Super Happy Family Nutella Meringue Wish Cake! (Part 1: the Journey begins... with the longest title ever)

I have developed a terrible, terrible, terrible vice since I moved to Belgium. I have become a Nutella fiend. It was pretty bad near the beginning. I would buy a 350g jar, spread it on crispy bread roll thingies (I have never seen them anywhere else, like really small bread rolls (5 cm long rolls that are cut in half and are... crispy), or crackers.. and eventually, once I ran out of the things to spread it on... I- I- I would... use a spoon [breaks down crying].

I learned to cope with my affliction. The key was not buying it when I went to the shop. As long as I followed this simple one-step program, things were fine.

But, of course, some days were harder than others... On those days I, well, I generally sobbed myself to sleep, cradling myself in Nutella smeared hands.

I decided, that when prevention failed, perhaps I could "manage" it.

Since I am wont to throw whatever I have handy into a cookies mix, I decided I would make some Nutella cookies. I did a Google and found this fantastic baking blog. I followed the recipe and it worked out well. Although, I suspect that the tastiest parts of the Nutella spread - the quintessence of Nutella, the true Nutellaness/Nutella-ality - were volatile organic molecules because the cookies don't have the same kick at all.

Next, I dumped Nutella into a cake mix. I used that standard base that I previously cited... huh, it appears, I've never listed it before:

125g sugar
125g butter
2 eggs
200g self-raising flour
a bit of milk¹

So I spooned lots (um... 5 tblsp?) of Nutella into the mix, and then I threw in some Maltesers. I had really hoped that the Maltesers wouldn't dissolve (just think of it! Maltesers in a cake!).

Unfortunately, the maltesers dissolved and were barely palatable in the end product.

So there I was, faced with a challenge - could I keep the Maltesers intact?

Stay tuned for my next post!
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¹I usually melt the butter, add the sugar and eggs (letting the butter cool a bit in case it is hot enough to partially cook the eggs). Then sieve in the flour bit by bit a-mixing all the way. Then 50mLs of milk or there abouts. Preheat oven to 180°C, and leave it until it smells edible/a toothpick through the centre of it comes out without any batter stuck to it. I'm loath to use just this.

Generally, I'll throw in some cocoa powder to colour/put some flavour in.

Sometimes I'll go for a marbled effect, split the batter in two, one half cocoa, the other plain.

You can throw in some fruit (strawberries, peaches, raisins, apples, mango... but never grapes. Never.). What worked out nicely, was putting in sliced apples that I had rolled in cocoa before hand.

Something that just occurred to me was using nutmeg and/or cinnamon with plain mix and some raisins.

You should see the other guy

Dear Diary

[Edit: The following was mainly written twofour weeks ago... I ain'tain't changing it now]

The words of the day are ultimate and failure... And careened as in: I wrote careened¹ into a post.²

Today was the first day I used my Velo card. I only wanted to go from my apartment to my bus stop and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those damn kids an unfortunate confluence of events. 

Just before I crossed the tram lines, my pedals lost tension. I froze, thinking I slid on the rails. Then the front tyre did slip into the rail. Naturally, the direction of the rails was contrary to my original course, so over/down I went... Shoulder first into a conveniently placed 5-by-5 soft sturdy wooden post at the edge of the footpath. You know, one of those things that is supposed to protect cars from belligerent pedestrians.

As I carreened into the post, I thought,"only one of us could walk away..."³ My finely sculpted shoulder and its newfound friend, momentum, broke me my first wooden block. And all I got was a 6" red mark along my shoulder.⁴

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¹According to the Dictionary app on my Mac the definition is:

to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction : an electric golf cart careened around the corner. [ORIGIN: influenced by the verb careerⁱ.]

²Lock and load...

³OK.. it was more like:"Shi-!"
⁴The crumple zones featured in smaller cars dissipate oodles of kinetic energy, instead of you getting crumpled. As far as I can figure, I wasn't in danger of breaking anything [Click here for the calculations], but the fact that something broke certainly made things easier on me :)

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ⁱThe verb career is "to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction", not to be confused with career the noun,"an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress."

You should see the other guy (Appendix)

I tried, for about 60s, to think of a funny title for this, but, as you all can see, I came up dry and my PhD training kicked in...

So here are my attempts at describing the mechanics of a gormless bogger¹ falling from his bike...

What I am looking to do is calculate my velocity on impact against the post, based on my total energy going into the impact (my Kinetic Energy from forward travel, that I am assuming smoothly segues rotation about a point and my Potential Energy from falling a bit). I can then have a go at the force on my shoulder, when I had bumped against the hitherto upstanding Mr Post.

The first picture below is an artist's [This guy... I'm pointing at myself with both thumbs] impression of the subject (me) on his bike, with the measurements of the rear wheel radius, a guess of the bike's and my centre of gravity and a guess of my shoulder height (0.2, 1.1 and 1.5m respectively)

The centre of gravity is somewhere just over the seat of the bike (arbitrarily taken as 10 cm, giving a total[-ish] height of 1.1m for the centre of gravity.

From the inset: The gears and chain are housed- to protect the poor things from the elements, doncha know- so I couldn't count the teeth on the gears, which would have been far easier.... From some surreptitious eyeballing, I have:

• Pedalling period² (T_F)=1.5s
• Front gear radius (r_F) = 0.08m
• Rear gear radius (r_R) = 0.03m

Let's say the gear ratio is represented by the ratio of the gear radii (which would be valid if they had the same number of teeth per unit of circumference), then the rear wheel's linear velocity is calculated using the steps below:

It is reasonable enough to assume that the velocity of the wheel is the velocity of the bike and me; A point of the wheel doesn't really move when it is in contact with the ground; ergo the bike and I move instead.³

A quick look back at my goals... Velocity ["check"]

Now to the change in height... Of all my ropey assumptions, here is easily the ropiest of them: I'm going to assume that the bike and I were a rigid body.⁴ Which makes things incredibly convenient, since the relative positions between my shoulder, what was a wheel and now a fulcrum, and the centre of gravity don't change.

My shoulder goes from 1.5m to 1.1m in elevation, which is a change in height of 0.4m. However, for potential energy we have to look to the change in height of the centre of gravity. By similar triangles, drop in height of the CoG can be calculated:

The next step is the total energy calculation and the velocity of a point object in the position of my centre of gravity:

Unfortunately, calculations using centre of gravity give lumped answers; I don't know what the velocity of my shoulder was [and frankly I want to finish this post in the next ten minutes]. If I was being correct and rigourous^4.5, I'd do moment calculations with estimates of the distribution of my mass, based on that I can get an expression that will tell me the velocity at my shoulder.

Let's say that my shoulder velocity is 4m/s (more than the CoG velocity, I figured this was reasonable because it is far from the turning point and centre of gravity). That gives an applied force of 800±25%N (mass by change in velocity (4-0) divided by deceleration time [writing on my white board takes time - use your imagination]).

Now, according to the internet a broken clavicle⁵ is a common injury for falling off of your bike onto your shoulder [LINK].⁶ According to this publication peak axial compressive force (compression along the length of the clavicle) is 2.41±0.72kN (listed in abstract). However, the paper itself lists the fracture force as a much lower value: 1.91±0.84kN.

Let's say I am on the frail side, one standard deviation to be exact, then force to do me damage is 1,070N. So the odds of me doing myself damage from this were disappointingly low (unless my head happened to hit instead, but that's another story).

If my straw-house of estimates is anything to go by, I experienced about 8gs on impact and an impact velocity of about 9m/s is needed for an average clavicle to break. This works out as 32km/h, which is reasonable enough, and is inline with statistics on to severe injuries and fatalities in road accidents.

In reality, I am not a rigid body:

• There would be energy losses due to my body's plastic deformation as I fell
• My soft tissues (read: amply muscled shoulder) would have absorbed more of the energy

And also,

• The post broke, so there is no telling how much of the force I actually experienced.

Now, if you will excuse me, it is the 2nd of October and over 25°C outside. I've got some kung fu to do.

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¹Funny side-note, I grew up on "Bog Road"ⁱ - I saw nothing wrong with that until I went to Summer camp for the first time. [Spoiler alert] They laughed at me... Bad enough my home town is Lisdoonvarna [LINK 1,ⁱⁱ LINK 2ⁱⁱⁱ]
²The time for my right pedal to go through 360°. I estimated this from my nominal pedalling rate in instances after the fact: "it ain't 1s and it's less than 2s."

³Nothing new.
⁴Ooo-er vicar.
^4.5Not that the rest of it is particularly rigorous :/
⁵Am I the only person that finds this word rather lewd?
⁶OK, I am being a sophist here, but it's a convenient bone and it has a reasonable chance of being a common injury because it is such a wuss, in the area of interest and would be put under axial compression. This ain't peer reviewed :P

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ⁱThe Fresh Prince has got nothing on me.

ⁱⁱI did not expect a Dutch article about Lisdoonvarna :/

ⁱⁱⁱA decided advantage of not being in Ireland is that this song  (heretofore known as my nemesis) is not known where I am.^A

°°°°

^APoint of note: Youtube has a new function that I noticed with this video; It listed Christy playing in Antwerp on the 5th October. How... convenient.