Tea party with Pookie

Ah, memories. I made these cream scones with chocolate chips a while back. Olivia and I set up the pretty table cloth and made some berry tea. We munched on these and sipped "delicately" from our franciscan rose tea cups.

The girl likes a good tea party and we all love a good cream scone. I won't be eating one of these again for a while. Especially not topped with luscious clotted cream.

Olivia's Un-birthday

The only successful thing about the Un-birthday was the cake. The concept was fun. The invitations were irresistible. It was just another blah winter day that was in severe need of cheerfulness. And what did we get? Snow. A simple dusting of snow was enough to keep Olivia's little friends away. Both our little invitees live in the country. I guess country roads are treacherous in just a little dusting of snow. Go figure.


I've combined a lot of learning into this one cake. Over the last year, I've learned from my mother how to make her own special brand of decorative buttercream. Holds it's shape better than regular buttercream, but still tastes great. She's also schooled me in the delicate art of forming roses from this frosting. I'd watched her do roses all my life, never really considering that I might one day try my hand at it.


It's a two layer yellow cake, frosted at first in a layer of Mom's buttercream, chilled, then coated with room-temperature ganache. To be precise, the ganache was at 68 degrees Farenheit. I used a digital thermometer. I followed the instructions in Nick Malgieri's "Chocolate," with excellent results. If I'd just chilled the cake shortly after letting the ganache set, it could have been perfect. As it was, I left it out and proceeded to decorate the top with my battalion of pink and red roses, dark purple sugar-studded violets, and bright green leaves. My new decorator's kit received heavy usage.


Another time-consuming element of this cake was the individual mixing of different colors and flavoring each color as I saw fit. The green leaves were vanilla peppermint, the pink and red roses were strawberry, and the purple violets were cherry. So, we still ate the sucker. And we still sang the un-birthday song. And we still had a good time. Louis has already made an order for his un-birthday cake--lemon meringue pie, which obviously isn't a cake, but sounds damn good.

Thanksgiving Morning

I am an idiot. Though I'm at death's door, exhausted, and now officially diagnosed with bronchitis, I couldn't bear the thought of pop tarts or donuts for breakfast on Thanksgiving Day. How could I sully this day with a cheap fast breakfast that has about as much culinary intrigue as a bowl of cereal?

So I stayed up late the night before and made a recipe of dough, slightly sweetened, butter as the fat. I always make bread by feel. I maybe followed a recipe the first year or so of my cooking life. Now, I guess it's just one of those things. You know how much toothpaste to put on your brush, and you know how much liquid to add to the flour to make dough. I had it in my head that I would make cinnamon rolls, so I made a mixture of softened butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and apple sauce. After the first rise, I rolled out the dough in a rectangular shape and slathered with the mixture. Roll it up like a jelly roll, slice into 2 inch rolls and arrange in a buttered springform pan. I sat them out on the enclosed back porch overnight on a 30 degree night. They rose only slightly. I brought them into the kitchen to warm up while I preheated the oven to 375 degrees. I have no idea how long they baked, but when I checked on them later, I knew they were perfect.



These rolls rose a bit more in the oven, just beginning to edge over the top of the pan. After allowing them to cool a bit, I opened the springform pan to reveal the golden brown glory beneath. They were breathtakingly gorgeous. Breaking them apart into "servings" (they were enormous) gave me great pleasure because I could see the very light and yet stable crumb. I added a glaze made of powdered sugar and a bit of milk. Michael and I had ours with a cafe latte. And we ate every bit. The kids seemed pleased, but barely made a dent in their rolls. Now, that is a breakfast worthy of Thanksgiving morning.

Olivia's Birthday, phase 2

So, every kid expects to bring in treats to school to share on their birthday. I had about 13 cupcakes left from the party. Yellow cake with pink strawberry frosting. Two short the 15 required for her class. And I had fallen apart pretty much the moment after the last birthday guest left. Exhaustion and a protracted cold had finally taken its toll. What was a self-respecting mom to do? Why, make the Martha Stewart one-bowl chocolate cupcakes, of course.

They called for buttermilk, which was a little unusual, but added a vaguely salty and tart unctuousness to the cakes. That, contrasted with the fluffy vanilla-almond flavored frosting (Mom's recipe again) made for a highly successful batch. There was a certain level of immediate textural pleasure just at the moment of biting into one of these. One of the teachers offered to help me start my own bakery and another has ordered a birthday cake for February. And the only gal who really matters, Olivia, was very pleased with the excitement over her birthday treats.

In the pink

Guess who's five? Well, almost five. Yesterday, we had a rip-roarin' awesomely awesome birthday party for little Miss O. I'm rather pleased with the cake end of things, as I'm the one who stayed awake for nearly 24 hours straight before I got a chance to decorate. I used my mother's frosting recipe this time. I also made Nick Malgieri's chocolate plastic and used a candy mold to create butterflies and flowers. Here is the cake:

And let's not forget the clever formation of pink cupcakes...

At one point while we were decorating, Louis looked around and said "gee, this looks like a breast cancer awareness party!"
Thanks, Lou.

Mom's frosting
1/2 stick butter
1 cup shortening
2 lbs powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp butter flavoring or other preferred flavoring (I substituted strawberry)
gel food coloring in desired color (yep, I used pink!)

Blend butter and shortening in mixer. Alternate addition of powdered sugar and milk--a few spoonfuls of sugar, a few drizzles of milk, until all combined. Add flavorings. Add a few extra drops of milk until at desired consistency. Add food coloring.

This is a great all-purpose frosting. It's never failed my mom for going on 30 years.