Back in April

Right now it is August and like almost everyone else I know, I can't find a job. This is pretty frustrating, but I should look on the bright side: Not having a job means I have time to do some catch-up blogging!

In April we had a surprise tea-party in our backyard for Emily's birthday. There were finger sandwiches, cheesecake, a chocolate souffle cake with a caramel sauce, fruit, cheese, and of course, tea.

The souffle cake was delicious. It's rich and flourless, but not too dense or heavy, and not too sweet. The sauce, drizzled on top, was good too, but I don't think the cake really needed it. Although, if you like sweeter cakes, then the sauce is probably a good call.

Ina Garten's Caramel Sauce
Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Mix the water and sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook over low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until the sugar dissolves. Do not stir. Increase the heat to medium and boil uncovered until the sugar turns a warm chestnut brown (about 350 degrees F on a candy thermometer), about 5 to 7 minutes, gently swirling the pan to stir the mixture. Be careful – the mixture is extremely hot! Watch the mixture very carefully at the end, as it will go from caramel to burnt very quickly. Turn off the heat. Stand back to avoid splattering and slowly add the cream and vanilla. Don't worry - the cream will bubble violently and the caramel will solidify.

Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until the caramel dissolves and the sauce is smooth, about 2 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature, at least 4 hours (actually I think we probably let it cool for half an hour if that, and it was fine). It will thicken as it sits.

Chocolate Souffle Cake
Ingredients:

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus additional for greasing pan
• 9 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not more than 60% cacao if marked), chopped
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 2/3 cup plus
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• Special equipment: a 10-inch springform pan (I believe we used a 9-inch, and it turned out fine)
  

Put a small roasting pan filled halfway with hot water in bottom third of oven (to provide moisture during baking). Position another oven rack in middle of oven, then preheat oven to 325°F. Butter springform pan and line bottom with a round of parchment or wax paper. Butter paper.

Melt butter (2 sticks) and chocolate together in a 2-quart heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring, then remove from heat. Beat together yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, and salt in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until thick enough to form a ribbon that takes 2 seconds to dissolve into mixture when beater is lifted, 6 to 8 minutes in a stand mixer or 10 to 14 minutes with a handheld. Stir warm chocolate mixture into yolk mixture until combined well.

Beat whites in another large bowl with cleaned beaters at medium speed until they just hold soft peaks. Gradually add 1/3 cup sugar, beating until whites just hold stiff peaks. Stir one fourth of whites into chocolate mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.

Pour batter into springform pan and bake in middle of oven (do not place springform pan in hot water) until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center comes out with crumbs adhering, about 1 hour (a crust will form and crack on top of cake as it bakes). Transfer to a rack and cool 10 minutes (cake will "deflate" as it cools).

Run a thin knife carefully around edge of cake, then remove side of pan. Cool cake on bottom of pan 30 minutes. Invert a rack over cake and invert cake onto rack, then remove bottom of pan and carefully peel off paper. Invert a serving plate over cake, then invert cake onto plate.

Source 4 Cake: Proof I haven't done anything in 3 weeks

Last week was finals, of which I had none, leaving me with basically nothing to do. So I decided to make a cake. Since the Valentines one turned out so well I decided that it was time to move up to the big leagues and find a significantly more difficult project. Anna, my cake decorating buddy from last time came over, and we decided to do a cake in the shape of a Source 4, a theater lighting instrument. Our plan was to make a full size replica in cake form.


To begin, we needed an actual light in order to get the dimensions for our project. Source 4's are around 2 feet tall, which we thought was somewhat unreasonable for a free standing cake, so we attached at PVC dowel to a piece of plywood to be the spine of our cake. The plywood was then covered in aluminum foil for sanitary reasons.


Next came the cakes. My estimate was that each cake would be 2-3 inches thick (WRONG!), requiring us to make 12 cakes. We used a basic yellow cake recipe, because we decided that strength was going to be much more important than flavor, though the cake did end up tasting good as well.


Here are our cakes. You may note that there were only 8- our plan was to cut the 9x13 cakes into smaller pieces for the thinner areas of the light. The next step was to flatten the tops of all our cakes, and start stacking. We carved it in sections of around 3 cakes at a time, and placed cardboard squares between every couple of layers for support. Between each layer we spread chocolate frosting- unfortunately not homemade.



We realized pretty quickly that the cakes were not actually 2 inches thick, and that we were not going to reach our goal of 2 feet. We also decided to keep the cake wider than the actual light because it was harder to carve than we had expected, and we didn't want to waste too much cake. Here is the cake will all of the layers.

The next step was to frost the cake to get it ready for fondant. Once again we used store bought frosting. Quick side note: not only did I have nothing to do last week, but I also had an unreasonable amount of meal points left, which is what allowed us to purchase all the ingredients we needed along with a Brita water pitcher and basically a lifetime supply filter replacements.



The frosting did not turn out that pretty, since it was only there as a glue for the fondant. We also removed the top two layers of cake since they were significantly smaller than the others and we thought it would be easier to put fondant on them separately.

Next came the biggest challenge- the fondant. We made our own with marshmallows because it is easier and cheaper than purchasing it. The recipe we used can be found here. We think our marshmallows were having some issues, because the fondant did not come out nearly as durable as it had for the valentines cake. The other major problem was that we needed to make it black. Doing a bit of research on the internet, I found out we either needed to buy black food coloring powder, prepared black fondant, or possibly add black icing to our fondant. Unfortunately, even after calling nearby bakeries, we were not able to find any of these ingredients and did not have time to order online.

Instead we decided to experiment with different mixtures of food coloring, all of which failed. We went with this greenish blue color because we thought we could possibly get the fondant darker on a large scale and then gave up partway through.


Here I am rolling out the fondant to place over the cake - note the color of my hands from all the food coloring experiment. The fondant was not nearly as sturdy as last time, and when we began to place it over the cake it started to fall apart, requiring us to do significant patching on the sides.

We then added on the top layers, also covered in fondant, and decorated the cake. The shutters were made from pieces of cardboard covered in aluminum foil and then fondant.



We even made a safety cable out of a necklace covered in fondant, and placed a C clamp on top for effect. (Had the cake actually been 2 feet tall then it would have gone all the way up to the clamp, but between the thinner cakes and the weight of the cakes and frosting we made it around 18 inches)

Baking up a storm and working it off

These are my favorite cookies. The recipe is here, but Becca and I decided that next time we would cut the sugar down to half a cup, because it was so so sweet. I could feel the cavities forming.
Matching shorts make going to the gym fun!

Sarah's birthday

For Sarah's birthday we woke her up with H&H bagels (Emily made a trip to New York and brought these back), baked her a cake in the shape of a jellyfish, and then cooked a celebratory dinner with her favorite foods. The cake recipe is from (where else?) the Smitten Kitchen, and we topped it with some homemade bubble candy that Emily made. The tentacles are made of bubble tape.

For Sarah's birthday dinner, the main course was lamb loin chops. I put them under the broiler for about four minutes on each side, and they turned out bleedingly rare, just the way Sarah likes them. I marinated them in olive oil, salt and pepper, minced garlic, cumin, coriander, and fresh chopped mint (all to taste) Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but here's the raw meat:
The best part of this whole dinner was that we ate it outside and played frisbee after dinner: Becca is now good enough to go pro. Finally, it's spring.

Valentine's dessert

So since we only decided to make the blog yesterday, and have been cooking in this house for around 6 months now, we decided that retroactive posts are okay as long as we have pictures.

Last week for Valentine's day we had a party with a wide selection of desserts.



I happened to be watching Food Network Challenge when the party was suggested, and decided I needed to make a fondant covered cake. It ends up that fondant can be really easy to make. The recipe i found just involved melting marshmallows and adding lots of powdered sugar and crisco. The cake itself is red velvet.



Anna came over to help decorate



Also on the lovely dessert table above are
Angel Food cupcakes with chocolate frosting - made by Sarah Jeffrey
Valentines sugar cookies - made by Sarah Weisbuch
Seven layer bars - Also made by Sarah Weisbuch

I first had Sarah's seven layer bars when she was living in the Bayit sophmore year, and they are basically the most delicious thing ever. There's chocolate, coconut, graham crackers, butterscotch chips and I don't even know what else, and they're amazing and addictive.