I want to eat this.

Yum.

Short discussion: CALORIES vs. Desire to eat delicious things.

I don't count calories.  It's like a see-food diet.  I see food, I eat it.  I tend to eat fairly healthy, save all the delicious butter/sugar concoctions I'm always whipping up.  Scratch that - I don't always bake.  I cook too.  I also tend to buy fairly healthy food.  Except for Nutella.  That's not such a good addition to my regular grocery shopping list - but a girl needs her chocolate fix!

This reminds me...I have to try the honey trick.  (Vague, right?  Means you have to keep following the blog!)

If you're to live a full of delicious things life, you need some restraint.  I mean, I would not be happy if I was terribly overweight.  Plus, dessert is occasional, right?  Unless of course you're at my grandmother's house.  Then it's every night.  But visiting her is occasional...right?

This delicious plate of cheesecake pancakes is 1,250 calories.  Whoa!  That could be what I consume in a day.  But one should not give up this delicious opportunity!  Just approach with caution.  Bring a friend or something.

Who want's to go to IHOP?

Fucking Adorable

I'm going to make my children wear shirts like this:

A borrowed post from friend Karissa Chase, who also makes sweet things like this:

In fact, my cat Baby has this little squirrel dish and a bowl.  I'm so jealous that my cat gets to eat off this adorable plate!

For the Love of Frosting! Part Two

So, yeah, Lavender Frosting a hit!  The cake was delicious when I actually got to share & eat it.  White Chocolate is my new favorite ingredient.  It's a heavy pound cake consistency, probably because of all the butter.  Shared it in NOLA with Jen, Miss Anne, and Sam, our neighbor.  Thumbs up!  My experiment with frosting worked.

I have been home, back in RI for a week, a little over a week.  So far I have had several wonderful happenings.  Chris and I are officially, even on Facebook.  My busted wrist is broken but does not require surgery.  Interrobanging with the magazine has proved fruitful and we are close to finishing up the judgments for Issue 3.  I baked another cake.

Oh, yes.  I baked a cake.  With frosting.

I brought home a block of the Callebaut White Chocolate with intention on making another cake to share.  I did manage to share a little leftover Lavender Frosting with friends and family but really needed to make a cake to show off how delicious that white chocolate cake really is.

And I made it special for Chris' parents!  Dinner & dessert with his parents gave me an opportunity to show off / bake for new people.

In lieu of partying with the Battey kids at a drag-extravaganza at the Biltmore, Chris and I borrowed my parents house for the evening.  He made delicious gourmet pizza, tossed the dough like a true culinary artist, and made a tasty white pizza with basil, tomatoes, proscitto, and fresh motz and fancy parmesano reggiano.  Every single animal in the house (2 cats and 3 dogs) joined us at the dinner table and begged for bites.

The cake was similar to the last post, but this was a layer cake.  All the substitutions suggested I utilized this time around and I actually got to weigh the white chocolate.  I doubled it and made two 8" cakes.  Also - I threw in a package of fresh red raspberries.

The frosting this time around was white chocolate, using 2 oz. of the chocolate, melted in a double boiler  with 2 tablespoons of heavy cream.  2 drops red food coloring for pinkness to compliment the raspberries.  I also threw in another half stick of butter into the mix.  This made the frosting really hard when I stuck it in the fridge.  It also made it fucking delicious!

Best way to attack this cake, especially when there's other things to do with your significant other on an evening alone, is to prepare in steps.  Prep all the ingredients ahead of time - especially when you have to soften the butter and get the eggs at room temperature.  Assemble properly - see "For the Love of Frosting! Part One" - bake those cakes, make the frosting, and then wait for the cakes to cool overnight, refrigerate the frosting in tupperware.

Notes on cake baking.  A discovery!  Gas and Electric Stoves are different.  Duh.  My discovery was that electrics are a bit more efficient.  The cakes brown a lot more.  So I turned down the temp to 325 instead of 350.  Raspberries should be added just as carefully as the egg white/sugar mixture so I gently added those with the second half of that.  I thought that they might float within the cake, but they didn't, but that's OK.  They're still in there...

Notes on frosting.  I insisted to Chris that the flavors weren't balanced in the frosting.  He said it was fine.  (He also polished up the batter bowl with the eagerness of a 8-yr-old.)  I was afraid to add more sugar because that would make it too hard.  And it was really too much butter.  The solution came when I took it out in the morning to beat it in the Kitchen Aid (yes!  I got to use my parents' Kitchen Aid!)  I grabbed additional heavy cream and probably added 3-4 tablespoons to make it a little more workable.  Totally balanced the flavors!  Yeah intuition!

Frosting this layer cake was fun.  I didn't have to level the cakes because they were so heavy that they really flattened out overnight.  (PS- make sure you cover in plastic wrap to retain the moisture.)  The frosting is still thick and can sometimes tear the cake when you're spreading it.  After experimenting with a few utensils, I found a cheese spreader, the kind you would put out at a party for brie or other soft cheeses, did the trick.  I also managed a pretty pattern with it.  It took a long time to spread this frosting.  I licked my fingers a lot.  Mmmmm....breakfast.

The final touch to impress the parents was a trick I learned reading the Coffee and Chocolate Bible: making chocolate leaves.  I took additional white chocolate and spread it on the underside of three bay leaves, let it set in the freezer, then placed the decoration on the cake.  Pret-ty!  I used some strange utensil in a random drawer...might have been the other end of a fondue fork I think, but a paintbrush reserved for your kitchen should work better.

The final cake was beautiful!

And then I melted it.

Just a little end.  Note to anyone stupid enough to leave cake next to the vent on the stove.  DON'T DO IT!  Yeah...a corner of the cake got a little melted when I reheated pizza from the night before for lunch.  I couldn't fix it because the frosting was too soft.  I ended up just putting it in Chris's fridge later that day and shrugging my shoulders with an "O, well."  Funny short story - I discovered the mishap on my way down to the car for transport.  I freaked and accidently caught my finger in the front door on the way back to the kitchen to fix it.  When I realized I couldn't, I got flustered and attended to the finger.  I put it under cold running water and started crying. My father came in and said something along the lines of, "O!  Did you really hurt your finger?"  To which I replied, "No.  I'm crying because of the cake!"  The fact that I was wearing makeup and didn't want it to smudge got me to promptly stop crying.  Didn't want to look like a hot mess in front of the boyfriend's parents.  I am such a fucking girl sometimes.

To make a long story short, the cake was a hit.  I impressed the parents with the beautiful, slightly injured cake.  I brought it over to the Julias' house to share and visit with an upset Jules (men suck...except for mine) and make Jay a little jealous that I'm watching her puppy back in New Orleans grow up.  Brought the cake home for my sister and my parents.  Accolades all around.

One last warning about this delicious cake - it packs a punch of sweetness and calories that I realized after having two pieces in one night, getting a bit of an ache in the tummy.  It's really an occasional cake, as in, it better be for an occasion where calories and fat don't matter.  Some statistics post-bake & eat:

5 cups of sugar (well, 3 are confectioners...)
3 1/2 sticks of butter
6 oz of White Chocolate
4 eggs (that's not too bad.  I guess.)

Deca(dent-in-your-diet.)  Enjoy while your thighs are that much thinner.  You'll literally impress the pants off people with this cake.

For the Love of Frosting! Part One

OMG FROSTING!

I was never a fan.  I'm usually all about the cake.   I mean, I can't argue that I don't love butter and sugar blended together - my wayward finger is always tasting along the way - but frosting is another story.  It's usually overly sweet and a consistency that just doesn't cut it.  I like icing.  I even like whipped cream from time to time - but that in between space where frosting lives I've never been to keen.  You would most likely see me take a cake - your average store bought brand - and proceed to scrape off the frosting, maybe even give it to someone excited for more.

People really like frosting.

My friend Maggie once shared a bit of frosting from a cake that was flavored with the essence of a tropical flower - like an essential oil.  It was amazing!  My first guess was Earl Grey tea and the second Lavender.  This amazing discovery led me to the idea to experiment with frosting flavors - frosting that I would want to eat.

I had a shitty day - there was no reason to bake a cake.  I got the news that I need surgery on my wrist - it was kind of a backwards congratulations cake.  Or, an anti-depressant.  Whatever you want to call it.  I knew I could get happy by baking a cake.

I went to Whole Foods and bought happy foods (fancy cheese, olives, wine), lavender oil, and Callebaut white chocolate.  Went home hoping I had just enough eggs for a cake.

I did an AMAZING amount of research trying to find a white chocolate cake recipe that suited the ingredients I had available.  A lot of them out there have white chocolate "frosting" with a white cake.  Not what I was looking for.  Others had up to 12 eggs in them!  I had 2.  Also buttermilk - but upon some research, that's easy enough to make yourself.

So it took me about an hour to figure out all the substitutes for a single layer cake with "quick" buttercream frosting.  Now to baking...

YOU WILL NEED:

For the CAKE!

1 1/3 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 ounces imported white chocolate (make it fancy!) chopped
1/2 cup whipping cream, split in half
1/4 cup half and half*
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup sugar, split in half
2 large eggs, separated


For the FROSTING!

3 cups of powdered sugar
Stick of butter (I used half salted, half unsalted)
2-3 tablespoons half and half**
1 teaspoon vanilla extract    
2 drops of Lavender Oil (use with caution!)***

* I used half and half instead of milk because the whipping cream was only 30%.  You can substitute heavy whipping cream for the 30% and milk for the half and half in this recipe.

**I used half and half because there was no heavy cream left.  I used 3 tablespoons because this frosting can get hard to spread if too stiff.  The extra liquid helped.

***Use any essential oil with caution.  It can be dangerous in large amounts - it's distilled to shit!  A little goes a LONG way.



I was so excited for this cake.  I was so excited to bake.  I prep the pan (a 12" layer cake pan), I set the oven to 350.  Step one - melt chocolate and half the cream in a double boiler.

I have no idea how much 2 oz. of chocolate is.  This kitchen must have a scale.  So I go a-searching.  I open one cabinet and BAM!  A glass falls and smashes right in front of me scattering glass everywhere - on the floor, on the counter, in my prepped pan, in my prep bowls: motherfucker.  Good thing I love fucking baking.  The setback and time spent cleaning was a bother, but fuck it!  I need to make this cake and I'm going to make this cake.  However, I have not found a scale.

Plan two - melt chocolate and measure out 2 oz.  It's not the same - but it will do.

I'm melting chocolate and the phone rings - it's Chris!  However, I am in full baking mode and I cannot pay attention to anything he's saying - updating me on Rhode Island's Great Flood of 2010.  Tasting that chocolate is amazing.  I'm usually the darkest of the dark chocolate girl, but a good white chocolate is so creamy and delicious.  The other funny thing is my eyeballing technique worked.  I actually melted exactly 2 oz. of chocolate.  Awesome!

We part ways on the phone.  Multitasking is not wise when baking.  I call him later wishing he was here to share.  I wanted to show off my kitchen talent after his amazing dinners prepared while visiting in March.  Eh.  He went home with banana bread.

Back to baking - Add half the cream to the chocolate.  Blend them together.  Then add the rest of the cream, the half and half, and the vanilla.  Do stick your finger in to taste.

Now grab an electric mixer - one of those hand held dealies work best.  It's hard to blend some ingredients by hand.  Especially when you have to beat eggs into submission.  You can blend butter and sugar together with a spatula but for a light fluffy cake - you need a mixer to beat those eggs.

Take half the sugar and the butter and whip until fluffy.  This shit can fly if you don't use a big bowl and take it easy on the power levels so be careful.  Then beat in the egg yolks.  Add that and the chocolate liquid deliciousness to your sifted dry ingredients and get to those egg whites.

Whipping egg whites is fun.  It's chemistry at work.  Watching this yellow-clear liquid fluff to white meringue with a little help from sugar is so cool!  This step sort of takes a lot of beating but you'll get a light fluffy cake out of it.  My wrist was thankful Miss Anne had a really nice Hamilton Beach mixer.  When it's stiff but (as one recipe said) still wet, incorporate it gently into the batter in two steps.

Stick it in the over - in the center so it's as even as possible.  I lost track of how long it took.  I had dinner and made frosting in the time it took to bake it.  Just be aware and watch.

OK so frosting - this is all about the frosting, right?  I've been babbling about cake making and all you frosting lovers have been sufficiently teased.  READY!  Easiest fucking recipe for frosting.

I suggest you blend the butter and powdered sugar with your hands.  (Or I used one hand.  The left one.)  Powdered sugar is easily airborne.  I learned this my Senior year of high school at CHS when the boys had the brilliant idea to use powdered sugar for their rendition of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" for some spirit week competition.  The entire auditorium tasted like sugar.  It floated like a cloud and put sugar over everything!

Their reason?  Because it was sexier.  It's a great memory.  There are pictures in the 2002 CHS yearbook you can check out if you can get your hands on one.

Once it looks like a paste, add the liquids and start blending.  You can even use food coloring to make it purple if you want.  I did.  One drop blue, 2 drops red.  Use a spoon to drop the oil on to before putting it in.  If more than 3 drops gets into your frosting it's no longer good.  Too much.  Be careful.  Your carefulness will be rewarded with one of the most delicious things you may ever put in your mouth.

I was instantly converted into loving frosting.  This is my first blog post where I implore you - if not the cake than at least the frosting.  It's so different and tasty I couldn't help myself.  The cake wasn't done.  So I just licked my fingers for a while.  Veritable. Culinary. Orgasm.

Took the cake out, let it cool.  Had a cigarette and a couple of glasses of wine.  Prepped the cake for frosting but sticking some squares of tin foil under the edges so when I took them out there wouldn't be crap on the pretty cake plate I found.  Mini spatula did the trick.

It's so pretty!  I can't eat it.

And then I had no one to share this cake with.  Called up a friend but by the time the cake was finished it was almost 10:30 at night.  I will eat it tonight and let you know how it all turned out.  As I said before, I'm usually all about the cake.  I am so looking forward to marrying my old love of cake to my new love of frosting.