Project Lila

Robb and I had a wonderful opportunity to make a cake for the 3rd birthday of Lila, the daughter of our friends Geoff and Hillary. Her birthday was on Thursday December 13th, and the celebration continued through that weekend. Lucky girl!

This post has obviously taken some time, but we've had a lot of real life stuff happening, some of it happy and some of it sad, and we are able to get to writing about this really fun time now.

Lila loves princesses and pink. So, castles, tiaras, pink, pink, pink, polka dots, flowers, whimsy, pink, pink, gowns, frills, etc. swam around in our minds as we thought of lots of possibilities. We hoped to include only edible items, this is obviously a big limiting factor for novice decorators, but we were willing to be pushed to (and beyond?) our limits. We considered that cake that is shaped like a gown, with a waist-up barbie sticking out the top. Seemed too predictable... although we did purchase the pan, and some scalloped edge pans that looked like they might be useful: 6 and 8 inch just in case. We also knew that we wanted sparkle and did I mention, pink? We found some pink gel food color (and a zillion other cool colors, too), flaky edible pink glitter, some pink food spray- yes like pink spray paint, also some really cool stuff called lustre. It's a powder that you can brush on and it's really sparkly. We got some of that in dark and light pink, white and pearl. We knew that we wanted the cake to look top notch and that our frosting skills are ok, but not professional looking. We decided that we would have the best luck creating a smooth cake with fondant. We got some pre-made fondant, and also made some (recipe in the CB pg. 307), and discovered in a practice coloring and rolling session (see the Art Deco cake) that they were virtually identical. And easy to work with- really easy! We were so confident, we didn't give the fondant another thought.

Originally, Robb and I had a design that included two tiers: one 9 inch round, topped with one 6 inch scalloped, each with some combination of cake and fillings, and a pointy princess hat on top. The 6 inch layer was to hover over the 9 inch layer by about a 1/2 inch or so. We figured that we could make the pointy princess hat out of caramel, similar in concept to a caramel cage that we've all seen placed over fancy shmancy desserts. For the cone shaped mold we considered foil, but realized that we'd have trouble getting it smooth enough. We ended up making one out of radiator screen. We thought that would be smooth and flexible and could withstand the hot sugar. We also tried a styrofoam cone covered with foil, and hoped the foam wouldn't melt. We planned to get it colored pink or close enough with all manner of the pink items listed above. We tried it out and for a number of reasons, did not get a good result. #1 we overcooked the caramel, #2 the radiator screen mold was too wide and short, #3 the application of caramel wasn't uniform enough to produce a strong enough caramel network to withstand the prying needed to unmold it, and #4 and most problematic for this project, it didn't color very pink with the stuff we had to work with. I think that it could be done, but we made this discovery on the Tuesday before the party. Yikes! So, we relaxed our restriction about edibility and agreed to use a plastic tiara. That was a tough choice, but a pragmatic one.

Funny how in making this cake, the actual cake part wasn't our focus. We were feeling fairly confident in our ability to make tasty cake and had dwelled completely on the look of it. In our batting ideas around stage, we had talked about an almond flavored cake layer with some kind of pink filling. That would have been fine I'm sure, but like a lightening bolt I was struck with the idea of making the inside look like Neapolitan ice cream. Brilliant! We decided on chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla, with raspberry puree between the layers and the wonderful raspberry mousseline buttercream for frosting (see our July 17, 2007 post for our raves). We still had to pick which cake recipes, so we looked back through our notes of butter cakes and decided that we like the Chocolate Domingo and the White Velvet Butter Cake best. We agreed that we could just color some of the white cake pink and call it raspberry, which we did. The only adjustment that was made to the cake recipes aside from coloring one batch pink, was some brown and red food color was added to the chocolate layer. In a practice muffin-sized version, the chocolate layer took on a slightly chalky look once it was cut. The brown and red made it just enough richer- or my imagination said it worked! Lastly, in addition to the cake layers, raspberry puree and yummy buttercream, I thought it would be good to have an almond dacquoise layer to add a bit of nice texture. Robb agreed once he tried the muffin-sized mock up. I think this may have been his favorite part! (It definitely was. A good crunch in a lovely cake!)

So, we come to Friday night, the night before her party and we have tickets to see Paula Poundstone (right here in Peekskill at the wonderful Paramount Center for the Arts) and we get started on assembly and decoration AFTER the show. We at least had the cake layers assembled: chocolate, raspberry puree, dacquoise, pink layer, raspberry puree, dacquoise, white layer, all covered with a thin layer of the raspberry mousseline buttercream, and the same for the 6 inch layer, except that the scalloped edges got lost in the trimming and it turned out to be round. That's ok in the big scheme of things. But, oh boy, we enter murky territory...

We got the fondant colored pink finally- it took a bit of time and a total scrapping of the first attempt. Fuschia isn't really pink, at least not in the way we wanted. Adding more and more of a color that isn't what you want doesn't magically make it the right color- go figure! Lessons learned- color a little bit at a time instead of 4 pounds worth, and use pink food color if you want to end up with pink fondant! (Ok, I'm a hair colorist and I know this, but somehow after seeing Paula Poundstone, it didn't come to me in a blinding flash, until the 4 pounds were already a lovely shade of a too violet fuschia.)

We had a heck of a time getting the fondant on the cake this time. The Art Deco cake was simple, partly because it was very wide and only an inch tall. So much for smooth sailing. Our 6 inch layer was at least 6 inches tall,and we ended up with a LOT of excess fondant on the sides and had a terrible time trying to smooth it. In fact, we took so much time trying to get it sorted out, it got hard. So, we ended up with a sort of bustle of fondant on one side of the cake, and a couple of seams. We were strategic with some fondant ribbon placement and all in all I think the "bustle" area looked suggestive of flowing hair at the back of the tiara. We stuck on some flowers and dusted the whole thing with the fantastic lustre mentioned above. Some princess ribbon on the tiara added to the flowing look.

Given the excitement of the fondant effort on the 6 inch layer, and that it was past midnight, we figured we'd go with buttercream for the bottom layer. We had a terrific polka dot ribbon and I was especially keen to see it wrapped around the base of the cake; minimalist and classy. We topped it off with a small branch of alstroemeria. (I think this small hand-held bouquet is called a tussy mussy or something similar- from Victorian times.) Lila enjoyed the flowers, carrying them around and then later in the day when she was tired, she got to tear them up into very tiny pieces. What a bonus!


We intended to have the layers stacked, but the pinks clashed and the style was quite different for that to make sense. With the overhanging fondant, we did need a pedestal for the smaller layer, so it was perched on some columns with a fluffy cloud of organza ribbon beneath.


The cakes were well received, the taste was great. And despite being mashed into slices with the side of a dull cake server, it held up pretty well. We had a great time thinking and planning for this one! We learned a lot in the process- found some good sources for supplies and interesting products. To some extent executing this one was less fun- there was even a moment for one of us of laying on the kitchen floor and trying not to lose it. But, we're troopers! We made it through and isn't that what this blog project is all about...

Bake through!

Janet

Daring Bakers challenge

Just a quick post... more about the daring bakers group shortly... we have departed from the Cake Bible on this one.

The Yule log, or Buche de Noel as some of us might call it was a great success. It is a basic yellow genoise and a very yummy coffee buttercream For the filling, we chose cranberry, which turned out to be a very good selection. It was pretty simple: cranberries, a left over can of cranberry sauce that never got used at Thanksgiving, and a LOT of ground cloves, some apple cider vinegar, and so on. It was a chutney really, and modeled after one we recently enjoyed from Trader Joe's. It wasn't so sweet which worked out very well becasue the cake itslef was really sweet, too sweet actually. The contrast of tart cranberry, spice, and coffee buttercream is pretty darn good.

The mushrooms are marzipan, and were a treat to make, the evergreen bough is rosemary that was still hanging in there in the snow covered garden. I'm very pleased with the festive look.

Like I said, more about what the daring bakers are next time- back to holiday guests and fun.

The New Math

Ok, we decided a long time ago to do the all the brioche recipes over December 3 & 4. It seemed like a good thing to do and we put it in our calendars weeks ago. I was afraid if I didn't do it, I'd end up scheduled teaching a class on the Monday and leave J the excitement of roll out, fold, roll out, wait, fold, wait, roll out, place. Truly, since it was on my calendar when I got the email for open days to teach in December, I could honestly not include those days as open.

Well, the week before, we were discussing what we were going to do and realized that about two recipes later, there was a sticky bun recipe that used the brioche as its base. Again, any forethought shown in this blog goes to J. She's the one that finds all these connections. It's times like these that I feel like I'm just along for the ride.

There was this great moment when we were doing three batches of yeasty bread type cakes and rolls, and had doubled one, even though we really could have just tripled it and had two batches to work with since the sticky buns and the struesel brioche start with the very same dough. It was confusing, and it looked like a comic kitchen. I sorta half expected the Three Stooges to come out and poke our proofing yeasty bread type things for fun and hilarity.

We did manage to make three batches, and never had to throw any out and start over, thank you very much. It's really much easier when you double -- if you forget to double you can always add. Halving on the other hand is a bit different. By the time you discover you forgot to halve the leavener, your zucchini bread has exploded out of the pan onto the bottom of the oven- not saying that's ever happened of course.

Just as RLB cautioned, we did find that we were overtaxing the motors on our two food processors when we were making the brioche. We ended up using the Kitchen Aid mixer. The virtue of using the food processor is lost on us, next time we will begin in the stand mixer and just stay there.

Our day started with the La Brioche Cake (CB pg 76) which is used in the Praline Brioche (pg 171). It started with making a sponge the night before. Relatively simple process. Actually nothing we did for any of these recipes was difficult or required a lot of hands on time. While it took about 2 days to make them, we only had to be in attendance on them for about 15 minutes.

I loved the fact that we start on Monday and when we get to cooking on Tuesday, it's only in the oven for 15 minutes!

After all the work, the Praline Brioche wasn't one of our favorites. So much so that we never even took a picture of it after we sliced and soaked and frosted. You are asked to make a cake which is not really a cake, but a giant domed mass of brioche in a 9" springform pan- see below,
then cut away more than half of it to have a crustless 7 1/2" by 1 3/4" disc of brioche. Then into this relatively small amount of cake, you are to let it absorb, practically submerging it, almost 2 cups of rum syrup. Then the the sodden layer gets frosted. All that manhandling -- or should I write person handling as J did quite a bit of that herself? :) -- seemed for naught. The texture was a bit weird, as in wet, and the rum was totally overpowering although the sugar put up quite a fight in that battle. This is one that I might think of making again only because it seems like it should work. It seems unlikely that what we produced could possibly have been near the mark, despite following the instructions explicity. Really, I think it was the fabulous Coffee Caramel Silk Buttercream (pg 242) that makes me such an optimist- what a delicious buttercream.

This is The Holiday Hallelujah Streusel Brioche (CB pg 94) and it was really similar to the previous in process. The recipe states that it freezes well and since we'd been pretty much brioched out, we froze it. J and K brought some over for the holiday party that M and I throw every year. (One of the happier things that took up some of our time this last month). This recipe did hold up well in the freezer. It was a nice addition to the other cloying sweets that we had on our table. It was eaten quickly. With many compliments. The texture was a bit dry to me. But others disagreed, they said it was flaky, which might have seemed a bit odd since it was a yeasty cake, not a pie crust. But a good brioche has a texture that is a cross between flakes of yeasty dough and the crumb of cake.

MMMM sticky buns (CB pg 98) These were very much worth the effort that we made them again for our Carb Fest 2008 (More on that in the next installment).

These start out with the exact same dough for the Streusel Brioche. Then you top (or is it really, bottom) them with butter light brown sugar and pecan halves. This is the most dreamy, melt in your mouth, smells like a home should smell like bit of baking we have done. It comes out all toasty and gooey and if you stop to think about it for any amount of time at all, everyone has beaten you to them and all the sticky buns are gone.


As you can see, these are well worth the work.

Bake through....

Robb

Fondant ain't so bad after all.

Well, this is a long time coming. J & I set to work right after Thanksgiving. The Tuesday after, we bit the bullet and did the Art Deco Cake, including working with fondant, and the crumb cake.

Could we have chosen two more dissimilar cakes?

We were excited and I have to say for me, a bit scared of the fondant. Honestly, I don't like fondant on my cakes and usually peel it off like it's the rind of a cheese. But now that I've worked with it, it's quite fun really.

Let's back up....
Our first cake was the Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte (p 84). I guess I shouldn't say ours as J did all the baking of this as it needed 24 hours in the fridge. According to her, it was simple. Really, it's only three ingredients. Yes, three: Chocolate, butter, eggs. Amazing what can be done with eggs.

When I arrived on Tuesday, 11-27, it was a thick, dense, rich, chocolate colored torte not too high, but remarkably heavy.

We had decided to do this as the Art Deco Cake (p 204). Here is where the fondant comes in. We decided to decorate only one layer. Remember J doesn't like chocolate that much, and really why would two couples need enough cake to serve 50? That's just crazy talk.

So, we followed the directions of covering the torte in a layer of white fondant, and created green stripes to mimic the art deco feel of the picture. We really enjoyed working with the fondant and J is excellent at creating an even color with food grade dyes.

This is a good thing since we are doing the cake for our friend's 3-year old daughter next week, and our design has a lot of fondant in it. We'll post about it as well....since we won't have a Cake Bible cake that week.

This concluded the Custard Cake Chapter for us. So, on to the Breakfast Cakes Chapter with the other cake we did, the Sour Cream Coffee Cake (p 90).

Simply put, unanimously, the cake rocked. Never has everyone liked a cake, until this one. My only complaint, if it can be called that, I would have liked more streusel topping. That is usually the case for me. I love the "extra streusel topped" Entenmann's coffee cake. And most times, I make a double recipe of the topping, but not this time.

This cake had a layered effect. Once you have the dry and wet ingredients combined, you put about 2/3 of the batter in the bottom of the pan then sprinkle with some of the streusel topping. Then, place the remaining 1/3 of batter on top in "large blobs" then spread it out. Then sprinkle the remaining topping on top and bake for about 60 minutes. It seemed like a long time, but it did take the time suggested.

It was crumbly, and light and moist and really good with coffee. I guess that is why she called it a coffee cake. And, it smelled like all the good smells of a grandmother's kitchen.



I don't want this to feel like the reading of the minutes of previous meetings, but there is a bit of unfinished business from the previous post......

Fruitcake follow up: My sister in law loved the fruitcake. She said that the rum was mellow, but with enough kick to stand up to the sweet fruit. It must have been a hit as all of it was gone when we left Saturday morning.

And for those of you who know the reason I was I Indiana for so long, my 21st High School Reunion!, it went well. Got to meet up with a bunch of people who I've not seen for about 20 years. And to think these are the people I spent every day during the school year and much of the summer as most of us were in marching band together. I know, it's hard to imagine that I was in marching band, but I was (I played the Bass Drum - loud and plodding, just like me.)

20 years ago, I couldn't conceive of a time without Bekki, Teresa, Kelly or Mike around. Hopefully, 20 years from now, I won't have to conceive of a time when J and I aren't baking.

Bake through everyone,

Robb

Who you callin' a fruitcake?

Well everyone, this will be short. M and I are about to head over to J and K's house for dinner. Sort of a pre Thanksgiving dinner as M and I are heading to Indianapolis (see previous post's pic of my home state). The folly isn't that we are flying on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the folly really is that we are driving to Indianapolis. Yes, driving. All 753 miles of it. In, according to Google, 12 hours. Somehow, I doubt that time will be right.

Anyway, J and I baked today. We realized we hadn't seen each other since our last installment on cheesecake. Remember all that superfluous information about a bain marie?

We still haven't figured out what to do with all that left over cheesecake. Although, if there is a way to incorporate it into something, I bet we find it. Julian suggested using it in a buttercream. That sounds completely interesting. Wonder how that would come together.

This time we baked the Less Fruity Fruitcake (p 66). We finally found all the fruit cake mix candied orange, lemon, cherries and pineapple and citron that we could handle. I bought the fruit cake mix and J bought the citron, interestingly we independently picked up 4 tubs each. We'll be ready for future candied fruit needs!!

This recipe rocked. I thought the rum added just a hit of spice, and warmth. It definitely brought out flavor. This is the first recipe, I think, where we got to cream the butter and the sugar. It was brown sugar, but we did get to cream. Honestly, if you've made any regular cake, this followed that method. After the creaming, add the dry ingredients in thirds with the milk/molasses mixture in between.

Then scoop into muffin tins and bake. This was so simple and the results were so outrageously good that both J and I thought we'd do it again.

It is so good, that I'm taking all the little beauties with me to my family in Indiana.

I'm sorry for the rush on this, but I was afraid I'd forget to write it if I waited for us to get back from Indiana.

One last thing, I had a idea flash while standing in line at Wal Mart. I call this cake:

The Cheater's Cake

1 box of yellow cake mix
1 can of pumpkin, (15 oz or so)
1 bag of chocolate chips (11 or 12 oz or so)
1 tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice

2 tubs of cream cheese frosting

To the cake mix, add the chocolate chips, stir to dust the chips. Then add the pumpkin. Continue adding all the ingredients called for in the instructions for your particular boxed cake mix, leaving out any liquid. After you have incorporated all the other ingredients, add the liquid (water, milk) a little bit at a time. When the batter seems to be right for cake batter, stop adding liquid. (When I did it, I only used 1/2 of the water.)

Pour into two 9" round cake pans.

Bake according to package directions. Then cool.

Frost with tubs of cream cheese icing.

Changes from first attempt: I found that 1 tub wasn't quite enough to really frost it. And the cake could use a bit of Pumpkin Pie Spice to add a bit of zing.

It's the first cake in a long time that M and I ate all of. It was quite nice.

Well, that's all for this pre Thanksgiving post.

Bake through, or since it's the holidays, Eat Through.

Robb

One cake with no flour... is a cheesecake!

What did we do this week?

It's been a wild wacky end of October. So much so that it's now November.

I spent the last two weekends in Boston teaching a class for a chain of salons. It was all good, but boy is that a long ride from Peekskill to Boston (3 hours). Ok. It's not that long of a ride, but it does take its toll on you when you do it alone.

Guess I'm in trouble since M and I are going to Indiana for Thanksgiving. Well, that's not a big deal. The big deal is that we've decided to drive. That is a 12 hour drive. I'm happy to have some one to share it with. Here's a picture of my home state:



Again with the diversions. What did we do this week? Oh, yeah, the cheesecake. (Glad J wrote the title or I'd have forgotten.)

The Cordon Rose Cream Cheesecake (pg 81) is treated more like a custard by RLB in that she has you do a water bath (a bain marie in French cooking terms). Bain Marie is really a double boiler. I never thought of a cake/custard in a pan half full of water as a double boiler. To me, that is a pot inside a pot. But I guess extrapolated, a pan in a pan is very similar to a cake pan in a roasting pan.

Ok, this'll teach me to search something on Wikipedia:
The term bain-marie originates from alchemy, where some practitioners needed to give their materials prolonged periods of gentle heating, in an attempt to mimic the supposed natural processes whereby precious metals germinated in the earth. It was said to be an invention of Mary the Jewess, an ancient alchemist traditionally supposed to have been Miriam, a sister of Moses. The name comes from this tradition: balneum Mariae in medieval Latin, from which the French bain de Marie is derived, although, in the French wikipedia the coinage of the term is attributed to the medieval German philosopher, theologian, and chemist/alchemist Saint Albert the Great (1193-1280).

Probably more information than any of us need on that subject.

One of the things that J and I noticed was that the recipe had a tremendous amount of lemon juice (3 tablespoons). It was definitely tangy, what with the lemon juice and the 3 cups!!! of sour cream to only 1 lb. of cream cheese.

She suggests adding a tablespoon of cornstarch to help it thicken and not leach water after unmolding. Interestingly enough, we used the cornstarch and it did seep a bit- a lot really.

You do get to incorporate one egg at a time much like when we added flour in the butter cakes. Speaking of butter cakes, this cake also contained no butter. Wow, that has to be a first..... well, except for the vegetable cakes that used oil.

This cake came together with out any fuss or fight. It poured into the prepared springform pan just like we thought it should. It was a bit tangy as mentioned before. We had that wonderful Raspberry Puree (pg 337) from a previous cake in the freezer, and added a lovely swirl of it to the cheesecake. We put it into the bain marie (see long dissertation on that above). Set it in the oven and waited.

While we waited, we discussed our plans for a birthday cake for a young friend of ours (she'll be 3) whose mom asked us to bake a cake for her. Her only requirements are that it be pink and princess-y. I know, hard to imagine a child who likes pink AND princesses. But Lila does.

So excited were we by the discussion of the birthday cake, we didn't notice that the oven was still on and we cooked to the cheesecake for an extra 18 minutes. We then let it cool and refrigerated it overnight as the recipe stated.

I stopped by the next day after tricker or treaters (or in the case of J & K's house, right in the middle of the steady stream) for the taste test.

This wasn't our favorite. It was too tangy, lacked a certain creamy/cakiness, and really seemed off. Now, it could be the overcooking of it. But, since the instruction was to turn the oven off and let the cake sit for an hour immediately after baking, the extra bit of time should not have been a large factor given our complaints. And in fact, one would expect that extra time would create a firmer, perhaps more cake-like consistency. Instead it was a too-fluffy, too-tangy, too- wet, absolutely not New York style cheesecake. That's fine, not every cheesecake has to be NY style, but RLB took pains to describe it as such. This is one instance where not making every variation listed is a very good thing indeed. We would not have been happy with 4 or 5 times as much cheesecake. This one didn't even get distributed, that's how little we thought of it. Currently it sits in the freezer. Who knows maybe we'll need it as an ingredient later on- raspberry cheesecake ice cream?? Cheesecake ice cream doesn't sound any better today than it did when it first came out 20+ years ago.

Personally I like creamy desserts: cheesecake, flan, tiramisu, creme brulee (not as much as one of my coworkers who sometimes sneaks downstairs to have one as a late night snack -- I won't say who, but she knows who she is), but I couldn't get it to like this one. Even with the best Raspberry Puree in the world.

Here is a picture.....


I hope you are enjoying the first bits of real autumn (or is it fall?) at least here in the North East.

Bake Through,

Robb

In This Kitchen, Carrot Cake is a Vegetable

The forecast for today was hot. Not as hot as yesterday -- we broke records all up and down the Hudson River. You know, it's very pretty river. And, it's ours.




It didn't get that hot today. All our preparing. I even wore shorts. Guess I wouldn't be talking about it, except that it's October! And, 90 degrees yesterday (or there abouts) is just plain wrong.

However, today wasn't wrong. It was warm to start, but while the 4th cake cooled (Mind you that is not the 4th pan with cake in it, but the 4th kind of cake we made today. We actually used 7 pans for our 4 cakes- la de da.), J and I sat out on the back steps and commented on how cool it had gotten. And, now as I write this, it rains. Sometimes rain makes me think of sadness. Sometimes, it's more like a promise of things to come. Really, I love rainy days and mondays. (Mondays are a part of my weekend!) Rainy nights are good too. They mean a restful sleep. Cool rooms. The lightening makes the world light up in split second intervals and somehow it all seems more doable. All this, plus it'll be more seasonable tomorrow. (We are so lucky to have a stream of consciousness section from Robb in this installment, hopefully this therapy is doing him some good!)

This week was carrot cake. We made the Golden Wheat Carrot Ring (pg 75). There is a sprinkling of cinnamon/sugar, RLB's first adornment suggestion. It was suggested that the white chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream would also be a nice compliment, but someone (namely me) totally spazzed on getting the white chocolate. In my defense, I had to take my dog to the groomers, pick up colored construction paper to fabricate this thing for a class I'm teaching in Boston....basically, I didn't write it down, so it didn't happen. Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. (if you're only going to know a little Latin, that's the phrase.)

Here's a pic of my doggie so you know how cute she is.


This cake tasted good. And, the grated carrot had a lovely orange speckling. The cake itself was a nice "wheaty" brown -- probably from the whole wheat flour it used. Interestingly enough, 1 cup of Whole Wheat Flour was about 1 oz heavier that 1 cup of Cake Flour. We never thought of how much heavier it could or would be. The wheat flour did come through the finished product. It was really noticeable to J, but not as much to me. This cake is a wonderful breakfast/coffee type cake. You could be happy with a slice and a cup of tea to start your day. It strongly reminded me of the zucchini and pumpkin cakes we've done recently. (M said to me yesterday, that Pumpkin Cake was amazing -- and that was two cakes ago!)



Then we made the Carrot Cake from the Silver Palate Cookbook. Why did we do this? RLB's recipe didn't seem like it would yield a "carrot cake" like the ones we grew up with. The Silver Palate recipe did. And, honestly, this is the recipe that a local restaurant must use for their carrot cake. It is a perfect carrot cake. We even used their Cream Cheese Icing. And, boy howdy did it taste good. (It's the triple layered cake on the pedestal in the photo.) The taste was deep and rich. In other cakes I wanted to add nutmeg or cloves or some woodsy, earthy type spice. While this cake didn't have any in it, the depth of flavor brought that to mind, surprisingly. We used a new tool, well new to me, a cake comb. What a groovy invention. (Sorry for the really bad pun.) Here's a picture if you don't know what one is.


We made Linda's (J's Mom) recipe. One thing about getting recipes from people who've cooked for a long time, is that they tend to have shorthand versions of recipes that are mostly a list of ingredients with instructions like "mix it until it looks right," which seems to be a common instruction included in pie crust or biscuit recipes passed down within families. And, while an accurate instruction, it's not that helpful if you don't know what Looks Right is!! Well, J got Linda's recipe over the phone and wrote everything she said in order to record all her nuggets of wisdom for posterity, or whatever. This included and I quote the recipe "1 1/2 tsp. of vanilla & not that fake stuff" and "Bake for 25 minutes, ... or until done. It may be done sooner." That makes one wonder if the baking time is really 20 minutes, or perhaps even just 15? With practice, we'll know what done looks like. Maybe we'll even translate that in to a measure in time for the next generations of bakers... or not, why should they have it any easier?

There was a moment of worry with these cakes. We realized that we were at the end of our Pam. For those of you who haven't had this happen, when you run near the end of the can, it sputters. That means that it's not evenly coating your pan. Therefore, you will have trouble getting cakes out of pans. Out of this came a series of learnings:

1. Parchment can be your friend.
2. What does come out can be cut into circles to create lovely variations.

The ones we created are the two rings on the silver tray with the powdered sugar and the small three tiered cake. We used the store bought icing for this one. It is our gift to K. We thought, it turns out mistakenly!! that he preferred the tub 'o frosting to the real stuff. What was that handy turn of phrase, oh yes, mea culpa. Actually, I really like it. All I need is a graham cracker and a spoon and I'd be happy.

The 9 X 13 pan is a "Faux Carrot Cake" recipe we made from a friend of mine at my new salon. Sandi and I got talking about carrot cakes and she sent me this version:

'faux' carrot cake recipe

20 oz crushed pineapple (drain and set aside juice)
2 eggs lightly beaten w/ pineapple juice
2 cups flour
1 cup coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tsp baking soda

mix flour and baking soda together in separate bowl combine all other ingredients
then mix in flour and stir until just mixed; pour in greased & floured pan 13 by 9 or 2 round cake pans

bake at 325 for about 45 mins or until sides start to pull away and center springs back

icing:
1 stick unsalted butter
4 oz cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
beat cream cheese, butter & vanilla till fluffy add in sugar slowly and beat till smooth frost cake when cool

We were both shocked when we looked at the recipe and there wasn't any fat or salt in it. It comes together in more or less the same fashion as other cakes, but it's a bit drier, and paler. When it's baked, it doesn't brown until the very end of the time. Then, it turns a nice brown that looks a bit like a potato latke. It makes an interesting cake, one that would benefit by the addition of some oil or melted butter. We might consult the CB for an idea of how much oil to add to the proportions of flour, etc.

I did like the icing. It was a bit thinner than the Silver Palate version, making it pourable. But, with a bit of fridge time, it set up nicely. It had a very nice tang and was not overly sweet.




Wow, a behind the scenes photo. Here we are loading them up to "ship" to our network of cake eaters. Can you see the tasting plates?



There was a point where we had to stop, not because we were tired or because we had run out of anything, but because there was no more room in the oven.

Now, that is baking through, isn't it?

Robb