Friday, I'm in Love

...with this cake.  I want to make it stat; the recipe sounds wonderful.  

 

...with the fact that there has not been an earthquake or aftershock in over 24 hours here in Charlottesville!  I've talked to many people and read about different accounts of the quakes; they were similar to mine.  In short, I was scared out of my wits!  It was my first earthquake and hopefully the last one I experience for, well, forever, ha.  It's an eerie feeling when the ground is shaking beneath you, that's all I'm saying.

...with the fact that I'm having a bad hair day.  Not.

...with the fact that my house is hurricane ready.  A couple weeks ago, we had a severe thunderstorm and lost power at my house for about 25 hours (every single time there is a storm involving the slightest puff of wind, a tree blows down and onto a power line in my neck of the City).  When this happened, I had two candles in the entire house (should I be ashamed of that?), one was a tiny unscented pillar candle, and the other one was an awesome jar candle from Bath & Body Works, scented "Mango Cilantro."  I love the smell of this candle, but the cool thing about it is that you only have to burn it for 5-10 minutes for it to permeate the entire house.  I'm starting to think that this feature is not so cool.  You can imagine what happened after having it burn for a couple of hours.  I got the worst headache ever and had to blow out the candle (aka, it was night time and really dark) and sit in my room alone with a flashlight toward the ceiling for some semblance of an overhead light.  I don't really like sitting in the dark; plus, it was depressing.

We have four fireplaces in the house, and I had this vision for making a candle arrangement in the living room.  I am sure I ripped the idea from someone else, but I don't remember where...Anyway, I have a super quality image to "show off" the display after a trip to buy out World Market's supply of unscented ivory candles.  This picture was taken from my lovely phone, as I cannot find the battery charger that goes with my camera.  Awesome.  Anyway, besides those candles, I have some hurricane glasses (no pun intended) and many votive candles to brighten up the cottage if we do in fact lose power.  I should probably get some ice for my cooler...

In other news, my favorite sewing pattern company Colette Patterns is coming out with a book in November!!  The Colette Sewing Handbook.  I am chomping at the bit to get this book!  In fact, I may go ahead and pre-order it on Amazon.  If you have never tried their sewing patterns, I highly recommend them!  I can sing praises for Colette Patterns all day long, seriously.  Their patterns are darling, vintage-inspired pieces, and the instructions they provide for garment construction are well-thought, simple and just downright wonderful, not to mention that they have projects for all skill levels.  I have made the Sencha twice, and the Sorbetto twice as well with great results to show from both!  The Sorbetto is a free pattern download (click above), so if you want to give Colette a go before purchasing, it'd be a great project to dip your toes in the water!  I have Ginger on standby for an upcoming project for fall.  Check them out-they have great products and a great blog (and I know the book is going to be smashing!).  Here is the description of the five patterns in the book: "a scalloped-hem skirt, flutter-sleeve blouse, sweetheart neck sheath dress, asymmetrical flounce dress, and a lined dress with gathered sleeves"  They had me at Sarai Mitnick (owner/author/designer of Colette Patterns) and scalloped-hem skirt.  Happy Friday!

O Tannenbaum

On Friday night, I co-hosted a party, and in the spirit of Christmas, I made a cake for it in  the shape of a ring of trees, with a train chugging along the bottom edge of it!  It even snowed on my cake, thanks to a dab of powdered sugar.  Unfortunately, this was the only cake photo from the party...Nordicware cake pans are awesome, huh?

DIY Time:  Today, I'm giving you all the recipe for the bundt cake pictured above:  Darn Good Chocolate Cake.  It is quite possibly one of the most wonderful chocolate cakes I've ever made, and anybody can do it!  Don't judge me because it has a cake mix in it, just try it, you won't regret it.

Darn Good Chocolate Cake

4 large eggs

1/2 c. vegetable oil

1/2 c. warm water

1 Devil's Food cake mix

1 pkg. instant chocolate pudding

1 c. sour cream

1 1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray bundt pan with Baker's Choice, or grease and flour the pan.  In a mixing bowl, mix together the eggs, vegetable oil and warm water.  Then add the cake mix, pudding and sour cream.  Mix until all ingredients combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Pour batter into greased and floured bundt pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Garden Party

It is time to unveil my finished rag quilt!   This photo was taken prior to washing the quilt, as I had a fear that the colors would bleed in the washing machine, but alas, Shout's Color Catcher sheets kept it from doing so (since I didn't pre-wash the Rural Jardin fabric).

Beware of the Walking Rural Jardin Quilt!

Also, remember the brownie mosaic cheesecake that I made about a month ago? 

I should make this cheesecake again and eat a slice while sitting on my rag quilt somewhere outside...

One Mint Julep

One mint julep cupcake, that is.  I wanted to make a dessert using my fresh chocolate mint, so I scoured one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, and found the perfect recipe:  Chocolate Souffle Cupcakes with Mint Whipped Cream.  I had a legitimate excuse to make a dessert (do you really have to have one?); Javalady had a dinner party. 

Here is the lovely table she set for us.  Isn't summer wonderful?

 

Here are the souffle cupcakes.  After they've fallen, they have a perfect spot to put a big dollop of mint cream on top!

I followed the recipe pretty much to a T, except I infused the whipping cream with the mint.  I brought the cream to a simmer and let the mint steep in it for a few minutes.  Then, I strained the mint out of the whipping cream, added the white chocolate to that and refrigerated it overnight.  The next day, I decided to add a little swig of bourbon to the cream while I was whipping it.  I highly recommend this addition; it gives it a wonderful subtle flavor.

Mint Julep Whipped Cream:  Mmm, Mmm, Good!

Birthday

H. recently had a birthday, so we had a party on Saturday, and what birthday party is complete without birthday cake? He wanted a yellow cake, and c'mon, I just couldn't use a box mix. I'm qualifying this cake as worthy of going on the chocolate cakery shenanigans because it had chocolate icing. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and I think it's the best cake I've ever made. So good. I did, however, alter the frosting recipe. I wasn't really in the mood for buttercream, but I didn't know how chocolate sour cream frosting was going to turn out. Using Smitten Kitchen's recipe as my base, I altered it accordingly:

1 bag Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 heaping cup sour cream
1 heaping cup low-fat vanilla yogurt
3/4 t. vanilla extract
1/4 c. light corn syrup plus some drizzle over the top

Melt chocolate chips. Combine all other ingredients. You want to have the yogurt and the sour cream mixture at room temperature (and let the chocolate cool off before adding it to when you add the melted chocolate chips) or it will kind of curdle, apparently. Anyways, mix all together and refrigerate until it's a good consistency to spread: 30 minutes to an hour. The frosting has a ganache-like consistency and it's a great alternative to buttercream if you're trying not to become a lardhead with all five sticks of butter in that frosting. It was a little tangy, but nothing a little corn syrup can't fix!

Here I am, frosting the cake, with cold spinach dip sitting in front of me, smelling the hot reuben dip and stuffed mushrooms in the oven. Sounds tempting, but when I make something or stand in a kitchen for a long time smelling the food I'm making, it makes me not want to eat it. When it's finally prepared, I don't want it anymore. I'm finding that cooking is all about the experience of creating rather than eating, for me at least. We made 14 pounds of pulled pork barbecue in some Crock Pots for the party; I couldn't eat it until the next day.

Here's the cake mid-party:


Prior to all the cooking we did for the party on Saturday night, though, H, Javalady and I went to the farmer's market, and H. bought me these lovely tulips to go in a Mason jar for the party. Aren't they beautiful! And since H. loves garlic more than life, he made 3 big bottles of garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil....while we were cooking for the party. It was an incredibly productive day!

Walking On Air

Contrary to many folks out there, math was my favorite subject in school. I initially went to UVa to major in "Mathematics" and be an Algebra II teacher.......aaaand I majored in English and Religious Studies after my first calculus class. Maybe it was my Ukrainian professor who used to close his emails with, "Your Evil Professor, Daniel T.," who knows; and now she's working in a law office, you're thinking. Hm. When I was in high school I had a teacher named Mrs. Henley who made math kind of fun; she was really sweet and everybody loved her, which totally gives you the upper hand if you're a math teacher. I had her for Geometry and Trigonometry (I really don't remember anything about Trig except for three things: sin, cos, tan. That's kind of sad to me.) and both years, our class celebrated on March 14 by eating various pizzas and pies in honor of the constant Pi (3.14159265...). Clever idea, Mrs. Hen.

I've always wanted to make chocolate souffles, I can't really say why, maybe I just like the word "souffle." I studied about them in Mrs. Fletcher's Foods & Nutrition class at LHS, and I'm thinking of a movie where the main character makes chocolate souffles at least twice (Any guessers?) that always makes me want to bake some. When I read Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard, she has recipes at the end of every chapter and one of the recipes is her French hubby's recipe: "Gwendal's Quick & Dirty Chocolate Souffle Cake." On Saturday, in honor of Pi Day (even though it was technically yesterday), I made this cake in my new aqua pie dish. So it is going on the chocolate cakery shenanigans list because it was an absolutely divine, like a perfect chocolate angel food cake. No butter, either; that's definitely the first cake I've ever made without butter or shortening. And I like the idea of making it in one dish because I didn't have anyone besides H. to eat it. Making 8 miniature souffles wouldn't have been the most practical thing to do, even though it would've been prettier. As souffles are made with lots of eggs and they puff up because of the egg whites, which facilitate wonderful airy-fluffiness, and my cake did eventually fall in the pie dish, but it still tasted wonderful. I tried to document the rise and fall (but caught mostly the fall). Also, I really really wanted to use this pie dish because I think it's adorable. And I don't really make pies. Ever. Unless it's a fudgy tart or, my personal favorite, Mom's chocolate bourbon pecan pie.

Here's the chocolate souffle prior to oven-time.

I have a major problem of wanting to peep in on my baking creations while they're in the oven. The problem is, I read somewhere that every time you open up the oven door while it's on, you lose 25 degrees, which demotes even baking and is also a waste of power. But because my Barbie oven has neither a light, window nor more than one oven rack, I feel like I'm in a dream kitchen that has an oven made post-1945 with all the amenities mentioned above. I could sit in front of the oven window the whole time.

Here it is directly out of the oven!


This thing started falling just a couple of minutes after I took it out of the oven.


But I obviously didn't care; I kept cutting the infamous Chambers Family Slivers out of this chocolate souffle cake. I'm admitting that this gene has been passed on to me. For those who don't know, the Chambers Family Sliver phenomenon is one characterized by all the women on my mother's side of the family, Granny, daughters and granddaughters all included, who cut teensy weensy little slices of desserts, over and over again. We like to believe that the sliver is a manifestation of eating in moderation; however, two slivers often turns into eating a whole row of brownies or a whole pie without even realizing it. This cake did not last 24 hours. It was phenomenal and I will definitely be making it again! I would guess that this cake was comparable to eating a chocolate cloud if such a thing exists; it was light, fluffy and very air.

Piece of My Heart

I made a heart-shaped red velvet cake in honor of Valentine's Day this past weekend. I love red velvet cake, but I hardly ever make it; it was cake #2 in Chocolate Cakery Shenanigans. A friend of mine tried to argue that the red velvet cake didn't count as chocolate cake, even though I made it and it was definitely a chocolate cake-granted, a mild chocolate cake, but chocolate nonetheless-so I'm including it in the list. The psychological effects of colored food are amazing to me.

Anyways, this one had four layers; I was kind of proud because I've only ever made two-layer cakes. Granted, I cut two thin cakes in half to make the 4 layers, but I just wanted an excuse to slather the tangy cream cheese frosting all over it. The cake recipe I used was my great aunt Nell's, which has always been prized as a "secret recipe," but as per my normal cake-making habit, I always add a dollop of sour cream (to keep it as moist as possible). One of my life's greatest pet peeves is dried out dessert; few things are worse than this. The cake turned out to be pretty good, though. My oven is a really old miniature one (It kind of makes me feel like Barbie. For real.), which also means that it bakes very unevenly. With that being said, one of my never ending obstacles when baking is trying not to dry out the cake edges while simultaneously trying to get the middle to actually settle. I love a moist cake, but when the edges are crispy and the center still jiggles like jello, I'd say it needs more oven-time. Someone suggested getting a baking stone to keep in the oven to keep the temperature more consistent. I think I may have to invest in one...

"Take another little piece of my heart, now baby..." (Or a big slice...):

Anyways, my red velvet cake is not the only heart I made this weekend...This is the famous Niknak (see below photo) that I always talk about. She's pretty much famous on rintherealworld. And this is her sweet Lhasa-poo (Lhasa Apso-poodle mix) dog Roxie. Niknak got Roxie when she could still fit in your hand when we lived together our last year at UVa, so I feel like I had some small part in raising her (even though I just had all the benefits of owning a pet without the maintenance). When I saw Rox for the first time, I thought she looked like a little bear cub, so I started calling her Roxiebear, and I that's what I've called her ever since. Roxiebear rocks my world, and she's the most laid back dog of all time. That's a fact. Except I like to think she gets super amped about seeing me. They came over for the day on Saturday to bake butter cookies.

Here was our workstation:

Dipped in semi-sweet chocolate:

Drizzled beauties:

One thing that we really weren't expecting to come out of a bag of Wilton Candy Melts was a grape lollipop...it makes me wonder about food factories. This was the look on Niknak's face when she opened the bag. WHAT?!?!


These sandwich cookies are imitation Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies with a hint of orange. I'm happy to say that they were very successful copycats. The "hint of orange" is a dab of pure orange extract mixed with the semi-sweet chocolate filing.


The finished products:


And as if the holiday isn't whimsical enough, I felt the urge to make a classic grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch for myself on Valentine's Day. It's the little things in life...

Chocolate

I never really think about New Year's Resolutions until about a week before every new year. I set goals for myself all the time, and when they're fulfilled I create new ones, yada yada yada. I'm in continual amazement each year at the people who say that their New Year's Resolution is to "get into shape." I actually think it's utterly hilarious and here's why: I normally lose weight during the Christmas whirlwind of parties filled with delicious yummies because it's always so busy. However, I get hit with the Post-Christmas Funk about 2 weeks after the New Year and want to eat everything in sight; also during this time, I could hover over a mixer or stove top in the kitchen all day long and never even care about the time spent doing so. With all that being said, I have set some lighthearted goals for myself (that don't include a gym membership), which I intend to take quite seriously, that will be merely the commencement of goals set and satisfied in 2010. One such aspiration is to make the perfect chocolate cake.

My friend Java Lady hosts a dinner party about once a week, and since I love to make dessert, I have gotten into the habit of providing the last course of the meal....unless I'm feeling super lazy and make Java Lady do all the work...Anyways, I've already warned the dinner party crew that they should be prepared to consume copious amounts of chocolate cake this year because they're my guinea pigs for R.'s 2010 Chocolate Cakery Shenanigans.

When I was in Boulder for the summer of 2008, I used to pop into a little hole in the wall restaurant called The Burnt Toast and buy a piece of their chocolate layer cake with chocolate frosting and a Clementine Izze. If you haven't had one of these, get one; Clementine Izzes are what killed Elvis (Not really, but that's what my dad always says when something's outrageously, mind-blowingly delicious.)! The chocolate cake at The Burnt Toast was awesome, and I'd like to re-create it as well as be known for making the perfect chocolate cake. I don't think it's too much to ask for (maybe I should ask for some larger pants with all this upcoming cakery).

With that being said, January 19, 2010 was the beginning. I got 5 cookbooks for Christmas, so I thumbed through them for a recipe with which to commence, and I ended up using a Martha Stewart recipe. While it was a really good recipe, it's not quite what I was looking for. The cake was a little dense; I'm looking for something lighter and fluffier. I did learn a few things, though.

First, why haven't I been heeding recipes that tell me to use parchment paper as pan liners? The two chocolate cakes came off so clean that I didn't even have to wash the cake pans! That was a joke, but seriously, I'm going to start using parchment paper on a regular basis when I bake.


This was by far the most interesting buttercream frosting that I've ever made. It's made with egg whites (I had no idea one could even do that). You have to whisk the sugar, egg whites and a pinch of salt constantly until the mixture reachs 160 F, then you have to mix the concoction in the mixer until stiff peaks form and the mixture is cool (about 10 minutes). Then you add about a pound or more of butter as well as semi-sweet chocolate and voila, you have some just right, not too rich, very light and fluffy chocolate buttercream icing to go on the rich chocolate cake.


And then I slathered the whole cake with the buttercream goodness.


Then, the attendees of Java Lady's latest dinner party, D. and H. and I, all ate cake (after indulging in grilled flank steak medallions, cheesy-sour cream smashed potatoes and green bean casserole). My overall synopsis of this cake is this: It was a little dense in texture, a little too rich, a smidgen dry, and just overall not exactly what I'm looking for in the perfect chocolate cake. The frosting was paired perfectly with the cake, though; and it was a decent cake overall, but I don't know that I'll be making Martha's "Basic Chocolate Cake" again any time soon. One down!