CAKE!

There are a couple of wonderful, crazy people in my life who are entrusting to me their wedding cakes. The first wedding, in August, is one of my nieces. The second wedding, in November, is one of my friends I've known since I was a kid. I decided to have both couples over last weekend for cake tasting! It was a bit of an undertaking, making seven cakes, but I've learned quite a lot already (parchment paper makes everything easier, cakes take longer to bake than I remember, white chocolate makes frosting very hard when chilled, champagne flavoring tastes more like bubble gum than bubbly, mango cake is a terrible, terrible idea). I had asked both brides to give me flavor ideas, and they both gave me general ideas, but nothing specific, so I ran with my own ideas.






Here are the flavors I ended up with:

• vanilla cake with raspberry butter cream
• mango cake with mango curd and white chocolate-key lime frosting (cake-FAIL, frosting-good)
  
• pumpkin cake with bourbon cream cheese frosting
• strawberry cake with vanilla champagne butter cream
• chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache, chocolate mousse and white chocolate cream cheese frosting
• vanilla cake with raspberry filling and swiss meringue butter cream
• chocolate and vanilla cakes with chocolate ganache and vanilla butter cream

I can't think of much else to say, except that it was a huge amount of cake, and even after forcing cake off on both couples to take home, my coworkers still enjoyed the remains all week long. I haven't been informed of final decisions by the brides and grooms just yet, but I think the over all favorite was the pumpkin cake.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Disaster

Today, after work, I eagerly got to my baking. I had made the pie crust yesterday, and got right to business rolling the dough, making the filling, designing a lovely steam-vent pattern on the top crust. I baked it. It was beautiful. It was golden. Puffed, with juicy drips of jam visible between the sparkles of sugar.

From the oven, I walked into my dining room to set it on the cooling rack. Inches from the cooling rack, I felt disaster looming: the butter from the crust had made the pie plate slippery, and it shot from my silicone-mitted hand, skidded off the table, and tumbled to the floor, onto our beige carpet. Yes, that's a sandal in the lower right corner.


I'd be lying if I said I didn't salvage the parts that landed on top. And you know what? It's fantastic.

Berries and Bubbles!

It's raining in central Ohio this morning. Really raining. Rain makes me want to do a lot of things, including skip the gym, and spend some extra time in the kitchen. Which is why, at 7:30 this morning, I decided to put that champaign in my refrigerator to good use. It's been there since New Year's, after all.

When I walked into the kitchen this morning, the entire room smelled like a strawberry patch. Two quarts of fresh strawberries is a lot for us to eat, even though we've had them plain, with angel foodcake, and now dipped in chocolate (another bit of the morning's productivity). I had some simple syrup already prepared, so it took about ten minutes to put together my strawberry-champaign sorbet. I grabbed a handful or two of strawberries, hulled them, and tossed them in food processor until they were totally smooth. Then I added in just a touch of simple syrup, because they were already plenty sweet. I pushed the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds, added several glugs of rose champaign, and poured it on into my ice cream maker.

Nothing starts the morning like a little berries and bubbles!

Really, I Bake

Wow, I started this blog in December after becoming so addicted to other food blogs. I kept thinking that I make enough fun things to share them on the web, right? It's true--I've even been taking pictures--but it's hard to take the time to post everything. I'll try to be more dedicated. To that end, I'll share some pictures I took a while ago, for cupcakes I did for a baby shower.

These are Chocolate cupcakes, filled with a white chocolate cream cheese and topped with fresh raspberry buttercream.







This cupcake is a fresh strawberry cupcake, filled with lightly sweetened whipped cream, and topped with vanilla bean frosting.