How does one design a Karate Cake?

When asked to create a cake for a group of Karate people, what kind of designs come to mind? For that matter, what kind of cake comes to mind?

While there were loads of suggestions (red velvet cake to simulate the blood of your enemies is a good one that comes to mind), I was pressed for time on the big day and stuck with one of my all time favorite cakes that never seems to fail and always seems to please: a trusty chocolate cake from a Halloween Martha Stewart Living Magazine from 2006 (or something like that). In between the layers I smeared a fresh made strawberry puree, and to top it off I coated it in vanilla-lime swiss meringue buttercream (of the Martha Stewart variety). Yes, I know the lime flavour is kind of odd when combined with chocolate and strawberry, but I wanted to try something a little different and see if it worked. The thing was eaten so quick I don't even think anyone noticed anyway!

As for the design... a few ounces of melted chocolate in the buttercream gave it a nice brown that was easy to pipe some fun designs with.

I even went so far as to revisit my days of relative Japanese proficiency and write some kanji on the sides.

Not too bad for a cake done on the fly, eh?

A Rainbow Cake

Last week I was at work and one of my favorite customers approached me and asked if I would make a cool birthday cake for her thirteen year old daughter. The cake was only going to serve around 15 people and it didn't have to be too fancy, just cool enough to impress her friends. This was exactly the excuse I needed to make this beautiful, multi-coloured, confectionery, monstrosity.

I got the idea to do this type of cake from a post I had seen on WhiskKid's blog a year ago. Using the same basic concept, I made a simple white vanilla cake recipe, divided into six separate bowls evenly by weight, coloured the batter in each bowl a different colour using Wilton's gel food colouring, and baked the individual cakes for 15 minutes each. This is what came out:

The colours were vibrant and way nicer than I thought they would be--the only issue that I had with the cake was that the flavor wasn't nearly as vibrant as the colours.

For the pristine white icing, I made my favourite (and possibly the most reliable icing I know of) Martha Stewart Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing.

When I made this cake, I went through 18 egg whites. EIGHTEEN! Jeez. That's a lot of albumen. I gotta say though, de-yolking eggs is one of my favourite things to do when baking. The slippery feel of the white sliding through your fingers and the delicate yolk cupped in your palm... for some bizarre reason it's something that I find very calming. You need to concentrate and focus or you might nick a yolk, get a yellow stain in your precious whites and potentially ruin the whole thing. I'm a weirdo, but I'm starting to figure out how to make pretty cool cake!

Pumpkin Loaves of Lub

That's "lub", not "lube", you crazies! Everyone always gets that wrong...

Anyway!

I made these pumpkin loaves and I was told that they were delicious. I don't really know whether they were or not myself because they were all gone and eaten before I could get a taste. The loaf itself was a pretty strait forward pumpkin loaf with walnuts just topped with an exceptionally delicious cream cheese icing flavored with lemon and vanilla bean. I'm told that they were moist and light--not heavy and dense like most pumpkin loaves that you find around town (shameless self promotion right there...). Instead of the required vegetable oil, I used some walnut oil that I found sitting at Winners and I think it really helped bring out some of the flavor. It's the little things.

The challenging part of these little loaves were the silly little loaf liners designed by the geniuses at team Paula Deen. Too awkwardly sized for any rational loaf pan, these liners look cute, but only cause unnecessary frustration. To make them fit better, I filled the empty space with aluminum foil, and this is the result:

The only thing that saved me from extreme shame at these misshapen trolls of the loaf/cake world were the adorable little boxes that handily went with the liners (all on sale at Michaels for 70% off!). I almost look like some kind of professional when I use these!

If you want to make these for yourself, they're very simple--just your basic muffin method at work here! I doubled this recipe easily and substituted walnut oil for vegetable oil, but other than that, this is pretty much it.

Pumpkin Walnut Bread
Adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1/3 cup water
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts (toasted)

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a large bowl whisk together first seven ingredients until thoroughly blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, water, sugar, pumpkin, oil, and vanilla.

2. Add the pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk until blended and smooth. Add walnuts and stir. Pour batter into prepared loaf pans and level off the tops.

3. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until the bread is firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Transfer to a rack and cool before adding cream cheese frosting.

For Cream Cheese Frosting:
Combine 12 ounces softened cream cheese, 3 ounces softened unsalted butter, finely grated zest of one lemon, 10 ounces powdered sugar, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla in a mixer. Beat until smooth.

Comfort Food: Blueberry-Blackcurrant Muffins

It's nearing the end of summer here. In fact some say that the summer had already come and gone by the middle of August. Yesterday I had to put on a sweater and crank the heat in the car. This seems somehow... wrong. Unfair even. The only thing I had to make up for the dismal weather was a bowl of blackcurrants I had picked the day before. Yes, I am that weird woman in her short shorts, batman t-shirt and Lindsay Lohan shades holding a little white bucket, picking currants off the bushes in public parks. I'm doing the city a service. And you can't stop me!

Anyhow...

I decided that the currants would go pretty well inside muffins with some blueberries. What I didn't count on was how much of a pain it would be to de-stem each and every one of these finicky little berries. I think I sat through 2 episodes of Mad Men while cleaning and separating (I didn't miss much--Don Draper was dashing and intense, Peter Campbell was creepy and intense, Peggy Olsen was weird and intense, and Roger Sterling was busy getting syphilis).

In the end, I managed to produce these delicious cakey muffins adapted from Sur La Table that were all eaten while the berries inside were still molten hot. Always a good sign I think.


Easy Morning Muffins with Blueberries and Blackcurrants
Adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet, page 148

2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
3/4 stick of butter (unsalted)
finely grated zest of one lemon (I used 1 tsp lime oil instead and it was really yummy)
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz fresh blueberries
4 oz fresh blackcurrants

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Prepare muffin tins. Blend together flour, 2/3 cup sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a medium skillet, melt butter with the lemon zest. Turn off the heat. Add the buttermilk to the melted butter and let sit for 1 or 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla to butter and mix well.

2. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour the butter mixture into the well and stir gently. Mix only until there are no more streaks of flour or pools of liquid and the batter looks fairly smooth. Gently fold in berries until evenly distributed.

3. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle remaining sugar over the tops of the muffins.

4. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Book Review: David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

Since June, I have been on a mission to make every recipe in David Lebovitz's book on ice cream, The Perfect Scoop. I've made 16 recipes so far and... I really don't have anything to show for this other than a new respect for stretchy pants and a LOT of new friends.


From this, I have come to the conclusion that the one big problem with Lebovitz's book is that the ice creams in it are too good. I know, this isn't a very good review of the book. I should be unbiased and look at it from all angles like I would any book I was reviewing. But honestly, of the ice creams I've made from this book only two have lasted longer than hour. All the rest have been devoured within minutes of being scooped out of the ice cream maker. Even the ones that look more like ice cream soup than soft serve.

However, while I did fail by not taking any photos, I can say that I almost make up for it by scribbling notes in the margins throughout the book. SO, here is a list of the 16 or so recipes I completed from The Perfect Scoop and the notes (the ones I could read) in the margins:

Vanilla Ice Cream Philadelphia Style- My younger brother's favorite. Very creamy and easy to make.
Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream (I added some blackberries too)- I really really liked this one. Chocolate and rasp/blackberries... best. thing. ever.
Anise Ice Cream-Super subtle, almost delicate. Grandparent's favorite.
Roasted Banana Ice Cream- My younger sister's favorite. Tasted fantastic with the Classic Hot Fudge Sauce.
Fresh Fig Ice Cream- Very very sweet. Almost a bit too sweet for me. Left me with a tingling tongue. Also, a bit crunchy.
Strawberry Frozen Yogurt- So simple, so good. The perfect tangy strawberry taste.
Raspberry Swirl Ice Cream- The Swirl was the best part. Decadent.
Raspberry Ice Cream- Mixed in left over swirl (from above) and made raspberry heaven.
Avocado Ice Cream- Odd. Tasted better in a milkshake, but overall... still in my freezer after two months.
Chocolate-Coconut Sorbet- I wanted more coconut. I wanted more chocolate. This one kind of fell short of both.
Mango Sorbet- OMFG so so so good. Seriously. I ate an entire quart in a sitting. Don't tell my doctor.
Cake-like Brownies- Disappointed. I like my brownies to be moist and light, and these were pretty dense and dry. Not quite what I expected in my brownies. To be fair, it could very well have been me.
Profiteroles- So simple, so light, so delicious. I made 30 of these and they were gone before I could even put ice cream inside them. I think that's a win.
Classic Hot Fudge- It was almost bizarre how good this sauce was. Better than anything I've ever bought in a store that's for sure.
Semi Sweet Hot Fudge- MMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

All idolizing and OMFGing!! aside, as far as cookbooks go, this is a gooder. Lebovitz creates recipes that are inventive and unique, but accessible enough for a home cook (I like to call myself a home chef... but let's not go there). The short anecdotes that go with each recipe are funny and eyeopening, if not down right cute. The new flavors and textures that you explore in this book (that aren't so bizarre as to being off-putting, but just different enough to keep you interested) guarantee that you will find a new favorite for everyone you know.

And the ones that you don't like... well, it's been three months since the avocado ice cream and everyone who tried it is still talking about it. Odd publicity is better than no publicity, right?

The Frog Cake

I did this cake a couple months ago and kind of forgot about it. The pictures lingered in my computer waiting to be posted and in the meantime I let the story behind them slip out of my mind. All I could really remember was that it was four layers of chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream and caramel sauce. But like any of the cakes that I do for (a teeny) profit, this one brought with it some drama.

For instance, the caramel dome that was supposed to contain the little frog shattered leaving me with dozens of shards of caramel and a frog with no where to go. Also, the little tadpoles ended up looking more like green mutant sperm than anything else... not really something you want to be thinking about while serving a two-year-old some birthday cake. Also, I think I made that caramel sauce for in the cake at least seven times.

If nothing else, I regret not going with my first instinct with this cake, which was to make the entire thing into a frog sculpture (kinda like this). I chickened out though, and instead tried to make something more like a little frog in some bulrushes with his little tadpoles (or mutant green sperms) beside him. The next one will be better, I promise!

My Macaron First

I've always thought of macaroons as being these impossibly delicate type-A little cookies that are designed only for those of us with infinite time, patience, and... insanity. But when you have eight left-over egg whites, a bag of ground almonds and a pint of fresh raspberries, you really don't have much choice. No more avoiding it-- there were macarons to be made.

Shockingly, they weren't impossible. In fact, I don't know whether it was beginner's luck or my own natural born talent (definitely the luck), but they turned out as perfect as I could have hoped! Little pink domes with bubbly feet that were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The swiss meringue buttercream I doused with raspberries and lemon oil was delicious. Sweet and sour just like raspberry lemonade is supposed to be.

The only problem I had with these little treats was that once the cookies are sandwiched together with the buttercream, there are only about a dozen to pass around. And one really isn't enough. Not for me anyway.

So my advice for macarons is this: Do not be afraid, little ones. Go forth and create little monsters with tiny feet out of egg whites, sugar and almonds... Just be sure to grind the almonds fine enough. And let the beasts sit before going in the oven-they get cranky otherwise.