Cakes or Something

Last year, maybe a year and a half ago, I tried making a souffle style cake.... and it was massive failure. It was eggy, flat as a pancake run over by a truck, yet so incredibly delicious... it made me afraid to try it again. there was a reason to celebrate so i decided to give it another shot, but with some amount of reservation.

For A's birthday, I made this:


JAPANESE STRABERRY SHORTCAKE

recipe from here

serves many, tastes delicious. I wish I had a picture of the final product.. I think it was hailed as the 27... or was that the tiramisu


WHIPPED CREAM FROSTING
1/4C sugar
1T cornstarch
3C chilled heavy cream
1 1/2t vanilla extract

• Mix the sugar and cornstarch in a saucepan. Stir in 1/2C of cream.
• Stirring constantly, bring to a boil over medium heat and simmer briefly until the mixture thickens. Set aside to cool to room temp.
  
• In mixing bowl, beat remaining cream and vanilla on low speed until bubbles form. Add cornstarch mixture and beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. Don't over mix! Cover and chill in fridge.

SPONGE CAKE
4T butter
1C all-purpose flour
1/2t salt
6 eggs
1C sugar
1t vanilla extract

• Preheat oven to 350. Line bottom of a 9" springform pan with parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper and sides of the pan.
  
• Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat and set aside.
  
• Blend flour and salt together in a separate bowl.
  
• Whisk eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl. Place the bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water, whisking constantly until the mixture reaches about 110 degrees... It became really foamy and delicious looking at this point.
  
• Beat at medium-high speed (this is important. I didn't beat at med-high speed... maybe just medium speed and the texture of the cake didn't turn out like I wanted) until the eggs are pale and fluffy. Gently beat in the vanilla.
• Stir 1C of the batter into the melted butter.
  
• Blend the flour mixture into the batter and gently fold the butter mixture back into the batter.
• Gently pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake about 35 min until the cake springs back when pressed lightly. Remove cake from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.
  

STAWBERRY FILLING
2lbs strawberries, sliced
1/2C sugar
pinch salt
1C strawberry jam
2T lemon juice

• Toss berries, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Let stand until berries have released juice and the sugar is dissolved. Save some fresh berries for decorating.

• Heat jam in small sauce pan, stirring frequently. Bring jam to a simmer over medium-high heat until color darkens. Stir in lemon juice. Pour over strawberry mixture and combine until berries are well coated.

CAKE ASSEMBLY!!! (THE BEST PART!!)

First, begin by making the whipped cream. Don't overwhip and keep it chilled. While the cream was chilling, I baked the cake. When the cake was finished, I made the filling while the cake cooled, and timing worked out perfectly. The whipped cream was nice and cold, the cake was cooled to a great temperature, and the filling had settled with just enough juice to allow for cake soaking to begin.

Cut the cake horizontally into two halves and scoop the strawberry filling mixture onto the bottom half being sure to generously douse the cake in strawberry juices. The top half was flipped up side down so that the center of the cake was exposed. Scooping up more juices, cover the top half of the cake as well to maximize strawberry goodness. While the two layers are soaking up the delicious strawberry juices, take the chilled whipped cream out of the fridge and apply generous dollops on top of the strawberries.



This picture is of the half cake, loaded up with strawberries and whipped cream. Top it off with the remaining half and cover with whipped cream.

After chilling it all night, the whipped cream and moisture from the strawberry filling definitely kept the cake nice and moist. The whipped cream held its shape well. Garnish with whole or halved or sliced strawberries and serve chilled!

yum.


until next time.... eat well, drink well, live well.

Happiness is...

An Endless Case of Cheeses

The Riverfront with D, with Clouds, with Sun

Delicious Oysters

Pink Calla Lilies

Flowers to Celebrate

Barrels of Wine

And people to enjoy it with.

Wine, Whine, Wine

Uncorking a bottle of wine is one of my favorite things to do. Drinking the wine coming in at a close second. The sound of the cork pulling out of the bottle, the little hollow pop followed by that joyous feeling of success. The smell of the wine when you bring the bottle to your nose to take that first aromatic breath, the sound as you pour it, the color as it fills the glass... it is an experience that must be appreciated by your whole body.

My home will have an accent wall. The color will be wine. My kitchen will have a huge wine rack. It will be stocked. My coffee table will have corks. It will be amazing.

Which to Choose...

I choose you! ludovicus!! the grapes in this wine are Garnacha (35%), Tempranillo (30%), Syrah (25%), and Cabernet Sauvignon (10%). mm.... delicious.

Beautiful Spanish Red: Ludovicus

I am a lush....

Vanilla, Salt, Sugar, and Ribbons

This is what contentment looks like:


Death inspires a lot in people. Sometimes it makes you realize how short life is and makes you do things that you normally wouldn't do. Sometimes it makes you realize how much you love what you do and makes you do it again. Sometimes, you sit there... and you're knocked into a daze... and you need a moment to gather yourself before you can move forward with your life... and your life just isn't quite the same as it was before. I hope you may rest in peace. I wish I could have seen you before you passed :-(

Well, Death... to face you, I worked in my kitchen.


Vanilla Sugar and Vanilla Salt

The sweet and salty, sweet and savory, sweet and rich flavors of foods. I saw this little recipe earlier and thought it was the cutest idea ever. I was gifted some amazingly gorgeous vanilla beans for my birthday when I was pretty much lame as a duck and could barely stand for more than 5 min, and I had been dying to try something out with my new delicious goodies.

so brace yourself. This will be a wild ride.

for the salt:

1 pod vanilla beans
1/2 (probably closer to a full cup??) Kosher salt

for the sugar:

1 pod vanilla beans
and again, close to a full cup of white granulated sugar

Split the vanilla bean long ways and use the back of the knife to scrape out the seeds

Pod, Seeds, Knife

You basically just mix it up with the salt and the sugar until the seeds are nicely and evenly distributed throughout the salt and sugar.

Vanilla Salt in the Making

I cut up the pod remains into two or three pieces and put them in with the salt and sugar.... you know... for more... flavor... and then proceeded to wrap the little mason jars with cute cute ribbon. If I had it in me to be more crafty, I'm sure they would have been a lot cuter... but no, my clumsy hands are only good for pipetting.

Purple and White Ribbon

A View from the Front

The jars are so cute in real life... somehow I took sad pictures of them.

Made with love, to give the gift of Making with love. Please, try it out in Creme brulee, in cookies, on meats, in life.

Small Heads come in handy

Safety First

I'm not one to stray too far from what i deem to be safe... I'm not one to be totally adventurous but i enjoy adventure. my april adventure became a HOUSE.

On a whim, i browsed listings and lo and behold... found a house i absolutely loved. On a whim, i e mailed the realtor and said, hey! i want to see this place. so i went to go see it. It was beautiful... on the inside. the exterior was horrendously kept so i kept looking. and two weeks later, no... less than two weeks later... i had put in an offer which was accepted as i was flying somewhere over colorado. I land, and i get this message from the realtor: congratulations, they have accepted the offer. and since then, the past week has been a whirlwind of chaos.

Yesterday was the three hour long home inspection. I spent my hours from 4:30pm-7:30pm poking my head into dark corners, climbing up rickety ladders into the attic, crawling down under the house into the crawl space. Armed and ready, they gave me a flashlight, hard hat, and a white suit

Ready, Set, GO!

and crawl around in the mud i did. I learned a lot.

But to break the monotony of Failed Experiments and House Chaos, I bought a bike. My credit card has not seen this much action in a long time.

Hello, my Pink Companion

And went for a ride.

I'm not too good at pictures over my shoulder

Mind you, holding the camera and trying to take pictures while riding really fast on a two lane road with cars flying by at 50 mph... is a little bit scary. but hey, the night was beautiful and there was a storm system hot on my tracks

Sunset, Huge midwest sky

Couldn't catch the lightning

I guess i should step outside my box and do some more exciting things. like, drop out of the program and open my wine bar and my cafe. there's a lot to think about. and i guess i only learned that life waits for nobody. neither does science. and i've fallen behind in both.