How Many Bites Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Cake Pop?

I am not the kind of person who is good at being trendy.  I think it goes back to when I was 12 and my Mom would not buy me a pair of Guess jeans.  It was a time when the right jeans could actually advance you into the next social sphere and I wanted them, like, really bad. They were just too expensive, too tight fitting, too un-Catholic and a million other reasons my Mom would invent every time I asked. Instead, she bought me a pair of jeans called No Name.  She thought that was hilarious.  I felt sick.

I was pretty sure Jesus wanted me to have fancy jeans and all the glory they would bring.  I remember once at a slumber party, we went around the room telling each other what other people said behind their backs.  I was told I had ugly clothes and shoes.  I learned how to make it work for me, though.  While friends shopped at the mall, cute and fashionable in their Camp Beverly Hills t-shirts and brand name jeans, I shopped in thrift stores and wore old men's clothes and combat boots.  I thought it was hilarious.  My Mom felt sick.

You can't read Martha Stewart Living, go to a kid's party or even run into a Starbucks these days without seeing cake pops.  They are omnipresent and really trendy.  Like Snooki or that Old Spice guy.  I was smug in my outward distain of them.  I am not normally so snobbish toward any dessert.  I can really get behind a frozen Ding Dong or one of those scorching McDonald's apple pies and I have been known to put my whole face into a bowl of cotton candy.  If it tastes good, I'll eat it (if it looks like a delicious, pink pillow, I'll put my face in it). But something about the cake pop rubbed me the wrong way.  They are so in your face with their diminutive cuteness.  They are so delightfully compact.  They are what unicorns and fairies eat.  They somehow make me feel old. They also make me want to punch someone in the face.

I have been on fire with my baking the past several months.  People call me and jokingly ask me what I'm baking that day and I usually have an answer for them. I've stockpiled so many ingredients that I have candy melts and sprinkles of all sorts in my bedroom closet.  I baked my way through cakes, pies, cupcakes, brownies (oh the brownies!), tarts, cookies and the list goes on.  I couldn't believe it, but I was actually getting tired of the usual suspects.  Even my friends would protest that they didn't need another loaf of banana bread.  I was becoming a baking drag.  I was troubled by this.  I really needed to find some new recipes or, gasp, get a job.  Since the latter was still not materializing no matter how hard I tried, I decided I needed to think outside the bundt and find me a new muse.

I was online one day reading one of my food blogs and saw photos of some really pretty cake pops.  I was wondering how you make them. I mean, they are little balls of cake.  How do they hold together?  How do you get them so round and plump? So I clicked on the recipe and was intrigued by the answer - you mix the frosting and the cake together and roll them into balls!  I was slightly repulsed and yet it was kind of genius.  I needed to try it for myself and see if it was delicious, or if it was some weird, edible arts & crafts project that you might do in Kindergarten. Either way, the spark was back!

sifting cocoa powder

First, to bake a cake.  I read lots of recipes for cake pops - some called for a box of cake mix and pre-made frosting, others for a rich red velvet cake from scratch and a fancy boiled buttercream.  The cool thing about these pops is that you can use virtually any cake and frosting recipe. I didn't think this experiment warranted a whole bottle of red food coloring, and making a complicated frosting seemed silly for such a whimsical little treat, so I went with a super dark chocolate cake recipe and a vanilla cream cheese frosting.  You don't need to bake the cake in cake pans because, wait for it, you cool it and then grind it up in a food processor!  This was definitely more on the Kindergarten side of the spectrum, but I was game.  And if it didn't work out, I'd just eat some paste and call it a day.

chocolate goodness

This was a HUGE cake!  It was kind of agonizing waiting 3 hours for it to cool completely.  Then I cut off all the dry edges so all that was left was the decadent cake belly.  The cut off edges went promptly into my mouth and I'll be damned if it wasn't a super tasty cake.  Then I cut the cake into chunks, put them in the food processor and pulsed until it looked like chocolate bread crumbs.  It was definitely weird putting a cake in the food processor.  I thought it might turn into a big ball of goo, but it turned into nice, uniform crumbs.

mixing cake crumbs and frosting

My favorite cake combination is the super chocolatey devil's food (whose name comes from its super dark color, although I tend to think it's because only the devil could make something so delicious that I will eat it until I'm disgusted and very repentant) and vanilla frosting.  I will definitely eat the hallowed chocolate cake/chocolate frosting double whammy with reckless abandon, but the vanilla and cream cheese cuts what can sometimes be an overwhelmingly rich chocolate-on-chocolate extravaganza.  There is a sort of appealing restraint in not going double chocolate.  Another hot tip:  choose the appealing restraint of NOT putting your face in a bowl of cotton candy when given the option.

When mixing the choco-crumbs and the frosting, it seemed like it was just going to be a globby mess, and it was, but it tasted good and the frosting incorporated well.  It seemed like the white frosting might turn the dark chocolate cake to an unappetizing gray color, but the mixture was super dark.  I liked sneaking the frosting into the cake so that it was the full cake experience.  I used a cookie scoop, which looks like a baby ice cream scoop, to make sure my cake pops were all the same size.  Then, with clean hands, I rolled them into balls and placed them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment.  I was kind of grossed out by having to manhandle each cake pop.  I was hoping the people who ate them didn't think too hard about how they got so round.  Sort of like, as a vegetarian, I try not to think about how they are probably cooking my veggie burger on the same cooktop that was used to cook a big juicy hamburger.  I was able to make 75 cake pops from one recipe!  Into the freezer with my little balls for a half hour until they had firmed up enough to withstand the sticks and the dip into melted chocolate.

live nude cake pops!

While the cake pops were chillin', I melted some semi-sweet chocolate over a double boiler and cooled it slightly.  Once the pops were frozen, I gently inserted 4" lollipop sticks, which I got at Michael's.

sprinkles!

I was a little nervous that the cake balls would fall off the sticks as I dipped them in the chocolate but they didn't.  I dipped those suckers, all 75 of them, in chocolate and rolled them into a dazzling array of different sprinkles and then froze them again for about 15 minutes so that the chocolate set. Voila!  Cake pops!  And they were gorgeous!  They looked very fancy and professional.  I was pretty proud of myself.  I tried one and it was really good.  Very chocolatey, nice crunch of chocolate and sprinkles and the hint of cream cheese frosting made it taste mysterious and complex.  When Aaron came home, I presented my cake pop spectacle with much pageantry.  He wasn't buying it.  He wanted to know if I touched each one and why they were so dense.  I guilted him into trying one with my trusty boo boo lip routine, and he said they tasted good, but it was definitely not his favorite of my baking oeuvre.

The good news is that everyone else loved them.  Since I made so many, I gave them to all my friends, my friend's kids, the gardeners, the mailman, my doctor, my dental hygienist and I took them to several parties.  Also good news, they freeze really well and defrost perfectly in about 10 minutes.  I've gotten more squeals, more big smiles and more compliments on these darn pops than on almost anything else I've made, so even though they may not be husband-approved, I declare my experiment a success.  For my birthday, my friend Kirsten even got me a professional "cake pop" maker, so I guess that is a hint that I should keep making them.  You don't have to touch those, so maybe Aaron will even come around.  I still have never bought a pair of Guess jeans, but these cake pops are one trend I think I can get behind.

Oh, and by the way, it takes one bite to get to the center of a cake pop or, "A One," as the owl in the old Tootsie Pop commercial would say.

The Cake Is Not A Lie

This was triumph

I'm making a note here:  HUGE SUCCESS

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction

- from "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton (theme song to the video game, Portal)

It's no secret.  My husband is obsessed with video games.  And I, by default, am a gamer too.  While other people our age are out at bars with a pack of friends or taking their kids to playdates, we are in our pajamas on the couch tearing through another twitchy masterpiece such as Bioshock or Heavy Rain.  On a typical night, we usually make a good dinner (think cracked crab with blue cheese and hazelnut mashed potatoes and some New Zealand sauvignon blanc) and fast forward through a few episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and when the plates are cleared...well, let the games begin!   

The games we play together are mostly the survival horror genre.  They have a creepy atmosphere and a really complex story line, usually involving a deranged killer on the loose or something undead.  And when I say "play together," I mean that Aaron plays while I snuggle with our dog and tell him what to do.  Now Aaron does not need some gal from the valley telling him how to play a video game.  He's been playing them his whole life, but my experience with video games was really limited to a few from Atari in the early 80's.  That is, until I met Aaron.  He would play games 24 hours a day if he didn't need to eat, sleep or pay bills.  That sounds like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not.  Luckily, Aaron also likes to do civilized things such as see movies, cook, and play piano.  But if given the choice, he will always choose to play games.  "If you can't beat em, join em" goes the saying.  I am also not exaggerating when I say Aaron has a rad wife.  

Aaron's favorite game is called Portal.  This is a puzzle-solving game where the player is enticed by a computer voice called GLaDOS to complete puzzles.  GLaDOS sweetens the stakes by promising a delicious cake when all the puzzles are completed.  Not money, not dancing girls, but cake.  The person who designed this game has her priorities straight!  Of course at the end, the cake was a lie and the whole time GLaDOS has been trying to kill you.  My husband, who normally only wears solid color clothing, has 2 Portal t-shirts, likes to say "the cake is a lie" whenever he is disappointed, and the game's theme song is on constant rotation on his iPod.  For Valentines Day, I thought I would surprise him by making him a cake that looked like the Companion Cube, which is a beloved icon from the game.

The Companion Cube from Portal

I have never made a fancy cake.  I am intimidated by the effort and the artistry involved.  My cakes are simple and fairly uncomplicated.  I have dream about making a 3-tiered extravaganza, filled with guava curd and decorated with the most delicate sugar blossoms, but it seems like such a pain in the ass.  I look longingly at the cake section of Michael's and wonder what all those tips and couplers are about.  The most complicated decorating I've done is pipe some rudimentary doo-dahs around the edge of a cake by putting frosting in a ziplock bag and snipping off the corner.  It's enough to elicit the desired effect from guests, but not enough so that I screw it all up and end up having to go buy a Sarah Lee cheesecake at the last minute.  

Full disclosure:  I did not bake the Companion Cube cake from scratch.  I was nervous that I would not be able to replicate the look of the Cube so I wanted to have as much time as possible to work on it.  Plus, I didn't think we'd even eat it (we did not).  This was a showpiece; a symbol of my solidarity (or at least compliance) with Aaron's obsession.  This was not dessert.  I baked a white cake from a box in two round cake pans and, once cooled, cut each round into a square. Since doing all this kamikaze baking the past several months, it was really weird to smell a boxed cake.  It was a familiar scent, but it didn't smell like cake at all.  It was nice to be able to tell the difference and it made me feel like a real baker. 

cake scraps!

Disclosure #2:  I am not patient nor am I precise.  I always eyeball it when I hang pictures, and I don't enjoy crossword puzzles.  If something says "assembly required," I feel the twinges of a panic attack coming on.  That Sven bookcase at Ikea, though handsome and affordable, is out of the question.  I considered my bag of fondant with trepidation.  Fondant is a paste made from sugar syrup that can be rolled out and cut into shapes or draped over cakes and other goodies.  When you see a cake that is perfectly smooth, it is covered in fondant.  I have never worked with fondant before, and it was giving me stress to think about adding coloring, rolling it out and cutting all those angles and shapes.  It was actually really easy and fun to work with.  It was like Play-doh for grown ups.  I didn't feel very grown up making a cake that looks like a video game icon, but I am often in danger of being revealed as a nerdy kid masquerading as an adult, so at least the feeling is familiar.   

Thank goodness I had a small heart-shaped cookie cutter.  Hearts done!  I used the top of a drinking glass to make the circles.  The other components were a little more challenging.  I had to scale them way down to fit on the cake.  I didn't have a ruler in the house so I made a little template out of some thick paper.  It was time-consuming to cut out the 20 pieces that go on each corner plus the squares that went on the top, and I was less than precise in my execution.  I would get the smackdown on Cake Wars, that is for sure.  Once I had all the fondant cut out, I made a buttercream frosting and mixed red and blue food coloring to get that grayish tone.  

Now I had to assemble the cake!  I was nervous.  First, I frosted the backs of the hearts to attach them to the white circles.  This made them pretty heavy and I thought they might slide down the sides of the cake.  And the pieces that go on the corners had to be facing the correct direction, so I had to pay attention.  Why couldn't Aaron love Pac-Man?  Pac-Man cookies would have been so easy!  

I frosted the cake, dipping the off-set spatula in warm water to try to get the texture as smooth as possible.  A little rustic, but it looked like a cube!  I added the corner pieces, making sure they were all right side up.  Looking pretty cool.  I held my breath as I added the hearts, sure that they would fall off.  But they didn't.  I was getting pretty excited imagining Aaron's face when he saw his Companion Cube cake.  He was going to be so into me!  

To accompany the cake, I had enlisted my friend Kirsten to help me re-record the Portal theme song with special lyrics I wrote.  She is a great piano player and an amazing singer and knows how to record music on the computer.  She imitated the voice on the original song perfectly.  I couldn't wait to give it to Aaron.  The original song is a nerd-core masterpiece. You can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RthZgszykLs

With the cake and the gift ready, all I could do was wait for Aaron to come home. He was working a long day on a commercial downtown and not feeling very well, so I made him his favorite soup; french lentil and barley with swiss chard.  It was our first Valentine's Day as a married couple and even though we'd been together almost 9 years, I had butterflies in my tummy as I waited for him.  

I loved making this cake.  It took me out of my comfort zone as a baker.  It wasn't that it was difficult, just something I had never done before and something that was done purely for the joy of someone else. When Aaron got home, he didn't see the cake right away and when he did, he just looked at me and said, "no way."  He went over to it and basically freaked out.  It was unbelievably satisfying.  And don't tell him, but he may have gotten choked up when he listened to my song.  "It was a triumph," the song says, and it was.  Neither the song nor the cake was a lie.  After Aaron celebrated my majesty for an appropriate amount of time, we got some soup and went in the living room and spent the rest of the evening killing zombies. It was the most romantic Valentine's Day ever.  

Aaron, Owen and the Companion Cube!

(Don't Fear) The Pie Crust

I have a confession to make.  I am afraid of pie crust.  There, I said it.  I have made french macaroons with buttercream filling, rose flavored gum drops tumbled in superfine pink sugar, and meticulously decorated lavender sugar cookies in the shapes of snowflakes that took 3 days...but I have not attempted the dreaded pie crust.  Not ever.  I've made plenty of pies over the years, but the Pillsbury Dough Boy always made the crust.  It's the same feeling I had when I was an English major in college - 4 years of classes, but somehow I avoided taking even one writing class. I was afraid I was a terrible writer.  It is the same with pie crust.  If I failed, how could I call myself a baker? At least I've never called myself a writer.  But baking without mastering the art of pie crust is like being a chef without being able to make an omelette - downright shameful.  One of the reasons I started this blog was to prove to myself I can link sentences.  And I will make a grand pie crust to prove to myself that I am a baker.

I remember realizing early on that I could request pies for my birthday instead of cake.  The thing about pie was that my Mom would get more than one and I liked that idea alot.  Plus, there are so many to choose from; fruit pies, cream pies, custard pies, nutty pies, chocolate pies.  But my favorite pie is peach.  Not fresh peach, which is just a bunch of uncooked peaches drizzled with some suspect jellied substance, but double-crust baked peach pie.  Just thinking about it makes me swoony.  Aaron and I had pie, not cake, at our wedding.  My lovely, unstoppable in-laws drove 25 lbs of peaches from Philadelphia to an island off the coast of Maine so that I could have peach pie at our wedding.  We also had apple, coconut cream, and fresh Maine blueberry pie made by the most talented bakers I had ever met.  It was pie heaven.

pies at my wedding - the bottom one is peach!

Pie seems to be the new cupcake.  This irks me some because many years ago I wanted to open a pie shop.  Of course my secret fear that I couldn't make pie crust was a problem.  My friend Bryan would encourage me and scout locations.  I even had the perfect name...Pie Hole.  Bryan and I would talk for hours about the shop. I would serve just pie and coffee.  No cappuccinos, no frothy faux mocha beverages, just pie and joe.  I had a logo and the whole concept mapped out, but fear, again, kept me at my desk job.  A while later, Bryan wrote the TV show Pushing Daisies about a guy who owns a pie shop called The Pie Hole.  At least, on some level, my pie shop existed.

In the recipe book my Mom made for me, which contains all our family recipes, she included a recipe for pie crust.  It came from a friend of hers whose pie crust she loved.  When I went to read over the recipe, there was an asterisk with a note that said, "I had to beg C for this - and she gave it to me when she moved.  When I made it - it wasn't as good.  Maybe she changed something.  C did not like to share her recipes."  Classic Mom.  I couldn't risk my first attempt at pie crust failing because of a recipe feud from 1979 so I thought I had better find a different recipe. The next place I looked was in The Pie And Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.  She writes that her pie crust recipe was tested over 50 times...much more promising than my Mom's endorsement.  This recipe called for cream cheese, however, and as delicious as it sounded, I wanted a simple recipe and cream cheese crust seems to be one you try after you perfected something more basic.  I turned to my trusty Cook's Illustrated.  They did have a recipe with a 2-page dissertation of how they came to this definitive and flaky model of pie crust perfection.  Their secret ingredient?  Vodka!  They claim the reason pie crust is so difficult to roll out is because the water evaporates and the dough is too dry.  Vodka provides moisture, but the alcohol prevents the liquid from drying out the dough.  Interesting.  They also claim it imparts absolutely no boozy flavor to the crust.  I was torn because I wanted the quintessential basic crust recipe, but the idea that this one was a sure thing was very enticing.  In the end, the Cook's Illustrated recipe won out - maybe because vodka was close at hand if things got ugly.

I was kind of sweaty assembling all the ingredients.  We were going to dinner at our friends Michael and Margie's house and I had volunteered to make an apple pie (peaches aren't in season) so that I had no excuses.  I took a little comfort in knowing there was a Marie Callender's on the way to their house, just in case. Flour - check!  Cold butter - check!  Vodka - check!  Everything went in the food processor....the consistency was good, now into the fridge to chill for an hour. What a long hour!  I paced.  I called my friend, Kirsten, who loves to talk.  I spoke to Aaron with an Oscar-worthy nonchalance...and then the timer rang.  Panic seized me as I casually took the ball of dough out of the fridge and set out my pastry board and rolling pin.  I called upon the spirit of Betty Crocker, I called upon the baby Jesus and I called upon four and twenty blackbirds....please let this roll out nice.  I sprinkled some flour over it and my rolling pin made contact.  It was cold, but pliable.  It was rolling out like the finest, gourmet Play-doh - no cracks and a beautifully smooth surface.  I did it.  And it was easy!  I felt what must have been pie crust rapture as I laid the crust into the pie plate.

Apples in, top crust on, steam vents cut - voila!  I had myself a real live homemade pie!  It is always a really satisfying feeling to put something into the oven to bake. Into my ancient pink oven my pie went.  My apple baby.  My flaky, buttery triumph.  It is a truly loving gesture to assemble ingredients and release them into the oven to become something better than the sum of their parts.  I am sure this is what it must feel like when parents send their kids to college. "Become a great pie," I whispered.  "I'm so proud of you.  Release your juices.  Don't forget to call.  And go easy on the vodka."

FOOLPROOF PIE DOUGH (from Cook's Illustrated Magazine)

- for one 9-inch double-crust pie -

2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter

1/4 cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces

1/4 cup vodka

1/4 cup cold water

1.  Process 1/1/2 cups flour, salt and sugar in food processor until combined, about two 1 second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds.  Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade.  Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses.  Empty mixture into medium bowl.

2.  Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture.  With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together.  Divide dough into 2 even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk.  Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.  

A Peach Of A Cake

I have very distinct and special memories about my Mom baking in our little house in the west valley while growing up.  She had a respectable repertoire that included chocolate chip cookies, cream cheese brownies, and peach upside down cake.  On lucky days, there were chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven when we got home from school, and the cream cheese brownies always made an appearance when we went camping, but it was the peach upside-down cake - gooey and rich with melted butter and brown sugar - that really got me swooning.  

I grew up in the 70's - a time when microwave ovens were as big as TV sets and processed food was lauded as the greatest invention since cigarettes.  Despite all these "advancements," my Mom could cook.  I mean really cook.  I didn't really appreciate this until I started having dinner at my friend's houses and my young foodie sensibilities would twitch with distaste when the ubiquitous Hamburger Helper was put on the table or some room temperature fruit cocktail was being passed off as dessert. I was pretty smug about my Mom's cooking and how she made everything from scratch.  In retrospect I know that wasn't true - she took the same shortcuts as other Mom's did.  She was an equal opportunity user of Ragu pasta sauce and boxed cake mix but when she wanted to bust a move in kitchen, she was fierce.  I remember being pretty shocked as an adult, however, to realize that my glorious peach upside-down cake, the Barbie Dream House of my childhood desserts, was (gasp!) made with Bisquick and canned peaches (cling!  In heavy syrup!).  Just thinking about this combination, even knowing how good it tastes, makes my head hang low with inferior-ingredient shame.  

I first learned of this when I joined a recipe club at work.  I was just out of college and working at a mail order catalog.  I was interested in cooking but didn't have any real experience in the kitchen.  I wanted to impress my co-workers with a recipe that would make them celebrate my majesty for years to come. I was sure the peach upside-down cake was going to make me a superstar.   

My friend at work, Kevin, saw the foodie spark in me and encouraged it.  He was always giving me cooking tips.  He patiently wrote down directions for roasting peppers using a paper bag, he gave me cookbooks for my birthday, he made non-ironic references to pousse-cafe and he used fresh garlic, which was something I had never seen in my house.  Kev talked so lovingly of the dinners he made. He actually went to the store on his way from home each night to buy ingredients and snipped fresh herbs from his garden.  He even cooked while drinking red wine. Kevin made cooking sound so luxurious and fancy and adult.  I wanted to live like that!  This peach upside-down cake was going to be my gateway to exotic adult cooking!

Here is the recipe as I submitted it for the recipe club.  I made a fancy border and even used a rubber stamp with my name...clearly this was a serious recipe - especially for people who liked flowery borders and rubber stamps. Other people submitted recipes like 40 Clove Garlic Chicken and Shrimp & Feta Rigate A La Greco (submitted by Kevin, and a recipe I still make today) and Chocolate Mousse with Raspberry Sauce.  It was clear I was not in the same league.  I remember that realization hitting me and feeling very uncool.  In one of my favorite movies, You've Got Mail, Greg Kinnear's character asks Meg Ryan's character if there was someone else.  She said no, but that there was the dream of someone else.  I always loved that line.  I was not a great cook, but I had the dream of being one.   

 

Even thought my beloved peach upside-down cake is no prize winner, I still like it.  It is comforting and pretty and reminds me of my Mom.  It is also shockingly tasty.  Those canned peaches are always pleasantly uniform in color and the combination of their tartness against the sweet richness of the butter and brown sugar is delicious. And the cake is surprisingly good.  Even though it is simply a vessel to hold the upside-down goodness, I have to say it is quite velvety.  Every time I tell my Mom I made the cake, without fail she says "I always use extra butter and brown sugar."  I always say, "I know, Mom."  She is as dependable as Bisquick.  

Last week, my friends Mika and Kirsten were coming over for tea.  I'm still job hunting, which takes up an unimaginable amount of time, so I was just going to serve some store bought cookies.  Two hours before they were supposed to arrive, I felt suddenly embarrassed that the Sugar Nerd did not have something homemade to offer.  I frantically searched my cupboards for something I could throw together and was pleased to see I had the ingredients on hand to make the notorious peach upside-down cake.  Mika is a professional pastry chef, so I knew I'd be taking a risk making a dessert with canned peaches and fortified flour, but she is also a lovely gal, and would probably appreciate the kitsch of it.  I got busy on the velvet crumb cake and was sure to use extra butter and brown sugar for the topping.  Unfortunately the pan I chose to use was a bit too big and instead of the cake coming out golden-topped with little peach half moons snuggling together in a carmelized blanket of deliciousness, there were big bald spots where the topping didn't adhere and the cake showed through.  I was mortified!  Epic fail! 

yellow cling in heavy syrup!

The girls showed up and I cleverly distracted them with my pretty tableau of vintage tea cups, champagne and flowers.  Billie Holiday sang the blues in the background, backing me up with tales of her own failures. But my friends didn't smirk or look knowingly at each other, instead they remarked on how great the cake smelled.  They oohed and aahed over the table.  They asked me how on earth I found a cake plate that was the exact size of the cake.  They giggled over the prospect of afternoon champagne.  And they didn't say one thing about my sad looking cake.  Of course I had to point it out - to me it was the huge elephant in the room.  But they laughed and said it was going to taste great.  And it did.  Everyone had two pieces.  We had a spectacular afternoon laughing, drinking and eating.  I forgot about the cake disaster and had a wonderful time with my friends.  We were having so much fun, we were still chatting into the night.  Mika's husband and son came over and Aaron ordered pizzas.  We drank wine and hung out until my dog and Mika's son were sound asleep.  Epic success!

It was a good lesson in being easier on myself.  It was good to know a can of peaches could lead to a triumphant and delightful afternoon.  And it is always good to use extra sugar and butter.

I'm still not a great cook, but I have the dream of being one.

A Christmas Cookie

My Grandma Bernadette made the best Christmas cookies.  They arrived every December without fail, just like Santa, and I looked forward to them as much as I looked forward to Christmas morning.  She made only one kind, rolled sugar cookies, and she made zillions of them.  She stored them with great care between layers of wax paper in every Tupperware container and every soup pot she had.  It was an amazing sight to behold, that tiny kitchen overflowing with these lovely, sparkly cookies.  The most remarkable thing about them was that they were gorgeously thin and crisp.  Even as a child, I remember wondering how she got them so thin.  Every year, my Mom and I discuss this feat of cookie engineering, trying to figure out how she did it.  I was so intimidated by her skills at cookie rolling, that I have never tried to make them myself.  These cookies had to be the thickness of dollar bills.  They had to live up to my memory of them and my memory of her.  Oh, the pressure!  But I wanted to try.  I got out the recipe that my Mom wrote out for me many years ago.  The title said, "Grandma Bernadette's Famous, Thin Sugar Cookies."  She underlined "thin!" Already I was re-thinking this.  At the bottom of the recipe, my Mom put a big asterisk and wrote, "I think only Grandma can make these.  I try but it's so hard.  She was known for her beautiful handwriting and unusually wonderful, thin, thin sugar cookies!"  She wrote "thin" twice!  Also, I will tell you right now, my handwriting is not very good.  

My Grandma made cookies like she did everything in her life; deliberately, carefully and with precision.  I, on the other hand, do things with more of a reckless enthusiasm.  She worked for the school principal, I got called to the principal.  She was very quiet and conservative and I'm...well...not.  We did have one thing in common, we both liked baking.  Reading through the recipe, I was surprised to see that it called for shortening.  I haven't used shortening for years. Seemed strange, but I wanted to try and re-create her cookies, so I used it. Another crazy thing was the baking temperature for this recipe was 425 degrees.  I thought for sure this was a mistake - I cook my pizza at that temperature but never my cookies.  And the baking time was 4-5 minutes.  That couldn't be right, either. Most of the cookies I make bake for 12-15 minutes - at least.  I immediately called my Mom to see if she made a mistake when writing down the recipe.  Recipe confirmed.  I was really curious to see how this was going to go.

As far as decoration, my Grandma would put some sugar in several glass ramekins and put a drop of different food coloring in each one and stir it with a fork until it turned the sugar the desired color.  The sugar on the final cookies were always so pale, you could barely tell they were different colors, but I  always loved the way they looked - very delicate and fragile.  The only way you knew they were Christmas cookies was because they were rolled into holiday shapes.  There were no bright reds and greens, no royal icing. I resisted the urge to use more fancy decorations.  When I called my Mom about the oven temp, she had said, "Are you making the colored sugar?"  My sister Kim asked the same when I told her I was making the cookies.  It was clear tradition meant as much to them as it did to me and that the cookies were more than just holiday treats.  Baking these cookies brought them close to my Grandma's memory too.

I cut out my cookies using only the cookie cutters that had belonged to my Grandma.  I listened to Andy Williams and Gene Autry and Nat King Cole sing Christmas songs as I rolled those suckers out so thin  that I could see the recipe for pie crust printed on my pastry board underneath.  I was in the groove.  I sprinkled my pastel sugar on the cookies and in that crazy-hot oven they went.  Exactly 5 minutes later they emerged slightly brown around the edges, and triumphantly crisp.  So far, so good.  The smell of the kitchen was exactly as I remember - buttery, sugary and very much like Christmas.  I hadn't had these cookies since she passed away over 20 years ago.  I was nervous to taste them but they were perfect. Buttery, but the shortening gave them a sort of pie crust taste and texture.  They were ultra crisp and the sugar gave them a gentle crunch.  I packed them in Tupperware containers and in my soup pot between layers of wax paper.  I felt silly that I waited all these years to make them. I was happy to feel a connection to my Grandma, and glad that my Mom and sister could share in it too.  Between bites of cookie, I'm sure my Grandma would have told me that I did a good job, but that I need to keep working on my handwriting,

Red Velvet, If You Please

I was one of those anti-red-velvet people.  I was always skeptical of eating what I thought was essentially a chocolate cake with an alarmingly large amount of red dye no. 5.  I mean, if someone gave me a red velvet cupcake, I would eat it, but never with the reckless abandon of, say, a vanilla coconut cake or a glorious slice of boysenberry pie.  I honestly felt that "red velvet" was just an overly sexy name for a rather vulgar dessert that disguised its mediocrity with a fancy moniker and a potentially toxic amount of food coloring...kind of like a hooker with too much lipstick whose name was Chantal or Maxine.  Intriguing?  Yes.  Delicious? Dubious!  

Last week, I was reading one of my favorite magazines, Cook's Illustrated, and they had a recipe for the perfect red velvet cake.  Hmmmm...if it's good enough for Cook's Illustrated, there must be something revelatory about it that I haven't experienced.  What I love about this magazine is that they don't just print recipes, they deconstruct them and rebuild them to make them foolproof.  They may add some crazy steps like baking apple crisp topping before putting it on the apples so that it is actually crispy instead of soggy or adding vodka to pie crust, which gives pies a tender crust but doesn't toughen it like water can.  If science merged with your Grandma, it would be Cook's Illustrated magazine.  For each recipe, the tester describes the trial and error, the failed ingredient combinations and then finally the moment of triumph where the perfect recipe reveals itself.  It's like reading a really short, suspenseful mystery novel where the main characters are delicious foodstuffs!  Like Keri Fisher, who was the recipe tester for this cake, my first glimpse of red velvet cake was in the movie, Steel Magnolias - remember the armadillo cake?  Not only was it shaped like an unappetizing animal, it was bright crimson inside. Weird!  In the red velvet cakes of yore, the color was actually a by-product of a chemical reaction between vinegar and/or buttermilk and cocoa powder.  Before red food coloring, sugar beet juice was a common ingredient to intensify the color.  So not only might there be a delicious recipe here somewhere, this dessert actually has a history.  I was taken with the idea of making my own red velvet extravaganza.  I've never had a real homemade red velvet cake and neither has anyone I have asked.  I wanted to see if it differed from the bakery red velvet cakes I've had and it seemed like a festive dessert for a holiday dinner party I was having.

I will say upfront that the cake calls for an entire bottle of red food coloring!  And contrary to my belief that red velvet cake is just chocolate cake with red coloring, there are only 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  There is also a whole tablespoon of vinegar in this recipe, which I learned makes the cake not only more tender, but brighter in color as well.

Mixing all my ingredients, I felt like a mad scientist.  I also felt pretty naughty using a whole bottle of food coloring.   And this cake wasn't just red, it was explosively red.  It was bloody.  I giggled, I danced around the kitchen with my spatula, which now looked like a murder weapon.  It was like a scene from CSI.  I wonder if William Peterson likes cake.

And then there was the frosting....this was the most fluffy, dreamy, cream cheesy frosting ever!  Normally when I make cream cheese frosting, I mix a stick of butter, a box of confectioners sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla and one package of cream cheese in a bowl and have something pretty tasty.  This recipe called for 2 packages of cream cheese and 2 sticks of butter!  I thought it might be super dense and way too rich, but it was so light and very yummy.  The bright white color was a lovely compliment to the dark cake, too.  So far, this was a pretty cool experiment.

I served the cake to our friends Kelly and Freddy after a dinner of lobster mac n' cheese, lovingly made by Aaron, and a salad of watercress, roasted beets, tangerines and pistachios.  My cake was celebrated, ohhhed and ahhhed over and devoured.  It was luxurious and tasted tangy and vaguely chocolately but there was a subtleness to it.  It had a taste that was all its own.  This cake lived up to it's elegant name.  OK Red Velvet Cake, you win.  I am under your spell.  You have wooed me with your brazen color and tenderness.  You have charisma and charm.  You are deceptively complex and deep.  You are also playful and a bit campy.  If you were a woman, you might wear false eyelashes, but you wouldn't be a hooker. I take that back.

Forget the vanilla coconut cake, forget the boysenberry pie.  From now on, it's red velvet.  If you please.

RED VELVET CAKE (from Cook's Illustrated Magazine)

Note:  This recipe must be prepared with natural cocoa powder.  Dutch-processed cocoa will not rise or yield the proper color.

CAKE

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Pinch table salt

1 Cup buttermilk

1 TBSP white vinegar

1 TSP vanilla 

2 large eggs

2 TBSP natural cocoa powder

2 TBSP (one 1-ounce bottle) red food coloring

12 TBSP (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 Cups granulated sugar

FROSTING

16 TBSP (2 sticks)

4 Cups (16 oz) confectioners' sugar

16 oz cream cheese, cut into 8 pieces, softened

1 1/2 TSP vanilla 

Pinch table salt

1.  For the CAKE:  Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.  Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.  Whisk buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs in large measuring cup.  Mix cocoa with food coloring in small bowl until smooth paste forms. 

2.  With stand mixer on medium-high, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl as necessary.  Add one third of flour mixture and beat on medium-low speed until just incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Scrape down bowl as necessary and repeat with half of remaining flour mixture, remaining buttermilk mixture, and finally remaining flour mixture.  Scrape down bowl, add cocoa mixture, and beat on medium speed until completely incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Using rubber spatula, give batter final stir.  Scrape into prepared pans and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  Cool cakes in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely, at least 30 minutes.  

3.  For the FROSTING:  with stand mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add cream cheese, 1 piece at a time, and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Beat in vanilla and salt.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolate Cookies

Often, I have been waking up in the middle of the night and imagining the perfect job gently floating in the breeze, around the trees, pirouetting in the blue sky as it is carried this way and that, and landing right in my lap like that feather in Forrest Gump.  My heart swells as the Alan Silvestri soundtrack uplifts my spirits and this job-feather sways to the left, then loops a few times just out of reach and right when I think it will shoot up into the infinite sky, away from me forever, it seems to change its mind in mid-flight, circles back, tickles my cheek and makes the softest, most perfect landing right on my tan Gump-like slacks.

Forrest's Momma said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."  Lately, I feel like I keep getting the crappy chocolate.  I want the scotchmallow of pure happiness or the maple buttercream of excellent luck.  But nope, it's the fruit nougat of joblessness for me.  My Momma also had a nugget of wisdom.  She said, "stop your whining and go out and play."  So instead of stewing in my chocolate metaphor, I decided to play with some.

Like most people, I love the combination of chocolate and caramel.  It's a perfect storm of deliciousness.  I found a recipe for chocolate sandwich cookies that have caramel in the middle.  It sounded so good, and also a little daunting.  I needed a candy thermometer.  Most of the time when I see a recipe that requires special equipment, I immediately cast it aside because it seems hard.  But I happened to have a candy thermometer so I wasn't going to allow myself any excuses.  The one I have was given to me by  my Aunt Frannie.  It's called the Betty Furness Thermometer Set and it must be from about 1952.  You can tell from the packaging that Betty Furness does not mess around with her thermometers.  One look at her competent face and you know that she has a roast on the table, her face on and a martini ready for her husband when he gets home from a long day smoking in his office.  She cooks in heels, too.  I'm sure of it.  She also looks like she repairs trucks.  Big trucks.  Also in heels.

Making candy is a lot more intense than making cookies or cakes.  There is science happening right before your eyes and there is an exciting element of danger.  If you don't follow the directions exactly, a disaster beyond your wildest dreams may occur. An explosion even! Do not even think of boiling the caramel (no stirring!) until exactly 250 degrees is reached. Then and only then are vanilla and butter added.  It is like a chemistry experiment.  The mixture froths and bubbles and hisses and and that delicious smell of burnt sugar and caramelized butter perfumes the kitchen.  Success!  I completely forgot I was cranky.  I felt like putting on a face and getting a martini ready for my husband.  Forget the heels, though. Betty is on her own there.

As the caramel cools, I start making the dough for the chocolate cookies.  I am kind of a cocoa powder snob.  No Nestle cocoa powder for me.  I love the cocoa from a Dutch company called Droste.  Their cocoa is a deep dark brown color, compared to the grayish color of Nestle, and when mixed with liquid, it turns almost black. The smell of the cookie dough is deeply chocolatey and rich with butter.

I love cutting out cookies.  Cut out cookies require so much work, but they are so satisfying to make.  There are so many steps...the dough making, the chilling of said dough, the rolling out, the cutting into shapes, the baking and, Oh Mercy Me, the amazing scent that fills your house.  And then there is the sharing.  90% of the reason I bake is so I can share it with others.  The other 10% is to bask in the glory of my creation.  No, just kidding, it's to avoid job hunting!

On thing I love about my husband, Aaron, is that he always knows the answer.  if I need to know how to spell a word, Aaron knows.  If I am not sure if my shoes are the right choice for my outfit, Aaron knows.  If I can't remember that Shakespeare quote or if I want to know, real quick, what 35 x 420 is, Aaron just freaking knows. When I was done making the cookies, I handed him one to try.  I felt like they were good, but not over-the-top-delicious.  He took a bite, thought for a minute, and suggested adding sea salt to the caramel.  It was a genius idea.  So good, in fact, that when my friend Margie asked me for an idea for a cookie exchange party, I had the perfect recipe.  We had a wonderful day making them together at her house.  We even made candies out of the left over caramel.  It didn't matter that it took us 5 hours to make 30 cookies, we were bakers and candy makers and we were using fleur de sel in our confection!  Mais oui!  We felt wild.  And we were.

I still wake up in the night and imagine the perfect job landing in my lap.  I think it's good to visualize it as something easy and light.  I also know it will come.  I have also changed my mind about the kind of metaphorical chocolates I am getting.  All the "chocolates" in my life are delicious.  Some more than others, but the fruit nougat makes me appreciate the scotchmallow all the more.  I'm lucky to have the time right now to bake.  It does not escape me that these moments are special.  I am done whining.  As Forrest said, "that's all I have to say about that."