How To: Frost Your Cake Like a Pro
Cake decorating is one of those activities that used to leave my hands sticky and my spirits dampened. No matter what I seemed to do, the final result always ended up looking like a preschool art project.
Cake decorating is one of those activities that used to leave my hands sticky and my spirits dampened. No matter what I seemed to do, the final result always ended up looking like a preschool art project.
There are rules that cooking in general always follows: cakes should be fluffy. Steaks should be heavily seasoned, and nowhere near a bottle of steak sauce. Every stock should start with aromatics (onions, carrots, & celery). And, until very recently, meringues should always be made with egg whites.
For those who like grilling fruit and desserts in general, we take it up a notch with this great video tutorial that shows you how to make a great dish from cooking Peaches directly on hot coals.
Holographic technology has made a push towards becoming a reality for everyday consumers, most recently with the introduction of the Microsoft's HoloLens, which combines real-world and virtual elements in one awesome device.
Independence Day is right around the corner, and that means three things: fireworks, cold beer, and great food. I always love to cook festive foods for the Fourth of July, and I don't just mean the classics, like grilled chicken and brats. I mean foods that celebrate the Stars and Stripes: foods that are red, white, and blue.
Like most people, you probably use hand gestures when you talk, whether you wave your hands excitedly when discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones or smack the back of your hand as you rattle off points during an argument. As your speech teacher probably told you, gesturing while talking is a great reinforcement tool—when used appropriately, of course.
When I was in college, I invited a girl over for a date. It was a glorious spring day, and I thought it would be the perfect time to fire up the unused barbecue that had been sitting on my patio all school year. I prepped all the food, chilled all the beer, and then I realized I had no way of lighting the coals for the barbecue.
My morning just doesn't start without a cup of coffee and an incredibly hot shower. There's nothing better than sloughing off sleep with a dose of warm, cleansing water. Except, as scientists are pointing out, our habit of showering daily isn't exactly the healthiest choice. Though it feels great, if you have a shower-a-day habit like I do, you're showering all wrong.
If you're going exercising, either at the gym or outside, you're going to need a backpack, gym bag, or pockets to hold your water bottle, wallet, keys, smartphone, and anything else you've got on you.
Our first stop at CES this year was at iLuv, a company well known for their long line of smartphone accessories (portable chargers, speakers, headphones, etc). While their products are geared towards everyday use, their Selfy phone case, which is a bit more situational, caught our attention.
Amazon is currently offering over $80 in free Android apps in the Amazon Appstore, but only for Friday and Saturday, so make sure to grab them quick before they all go back to normal price. Highlights include the Fleksy Keyboard (normally $3.99), Oxford Dictionary of English with Audio (normally $24.99), and EasyTether (normally $9.99).
When I get weather information, I prefer to receive it in a straight-forward, minimalistic fashion. Living in California, I could care less about wind speeds, humidity, or any other calculations that I can't analyze in a second. I essentially use the information to help decide whether I'll be wearing shorts or pants on a given day, so give it to me bluntly.
We're always looking for great food hacks to help us become better cooks who can create delicious food with less waste, fuss, and hassle. You never know where the next good tip will come from, so we've all learned to keep our eyes and ears wide open.
Spotlight is awesome for finding items in the stock Apple apps, but what if you want to search through the rest of the apps on your iPhone?
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Sense 6 came with a ton of new features for the HTC One, but for some reason, HTC decided to keep one of them hidden to all non-Harman Kardon editions.
Say goodbye to the age of metal robots—C-3PO and K9 are a thing of the (future) past! Anette Hosoi, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics at MIT, and her former graduate student Nadia Cheng, have created a robotic material closely resembling human skin.
Two slices of whole-wheat toast with lots of butter. Two eggs, poached to a firm yet custardy texture. The yolks should absolutely not be hard-cooked and the whites should be tender, not rubbery. That's my idea of the perfect breakfast.
Many people drink green tea for health reasons, and it's no wonder. This beverage is a superstar when it comes to antioxidant levels, and is being studied for its potentially curative properties on multiple health concerns, whether it's staving off the aging process or fighting cancer.
Life hacks are tips and tricks to help make life easier. Shortcuts and clever workarounds for life's daily problems. Sometimes common sense isn't so obvious until you've actually seen it. In this video, I'll be sharing with you 10 life-changing hacks you can use right now, from finding your lost smartphone to sleeping better at night.
Removing the thin aluminum foil wrapping from a Hershey Kiss isn't necessarily a difficult thing, but even the easiest of things can be annoying sometimes. For instance, getting chocolate under your fingernail when you're trying to peel the wrapper off, or making a wrapper mess. To make this first-world problem go away, simply grab a Hershey Kiss in-between your index finger and thumb, then pull on the paper plume to yank the chocolate straight out of the wrapper. The plume was originally des...
Even if you decode the laundry symbols on the tags of your clothes and follow them perfectly, using the washing machine tends to change their shape and fade colors over time. And whether you spent $20 or $200 on them, there's nothing worse than having your favorite pair of jeans ruined.
If you look at the label on your favorite processed snack, there's a good chance you have no idea what half the ingredients are. It's nothing new, but with natural and organic foods becoming huge trends, we're hyper-aware of all the "chemicals" we eat.
I listen to Pandora as I slowly drift off to sleep, so why not have the popular music app wake me up as well? Pandora only recently introduced the Alarm Clock feature on iOS, and now they've brought that same feature to Android—only it's better.
We've all been there. Rushing to find an outlet because your smartphone's battery is about to die and you're in the middle of uploading a picture on Instagram or something else of dire importance. Android's operating system shuts down automatically when ever there is 1% left in order to allow for a proper shut down, and so as not to mess with the calibration of the battery, extending its overall life.
Video: . This DIY room decor tutorial is super easy and the final result is very girly and polished.
This is how I made my smartphone camera stand using everyday items laying around in my garage. This is also a great rainy day project for anyone who uses a smartphone for their youtube or social media videos. It cost me almost nothing to build since I already had most of the items. This is a great project for anyone looking to start out on since it is really simple. It literally took me only 10 minutes to build.
It's hot this summer, but it's not that easy to cool down when you're on the go. You can't take an air conditioner with you, and a handheld fan will just tire you out, so you'll need to find more creative ways to cool down when you're on the go. One of these ways is a DIY solar-powered fan baseball cap.
I have always heard about how dry ice can repair dents. I have been asked this question, so I put it to the test. I got some dry ice on a hot day and even used a hair drier to heat the surface more. Do you think it worked for me? Well, watch the video to find out.
My wallet is useful for pretty much two things. The first, holding my credit cards, lottery tickets, and money (or lack thereof). Second, making my ass number whenever I'm driving.
Next time you finish a box of Franzia, don't throw out the bag. Instead, wash it out, fill it with water, and lay it flat in the freezer. As America's Test Kitchen points out, your newly created flat ice pack is perfect for lining the bottom of a cooler for a barbeque, camping trip, or hot summer day on the beach.
Wondering how to get long hair naturally? How do you grow your hair? In this video Rachelle and Sam give you 10 tips to get those long locks naturally!
Having to read a bunch of articles and tweets everyday can be tiresome, but if you can have a sweet-ass personal assistant read them for you, you're pretty golden.
We've all seen the classic tornado-in-a-bottle science experiment, which uses 2 two-liter bottles to create a whirlpool effect. This version requires you to get the tornado started yourself by spinning the bottles, but what if you want to make it fully automated?
One of the biggest downsides to the iPhone is that it isn't as easy to customize as other smartphones. It's true that this makes Apple products more secure in some ways, but it also means that you have to jailbreak your phone and void your warranty if you want to change certain things.
Playing advanced games on your phone can be pretty frustrating sometimes. Touchscreen devices are great for everyday apps and games designed solely for them, but when it comes to games that require multiple actions in conjunction with directional movement, it gets ugly.
Remember the young Parker who taught us how to make fun things like the ghost trap from Ghostbusters and the cheap severed leg effect? Well, he's definitely grown since then, and in his latest video he takes a more practical approach to DIY with a cheap and easy soft box for you home photography studio.
Got an upset stomach or a little heartburn? America's favorite pink pill will cure it right up. But did you know that there's actually metal hiding in those chewable Pepto-Bismol tablets? Yes, metal. Technically, it's a poor metal, but metal's metal, right? Well, we do tend to eat a lot of iron in our diets, because it carries oxygen throughout our bodies, so consuming metallic minerals isn't anything abnormal. But you'd never think that Pepto-Bismol is actually made up of metal.
A spectrometer is a device that splits light into all of the different colors it's composed of that can't be seen with the naked eye. It does this by using a prism to refract or bend the light. Jeffrey Warren over at Public Labs created a tutorial showing how you can make your own video spectrometer and create spectra like the one pictured below. Any guesses as to what the subject is? Believe it or not, that's what whipped cream looks like when viewed through a spectrometer. You can do this w...
You've probably seen the classic fruit battery science experiment a thousand times, but I doubt you've ever seen it turned into an art project! Photographer Caleb Charland uses everyday objects like apples, coins and vinegar to create makeshift batteries, then takes these gorgeous long exposure photos. For the apple tree photo, Charland got about 5 volts for every 10 apples, so he had to wire 300 apples to power the lamp for several hours. He used a zinc-coated galvanized nail and copper wire...