cake fail

Being an excellent sport, I poked a little fun at myself and piped out my heart and sense of humor on top:

cake fail

That was about two years ago and I have not touched my 9″ cake rounds since.  UNTIL TONIGHT.  haha.  Here I’ll go through my (insane) cooking/baking thought process:

I have to make a dessert for the potluck tomorrow…what can I make out of what is in my cupboards?  Cake!  I have cake mix!  That’s quick and easy.  Oooo and I want to try that dairy free dark chocolate frosting mix I bought.  Ok so I should make a layered cake, fun!  yay fun!  Will that be enough frosting?  Looks like it.  (cake bakes in two 9″ pans…and I attempt to remove the cake from the pan which I did not pre-grease in my haste.  One comes out clean, one breaks in half)  Oh crap, now I have one cake and a broken one…can I patch this with frosting?  Yeah no.  I have another cake mix, I’ll just make 2 more layers and make a 3 layer cake!  (makes 2 more cake rounds)  I only have enough frosting for the exterior, what am I going to put in the middle?  Jam?  Nah, I hate fruit and chocolate mixed together.  Carmel?  Don’t have enough and it may drip out.  Hmmm…coconut and pecan?  Sounds good!  Mix together some butter and throw in the rest of the can of carmel….ok coconut and pecans!  Texture is too dry.  Add some brown rice syrup.  Still needs more liquid.  What do people add to stuff to make it thinner anyway?  Oh yeah milk!  *adds soymilk*  Looks good!

Then I carved the round top off the cake layers, spread the filling, put the dark chocolate frosting all over the top (vanilla cake, FYI) and I MADE IT!  I made a layered cake!  Woo!  I can’t cut into it until tomorrow, but I’m excited to taste it.  I mean…can you go wrong?

I did it!

And it’s flat on top!!!

flat top

I did, of course, taste some frosting samples and it’s gooooooooood.

mmm frosting

Maybe this year I can flex my layered cake muscles and attempt a birthday cake or two! 

I was browsing my aunt’s copies of People magazine and found this John Besh recipe for red beans and rice in the Sept. 28, 2009 issue.  I’ll be honest, I have/had no idea who John Besh was, but my friend tells me he was on a television show of some sort.  Top Chef?  I forget.  The recipe was billed as this great way to cook a meal for four people that is under $10.  I’m sold…I love cheap food and challenges.  I’m a chronic ingredient substituter, and I had to vegetarianize the recipe (ham hocks?  Yuck!) so in the end my version didn’t really resemble his.  However, it was delicious so I’m happy to pass it on!

You can find his original recipe here at Experience Life Magazine (I googled to find the recipe).  My recipe (as much as I can remember…I usually start randomly throwing things in after the first taste test) is as follows:

2 onions, diced

1 orange bell pepper, diced (didn’t have green)

2 stalks celery, diced

1 pound mixed dried beans (some Trader Joes thing…17 bean and barley soup mix which included these: baby lima beans, black turtle beans, blackeye peas, dark red kidney beans, garbanzo beans, great northern beans, green lentils, green split peas, large lima beans, light red kidney beans, navy beans, pink beans, pinto beans, red lentils, small red beans, small white beans, yellow split peas, pearl barley)

3 bay leaves

2 cloves garlic

2 “links” Trader Joes vegetarian italian “sausage”, diced

6 small kale leaves, chopped thinly (center stalk removed)

1/2 tsp (and then some) cayenne powder

salt and pepper to taste

2 roma tomatoes, diced (garnish)

2 stalks green onions, chopped (garnish)

handful Italian flatleaf parsley, chopped (garnish)

sour cream (garnish)

guacamole made with avocado, salt/pepper, roma tomato, fresh garlic, green onions and cilantro (garnish)

2 cups brown rice

I recommend using a large soup pot to cook this, FYI.

Saute the white onions, orange pepper, and celery in butter until the onions are clear.  Add bean mix, cayenne, bay leaves, and enough water to cover the mixture in two inches of water.  Bring to a boil, then change to medium-low heat and cover, stirring every 10 minutes or so.  I cooked this for about an hour and had to add water twice to keep water over the beans.  In a separate pan, brown the “sausage” and add to the beans along with the garlic.  Add kale once you’ve tested the beans and verified they are done, then cook for 5 more minutes.  Remove bay leaves, and add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve over a bed of brown rice and garnish with roma tomatoes, fresh flat leaf parsley, green onions, sour cream, and guacamole!

This recipe is hearty and filling, but I’m not sure it was under $10 with the sour cream, guacamole, and italian “sausage”.    Regardless, it was very tasty!

Of every item in my entire kitchen…the one thing I would never part with is my knives.  Even including my Fiesta and Pyrex and Kitchen Aid.  They are my most treasured, my most valued and life-changing kitchen gift I’ve ever received.  I’d always had hand-me-down or cheap knives which was no big deal.  They’re knives and they cut things, and that was all that mattered.  Then on Mother’s Day 2008 I got my first fancy knife.  It’s Sha Ra Ku Mono, it’s only available in Seattle, and it changed the cutting game forever!  It was as if I had never truly sliced and diced before.  It slices through skins of fruits and veggies like a hot knife through room temperature butter.  LOVE.  I got another one for Mother’s Day this year…and I asked Santa to bring me a serrated knife for Mother’s Day this year too!  ;)  These are my pretties….

We loves them, my pretties.  I would pet them, but they bite.

Point being, go forth and spoil thyself with fancy cutlery!

I can’t remember where I got the idea to make guacamole in my food processor, but I’m sure it was from some foodie blog I was perusing.  Gone are the days of fork-whipped guacamole that took me 15 minutes to make!  I’ve ushered in the 5 minute press-button guacamole era.  My mother’s guacamole “recipe” is something I had followed for over 15 years, but threw it out in favor of something I stole from the ingredients list on the bottom of some deli guacamole.  No more mayo in my guac!  Of course there are no measurements, but I’m not really much of a measurement person…I like to taste my way to culinary greatness.

Basic guacamole ingredients: avocado, tomato, red onion, green onion, garlic (powder sometimes works better just because the real deal can overwhelm…not that it prevents me from doing it), sea salt, pepper, lemon juice, hot sauce.

Hack everything up into chunks and throw it in!

In this instance I used jalapeños and red pepper in there (and no red onion) and if I recall correctly, I lost some hair after eating it.  Next time I may take out some of the jalapeño seeds.  I recommend pulsing the food processor when you chop this…avocado puree is not guacamole.

Oh so easy!!  And oh so delicious….

Before peaches disappeared from the farmer’s market I decided to make a peach pie.  I used Martha Stewart’s Pate Brisee (Pie Dough) recipe but in my mixer instead of food processor.  Martha’s recipes never seem to fail me, and I appreciate her for that.  I will certainly be going back to this pie crust recipe in the future!  I used Joy of Cooking’s recipe for the filling, and listen when I tell you to leave on the peach skin!  I’ve never understood why people take it off, it is by far my favorite part, and provides such great color to the pie innards!

It’s the second pie I have ever attempted and I think I did a good job!  Well, if you don’t mind the edges.  I fail at edges.  Unfortunately I couldn’t think of something beautiful to cut into the top (I’m about as non-artistic as possible).  So I just wrote “Pie”.

It was heavenly.  :)

I’m not a fan of taking pictures of food yet.  I love other people’s food photos…I just don’t like to stop cooking to snap a picture, nor have I figured out how to overcompensate for the unnatural lighting (I’m not a post-processor by nature!).  I’ll have to work on this.

Speaking of Martha…this pumpkin spice cake with honey cream cheese frosting is to die for!  Highly highly highly recommend!  I’ve made it twice now and my oh my is it delicious.

The glutton living in my stomach who is related to the enabler in my eyes tells me I should double the frosting recipe, but it really is adequate as-is.  ;)  Whichever of Martha’s minions created this honey cream cheese frosting should be knighted as it is magically delicious.

In the far back is some local celery!  Cat tells me they don’t grow quite as large here in Washington as they do other places.  The result is a more fibrous and flavorful midget-size version of what you buy at grocery stores.  I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never cooked with shallots before so I was excited when she brought me some.  Also pictured are delicata squash, zucchini, Japanese salad turnips, easter egg radishes, stupice tomatoes, Italian flatleaf parsley, and jalapenos.

What to do with all these vegetables?!  I poked around online looking for recipes and discovered the glory that is Choosing Raw (blog).  I have never been inspired to attempt raw “cooking” but I am really going to try incorporating more into my diet.  Through her blog I found my way over to Kristen’s Raw and a recipe for harvest soup.  I knew what I was going to make for dinner!  I don’t have a large food processor so I blended this in my trusty Oster blender and it wasn’t as finely pureed as I would have wanted it, but I guess this just means I will have to go buy myself a fancy food processor.  Darn!

My four year old was less than pleased with the outcome, but he was a trooper and ate it with some toast.  Here is the recipe from Kristen’s site with my substitutions:

Kristen Suzanne’s Harvest Soup
Yield 6 cups

1 cup water
1 large zucchini, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, quartered
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 cups carrot, chopped
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 small shallot
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup olive oil
Blend all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, on high speed in your blender. Then, while the blender is running on low speed, add the olive oil. Continue blending, at a higher speed, for another minute or less. Enjoy!

My grandmother always seemed to have a kitchen utensil in her hand and it was either a knife she had just erroneously sliced herself with, or a spatula with which she was gently shooing me out of the area underneath her feet.  She was always in the kitchen baking and cooking, at least as I remember it.  I think the difference between my perception of her cooking and that of others was that little piece of dough she would give me to pound and knead and over-flour to my hearts content.  Being involved made me feel very special, and I can remember that piece of dough being given to me at an age where I think I was still eating more of it than I was rolling in too much flour.  Bless my grandma’s heart for that.

My mom was everything my grandmother was not, even though she came from her household.  We had about 10 meals that my mom cooked on a regular basis, and on special occasions like New Years Eve sometimes my mom would bust out a special recipe (7 layer dip!!) to bring to a party.  She did make a lot of tasty baked goods now that I think about it, and I’m remembering some layered bars in particular.  I should ask her for that recipe.  My mother became pregnant when I was in fourth grade and due to complications was bedridden for much of it.  Sometime around then was when I started fending for myself food-wise.  I still remember my first creative concoction in which I mixed my two favorite foods: Top Ramen and Campbell’s tomato soup.  Together.  I’m pretty sure I added lots of salt and pepper too because I knew food was supposed to be seasoned.  My mother complained about the nutritional content of Top Ramen/tomato soup so soon thereafter I started adding frozen peas and corn to it.  And salt and pepper and perhaps some italian seasoning.   I think that recipe progressed to other things, and I do remember my “dill phase” where I put dill in absolutely everything, much to my mother’s chagrin.  Eventually (high school?) I mastered the following dishes: chocolate chip cookies, pasta salad, 7 layer dip, guacamole, and stack-a-dinner.  It gave me enough range to feel confident in my abilities when I moved out at 18.  Somewhere along the line someone, maybe my mother, told me that all you had to do in order to cook well is be able to read a recipe and follow it.  I still think that is true, and that thought keeps me from becoming intimidated when trying new recipes.  I take that back.  Indian food intimidates me, and cooking meat intimidates me, but other than that I consider myself recipe fearless.

So three cheers to my new cooking blog!  Hip hip hooray!