Happy 4th of July!

Lots of red, white, and blue food has been circulating around the Internet lately ahead of the holiday. I saw some cute dipped strawberries with white chocolate and blue sugar, but nothing really caught my imagination until I saw a marbled red, white, and blue cake. It seemed simple but fun to make. Here's the original recipe from Tablespoon. Frankly, it's more of a process than a recipe, because the original relies on a box cake mix and store-bought frosting. That's just not how I roll these days though. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in those pints of frosting? It's a lot more than butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt, let me tell you.

Anyway, based on my desire to make this cake (and, more importantly, for saving our bacon during the recent power outage), I invited my BFF Amanda and her boyfriend Brandon over to cook out on the 4th. I made hamburgers, roasted rosemary potatoes, sangria, and, of course, "firecracker" cake. I wanted to get some sparklers for the top, but I just didn't get it done. The original was in a bundt pan, and I don't own one yet, so I used a regular cake pan instead.

my firecracker cake interpretation

What I learned is that it takes a whoooole lotta food coloring to color cake batter (and frosting) a strong red and a strong blue. Because I was rushing a little, and because I didn't realize it would take SO much food coloring, my cake came out a little more tribute to the '80s than a tribute to America. A little more pink than red, really. But, it tasted great, so that's what really matters. I used an amazing frosting recipe that I got from my college friend Lauren's blog, which is great- she's such a foodie. Her recipe is for whoopie pie filling, but it made enough to frost the 12-inch cake with a little bit left over. This is some of the best frosting I've ever made or eaten, so you should try it for your next dessert that requires frosting- cake, cookies, cupcakes, whatever.

a shot of the marbled interior

This would be fun in a number of colors for kids' birthdays, etc. based on the same principle of coloring white cake. Just be prepared for a lot of food coloring and a lot of stirring. 

Feeding Friendship: Strawberries

I was at the farmer's market a couple weeks ago when I smelled the fresh strawberries at a particular stand. Many sellers had strawberries, but only one smelled so amazing, so I had to buy some there. I decided to make a Martha Stewart recipe for strawberry cake to use them up and randomly decided to take pictures for the blog, so I was thrilled when Ellie chose strawberries as our ingredient.

These berries weren't the biggest, and many were shaped a little oddly, but they smelled and tasted great

So, at the risk of offending Ms. Stewart, I'm going to call this recipe "Strawberry Identity Crisis Cake" because it's a cake that seems like it should be a pie. It's made of fruit and baked in a pie pan, for Petey's sake! It should be pie! But it's not; it's delicious cake instead. Here are the ingredients:

6 Tbl unsalted butter, softened, plus more to grease pie plate

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup + 2 Tbl sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 lb. strawberries (I think 3/4 lb would be fine, I had extra) 

First you preheat your oven, then sift together dry ingredients, per her directions at the link above. Making your batter in a stand mixer makes it so easy.

butter, sugar & egg

At some point you'll need to hull and halve your berries, and I whipped out my new kitchen scale so I would know when I had a pound ready to go. I like this scale because it does metric weights too.

right on the nose!

Then you pour your batter into your buttered pie plate and arrange the berries on top. I thought mine came out pretty:

pretty pie

Then you add your last 2 tablespoons of sugar on top. This seemed a little excessive to me, and I actually scrimped on the sugar a little (!), but in hindsight, the sugar forms this awesome sort of crunchy layer on top that reminds me of the life-changing gooey butter cake, so you may want to go whole hog on the sugar here. 

ready for the oven

My cake was looking so pretty and at this point I wondered why the one in Martha's photo looked like kind of a mess. Turns out that the batter sort of bubbles up and covers the berries, so your pretty pattern isn't going to matter much in the end product. Oh well. Around and hour (and several toothpick stabs) later, I pulled the cake out of the oven. We ate it straight, but it would be very good with either whipped cream or vanilla ice cream (or both, I won't tell). Here's the finished product:

slice of strawberry heaven

 I brought a piece in for my coworker who is leaving to go work overseas (sniffle) because I got sick and missed baking for her going away party. I asked her how she liked the cake and she said, "What did you put in it, crack?" ;) She offered to be my first online customer if I every opened a bakery. So, despite its  confused semi-pie status, this is one tasty cake. I recommend it!

Feeding Friendship: Irish Fare

Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers! In honor of the upcoming holiday, Ellie chose Irish food as our theme this time around. The Irish food you'll find most typically in our house is soda bread. I usually make Grandpa McAndrew's recipe (someone's grandpa, but not mine) from AllRecipes.com and add 1/2 tsp of salt to it. It's a pretty dense bread though, so you might also want to try this recipe from a Martha Stewart staffer's mother. But I make that all the time, so I wanted to branch out for the blog this time. With a week out of town and the cold that ensued from air travel, I didn't have much baking time, but when I saw this recipe I knew it was perfect. I acknowledge that there is a low probability that actual Irish people invented this, or even eat this recipe often, but I am certain they would be in favor of it. It combines 3 of many people's favorite vices into one spectacular dessert: beer, coffee, and chocolate. Without further ado, I give you Chocolate (Extra) Stout Layer Cake.

I got this from Bon Appetit's website and it sounded like it was really interesting, so I went out and picked up some Guinness Extra Stout and dark chocolate. I didn't really mean to get extra stout beer, but that was the only Guinness I saw, so that's what I bought. Here is BA's ingredient list: 

Ingredients

cake

• 3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup chocolate stout, regular stout, or porter
• 2/3 cup freshly brewed strong coffee

frosting

• 1 pound bittersweet chocolate (54% to 60% cacao), chopped
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

I started out by chopping up my newly acquired unsweetened chocolate. This is not the kind you're going to want to sneak pieces of while chopping- it's pretty gross with no sugar added. 

Ghirardelli 100% cacao 

I threw that in a double boiler and melted it down so it would have time to cool. This is also a good time to put your butter for the frosting out on the counter to come to room temperature. 

Next, I did something really stupid. Have you ever been sick and you just can't get your brain back to 100% for a few days? I've definitely had a case of the stupids recently, and while I was grabbing the dry ingredients for the flour part of the cake mixture, I dumped the first cup of sugar in with the flour. Not good. You are supposed to beat the sugar with the butter separately from the flour. Sigh. So I beat the butter with the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar I didn't throw in the wrong bowl and hoped for the best. I did separate my eggs rather nicely though, so I have documented it for posterity. 

the beaten butter and not quite enough sugar

separated eggs 

Next you add in your egg yolks, one at a time, and then the melted chocolate. 

chocolate Rorschach test

Next it was time for some Guinness Stout and some strong coffee. I used hazelnut flavored coffee because I think it's yummy and am not a huge fan of regular coffee taste. 

As nearly every postcard in Ireland will tell you: Guinness is good for you! 

a little hazelnut french press brewing

After adding the liquids, my batter definitely got a little odd looking and sort of separated. This was fixed by adding the flour mixture and beating well with a hand mixer. 

Much better. I'll spare you the "before"

Next I put my egg whites in my stand mixer for a good beating. I used this time to watch a YouTube video from About.com on how to fold egg whites into batter successfully, never having done it before. I stopped when the whites had formed stiff peaks. 

a peak! 

Apparently the key is just to cut your batter in half with the spatula, turning it over gently, and gently combining the whites with the batter. 

folding in some egg whites

that's some light, fluffy stout batter!

The BA recipe calls for you to bake this in 2 9-inch cake pans and use parchment paper in the pans. In hindsight, I'm sure sure why the paper was necessary. It was convenient for lifting out the cakes to cool, but my paper was very stiff and make the sides of my cake uneven, reproducing the creases in the paper. If I did it again, I would just grease my cake pan well and forget the paper. In my convection oven on 350, the cake was done in 20 minutes, as opposed to 30 in a regular oven setting. 

no schmootz on the toothpick = done! 

While the cake was in the oven, I chopped up more semi sweet chocolate for the frosting and put the heavy cream on to simmer. You add the hot cream to the chopped chocolate, wait a minute, and then whisk until the chocolate is smooth. Observe: 

a mix of chopped baking pieces and chocolate chips

hot cream added

mmm...chocolatey

The recipe calls for espresso powder to be added to the cream. I didn't have any, and didn't want this to be a terribly coffee-flavored dessert, so I tipped in a little vanilla extract instead and called it a day. The frosting is still quite hot and very soupy at this point. I was making this fairly late and thought I might be able to frost the cake the same night I made it, so I put the frosting bowl in the freezer for about 45 minutes until it was a thick, frosting-like consistency. I ended up having to leave it covered in the fridge while I went to work anyway, since frosting a cake at midnight didn't seem like priority anymore, but the freezer trick works. I'll go ahead and say that this is definitely a frosting for those who like their chocolate bittersweet and their desserts not too sweet. I prefer the chocolate sour cream frosting I made at Christmas, but it never hurts to try something new. 

finally frosted! 

Guinness lurking in every bite!

the first piece

This is definitely a grown-up cake and you can tell that it isn't your standard cake mix cake. I kind of like it, and it would be perfect to serve in a pub, but it may not be everyone's favorite. 

Life-Changing Cake

Hello, readers. I wasn't going to blog this recipe. I got a recipe from a co-worker who said his wife had the best cake recipe ever. His family kindly gave me a wee recipe book at Christmas featuring this dessert. I hadn't made til about a week ago when same said coworker pestered me into making it for our staff meeting. All I can say is, "Whoa." The source of this recipe was never clear, and I wasn't sure if his wife was an evil genius or a resourceful Internet user. He said I shouldn't give it away to just anyone. However, I found what I think is the original source of this recipe, the well-known and somewhat fancy Momofuku Milk Bar in New York City. I tracked this recipe across the blogosphere in a couple of iterations from Wee Eats and Some Kitchen Stories.  However, I'm going to make a bold claim. These people are giving you bad advice and my version is BETTER. Ha, there, I've said it! Their recipe is for "bars" and you'll notice if you click the above link that the bars are distinctly darker on the bottom. Jake's wife took the recipe firmly into the cake realm, which I respect and appreciate, and I have kicked it up a notch using the easy yellow cake recipe from Mama J at A Little Bit Crunchy a Little Bit Rock 'n Roll (though she's doesn't give the amount of milk you should use) and by using more vanilla. Besides, who wants a 1" square bar unless you're at a party? That's just enough dessert to make this kid angry. 


So, here we go. I give you the recipe for what I'm going to christen Vanilla Gooey Butter Cake. Here's what you'll need to change life as you know it today:


for the cake

• 2 1/2 cups cake flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened and cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
• 3 eggs
• 1 Tbl vanilla
• 3/4 - 1 cup milk (2% or whole) 

for the gooey topping layer:

     8 oz cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat)

     2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg beaters) 

     4 cups confectioners sugar 

     1 tsp vanilla extract

Now preheat your oven to 350 F. Grease or Pam the bottom only of a 9x13 or 9.5 x 11 inch pan and set aside. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of your mixer. I used a fine-mesh sieve here instead of my hand-numbing sifter, so suit yourself. Add the sugar and butter and mix on low for about 1-2 minutes, until the mixture looks like relatively fine sand. 

In a large measuring cup, combine the eggs, milk, and vanilla. If you are using egg substitute like egg beaters, use 3/4 cup of milk, but if you're using actual eggs, kick the milk up to 1 cup. Beat lightly with a fork in the cup. 

With the mixer on low, pour about a cup of the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Turn the speed up to medium and beat for about a minute. Add the remaining mixture and beat on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping the sides as needed with a spatula. Pour your cake batter into your greased pan and set aside. 

Now for the gooey topping. Mix your cream cheese, eggs, and vanilla in a mixer or using an electric hand mixer until the lumps mostly subside. Add in your sugar slowly, mixing to incorporate each addition. When all sugar is incorporated and mixture is a consistent texture, pour over your cake batter in the pan. 

Bake for ~40 minutes, depending upon your oven and settings, until the top layer is ever so slightly brown and the sugar has formed a crisp layer. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out without cake batter when it's done, but will have goo on it from the topping. Like this: 

At this point your whole house will smell like vanilla heaven and you'll want to put your face in the cake, but it needs to be allowed to cool. Cool for a minimum of half an hour on your stovetop, or your goo will do this:

I was in a rush here to take some to a friend, so I cut it prematurely. However, these clowns on the Internet are telling you to put this cake in the freezer to make it easier to cut. For the love of all that is holy, do NOT do that! This cake will induce a foodgasm when eaten while still slightly warm, and unless you are foolishly cutting it into tiny pieces, there is no need to freeze! I cut it into roughly brownie-sized portions. This cake is a combination of yellow cake and a topping that has the best attributes of creamy frosting and crunchy creme brûlée topping. It is the kind of cake you think about all day. It is the kind of cake that lets you control others like puppets. Proceed with caution...and you can thank me later. 

This is the part where I normally put up a pretty photo of a piece on a plate, but this cake tends to disappear too fast, so you'll have to be content with another pan shot until I make it again.