A Series of Less Succinctly Written Recipes

Some folks just can't be bothered. Still, I forgive them. More specifically, I forgive Amy Sedaris. Her crazy book on entertaining, trashy chic style, has a number of "interesting" recipes. I took a chance one day on "Aunt Joyce's Brownies". Aunt Joyce probably knew what she was doing, but the recipe was a little slap dash, giving the measurements and basically sending you on your merry way to mix and bake as you please. The main problem with a recipe like this is things could go horribly wrong, even if you aren't a novice. Luckily, things went especially right. And could only improve upon the second go 'round.

From "I Like You," Aunt Joyce's Brownies [with additional instructions]

4 eggs (beaten until fluffy)
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour, sifted
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 12-oz. package of chocolate chips
2/3 cup (11 tbsp.) butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
lightly greased 9 x 12 in. baking dish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift together dry ingredients and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Set aside. Melt butter in a medium sized mixing bowl. I generally microwave the butter at 30 sec. intervals until mostly liquid and then add the chocolate chips. Let the chocolate sit in the hot butter to melt. Once smooth and blended together, add the vanilla to the chocolate mixture. Using a stand mixer and a whip attachment, beat all four eggs until light and fluffy and pale lemon in color. When the chocolate/butter mixture is cooled, fold in the whipped eggs. Then pour this mixture over dry ingredients. Mix with a spatula until just blended. Pour into your baking dish and bake for 30 min.

This yields an almost airy brownie, but it still has the heady damp chocolate decadence brownies are known for. I also like using the 9 x 12 dish to provide more crispy chewy surface area. You can almost taste them, can't you?

What the girl wants, the girl gets

Today was Olivia's last day of vacation before summer session. She stayed home with Daddy and generally insisted that they go nowhere and watch loads of t.v. He did, however, convince her that it would be a good idea to make cupcakes. And when is it not a good idea, really? She immediately specified yellow cake with chocolate frosting and cherries on top. These little jewel-like goodies were the result.

I didn't realize until just now that there is something vaguely sexual about them. We paraded around our neighborhood with the platter of them and delivered one to each of our neighbors. We have good neighbors. We weren't too worried about giving away all our cupcakes because we knew we had the matching cake waiting for us at home.

I bet you might be able to guess by now that my daughter has a semi-permanent ring of chocolate around her mouth most days?
Olivia claimed it was my birthday cake and she set to work drawing up some elaborate birthday cards for me. She even went to the trouble of making sure all of my friends "signed" the card by having Daddy write everyone's name for her. The list she gave him was surprisingly comprehensive. She hit all the grandmas, grandpas and even some of my older friends who hadn't visited in some time.

Finally, for those who have expressed concern over the spider bite, I may have panicked just a little bit. The bite isn't sore or painful anymore and it seems to be fading and moving on into healing mode.

Scary Yoda Cake

Baking geeks beware, I too can flood the Internet with images of scary Yoda cakes. As on every May 23rd, we celebrated the birth of my youngest stepson. Bryce is the happy recipient of several Babycakes. Over the years he's seen some of my finest work. Licensed characters are the usual fodder. We've had Bob the Builder (building things out of Little Debbie Cakes and scooping crushed chocolate cookie crumbs), a super-hero camp out (The Flash, Superman, and Batman sitting on Twix logs, toasting mini-marshmallows on toothpicks over a candy-corn fire), SpongeBob Squarepants, Star Wars (Return of the Jedi sandworm scene with the world's ugliest sandworm), and finally Yoda. Ya ya ya ya yoda.

As you can see, I ended up using a hell of a lot of green fondant. The cake itself was peanut butter flavored with chocolate buttercream frosting. I cut a 9 inch round cake to roughly yoda-shaped proportions and used leftover cake bits and fondant balls to build a framework that would form the contours of Yoda's face when draped with a sheet of fondant. I spent about 12 hours trying to figure out how to work with the fondant in sculptural manner. Eventually, I developed a stylized means of depicting the green Jedi master using some handbuilding techniques I'd learned years ago from husband number two, the ceramist.

The birthday boy was pretty pleased. We ate Yoda while listening to the Weird Al "Yoda" (to the tune of the Kinks "Lola"). And fun was had by all.

New look, actual purpose

Babycakes is the name of my fictional business. I have a history of baking and fiddling around in the kitchen, as many of you know. I've decided to blog about it because I'm sure my husband gets a little tired of hearing about whether or not marzipan can be an adequate substitute for nutella in a recipe. If anyone finds what I write interesting, maybe I can one day put together something other than a fictional biz.

Today I supplied a cake for my library's monthly birthday celebration. I would post a photo if there were any left. I didn't think to photograph it this morning before the vultures moved in.

I synthesized two different recipes, one a Marcella Hazan almond cake recipe and the other a Nigella Lawson chocolate hazelnut recipe. I used marzipan rather than the almonds called for in the Hazan recipe and it also substitued for the Nutella. Amaretto really nailed home the almond perfume for this cake, but it was balanced out by some semi-sweet chocolate. Chocolate amaretto ganache served as the icing and toasted almond slivers sprinkled over the top distracted viewers from the fact that this cake was quite misshapen and ugly. No matter how ugly, the taste was divine. I may have to refine this one and post the recipe once I get predictable results.