This is the first episode of Baking with the Director the companion series to SiftingRealities (my web series) and my YouTube debut.
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Speaking of Birthday Cake…
My sister, Heather, requested the following cake for her birthday this past weekend: strawberries with a light chocolate cake and no icing. I quickly informed her that cake WAS heavy and that I couldn’t possibly make a cake without icing, but I could try a glaze instead of some crazy thick cream cheese icing (which would be MY preference, of course. For me cake is just a delivery system for icing.)
So here is the result in pictures:
The strawberry layer looks super thick here, but really soaked into the cake by the time I served it (with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream in the side, of course).
Here it is completed, but without birthday candles, and smothered in chocolate (Callebaut, semi-sweet) glaze.
What would I change?
- Bake the four layers separately instead of cutting 2 into 4 (which was finicky and crumbly).
- Don’t pour ALL the glaze on at once (it didn’t drip as nicely as I wanted on the first pass and I had to dragged it up the sides from the giant pool that formed around the cake.) Plus I think the extra would have been very nice on vanilla ice cream the next day.
- Add a bit more sugar to the strawberries? I added 1/3 cup to approx. 4 cups of strawberries. The Tasters seemed to disagree on this point which is why I use the ?
My personal feedback? The cake was a little too crumbly for my taste and I did miss the icing BUT it wasn’t my birthday and the birthday girl seemed very happy with it and THAT is the point of Birthday Cakes By Request!
So… what has been occupying practically ALL my time these days??
SiftingRealities: web site, youtube, twitter & facebook fan page
SiftingRealities is a webseries… my first foray into online distribution and, as soon as it finishes compressing, I will be posting the pilot episode. Please check it out! Reviews, comments and referrals are gratefully (& hopefully) graciously appreciated.
We have 6 more in the post-production pipeline and 7 more to film to complete the first season. I’ll post more extensively on the process of creating, shooting & releasing this series when I am further into the experience.
I am shooting the first of the Baking with the Director segments this week and #1 will go live on Monday, March 22, 2010. In it I will chat about my oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies (featured in SiftingRealities: Pilot). I’ll be sure to post a link here as soon as it is up.
In other news… more seeds planted this week: basil, 3 types of tomatoes & acorn squash (will attempt to get photos through the week). Strawberries and oregano (now 3 weeks old?) still seem to be struggling but, oddly enough, the melons all seem very happy.
Testing a new cookie recipe, currently called cowboy cookies, got some solid reviews during the SiftingRealities cast and crew screening yesterday, so they might be a keeper… oatmeal, coconut, chocolate chunk – yum!
Okay… back to work.
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Birthday Cakes
It is a steadfast rule in my home that the birthday boy/girl gets to select what kind of cake they would like for their birthday celebration …and then I attempt to make said selection.
Michael always picks cheesecake… for almost 10 years now, at least from the moment he first tasted my cheesecake, this has been his birthday selection: beer, pizza and cheesecake with blueberry sauce for dessert.
As yesterday was Michael’s 40th (!!!??), I felt the need to make things extra special, so I also added a white chocolate glaze and ordered a selection of molded white chocolate tools from Chocolate Arts.
It was as yummy as it looks (if I do say so myself). Everyone who celebrated with us last night was very quiet as they ate their slices (some with strawberry sauce, which was also very yummy). Focused eating is always a good sign of complete enjoyment (especially with this expressive and boisterous group).
Pictured above: Baked cheesecake with white chocolate glaze. Served with fresh blueberry sauce, whipped cream & white chocolate hammer.
So… I made an attempt at whole wheat perogies last evening… perogies are something I had been craving but, given my white flour sensitivity (as in I can’t seem to digest it without a lot of pain and suffering), I haven’t had them in years. Ah, cottage cheese and onion perogies… boiled then fried with onions – yum! Perogies were a dinner mainstay during university (introduced to me by Mr. Barefoot I believe). Anyway, craving… yes. So I sourced a bunch of recipes and then pretty much made up my own based on what ingredients I had in the house and what I was craving (i.e. I mashed the potatoes with a ¼ cup of sour cream). Also, I didn’t have any cottage cheese so I went with cheddar. I even took a picture right before I got started (in a false sense of anticipated success?):
So I make the dough, make the filling, roll the dough (perhaps a bit too thickly?), then fill, crimp and boil the perogies. To finish them off, I fry them up with an onion, try them and I am not pleased… they are doughy enough that some bits stick to my teeth. Michael suggests frying them until they are almost burnt (in fact the onions were unsalvageable by the time he finished frying)… I attempt another taste with sour cream… nope, the filling rocks (enough that Michael opted to take the remainder of it, cold, for lunch today), but I am not happy with the dough part.
Too much work, not enough pay off, to attempt again I think… Michael now has lunch for all next week – he thought they were tasty, of course.
Not everything is #failing around here. We are getting ready to launch the trailer for SiftingRealities on Monday and the seeds I planted last Saturday are starting to wake up:
Schizanthus aka Poor Man’s Orchid seem very happy in their jiffy pellets even though I was skeptical about germinating them in “complete darkness”, but thousands-of-year-of-gardeners know better than I! These were supposed to be for the hanging baskets, which I have also decided to fill with strawberries, so something has to give. I suspect (if they germinate… I see no evidence of that this morning) that the strawberries will win and the Poor Man’s Orchid will be relegated to another part of the garden.
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New story idea today…
…though I was supposed to be locking cut on SiftingRealities, Episode One today, I did take a few moments to jot down a few scenes floating around in my head. One of them kind of goes like this:
He didn’t much like taking the lead, but no one else was communicating effectively. He turned to the one with the purple hair, the one who’d been doing all the demanding:
“And you are?”
“I’m the witch.”
The squad rumbled with derogatory laughter until the Chief cleared his throat and every one settled to their listening.
“And you?” he asked the black clad one.
“I’m the ninja.”
More laughter erupted and even the Chief was now looking more pissed than amused. Just to cap off this debacle, he thought he might as well go three for three, so he half turned his attention to her… the one who hadn’t spoken, the one who seemed to like to touch things. She didn’t look over at him, but he could tell by the stiffing of her spine that she felt his gaze.
“And her?”
“She’s why you called us. She’s the reader,” the self-identified witch answered.
“She reads?” he heard the sarcasm he was trying to suppress with the aid of his mandated anger management classes edge this unnecessary question. Was that a smile on the edges of her perfectly formed lips? The witch was certainly smiling.
“Yes.”
“Don’t we all?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“By the lack of literacy or her ability to read?” he was attempting mollifying seriousness. These people certainly seemed to believe the shit coming out of their mouths.
“Both.”
“That’s not confusing at all, and what do you mean ‘we called’?”
“You’re dealing with something you can’t understand.”
“And you’re here to explain it?” that got him a few laughs from the peanut gallery. Even the Chief snorted.
“Not at all. We’re here to make it go away and you to forget it ever happened.”
Now… he didn’t like the sound of that at all.
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Testing themes….blog
this one has three columns… not too sure I like that, but I like the colour scheme. Hmmm…
ETA: this one seems simple and clean. Could be a keeper.