Day 228

Made this cake for a friend's goung away.  It's not the prettiest but it took only 3 hours to make from scratch to leaving for the party so not too shabby considering time restraints. And a big thanks to my fella for being a great sous otherwise it would've taken me like 5 hours ( I get distracted easily and usually end up scorching white chocolate)
It's a white chocolate cake with a rose buttercream frosting.  Everyone tought it was tasty.  Next time I'll use rose extract instead of water.  The water  ( even after putting in ~6x what the recipe called for) gives too subtle a flavor.  
This was my first time making a buttercream.  I think there will more of this in my future once the weather cools down some.  I iced the cake and the fella did the decorations.  
Hope you're having a great day. 

Day 198: Plantains galore

I made an upside-down plantain gingerbread cake for some friends' going party.  

DELICIOUS.  

I actually made this cake 3 times 9 days.  I even forgot the butter one time and it still came out well.  I have every intention of perfecting this recipe and making it as often as possible :). 

I made a lame washi tape label for the cake so that I did not have to explain what it was a dozen times. 

For the party, I was feeling pretty funky that day (I'm pretty sure I brought some frenemies back from my trip) and needed a little pick me up. 

So I whipped up this Plantain shirt from Deer and Doe (FREE pattern here). 

I used fold-over elastic (FOE) for the neck binding.  It was the first time I've ever used FOE and while it was not perfect I think it came out pretty well. I also did not hem this shirt at all; another reason to love sewing with knits. It fits well and the tissue knit and the drapey shape are great for the summer heat and will be great for layering in the fall/winter.  Promise I'll take more detailed photo and share. 

Day 147

So I have a tendency to hoard fruit (anyone else have this problem? ).  This meant that I purchased way too many apples awhile back and wasting food is something I'm working on; so instead of giving all the apples to the worms, I made this delicious apple torte.  It has a dense cakey bottom, a cheesecake filling, and is topped with apples and toasted almonds.  

I think this might become one of my regulars.  I mixed it all by hand with forks and it still came out like a dream.  

P.S. torte is better than cake imho

P.P.S. Are all little kids adverse to eating toasted almonds?

Day 117

Most delicious breakfast.   I made this strawberry-mulberry pie with the little mamas.  They even did the lattice :)

It's the same as the mulberry pie recipe but with 4 cups of mulberries and 2 cups strawberries and lemon instead of grape fruit.   I also reduced the sugar by a quarter cup and used light brown sugar. 

 This one was definitely on the sweeter side as far as pies go.

 

Day 114

Mulberry pie.   Recipe here. 

Mulberry Pie

Recently, I went foraging for the first time.  

We got 10 cups of Mulberries!!!

So I thought a pie would be a great use of all these lovely babies.  

What you will need (for one pie)

5 cups of mulberries
1 grapefruit
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of all purpose flour
1 tsp of vanilla
your favorite pie crust

The fun part

1. De-stem and wash your mulberries.  

2. Squeeze half of a grapefruit over the mulberries (let's say 1 tablespoon)

3. Mix the sugar, flour, and vanilla in with the mulberries. 

4. Roll out your favorite pie crust.  And Dump in the pie filling 

5. Top in your favorite manner.  I chose to do hearts. 

6. Bake at 400F for 35-40 minutes.

7. Let cool completely, cut yourself a slice, and enjoy. 

Rainbow cake

So in order to reign in spring this is what I made

I used skewers (that I was too nervous to cut to hold it up) 

Rainbow Cake

It's not the most original idea but I thought it would be fun to do.  It was :)

Next time I make a cake over three layers, I'll use dowels.  By the end of the cake cutting it was the leaning tower of rainbow cake (might have also helped to even out the layers but it was 2300h when I assembled and crumb coated it).  Didn't seem to matter much to everyone else *shrug*.  

Would I do it again?...yep.
Were people concerned about what I put in it to get the bright colors (only food dye)?...yep.
Did people like it?...yep
People were oddly particular about what colors they wanted to eat and purple was the first to go.

Anyway, happy spring.
(also now I wish it was socially acceptable to plan other peoples' kids birthdays so I could throw a rainbow themed party)

-Nique

Food

Well all this nice weather makes me want to be super productive (and apparently super hungry)

batter for raspberry muffins

fruit bread

plum + nectarine cake

raw kale

kale chips

mushroom 

Day 53

My non-traditional dobos torte :)

-Nique

Dobos torte

Dobos (the s is pronounced with a sh sound) torte (e sounds like a long a) is a traditional Hungarian cake.   It's very showy having 6-9 layers of thin cake

  

My lovely friend requested one for her birthday.  So since I've never made a cake with confectioners sugar in the batter nor cut up sheet cakes for layering,  I made a practice cake.  Thank goodness I did.   This is my first"nailed it" ever.   At least out was only in appearance and not in taste.  

I followed smitten kitchen's (photo above), with a helpful forward ( that I must've read at least a dozen times before attempting). It seemed if she can do It in a tiny kitchen I can do it. It did NOT go well. Initially it was going well.  The batter is fussy needing lots off mixing die to all the eggs, but even with the wrist handicap,  it came out well.  The batter was thick and I made sure to take my time with the eggs.   But alas, the cake got "pre-boiled" a bit.  (Someone turned on the wrong burner on the stove.) Then the cake still took like 15 minutes to bake instead of 5 as the recipe indicated.  Then it was a nightmare getting it of the wax paper.  So this is what my Dobos torte came out.   However,  after being set in the fridge for a day it does have pretty layers (albeit with some inconsistencies ) and everyone thinks it tastes delicious. 

Although I don't think I'll be making this cake batter again anytime soon, the icing is a keeper for sure with half a pound of sugar and butter. :)  

Day 44

May have gone a bit over board getting ready for vday.  

Cookies : chocolate chip, peanut
Brownies
Cupcakes: chocolate with vanilla icing

And sprinkles. 

-Nique

Day 41

Made a carrot cake- cheesecake.   Recipe here.  

  Instead I used a tried and true recipe and kept with the danish-esque filling.    (I think adding pineapple makes it a hummingbird cake)  also did it sans icing.  

 

It tastes pretty delicious.  

I think we have a birthday cake :)

-Nique 

 

Day 10

All week, it felt like a brownies for Friday type of week...but when I woke-up obnoxiously colorful funfetti cupcakes seemed like the better choice.  

Being the first week of classes I thought it would be nice to be a little more festive than white cream cheese icing.

 So I dyed the icing orange (3:1 yellow:red ratio) and tried out some rosette pattern using a handy dandy and now recyclable ziploc bag.   (Obviously I needed some practice, but I think I got the hang of it by the end)

Yummy sugary goodness

So after the cupcakes were eaten, we went to La Tienda.  So good :)

chips and guacamole 

I love lime :)

tasty meaty nachos

 The fella had a quesadilla and apparently they have amazing scallop tacos.

~~~Soooooo, on a side note, there are three  (yes, 3) dictionary acceptable ways of pronouncing scallop.  English can be strange and mystical at times)

-Nique

Day 6

So, school's back in session and it's been some the coldest days of the year here in FL. It's pretty entertaining to see undergrads in their lack of preparation/need to show skin.

But I did have a great time heating my place with my oven.
I made some banana bread based on this banana bread.  Only I didn't follow the directions.
I used splenda ( I somehow ran out of regular sugar) and added an extra 1/4 cup.
I used extremely rip bananas-like the kind that mash with almost not effort.  And excluded the walnuts.  I had no desire to take out my stand mixer so I fudged the directions so that I could manage without having to use my other hand for anything but holding the bowl.  So I mixed all of the ingredients- making sure to crack the eggs in a colored bowl to make sure that I could see any shell flakes.  Also, I used sea salt (because I also ran out of that), I've done it in waffles before; surprisingly, it does not effect the flavor/texture of things.   (I know that Alton wouldn't approve, but meh. ) While I was doing that, I melted the butter- in a mug in a skillet on the stove (sadly I do not have a microwave).  After mixing everything together, I added the melted butter and mixed everything for a few minutes to make sure the flour was well incorporated.  I would maybe cook it for 5-10 minutes less than indicated, as mine had quite a thick layer of crust on it.  --The fella really liked it, and I had some with chocolate ice cream :).  Well at least I can now officially say that I've made banana bread.
While the bread was in the oven.  I made some delicious jasmine tea... And some one pot pasta. So this was definitely one of those things I'd never heard of until Pinterest.  I used this as a general outline.  I did not follow directions since I like crispier veggies in something like this.   After letting the pasta cook, we strained it and I added some bell peppers in the pasta so they could cook some.  After a few minutes I added the spinach and tomatoes so the spinach could soften some.  For plating I added the mozzarella and avocado.  I know that this might sound like a strange combo, but really, it was a good mix.  ( I may or may not have added to much cayenne making the pasta mostly inedible-but the rest was very good).

All in all, it took about an hour to get all this done, which was great, seeing as I have this problem with taking on way too much .

Hmmmm, maybe I should actually whip out my camera camera for things like this.

-Nique