First, the groom’s cake:

Four-layer Red Velvet cake with vanilla buttercream (groom doesn’t like cream cheese frosting on RVC); dimensions ended up 6.5″ x 9″ x 6.5″

See, the groom’s a big game player (they even met at a meetup dedicated to geeks), and these are some of his favorite games.  My husband did the graphic design work to make the images, and then I had them printed on rice paper at the local harris-teeter.  Jeff also made the Catan printouts for the base for me.  He’s so fabulous!

The Wedding Cake

3 tiers

Top tier: Italian Cream Cake (6″)

Second tier: Chocolate Butter Cake with Chocolate ganache (and a touch of Frangelico) (8″)

Third tier: Lemon-Raspberry cake (based on Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake) (10″)

All covered in vanilla buttercream (also from Dorie’s party cake recipe).

Homemade gumpaste hydrangeas. (Best.  Tutorial.  Ever.)

Homemade cake toppers (by the bride’s eldest daughter), non-edible.  But amazing!  And yes, they’re from the movie UP!  Incl. the dog.  And if you look at the purple hydrangeas closely, you’ll find a squirrel  here’s a closer look:

No interior shots, as the caterer who cut the cake sort of butchered it.  But still, tasty cake!  Everyone loved it.

Many congratulations and well wishes to the fabulous bride and groom!

Action wedding shot of the cake-maker (with glowing tiara, no less!):

(This is the beginning of a series of pictures of me starting to sing along with a song, which I am thankfully sparing you, both visually and auditorially).

Yesterday was the official opening of a new pie-based restaurant in Raleigh, so of course we were there!

(How could we miss out on a place whose motto is, “Our mission is to make and sell the finest quality all natural pies in Raleigh and beyond.”?)

Finding it was pretty simple – they’re on Person St, just north of Peace St, across the street from the Krispy Kreme (so on the E side of the street).  There appeared to be plenty of street parking in the evening.

We arrived around 6pm, at which point they were out of quite a few things (most appetizers, the quiche, and all hand pies, darn it), but there was still plenty to try.

We were seated quickly by a friendly person.  The decor is bright and cheerful, sort of a retro-kitschy feel (as the logo above embodies).  Our seat towards the back had a nice view along the side wall towards the front:

It’s still a bit bare-bones (some art on the bare brick walls would liven it up a little), with a bright, clean feel to it.

The menu had us drooling; I decided on the Mushroom Tart, while my companion had the Madras Curried Vegetable Pot Pie.  Both came with a side – we each chose salads, mine with balsamic vinaigrette, his plain (no dressing).

There were some opening-night bobbles in the service – it took a long time for us to get drinks, even longer for our salads and entrees to arrive (we got several rounds of a card game in between drinks and salads), and we watched the ice cream on our dessert pie melting away at the back for a good five minutes before we were able to alert our server that they were ready (when she came to apologize for the wait).  However, the staff were friendly and obviously trying hard, and I imagine they’ll get staffing and efficient service sorted out soon enough.

So, how was the food?

In a word: excellent!

Salads:

The salad was mixed greens, cucumber, tomato, and a bit too much red onion.  Perfectly fine.

Curried Madras Vegetable Pot Pie:

Came with a delicious raita and mango chutney.  I found the filling a bit uninspiring (sort of reminds me of English-style curry), but it also had no peppers, which is a plus for me.  And sweet potatoes, yum!

My dish, however, totally won on flavor (Mushroom tart):

Wild mushrooms and delicious caramelized onions on a pie crust base (yum!), with herbs and whatnot..  Very rich and deliciously yummy.  It was hard to share, even though we’d agreed

And of course we had to try dessert pies.  I got cherry:

Which inexplicably had powdered sugar sprinkled on it.  (?)  Now, I’m from Michigan (where cherries are grown), so I’m a bit particular about my cherry pie.  So when I say that this was nothing special, that’s not to say it was bad.  Just that it wasn’t… anything special.

My dining companion, however, totally won with the Apple-Crumble pie served with locally-made ice cream:

More inexplicable powdered sugar, this time with cinnamon (tasty!).  The ice cream, as you see, was a bit melted by the time we got the pie at the table, but still tasty.  The granola-crumble topping was fabulous.  Yummy!

We also got a coconut-cream pie to go, but haven’t heard back yet from its recipient how it was.  Looked yummy, though:

Total bill came to less than $50 including tip for two entrees w/sides, drinks (non-alcoholic, I think their license isn’t active yet?), and desserts, plus a takeout slice of pie.

Verdict: totally tasty, some service wobbles that I imagine will improve, and did I mention tasty pie?  We’ll definitely go there again.

Can’t wait to test it out…

Apple-Basil Cake

So, the herb garden continues to chug along, making huge quantities of basil and rosemary and mint and other wonderful baking herbs.

This week I wanted to try something a little more unusual.  I pulled out last week’s book (Desserts from an Herb Garden, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett) and found this recipe on the page right after Lemon-Rosemary Cream Cake.  Fate!

The recipe uses oil for the fat – the first time I made it, I used all Canola oil, but the second time I was running low so I substituted half of it with unsweetened applesauce – something I often do to cut down on fats, plus it’s not like more apple flavor is going to hurt this cake!

Oh, and I sprinkled toasted pecan pieces in the bottom of the pan after I had spray-coated it – the crunch was a nice counterpart to the richness of the cake and the glaze.  And I added a teaspoon of Ceylon Cinnamon to the batter itself, because I think Cinnamon and Apples and Basil all go together.

A closer look at the glaze. Yum!

This cake is moist and dense.  Very flavorful – mostly apple with the occasional bright sparkle of basil.  It freezes well, and I imagine it’ll ship well (I’ll find out!  The second cake is getting shipped to Rhode Island after I freeze it).  My sweetie and I were having people over for dinner, so to dress it up for dessert I made a quick cream caramel sauce (infused with cinnamon stick) and added some Dulce de Leche Gelato.  Ohhhhh, my goodness.  That stepped it up from “really darned tasty” to “OMG; to die for”.

All dressed up for dinner...

What would you pair with it?

Apple-Basil Cake

from Desserts from an Herb Garden, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett

CAKE

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

2 Tablespoons (packed) minced cinnamon basil or sweet basil leaves

1 1/4 cups vegetable oil, preferably canola oil (can use half oil and half unsweetened applesauce)

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups unpeeled, coarsely chopped cooking apples, such as Granny Smiths

1/2 cup toasted pecan pieces [optional]

GLAZE

3 TB unsalted butter

3 TB packed light brown sugar

3 TB granulated sugar

3 TB heavy cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 325F.  Pan-coat a 10-inch removable-bottom tube pan. [Note: you'll want this - the cake sticks like mad] Sprinkle about 1/2 cup of toasted pecans in the bottom of the pan, if you’re using.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.  Whisk in basil leaves until thoroughly dispersed in the flour; set aside.  In a large bowl, beat together oil and sugar on low speed.  On medium speed, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add vanilla and beat on high for 30 seconds.  On low speed, add flour mixture and beat just ’til blended.

Fold in apples; spread batter in prepared pan.  Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

Just before the cake is done, make glaze: Over med heat, melt butter in a small saucepan and whisk in both sugars, cream, and vanilla.  Boil glaze for 1 minute.

When the cake comes out of the oven, immediately pour the hot glaze over.  Let cake cool completely on a rack before removing from pan.  To remove from pan, run a knife around the edge to release it, then run a think knife between cake and pan bottom; invert to release and invert again to place on platter, so glaze side is up.

12 to 16 servings.

A few years back, I acquired an interesting-looking little cookbook called Desserts from an Herb Garden.  It tempted me with a wide range of really unusual-sounding combinations and categories (it covers cookies and candies, cakes, pies, crisps, custards, puddings, frozen desserts, and plated desserts).

The librarian in me loves that it has two indexes – your usual index at the back that lists everything by name and ingredients, and a “Recipes Listed by Herb” index up front – fantastic when I’ve got an abundance of one particular herb and want to find something to use it up.

I hadn’t actually baked anything from it until this year – chalk it up to substandard herb gardens since we’ve moved to the new house (3 years ago, sigh), or just forgetfulness… but I’ve gotten it out twice in the last week, and the results have been fantastic!

The first thing I tried was the Lemon-Rosemary Cream Cake, which came out like a dream.  The cake uses cream for the fat and no butter at all, which gives it a really light airy texture – almost like an angel-food cake, but without the stickiness.

(One taster commented that it was the first homemade cake he’d ever had that reminded him of the texture of store-bought cakes (rather than being dense and very moist).  He loved it, so I can forgive him the comment and take it in the spirit it was intended.  :)

Next week, the Apple-Basil Cake.  Mmmm.

Lemon-Rosemary Cream Cake
from Desserts from an Herb Garden, by Sharon Kebschull Barrett.

Cake Ingredients:
2 cups bleached all-purpose flour (I used Lily’s White)
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt (I used Trader Joe’s sea salt)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon minced rosemary leaves
1 Tablespoon minced lemon verbena or lemon zest (I used lemon balm, because I have lots of it and no verbena – next year!)
1/2 cup nonfat or low-fat buttermilk (I used Maple View Dairy’s buttermilk, they’re a local dairy that makes exceptional products)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream (Maple View, again)

Glaze Ingredients:

1 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tablespoon half-and half or milk
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease and flour (or pancoat) a 10-cup Bundt pan.

Whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and rosemary and lemon verbena leaves; set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk and vanilla; set aside.  In a large bowl, beat eggs on medium speed with sugar until thick; batter should fall in a ribbon when beaters are lifted.  With mixer on low speed or by hand, alternately mix in flour nad buttermilk mixtures, beginning and ending with flour.  Mix just until combined.

In another bowl with clean beaters, beat cream until stiff peaks form; gently but thoroughly fold into batter.  Pour batter into prepared bundt pan and smooth the top.  Bake for 45 minutes, until the top just springs back when pressed.  Cool 10 minutes in the pan on a rack, then turn cake out onto rack to cool completely.

Transfer cake to a serving platter and glaze: Whisk together confectioners’ sugar, half and half, and lemon juice and drizzle over cake.

Note: I totally skipped glazing, and while the cake would have been stupendous with the glaze, it was just fine without – lightly sweet and delicately perfumed with the taste of the herbs inside.  Yummy!

Bilbo! Frodo! the Ring!

The top layer (aka Hobbit Hole) was Vanilla butter cake filled with a layer of Apricot preserves and frosting.  The bottom layer was chocolate with strawberry filling (local strawberries, frozen and saved from last summer).  The frosting was ‘buttercreme’ (not real), because it holds up at room temp even when it’s hot, and kids don’t care.  And it’s sweet.  The door, paving stones, and chimney stones are made from white chocolate (colored), and everything else except Frodo and Bilbo are frosting.

Yes, those are Elvish runes. It says "Happy Birthday Fiona. Eleven years."

Yes, I added an inscription in Elvish.  Because I could.

Wouldn’t you?

The cake will fit in.  It’s for a birthday party that’s Hobbit-themed (the party favors are copies of the book even).  The kid is a geek.  The parents are geeks.  They were thrilled when I dropped it off. 

And, so you all can see how long it’s been since I actually made flowers, a flower closeup (don’t take my Wilton license away!):

Nobody tell my old cake decorating teacher, okay? I'll lose that "A".

In my continuing efforts to deal with the “no dairy, no soy” dietary restrictions, I’m always on the lookout for desserts that  I can both eat without guilt, and with pleasure.  So when I saw this on the shelf at my local Harris-Teeter, I picked it up.

The ingredients are thus: Sugar, Non GM corn syrup, cocoa processed with alkali, natural cocoa, carob bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan.

It’s 99% fat free, has no dairy, uses no soy (yay!), is gluten-free, and the calorie count is reasonable for a snack (120 calories for a 1/2 cup serving, 5 of them from fat). (More info about the company and their products here.)

So, how did it taste?

Obviously, the lack of butterfat means that it doesn’t taste like ice cream.  No getting away from that.  But the chocolate flavor is rich (although with a hint of that weird plastickiness that I associate with carob – this isn’t belgian chocolate, folks, and doesn’t pretend otherwise), and the sorbet is creamy and has good mouthfeel.

Honestly, the closest thing I can say that this comes to in flavor/texture is the Fudgesicle Fudge Pops – remember those?

Mind you, I like fudge pops.  So for me, having an entire tub of solid fudgepop isn’t a bad thing, but ymmv.

I’ve been reading the Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy blog for a little over a year now, and being in love with her writing (and recipes!), picked up a copy of her book a few months ago.  I read through it when I first got it (something I usually do with new cookbooks – I love reading them just like books), but while I kept meaning to make something from it, I just kept getting distracted by old favorites.  Which also explains the paucity of posts lately

A few weeks ago, however, I had some extra bananas to use up,  picked up the book to see if there was anything interesting in it, and found this recipe.

It looked fantastic, so I made it (and took the excuse to use one of my new spiffy Bundt pans obtained on sale this winter), and Oh My God.  It really was fantastic.  The outer layer of rum-soaked cake became this sticky, crusty incredible goodness (we won’t even talk about the pecan layer on top), while the inside banana cake, which was soft and creamy right after baking (you think we waited for this to cool completely?  Ha!) becomes dense and creamy after you let the cake cool.  And if you throw the leftovers in the fridge?  Oh my goodness.  It is soooo good.  We even threw the last piece in the freezer (double-wrapped), and when I thawed it back out and ate it, it was still perfectly wonderful.

The book itself is a joy to use – recipes are clearly and beautifully laid out, instructions are easy to follow, and the book itself is a visual treat.  I highly recommend it.

So this cake is an excellent one for cake stands, leftovers, etc.  Bakesales, you name it.  It holds up well, the flavors just get more rich after the first day, and it’s sooo good.

If only real cathedrals tasted this nice

So while we had friends over to play cards, I made it again – this time using my new mini-bundt pans (I cut the recipe in half, which made me six mini-bundts and one leftover tart-pan’s worth of batter).  Still amazing, amazing, amazing.  I took one to my sweetie for lunch at work, and he wrote to tell me that he was still tasting it on his tongue hours later.

Another cute little bundt shape

Bahama Mama Banana Rum Cake

from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor

Dark Rum Glaze:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark [I used dark] brown sugar
1/2 cup dark rum

Combine the butter, water, and sugars [but not the rum!  I did this the second time and had to double the rum, oh noes] in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.  Immediately reduce the heat to medium-low nad simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat and stir in the rum.  Set aside and keep warm.

The Cake:

1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, toasted [I ran out halfway through and used walnuts as well, which worked just fine]

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar [I used dark]
5 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (about 3 medium)
2 tsps pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons dark rum [I use Myers Dark]
3 cups bleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle.  Spray a 10-cup tube pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Sprinkle the pecans in the bottom of the pan.  Set aside.  [note: Yes, the pecans make quite a deep layer on the bottom of the pan.  It will all work out, I promise.]

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat togethe rthe butter and sugars until the mixture is light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Beat in mashed bananas, vanilla, and rum.  Sift the flour, baking osda, baking powder, and slat over the batter and fold in using a rubber spatula, just until no streaks of flour remain.  Fold in the sour cream.  Spoon the batter over the nuts in the pan and spread to the ede of the pan using the back of the rubber spatula.

Bake until a wooden skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out with no more than a few moist crumbs clinging to it, 60 – 80 minutes.  [For the smaller bundts, it took around 30 minutes] Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes.  Use a wooden skewer to poke holes all over the cake and pour 1/4 cup of the warm glaze over the cake.  Let the cake cool for 5 minutes more.  Place a serving platter over the pan and invert to release the cake onto the platter.  Spoon the remaining glaze over the cake, a little at a time, and let stand until the glaze is completely absorbed into the cake.  If the glaze starts to pool at the base of the cake, use a small metal spatula to spread it up and around the sides of the cake.  As the glaze hardens, this will encase the cake in a rummy, sugary shell.

[Let's just dwell on that phrase for a moment, shall we?  Rummy, sugary shell.  Yummmmmmmm.]

Let the cake cool comp;letely before cutting into wedges and serving.  [Ha!  I can say that when warm/hot, this cake is almost like banana bread pudding.  It's so awesome.  Don't deny yourself.] Will last 2 to 3 days if covered well.  And if your house contains only one person, or somebody who has no taste buds.  Otherwise, don’t plan on saving any.  It’s that darned good.

Yummy!

A little while ago, I made a birthday cake for someone to have at their “Free Cake Day” party (not wanting to have a Birthday Party, or really celebrate their birthday in general – I know!  How odd.)

I’d recently acquired Rose Beranbaum’s newest cake book (Heavenly Cakes), and wanted to make something from that . I settled on Woody’s Lemon Luxury Layer Cake (page 43), because the lemon flavor seemed bright and cheery, and I hadn’t really done anything interesting with white chocolate in a while.  Plus, I wanted to try out my new transfer sheets.

The cake is a lemon butter cake, baked in two 9″ layers that are split and filled with homemade lemon curd (Rose’s fabulous recipe, that works like a charm and tastes amazingly zingy).

The white chocolate lemon buttercream was the real surprise in this recipe.  The technique Rose calls for is one that I’d never come across before – essentially, you make a white chocolate custard, cool it, beat in butter and then beat until stiff peaks form – and then leave it at room temperature for up to 2 hours until “slightly thickened and spongy”.  Then you beat until smooth, and beat in the lemon curd.

Why the fermentation period?  The buttercream was smooth and creamy and tasty – everything you want – but I can’t quite figure this one out.  It’s easier, overall, than doing either French or Italian buttercream, but you have to have those two hours of downtime.  Does anyone know what’s going on, here?

In any case, the cake and buttercream both came out delicious, I put it all together and decorated with white chocolate shards, and served with either raspberry or blackberry cabernet sorbet.  The not-birthday-boy and his friends/family were highly pleased; very little of this cake was left after the party!  Another hit, Rose.

Time for another Chocolate and Wine tasting night at the Hope Valley Bottle Shop! (Located in the Woodcroft shopping center, SW Durham)

This Monday, February 8th, 5:30-7:30pm.

Come try the Valentine’s Day lineup!