Layers of Fun

Recently, my friend Liz (an excellent caterer) threw her hands up in despair upon discovering that her 5 year old had pulled a cake for catering off the table an hour before the event. As Liz was explaining this to me, she said, "It's a sign! I'm not supposed to be doing dessert! I just need to have someone else do it for me." Being the baker that I am, I volunteered. Liz, knowing sloppy me as well as she does, said "Yes, but could you do the decorating?"

This is the million dollar question. On more than one occasion I have noted my absolute carelessness in appearance of food, because my goal is solely for it to taste good. Whereas my sister will spend time arranging each leaf and element of a salad on a plate, I simply mix it all together and let people serve themselves. All this to say that Liz brought up a valid point. (My last layer cake decorating event was disastrous, at best.) So, after a moment of thought, I said, "Yes, I think I could do the decorating; I'd just have to take time to practice or maybe even take a class."

Hence, this weekend, I borrowed Liz's cake decorating items and set off to make a cake. Additionally, I had my mentee, Kayla, join me in this adventure since she loves to watch the cake decorating shows on the Food Network. After debating between chocolate cake, caramel cake, or white raspberry cake, we decided on the Raspberry-Laced Vanilla Cake on the back of the cake flour box. It was to be a 3 layer cake, with each layer split in half (to make 6 layers) with frosting and raspberry jam alternating between the layers.

After the cakes had finally cooled (I tried very hard not to cheat on this part-I'm very impatient), we cut off the tops to make them level, and then split each layer in half. This was challenging, but doable. The hard part was moving them from the rack to the cake plate, since some weren't cut particularly evenly, and one of them had been nibbled on by a certain white fluffy dog who shall remain nameless. But, after a bit of maneuvering and a fair amount of crumb-making, we succeeded.The next issue was trying to decide what to do since I had two 8 in. round pans and one 9 in. pan. After a bit of hemming and hawing, we just sliced off the extra inch when all the layers were assembled. (See first picture.)

Next came the frosting. We took our apparent gallons of pink buttercream frosting, and started slathering it on. Then we had to decide how to frost it. We had Liz's cake decorating nozzles, which worked great on a ziploc bag with the corner cut off. However, it took some practicing on various flat surfaces to get the decor to appear marginally presentable. When all was said and done though, I thought it turned out quite well. It's not professional by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely presentable. It's still not something I'd do for my own dinners, but for catering, I could probably arrange it :-) Who knows? Maybe there's hope for me, after all!

Wasn't planning on it...

So a few weeks ago, I got 2 beautiful bunches of basil and made pesto (see photos). This week, I was planning on making the pesto pizza from the Simply in Season (among other things). Then, as I tend to do, I invited 4 friends over for supper to share the pizza with us (for a total of 6). However, I did not think of what I was planning on making. After looking over the options for which I had purchased groceries, I realized that all of my options (main dish, sides, etc) were for 4 people. So, I just decided to make them all. I made my favorite cucumber salad from the More With Less cookbook and an awesome kiwi-strawberry salad (kiwi, strawberries, a few tablespoons of citrus juice, a dash of honey and a bit of cinnamon) which I made that afternoon and were fine.

I also decided to make a chocolate layer cake, since it was one friend's birthday. I made the 2 chocolate layers according to the directions and waited the appropriate amount of time and then inverted the pans to take out the cakes. Unfortunately, I discovered why most cooking experts recommend putting parchment paper on the bottom of the pan in this case. Approximately 1/3 of the cake remained in the pan. Dangit. But, I was committed and doctored it back together as best as I could. Next, according to the recipe, the plan was to have 2 chocolate layers with a layer of cream cheese, whipped cream and Oreo chunks in the middle. Since I hadn't planned well (big surprise), I didn't have cream cheese or whipped cream, so I decided to go with white frosting which I did have. I pulled out the Oreo crumbs which I had from something else and mixed them in. What did I now have? Grey frosting. Dangit.

But, I had what I had, so I spread it on the cake, and then decided that was pretty ugly, so I spread some of the extra white frosting around the edges to make it look pretty. (On a side note, through this entire process, I was thinking about how much I hate caring about how food looks and that this is why I never bother!!) So, I get the frosting done in the middle and put on the top section (which is barely holding together). I spread my chocolate frosting just across the top, as the directions indicate. But, since 1/3 of the original top layer was falling apart, it looked really weird on one side. So, I just decided it'd be better to frost the whole thing, which I did. By the way, at the beginning of this whole episode I had put the cake on a piece of waxpaper on a plate and was planning to move it to the cakeplate off the waxpaper when all was said and done. (Again, should have known better than to care about appearance!!) As I go to move the cake to the cakeplate, I put it on the cake plate, and then pull out the wax paper. At this point, approximately 1/3 of the bottom layer pulls out right along with the wax paper!!!

Dangit again. But, it was as done as it was going to get, so I turned the now sloping side to the back, put the lid on and stuck it in the corner, hoping to forget about it until supper.

When I had finished the cake, I had turned the oven up from 350 to 400. After the whole cake episode, I got ready to put the chicken tenders for my salad into the oven. However, at that point, I discovered that my oven was now at 300 degrees, not 400. I thought it was because I bumped the dial, so I waited another 20 minutes, and still the oven was cooler. It appeared that my oven was broken. (Still does, for that matter.) So, I microwaved the chicken, much to my chagrin.

Meanwhile, my pizza dough was rising, but I now had no way to bake it! So, the best I could do was to grill it. Not that this is bad. Grilled pizza is awesome, but it has a tendency to become a disaster when I do it. Either way, I had no choice. So I make my pizza dough into five 8-inch rounds and oil top and bottom and throw them on the grill. After grilling one side, I pulled them off, spread pesto on the grilled side and put tomato slices and mozzarella on top. Then I put them back onto the grill for a few minutes (baked side up). (Meanwhile, I'm trying to beat the dogs off with a stick. They LOVE it when I grill because they inevitably get a LOT of food from my sloppiness). It turned out fine, but it was a crazy afternoon :-)

More Ice Cream, Please!

For Memorial Day, Steve and I decided it was time for more homemade ice cream, so he/Darla made Butter Pecan, which was spot on in flavor and I made Mint Oreo. Good news. The mint Oreo is awesome!! I followed the same recipe as I did for the first foray into ice cream making, but with the following changes:

-Instead of 1 1/2 T. vanilla, I put in 2 t. vanilla and 2 t. mint extract.
-I left out the almond extract.
-After the ice cream freezer stopped, I mixed in (by hand) 2 rows of crushed Oreos.

So good!!

For good measure, I also busted out one of my favorite summer recipes:
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
1/2 c. butter or margarine
1/2 c. oil
1 3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. cocoa
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
2 c. grated zucchini
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. chocolate chips
1/4 c. chopped nuts

Cream butter, oil, and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, and cocoa. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Fold in grated zucchini. Pour into greased 9x13 pan. Mix brown sugar, chocolate chips and nuts and sprinkle on top of batter. Bake at 325 for 40-50 minutes until cake tests done in the center.