in transit.

Sound good? Okay!

As for my birthday. I got everything I wanted. Ms. Humble finally, FINALLY got her Easy Bake Oven from Mother Humble. Very funny, Mom.




Thanks. That frosting gun-pen thing is ridiculous. I'm going to bake with this and post it to the blog. I know you're all itching for some hot and fresh lightbulb baked treats.

I also was given a Sous Vide. I know, crazy right? Looks like I have a new kitchen gadget to play with.



Back to the giveaway. You're all welcome to enter anytime between now and 9am PST on July 26th. I'll hold the drawing and announce the lucky winner next week.

♥

Ms. Humble

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Drum Roll Please!

I did it! I complied and cut out a million-billion little strips of paper yesterday! Okay, so it was closer to six or seven-hundred slips of paper. Still, that's a lot!

I started out hand writing each email address or ID on to the strips. I eventually realized that such a method isn't wise, given how my penmanship degrades the longer I write.

After about 230 strips, I realized that I had resorted to using my university-note-taking scribbling. Which I can read (usually) but I'm pretty sure no one else can. So, I'm looking at these strips and I can see what was going to happen when I finally got around to the drawing.

I am going to pick a paper slip and the name/email address was going to look like this:

[ ~w~~~%~~~r ]

So ambiguous that everyone is going to have the itching suspicion that they may have won, no matter what I tell them it says.

So I started over, typing this time (which, as we have all probably figured out by now, I am only marginally better at). This of course means I could have used the Random.org number generator, but by this point I was feeling really stubborn. I was bent on having my drawing and I finished it.

So I gathered up all the strips into a bowl... I fluffed, I shook and I mixed. Then I dug my hand deep into the bowl and grabbed one.

Jackie!

Congratulations on the $150 gift certificate. I'll email you today to double check the address then I'll send you all the details you need to start shopping for that new dutch oven.

To everyone else, the nice folks who take the time to read my blog. Thank you. I know we all have busy lives and that each of you pop by and take the time to read, comment and occasionally point out my typos is appreciated. Thank you to CSN too, for letting me give away your money.

I enjoy doing these giveaways and I'll do my best to arrange one that is accessible to all of my readers in the future.

Now, I'm off to scoop some ice cream and work on today's post.

Toodles!

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Gift Certificate Giveaway

Last week CSN contacted me, asking if I would review a product or host a giveaway of a $150 gift certificate. My kitchen is already hopelessly cluttered with tools and gadgets, so I thought I would pass the gift certificate on to one of my humble readers. A small token of my appreciation.

You should all know really do appreciate your taking the time to follow and read the silliness I post here. When I started this blog it was purely for my own amusement, nothing more. I never expected to be one of those blogs that had followers. Now I look over at that right hand column and I am all astonishment. Really.

Don't worry, I haven't let it go to my head. I really am Ms. Humble. If anything, it usually just fills me with dread that I'll disappoint you and then you'll un-follow me. (Oh no. What did I do wrong…. wahhhhh) I can't handle that kind of rejection.

Wait, this is supposed to be about my giveaway and not my personal neurosis, right. Moving on...




So a $150 gift certificate! For the winner to spend as they please. I should note that the certificate doesn't cover shipping costs but most of the stuff on CSN has or qualifies for free shipping anyway, so no worries there.

So let's make this fun. What would you buy with $150? They stock just about everything from furniture and sectional sofas to pet supplies and housewares. They actually have over 200 different stores to browse.

I guess one of the first things I'd pick out would be a new marble rolling pin for working with chilled pastry. However at $9 that really doesn't make much of a dent in this gift certificate. So much mad-money to spend…this could be fun, right?

So think about what you would like to win and leave a comment below including:

• your email address
• what sort of baking/cooking from their housewares store that you really want or need. A copper bowl, a ice cream maker, or my rolling pin? This is just for fun of course, the winner can spend the gift certificate on anything.
• If you follow my blog or start following my blog I'll enter your name twice into my drawing. If you also follow on Facebook I'll enter you three times. Just be sure to mention that when you enter (To be fair, I will be verifying that the winner was entitled to however many entries they got).

I will write an email address for each entry on a paper slip and toss it into a bowl. I will select one of the slips on Tuesday June 22nd (you can post a comment to enter up until 11AM PST on the 22nd). This drawing is open to all my readers in the US and Canada.

Edit: Looks like I will be spending an entire day cutting out little slips of paper!

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Pumpkin Coffee Cake & A Giveaway!

Happy Monday everyone!

My kitchen smells wonderful, the little Humble and I just finished sharing our second piece of pumpkin coffee cake drizzled with brown butter icing and I have a cookbook giveaway for my readers. Pretty good way to start my week.

As I mentioned on Friday, I've been baking from fellow blogger Jane Dorian's cookbook: Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms. She was nice enough to give me a copy and then let me post a couple recipes on the blog. Now she has also offered to give away a copy to one of my readers.

How great is that! A person can never have too many cookbooks... or shoes, or blueberry muffins for that matter.

So, I've read the book cover to cover this weekend, no small feat as it is a substantial book for a blogger. It is packed with family friendly recipes, all the comfort foods my husband and I grew up on. All with details on how to make ahead for future use.

If you're interested in the cookbook, just post below with your email address. Jane will pick the winner next Monday (Feb 15th) and then email you for shipping details.



Now lets get onto the coffee cake!



Okay, so I took a few liberties with this cake. I didn't change the recipe, but I baked it in a different pan. The recipe calls for a tube or bunt pan and I used two 8" rounds and... I kinda... sorta... tripled the streusel topping.

Sorry, Jane! I just love the crumb topping on a coffee cake! That is my favorite part! I'm compelled to maximize the ratio of cake to crumbs in any recipe like this. Sane, reasonable people needn't do this, of course.

Also, I added a drizzle of brown butter icing. Why? Because: Brown butter + pumpkin + spices = love. Obviously.

Make Ahead Meals For Busy Mom's Pumpkin Coffee Cake
From Make Ahead Meals for Busy Moms
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
15 oz can pumpkin
3 large eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt

Streusel Topping:
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray the inside of a tube or bundt pan with nonstick spray; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until well blended. Add the pumpkin and eggs and mix thoroughly. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture. Mix on medium speed until combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Prepare the streusel topping: In a small bowl combine the flour, sugars, cinnamon, melted butter and walnuts. Sprinkle the streusel over the cake batter. Bake for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes. Slide a knife around the pan so the cake doesn't stick when removing it. Invert the cake onto a plate. Then invert the cake onto another plate, so that the streusel is on the top. Cool completely. Cover and store at room temperature.

(For two round cakes: coat two 8-inch rounds with non-stick spray and place a circle of parchment in the bottom. Divide the batter between the two pans, top with the streusel (x3) and bake for approximately 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.)

Not So Humble Brown Butter Icing:
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
whole milk

In a small saucepan, heat the butter over medium low heat until fragrant and the butter solids are golden brown. Pour the butter into the sugar and combine with a whisk. Continue to mix, adding one tablespoon of milk at a time until you have a pourable icing.

Drizzle over the cooled cake, then abandon all dignity and begin stuffing chunks of it into your mouth.

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Mouse Cookie Cutter Winners!

My random integer generator's picks for last week's mouse cookie cutter giveaway:

J Levine said...
I run the undergraduate research office at my university, and my students are completely in love with your science cookies, which I made for our holiday open house. You are a goddess, and I would love a cookie cutter. :)

Lauren said...
Round 2!! I wanted the mouse anyway, so this works out. :)

kk9irl said...
Omigoodness please enter me in mouse cutout contest #2!
I am definitely a bio nerd, and have interned in labs working with both drosophila and mice! 
:D

Mrs. DeRaps said...
My students would be so excited if I made them little mouse cookies! Especially with the issues we've had with actual little furry goblins in the past. 

Thanks for the opportunity!

kathy said...
Do we want you to give away more stuff? Of course we do!

How about a science cookie design recipe contest for January? We could design the cookies,make them, email you a picture and/or post them on our blogs

I don't see emails in any of your profiles (three of them are private), so if you would please email me your mailing addresses (my email is listed on the left in my blogger profile) and then post a reply in this thread saying you've done so (so I know it is you). I'll carefully package up the little cutters and send them on their way.

And yes Kathy, I would love to do a science cookie design contest one of these days, that sounds like oodles of fun. A science cookie round up would be great too!

If anyone is interested, send me photos of your cookies and permission to post them and I will periodically post a 'Not so Humble Cookie Round Up'. I have already received several batches of digital baked goods, so maybe I will do the first one sometime this week.

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Science Cutter Giveaway: Winners & Mouse Round #2

Wow! I've been gone all day, but I'm finally back and able to post and pick the winners for the science cookie cutter giveaway.

I had been tied up by the construction of a christmas present that required "some assembly" for most of the day. The gift ended up taking my husband, brother-in-laws and I over three hours to assemble. In my humble opinion, 'some assembly required' is a bit of an understatement when four able bodied people can't complete something in under 3 hours.

So these cookie cutters! I have to say I am very surprised about how many people were actually interested in this giveaway. I expected maybe 50, not over 200. I'm really digging the nerd cookie love here, folks.

So this is how we're going to do it. I'm going to give away both the mouse and the Drosophila. Since roughly 1/250 odds are terrible and I really want to give away cutters to as many of you awesome folks as possible. So I'm making two lists, one for folks interested in the fruit fly and another for the mouse. If you didn't state a preference, I flipped a coin to choose for you. I then used a random integer generator to pick a cell on my spread sheet from each column to select the winners.

So, without further ado, lets do this:

unexpectedthings won the Drosophila
"Drosophila!! My twin sister studies these little guys and is always sending me emails about her triumphs of changing their eye color or curling their wings using mad scientist techniques. I'd love to put her to work making delicious fly cookies to out-geek the rest of the family."

Colleen won the mouse cutter
"Oh, my students would LOVE to bite into these cookies! We're not supposed to have parties in our classrooms, but this would be "science"-related, so it would have to be OK, wouldn't it? ; ) I like the mouse the best!"

I don't see emails in your profiles, so if you would please email me your mailing addresses (my email is listed on the left in my blogger profile) and then post a reply in this thread saying you've done so (so I know it is you). I'll carefully package up the little cutters and send them on their way.

For everyone else: I know some folks asked me to post a link to where you could find these cutters should they not be picked. Well I searched around trying to find these cutters and was not able to locate the mouse. I did however find the Drosophila (for $1!). Though, Sur la Table has missidentified it as a bee, but I will forgive them since I figure their staff lacks a trained cookie entomologist to properly identify their cutters. Anyway, here is the link: Drosophila Cutter.

As for you folks eager for a mouse cutter just like mine, I'm sorry I cannot find the exact one online: I did stumble across Mouse #1 and Mouse #2 cookie cutters on amazon. They are not quite as cute as mine though, which is why I went out and bought 5 more mice today. I'm going to give these away as well.

(Edit: Ronnie found the mice online: LINK. Jacqueline also found them here: LINK. Bea found it here as well: LINK)

So... if you're interested in a second round of mouse cookie cutter giveaways, go ahead and post a comment below and I'll pick 5 winners next Saturday.

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Not so Humble Giveaway: Science Cookie Cutter

The science cookies have been such a hit I thought I would do science cookie related blog giveaway.

I have several unused science theme cookie cutters that need to see some baking action. So I've decided to give one of my cutters away to a lucky reader. Besides, I really need to make some room for all the new ones I seem to acquire almost every weekend.

For this week's giveaway I've chosen a brand new lab mouse and a Drosophila cookie cutter (which will be making an appearance on the blog later this week).

So, if you are interested in owning one of these fine examples of baking gone nerdy, just post a comment below indicating which one you prefer. That is all you have to do to be considered. I'll allow people to comment and enter for the next 7 days and then I will announce the winner on my blog next Saturday, the 19th.

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