Cake #8 - Cranberry-Maple Pudding Cake

Perhaps instead of using this cake's proper name - Cranberry-Maple Pudding Cake - I should call it the cake that time forgot. 'Cause, uh, yeah, I made this for Thanksgiving. I think the fact that I haven't been champing at the bit to tell everyone about the cake gives an indication for my enthusiasm for it.

Meh. It was fine. Tasy even, but definitely not a best cake contender. To be fair, I can give this cake props for one thing that none of the other cakes thus far can claim. It was unbelievably simple. I did not need to use a food processor, standing mixer, or multiple sticks of butter. I made this cake while at the same time making mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, and stuffing (okay, it was Stove Top, but I still had to do something). I popped it into the oven when the turkey came out, and it was warm and golden and ready for eating when dessert rolled around. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I enjoyed it a lot, however, it was not special enough to have a place at the Thanksgiving table.

The recipe says that it's great for dessert or breakfast, and I have to say it's a better breakfast cake. The maple sugar and cornmeal cry for being eaten at breakfast. The tartness of the cranberries was very good with the maple syrup (oh, and I used the very last of my GALLON bottle of Parker's Maple Barn syrup. We might have to make a trip to New England come sugaring time just to replenish our supply). If I make it again (and I might someday given the total ease of it), I might increase the amount of cranberries. Two cups did not cover the bottom of my 8 x 8" pan - I would have liked a denser fruit layer.

This week Sherie and I are having a conference call to figure out our holiday cake choices. I predict we'll both be doing a whole lot of baking in the next three weeks, and I promise to do my best with more timely descriptions!

Cake #8 Cranberry Maple Pudding - Cambridge Edition

Also written on 11/27 and just joined with pictures today: Cranberry Maple Pudding Cake:

I think we were both really excited to make this for Thanksgiving this year. Considering I used the Maple Syrup from our trip to Parker's Maple Barn and the cranberries almost from our trip to the AD Makepeace cranberry bog this year, it had to be good. Sure looks purdy.

Eh, not so much. This cake was exactly what I thought the cherry cornmeal cake was going to be, kind of like cobbler with cornbread on top. I was not looking forward to that cake and it totally wowed us. This one, I was pulling for to be better than it was. Given that we were cooking Thanksgiving dinner and this cake is to be served warm, I prepped all the ingredients to this stage so I could whip it all together (not literally) as I breezed to the table with the turkey en platter.

It was 1 of 4 desserts on Thanksgiving for 5 adults and 3 kids. And, we agreed on its own it would have been fine. In light of the other options, nobody wanted to touch it. It did not make it to the Thanksgiving recipe binder for the future - but I was happy eating the leftovers today.

Well, at least there were lots of leftovers. And, they were good the next day - which we found out only after the chocolate pie and pumpkin pie was gone.

Cake #5? What Number was the Lemon Loaf?

This was written on 11/27, but I just retrieved the pictures today. Mindy & I are gearing up for more cakes over the holiday "break", so I needed to catch up. Here are:

The Lemon Loaves. Now that is a lot of lemon. Good thing Kassi juiced all our lemons for the Toddlers and Toddies party and we had some left over. What I remember about making this cake: I was going to have it in the oven by 7:30 to have it out by 8:30. Didn't get it in until about 8:10. Many distractions lead me to this.

I love lemon! This was very very good, but IMHO, not as good as the effort. I have a better sour cream lemon bunt cake I would make instead. It was nice to have on hand when my parents were in town visiting and I even had some left over to bring to work.

You can see that I too only have 1 loaf pan, therefore the improvised casserole dish second loaf.

Cake #7: Oops I made a Cake! Orange Angel Food

Orange Angel Food Cake with Caramel and Tropical Fruit Compote. Now that is a mouthful. I am behind a cake now too. Mindy made the lemon loaves for a brunch. I needed this cake for a kiddie cocktail party. Cocktail hour. Easy Nibbles. Make it in advance. Z can't have chocolate. K can't have peanuts. Nobody wants to load their kid up on frosting and take them home to bed. Enter the Angel Food cake. No frosting mess. Low cal (ish), and with the fruit compote, down right healthy.

There are a few things I liked about making this cake. #1 - NO BUTTER! Don't get me wrong. I love butter. But the last couple of cakes were kind of over the top. When I have to tear into the second package of butter, or the third for 1 recipe, even that is a bit much for me. #2 - NO greasing/flouring/parchmenting the pan! Wow, am I growing to hate that task. Fortunately, Elliot is getting old enough to take it on for me. #3 - I used our hand blender instead of the counter-top Kitchen Aid. I did not have to dig it out of the cabinet or clean & put it away, and it helped me get a feel for the fluffiness of the batter. And finally, #4 - Learning to make caramel from scratch at home. This could prove to be deadly. It did take me 3 tries to get it edible, but with so few ingredients and relatively little effort to make it, wow! why buy it at the store anymore? Hello new found calories!

There are a couple things I did not like about this cake: okay, just 1: Cardamom. Did not have this spice in my drawer. Knew we were in trouble when Ben called from the store to see if we "really" needed it. If he thinks something is expensive, we are in deep. The recipe calls for 3/4 of a teaspoon.

Holy guacamole - it cost $11.99. And, the best part, it smells like powdered Nyquil. I used the recommended 3/4 teaspoon in my first batch of caramel and I thought it was over powering.

But, you will see, there were other issues with my first batch of caramel.

My second batch of caramel, I learned my lesson. The color it is when you take the sugar water off to add the cream is the color your caramel will be. It won't change after that. The recipe said the boiling would only take 5 minutes or so. After 12 minutes, my batch 1 still looked like snot ( gross, I know, but I can't think of the name of that glue with the little brush on the lid) and I thought I would somehow ruin it. My second batch, I got to the color and then went maybe 30-60 seconds too long. I only used 1/4 tsp of cardamom in this one and it was still overpowering, added with the burned taste, it was also gross (to me).

I made a 3rd batch of caramel right before the party and it was perfect. No cardamom, and took it off in time. mmm mmm trouble.

Batch 1 and Batch 2. Night and Day.

I also made my first major cake making error from not reading the recipe carefully. You are supposed to fold the flour into the batter without the mixer and I beat the batter to a pulp with half the flour before realizing this. Turned out to be just fine. And the angel cake was great - would definitely make this again.

Cake #6 Mile High Chocolate Cake a la Sher

Basic ingredients. Rough cost outside the pantry ~$12 for the chocolate and sour cream & butter.
I employed the double boiler method of melting the chocolate and butter. Pyrex bowl on top of 2 qt sauce pan with 2 inches of water at the bottom. My bowl was too small to mix it quickly. I had to be careful.
Standing mixer whipping butter & sugar. Sifted dry goods waiting to be added. Melted chocolate is cooling to be added (separate from the melted chocolate from the frosting - good thing I started this at 7:30 am.
The batter in the pan. It was like mousse - though it looks a bit like cow pie when photographed...sorry.
And, disaster # 1 strikes the cakes. Of course this one is for public consumption. I think I cooked a few minutes too long. I also did not take the cakes out of the pans after 10 minutes as instructed, more like 30 (oops, didn't see that direction until too late). And, I was a bit hasty loosening with the knife. Well, yeah they were crumbly. I kept all the parts and planned to frosting-glue them back together.
Taking Mindy's advice, I put the cakes in the fridge to cool/freeze before slicing them in half. I have a wire cake cutter. Why, pray tell, did I not use it? Why did it call for a long serrated knife? Mine did not look long enough, and I expected problems with the crumbly cake. Well, if Alton Brown had ever thought cutting a cake with an ELECTRIC KNIFE was a good idea, I am sure he would have put it on TV already - so why was I thinking I needed to forge a new frontier? Completely uneven. Completely crumbly. Completely hilarious though. Oy vey, and it's not just family coming to dinner either.
I like this contrast of the inner disaster and what can be done to cover it up with a WHOLE LOTTA frosting. We used every lick. Yup 6 sticks of butter.
I also liked Mindy's money shot with the ruler. And the picture below gives a little perspective on how TALL this cake is - looked like a top hat.
Happy Birthday! Finally an interior shot of the cake. Smiling at the layers.

More like 0.00009th of a Mile High Cake. Yes, I did the math. Ben graciously selected one of our 30 cakes for his birthday cake. Good thing he and Chris both like chocolate, since they had the same cakes for their birthdays. This was a very chocolate cake. As Mindy mentioned, it was not too sweet, maybe because it called for unsweetened chocolate and unsweetened cocoa. It almost had a quality of a really dry wine that sucks the moisture from your mouth and begs to be eaten with some vanilla ice cream.

This was not quite a "pantry cake", but was close, just had to have 2 CUPS of sour cream on hand as well as many ounces of "high quality" unsweetened dark chocolate. Ours was the highest quality that Shaw's offers, but that's not really saying too much. And we usually have butter on hand, but this cake called for so much, it wiped out our fridge supply!

I was very happy to have the wisdom of Mindy's lessons learned before attempting this. I had to make it on the day we were eating it. I can usually safeguard against many pitfalls by baking the day before frosting. This cake requires a lot of cooling. For the cake before frosting, and for the frosting itself before combining. Cooling = time. Usually time we do not have. You can't hurry up and cool something.

This cake is funny tall. Taller than it is wide. Too tall for my cake dome. Too tall for the plates we used. Had to carry it on my lap in the car, uncovered, just to get it to the party - had visions of a blog post of me on the ground, my face in the cake atop a pile of leaves on the walkway to the house.

Truthfully, I did not like the cake. Not worth the effort for the payoff. But, Ben LOVED the cake. Both the crumble and the frosting. LOVED the frosting. He wouldn't say that just to be nice. Not to me anyway. Reminded me that everyone has different tastes. His happens to Heart the 0.00009 Mile High Cake.

Cake # 6 - Mile High Chocolate Cake

I have a tummy ache as I type this...all due to a piece of the Mile High Chocolate Cake that I just ate with a cup of coffee. More on that in a bit....

First, do you know how hard it is to find 8" cake pans? After trying a few places without success I remember that Sherie once told me the best cake decorating supplies can be found at craft stores, like Michael's. I just so happened to be near my neighborhood Jo Ann's Fabrics, and lo and behold...8" pans! Huzzah.

The batter of this cake ended up tasting like the most awesome chocolate pudding you ever had. It was thick, rich, and not too sweet (due in part to all the chocolate in the recipe begin unsweetened). When I was scooping the batter into the pans, I got to thinking about how incredibly liquid the batter for boxed cakes is - this was so very different. Soooo much better. And, really, not that time-consuming at all.

Moist and luscious batter brought to you by:

Butter melted with unsweetened chocolate

An unbelievable TWO cups of sour cream

The result - a super thick batter

The cake came out incredibly moist and rich and wonderful. I baked the cakes a day before I planned to frost them, and I stored them in my fridge. I can't imaging slicing each of the cakes in half if they had not been chilled - I think that they would have fallen apart. That's how wonderful moist they were.

For me, this was the last time the recipe went well. The frosting was a big hot mess. And I'm not using "hot" to just sound like a contestant on Project Runway.

So, to make the icing, you cook milk, flour, cocoa powder etc. on the stove and then add chopped chocolate. The result is a really thick paste - almost like frosting. The recipe says to cool this mix to room temperature and then add it to SIX STICKS OF BUTTER [oof]. My big mistake was not letting the chocolate paste cool enough [I was in a hurry - when will I learn!] before adding it to the butter. The butter immediately started to melt, and suddenly I had a very thin, almost liquidy frosting. Crap. I threw the entire thing into the fridge to firm up.

After chilling for a few hours, I took out the bowl of frosting, let it warm up a bit, and then rewhipped it with my standing mixer. And, all in all, it had great texture. The problem, however, little tiny lumps of butter that I could not get rid of no matter how much I whipped the frosting. Seeing how I was making this cake for a birthday boy who despises butter, this was not a good thing.

Those little pale flecks? Butter. Ewww.

All that being said, the frosting, at room temperature, tasted pretty good. Again with the pudding reference, but that's what it tasted like - rich chocolatey, but not sweet, pudding. But, and this is a very big but, that was at room temperature.

The true test of a cake, in my opinion, is how it tastes the next morning with coffee. The frosting, when cold, is way too buttery. Greasy in the mouth, butter overwhelming the chocolate. Yuck. The cake itself still tastes wonderful, and I'm sure that I'll have it again after I scrape off the frosting. I'll definitely make the cake again, but not the frosting. Even if I hadn't screwed up, that's just too much butter in a frosting for my liking.

Oh, and Mile High? Not quite, but very tall and impressive!

[Hey Chicagoans, if you love really buttery butter cream and
want to come and take away a chunk of cake, let me know!]

Cake #5 - Lemon Lemon Loaf

Three things that I really need to do as we go along on this cake project:

1. Take notes. Seems elementary, but I'm not doing it. Stupid.
2. Write up the cakes quickly. Without the aforementioned notes, the length of time between baking and writing is a real problem.
3. Learn a little something about food styling!

So, Cake Number Five is the Lemon Lemon Loaf. If you're paying attention, you might think, "Hmm...I don't remember Mindy's write-up on Cake Four..." Uh, that's because I haven't baked it yet. I will get to it, I swear.

Back to the Lemon Lemon Loaf! I made it for an Open House that we hosted, and it was a perfect sweet companion to quiche and coffee.

This was last week, so here's what I remember:

1. Whoa. That's a lot of lemon zest! 1/4 cup, to be exact. My lemons might have been on the small side as it took five of them to get 1/4 cup.
2. I was extremely happy for a recipe that used my food processor instead of my standing mixer. Silly thing to be excited about, no? It's just that my standing mixer is.so.very.heavy.
3. This recipe makes two loaves of bread. The recipe says that you can freeze one of them, and if we were not having people over, I definitely would have done that.

Speaking of two loaves...this project really points out the deficiencies in my cookware collection. I only have one 9 x 5 x 3 pan. I prepared two additional smaller pans thinking that I would need both of them, but I ended up using the larger of the two. Remarkably, they required the same amount of a baking time.


The finished loaves - aren't they beautiful?What I don't have pictures of:

1. The loaves after I pricked them and poured on the lemon syrup.
2. The loaves after I doused them with the lemon and powdered sugar glaze.
3. The smiles on the happy faces of my taste-testers.

Most commented on how incredibly moist the cake was (a lot of credit probably goes to the sour cream in the recipe), how intense the lemon flavor was (all goes back to that 1/4 cup zest in addition to the 1/4 fresh lemon juice), and that the cake was sweet, but not cloyingly so. I don't think that these cakes need the glaze, they are plenty sweet and rich on their own.

And, the out of the fridge test? Divine with a cup of tea around 10 a.m.

Cake #4 - Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream a.k.a. The Toothpaste Cake

I mentioned that Abby from work volunteered me to make a cake for a baby shower at work.  I cannot exclaim enough, how I am NOT doing this for public acclaim nor do I think my cakes are all that - I would have much preferred to throw some money at the budget problem and just buy one from Rosie's Bakery.  Plus, these are new recipes to us, so I cannot even vouch for them.  On one hand, I have very high cake standards.  On the other, if it is called cake, it will pretty much be cleared from any plate near me, without complaint.  Frosting is really my favorite part of the cake, but I am developing an heightened appreciation for the cake part too.  And, I had no idea all the nuances of different frostings.  I was pretty content with the tubs of Betty Crocker, and still am, but maybe am developing some new favorites.  Okay, so back to this cake.

I CHEATED. Cake #4 and I already am cheating.  This cake is a layer cake with a pyramid of mini-cupcakes on top.  In fact, the recipe says, "garnish with mini vanilla cupcakes" as if we all have mini cupcakes lying around as garnish.  Since this was a work thing and I already made a cake this week, I recruited Abby to make the cupcakes.  She knows her way around a kitchen too, so I felt okay delegating this part.  She was game to try the recipes and we coordinated on the colors, which were pretty similar to those in the photo on Epicurious.  I brought the layer cake.  She brought the mini cupcakes.  We assembled in the conference room.  

Overall, this cake seemed kind of boring on paper.  Chocolate cake.  Vanilla buttercream.  Pile some cupcakes on top for a "wow" factor.  The cake batter was a snap to make.  It had a liquidy consistency similar to a box mix.  I had all of the ingredients in my pantry, so this was sort of a $0 cost cake.  

The frosting was intriguing.  It required a candy thermometer, which automatically ups the ante of my time in the kitchen.  I do not have a good one and I always assume I will ruin whatever pan is involved.    It also requires a level of execution that is above par.  Once the temperature is reached, all your other steps better be prepped and ready.  It's go time people.  

I was ready.  I rocked it.  With the steady help of my kitchen aide mixer.  I added the butter.

Whoa nelly, there was a lot of butter.  Now here is where I had a substitution.  6 sticks of "unsalted" butter.  While baking, I sometimes skip the "unsalted" and just add less salt - never had a problem with any batters.  I substituted salted butter here, and as I added it, and realized its different when butter is 98% of the ingredients - maybe not the best idea.  I wished I had the unsalted.  When the butter, er, frosting was done, it tasted very buttery and maybe too salty - but Ben & Kassi told me it tasted good, no reason to be paranoid.   I was not sure until I had it with the cake the next day.  And, it was great.  Abby made hers with the recommended unsalted butter, and I definitely preferred the salted butter version (less slippery, more tasty) - so I was glad we had a comparison.  

And, while adding the dots in blue, yellow and green, each dallop added looked more and more like toothpaste to me, hence the Toothpaste Cake.  I think I would skip this design in the future.  

A note on the cupcakes.  Abby used the foil liners for mini cupcakes, but they were too big for her cupcake pan.  Apparently the box says you can cook the foil liners alone on a cookie sheet and they will hold their shape.  They did, but they expanded a bit to be wider than mini cupcakes...so we could not stack 4 layers in our pyramid, only 3.  

Oh!  And I almost ran out of frosting.  Assembling the cake says to put the flat side down and the rounded side of the top layer down, (but it says it better than that) basically, rounded sides in the middle.  I suppose so there is a flat top to put the cupcakes.  This required extra frosting "glue" in the middle so an nice thick layer of middle frosting.  I always have extra frosting and I always think I go too light in the middle, so I layered it on.  But then it was time to frost the outside of a chocolate cake with white frosting.  I was so glad I froze the cakes the night before frosting them - made for less crumb to maneuver my millimeter of frosting.  Oh, and I froze them in the pans I baked them in (after taking them out to cool on racks) - but could not get them out of the pans when I wanted to resume frosting.  Patted myself on the back for thinking of putting the pans on my stovetop burners for a few seconds to unfreeze them from the pan.  

Overall, we declared this cake the best plain chocolate cake ever made at home.  If you like Rosie's Bakery, this cake and the frosting was nearly identical to what we order there.  And it was good.  I will definitely keep this in my repertoire of standard cakes - when you want a good one without a whole fussy "to do".  

Cake #3 - Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Orange Frosting - Mindy's turn

My turn. Let me start by saying that this was one of the cakes in our list of 30 that I was not too excited to make. For one...I am just not down with the floral notes in chocolate. Lavender as ingredient in anything but a sock drawer satchel didn't appeal to me. I'm also not a fan of the chocolate and orange combination.

But you know what? The fundamentals of this cake were so strong, so awesome, that I really liked it in spite of the lavender and orange. Go figure. I guess I need to take my own advice - the advice I'm giving constantly to the five year old; how will you know if you like it if you don't try it?

I thought that I was going to get out of using the lavender due to an inability to find it, but lo and behold, my local Whole Foods had it in bulk. For a mere $.26 I came home with more than I needed. Like Sherie, I also had the problem of grinding the lavender, but I put my helper to work on it, and she did a great job.

Unlike Sherie, I didn't strain out any particles, but it all seemed rather uniform. And, I opted for a different cake form: the pumpkin. We have Halloween Fever in these parts, and the idea that we'd make the cake in the shape of a pumpkin was met with great enthusiasm. This shape added another 15 minutes or so baking time to the cake.

Do you know this trick? When you're making a chocolate cake, rather than dust your pans with flour, dust with cocoa powder! Thank you, Cooks Illustrated for that awesome, and frequently used, quick tip!

It is a crying shame that I do not have a picture of the cakes after they came out of the pan. Golden brown, springy, moist....perfect. Really, this might be one of the greatest chocolate cakes that I've ever made. Frankly, it didn't need any frosting (oh, but the frosting! more on that in a minute). A light dusting of powdered sugar would have made the cake plenty decadent.

Ah, but the frosting. Hands down, this might be one of the best recipes I have ever encountered for butter cream frosting. I haven't made enough recipes for butter cream frosting to know why or how it was different, but it was amazing. I could have sat with a bowl of it. EVEN WITH THE ORANGE. I know! I thought that I would hate the orange flavor, but I actually liked it. In full disclosure, I didn't use quite as much as the recipe called for. One orange yielded not quite a full tablespoon of zest, and I opted to not zest a second one.

Not quite a tablespoon, but close enough.

And, we did not have any orange liqueur or Grand Marnier, so I skipped it. The orange flavor was plenty enough for me, but I am curious now to know what it would taste like in full flavor. One of the most interesting things about the frosting was the addition of a half teaspoon of coarse kosher salt. The frosting definitely had a salt edge that took the edge off the sweetness of the chocolate.

I include a photograph of our final, decorated cake with a word to the wise. One really should let the cake (as EVERY SINGLE RECIPE EVER has stated) cool fully before frosting. But, I made this late afternoon, and we wanted to be able to have it after dinner for dessert. I thought that the cake was cooled enough, but my frosting started melting, and I had to use a skewer to hold the top and bottom of the cake together. Frankly, with the melting chocolate icing, it looked disgusting.

Oh, but the taste! I ate a piece every day for six days until yesterday when I threw it out - not because it had gone bad, but because I just could not stop myself. Make it. You will love it too.

Cake #3 Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Orange Buttercream Frosting

There's been a cake landslide in Cambridge lately.  After the monsoon, I was in the mood to bake.  We were in the mood for chocolate and there you have it.  Chocolate cake.  With Orange Chocolate buttercream.  Only to get to work the next day and find out someone has heard I have a baking project and recruited me to make a cake for an office baby shower on Friday.  What? 2 Cakes in 1 week?  More on that later.  I do not want to take away from this amazing cake. Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate-Orange Buttercream  

I am starting to think of cakes on a couple of new fronts, like how easy is it to make with ingredients on hand in my pantry and after my first cake, the $30 cake, in terms of cost of ingredients.  I have to say this cake was both easy and complex at the same time.  The only specialty ingredients I needed were dark chocolate, usually a staple in my pantry, but we were out, and "dried lavender blossoms".  Lucky me.   I live in Inman Square, home to Christina's Ice Cream and neighboring spice shop that seems to have every obscure spice - as in if its tough to find, I have found it there, and if they did not carry it, I would have to throw in the towel and substitute, because I could not think of another place to look.  Everything in Inman Square seems to be closed on Sundays, so I thought I had no shot, but surprise again, the obscure spice shop IS open on Sundays (maybe because people like me like to cook on Sundays and cannot plan ahead).  And, imagine my further surprise that a lifetime supply only cost $3.36.  My recipe needed "dried lavender blossoms" and this was "lavender" with what looked like blossoms in the pack, but I was hesitant b/c it was not called the exact name.  It looked a lot like the potpourri in my sock drawer.  It also looked a lot like a plant on my front stoop, but I did not want to poison us if I was horticulturally wrong.  

For the record, I was supposed to get a teaspoon of it out of a spice grinder, but we do not have one.  I used the mortar & pestly instead.  But then I also had to use my fine mesh sieve, since the mortar & pestle yielded some hay-like strands in it that instinct told me would not be great.  I used only about half of the teaspoon I needed - in case I was wrong on my assumptions & substituyions, I did not want to overwhelm & ruin the whole cake.  

I also want to say a bit about the ingredients.  I was being lazy (in comparison to my search for cherries in cake #1) and I only needed chocolate and I needed a slew of other groceries.  Back to Trader Joe's.  For the amount and kind I needed, I wound up with the "Pound Plus" pictured above.  I was worried this chocolate might not be "fancy" enough and could make my whole cake pedestrian when it could be amazing.  Well, in the end, the cake WAS amazing and I was relieved that my choice of chocolate did not bring it down.  
Maybe it was this picture that prompted my husband to declare he would become my official cake photographer - I keep forgetting to take pictures of a slice or inside of the cake.  This one with the salsa coming out of the top, maybe not the greatest.  
One of the things I liked about this cake was the multiple chocolates involved and the complexity of making them.  It is a messy-kitchen cake for sure.  Melting chocolate for the batter, dissolving cocoa, melting chocolate for the frosting, etc.  Many bowls.  Many pans.  Much mess.  Very worth it.  I have been bringing cake to work.  This one elicited comments like, "Restaurant Quality!" "My favorite frosting- I need the recipe" and "Oh, it was too rich.  I cannot finish a piece."  I took that last one as a compliment too.  Wimps.  

We did realize that temperature matters in serving the cake.  Room temperature, as recommended, might be too decadent to eat.  The only way to get through a whole piece is to eat it cold from the fridge - at which time you might even want a second piece.  Kind of the reverse Krispy Kreme theory (that hot you could eat a box, but cold, 2 would clog your heart).  The lavender was there if you knew it, but not overwhelming.  I could have used the full amount.  The orange was only in the frosting and was perfect for some, needed to be more orangey for some and too orangey for others.  So there you have it.  
Me and my kitchen helpers.  To buy me some alone time in the kitchen, I let the girls measure the sugar I needed, but then left them with some tools at the table.  I took all the goods away and was in the kitchen.  Elliot was helping me above, but Samantha was being awfully quiet in her high chair.  I forgot to take away the BAG of brown sugar.  She swiped it from what I thought was out of her reach.  I was in the kitchen a good 5 minutes before finding her below, shoving fistfuls of brown sugar into her mouth.  I am pretty sure that was not a full bag to start - but I was also pretty sure I cleared the table, so who knows.  And since she already had so much of it, it did not bother me to let her keep it the extra 30 seconds it took me to get my camera.  

Cake #2 - Red Velvet Cake with Raspberries and Blueberries

The subtitle of this post could be either:

Really, Epicurious? You can't just give us the flour amount in weight?

or

Purple velvet cake; holy crap, that's a lot of food coloring

To the first point: In this recipe for Red Velvet Cake, the directions call for you to sift the cake flour not once, but twice. Sift, measure, and then sift again with the other dry ingredients. It's a major pain the arse to sift cake flour and then measure (not that I personally did this step. Chris, my third kitchen helper [see previous post for my other two], took care of this portion of the recipe, not without a lot of swearing). If the recipe had given us the weight of the cake flour, life would have been much easier.

And then to subtitle two -- a tablespoon of red food color is a hell of a lot of food coloring. It's essentially a whole one of those little tear-shaped thingies. Needless to say, I did not have enough red food color and substituted with purple, thus our cake was purplish.


But, all that being said, this was one super yummy cake. Even Chris, who is not a fan of cream cheese frosting, ate leftovers. I am not ashamed to say that I had Purple Velvet Cake with Raspberries and Blueberries for breakfast three days in a row (cream cheese and fruit -- that's breakfast food, right?).

Oh, and totally suitable for celebrating fifth birthdays, if you need a cake for such an occasion.