Archive 1: Cake through the Ages.

Naturally, we must begin this post with a bit about my opinion- this time on the merits and weakness of cake.
To give you a general idea: If I had to pick one dessert to have for the rest of my life it would definitely not be cake. Cake is often dry or spongey, and whether these textures were given to it intentionally or unintentionally I generally find them unappealing- or just unsatisfying to whatever chocolate craving I am nursing at the moment. But the cakes I feature here need not be feared. They are neither dry nor spongey nor full of half-baked air. They are rich and sweet and all around perfect. And some of them take a while to make. But trust me, every dish you wash will be worth it.


Alrighty... let's think back a few months.
First I shall introduce to you the lovely cake recipe that I found off of the blog smittenkitchen.com. This is probably the best cake I have ever had, and is most likely the cake that somehow- subconsciously or not- influenced me to begin this cooking blog. However, the memories are a bit bittersweet because this hunk-o-chocolate was served at my dear friend's goodbye party before she departed us and moved to Asia. In any case though, the recipe will remain as incredibly delicious and ridiculously time consuming as always. Look for the double-chocolate layer cake. It has this scrumptious raspberry filling between the layers as well, that may just as well be replaced with jam or filling of some other kind. A few tips I have:

-Don't decorate it like Debbie did. The icing for the designs will just make the surface more grainy, and the cake is regal enough to require a fancier design or none at all. I just used melted chocolate (white and semi-sweet) for the florentine design on mine- because I was up for experimenting and was inspired by a Julia Child re-run on French pastries. It worked pretty well, I simply striped the chocolate across the ganache with a pastry bag and used a toothpick to lightly scrape the surface. You have to be careful to do this quickly though so you don't end up carving into the frosting or chocolate.

-Make the ganache and filling while the cake bakes. It saves time, although I am sure all of you quick-wits could have figured that out yourself. 

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As you can see, I am no expert on the florentine design,
but I would still recommend trying it.



Try whatever design you plan on a piece of parchment paper
before you start.



After icing the cake make sure you go around the edge of the plate and remove excess

ganache with a paper towel- and then fine tune with a butter knife.

 Make room in the fridge, because the cake should be cold

before serving- to prevent chocolatey ooze.

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Next I will address another cake- much easier and very similar to the flavor of the double-chocolate layer cake. For Christmas last year my mother's friend sent me a box of lava-chocolate cake mix. Which seems incredibly strange unless you consider how much I enjoy baking and how delicious lava-chocolate cake is, even from a box. One of my friends was over and I had made dinner, so naturally I had to make dessert. I really had spent the afternoon cooking and wasn't willing to stand in the kitchen for much longer so I pulled out the cake mix. The method is simple enough- mix together the batter and pour it into these cute miniature foil cups. The cakes don't take long to bake, because you want then still gooey in the middle. To fancy things up a bit I used frozen raspberries, sugar and water (eyeball all of the measurements) to make a sauce for pouring on top. I will warn any who attempt to do this that the cakes must be oiled very well or they won't turn upside down onto a plate or will collapse when the sauce goes on. But out of four cakes I had three successes- so I wouldn't fret too much. Powdered sugar also would serve as a garnish if you hadn't any raspberries. Hot fudge (from a jar, i.e the good kind) was drizzled on these to create contrast with the plate and of course to add more chocolate.

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Alright. Next we have a rose cake. Amazing or what? I am not sure what actually started this, I think it was the huge excess of rose water I had from making some rather nasty cookies one time, but my friend and I decided to get together one day and make everything and anything imaginable that could be flavoured with rose water. During World Geography with our below-par teacher she compiled a list of recipes including a rose-sorbet, rose-blueberry gelatin and rose cake. The day of our baking experiment she had gone to our 'local specialty-food market' (like in all the recipes) and gotten some rose flavoured Vor-Mag water. Never heard of Vor-Mag water? You are definitely missing out. It is pretty much the best thing ever. Well, truthfully it is nothing more than plain water with rose flavouring- but the wrapper claims that they placed the water molecules under special circumstances that caused them to be Vor-Mag-ified. Who knows.

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 We also added some edible flowers for effect. They were not that tasty.

We did however have the brilliant idea of placing segments of straw

into the cake so the small stems would stay stuck.

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For the recipes rose syrup can be made from a ratio of 

3 tsps sugar

1 tsp rose-water/essence

1/4 cup of water

(Heat the water and sugar until dissolved and at a rolling boil)

Rose Sorbet

Rose Cake

Blueberry-rose Gelatin

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Finally I have the S'mores cake I made my little sister for her "Island' themed birthday party. Well, really it was more than a cake. It was brownies-the best brownies. And then it was homeade marshmallow fluff (don't skimp on this part). And THEN it was crushed graham crackers and chocolate chunks and more marshmallows. I personally would not have picked this- I tend to shy away from marshamallows ever since I ate an entire bag with my childhood friend one afternoon (spent making marshmallow stuctures with toothpicks and- you guessed it- marshmallows). But I must say that it was quite good none-the-less. For the cake I used Baker's One Bowl Brownies "Cake-like variation" which is not a negotiable aspect of the recipe. It must be done this way. Just pour the batter into two round cake pans and bake for the specified amount of time. Then for the marshmallow fluff I used the following recipe:

3 egg whites, room temperature
2 cups light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sifted powdered (confectioner's) sugar

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

In large bowl of an electric mixer, add egg whites, corn syrup, and salt. Using your electric mixer on high speed, mix for approximately 5 minutes or until the mixture is thick and volume has almost doubled.

On low speed, add powdered sugar and mix until well blended. Add vanilla extract just until well blended. Use immediately, or refrigerate in a covered container for up to 2 weeks.

WARNING: Once cooled the fluff will crystalize so make sure to cover the cake with fluff soon after making it. Additionally this recipe should probably be portioned or halved because it makes an extremely large quantity.

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That'stoday people.

Thanks for stickin' around.

 

  





Archives and School

So erm.. maybe you have noticed that I haven't posted anything in ages. Or maybe you haven't because you don't follow my blog. I think that the latter is the more likely of the two. Anyways. I haven't. For one thing I have a lot of homework, so there isn't much time for blogging. But that is old stuff, especially for my fellow classmates or used-to-be classmates. The thing is, when you row after school and do homework on the weekends your kitchen time is pretty much limited to the cookies you made for Health in 20 minutes flat (record time by the way.. or at pleast a PR for me). Oh yeah, and the reason I didn't ever post about those? They had four ingredients. And tasted like paper clips. But at least I knew the nutritional value for each cubic meter of cookie batter.
Please note though: I'm not complaining, just making excuses.
Rowing is great and so is school (English went about 10 points up and Science a few points down). And I have come up with a great solution (blog-wise) for my lack of time.
I am going to begin an archive of recipes that I have made and photographed before (that's perfectly normal too, to take photos while you cook).
Since my birthday is approaching I have decided to make my first archival post a special post about cakes.
And a sneak peek right here at the deliciousness to come:

The story behind this lovely creation and more are coming up on my next post.

Lunch

Well, now that school is starting it means I won't be eating microwave tortellini and peas every day at 3:30 for lunch. Not that my lunches will be much fancier.. I rarely have the mojo or the time in the mornings to even think of something interesting to eat. Which is unfortunate because after the first two periods of the day, the last thing I want is a lame lunch. But there is only so much you can pack in a lunchbox. It used to be that I would make elaborate plans to pre-make and freeze things like stir-fry and pasta with home-ade sauce. But that never actually happened. Maybe I am more in tune with reality now or maybe I am just out of inspiration. Either way, I have no clue what my lunches are going to look like. I'll keep you posted. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Egg Genie© As Seen on TV!

So my uncle is moving out of town. For the umpteenth time. But on the bright side.. he gave all of his awesome junk to us. Well, he gave most of it to my two younger sisters. But I can live without the Chicken Run memoribilia and that librarian action figure we gave to him long ago- just as long as no one takes that Egg Genie away. It can make 7 hard boiled eggs in UNDER 10 minutes with varying levels of softness depending on how much water you include. Have you ever heard of something more ingenius? I thought not. It even has a poached egg tray... Now I can have deviled eggs whenever I want OR poached eggs with soup OR a just plain hard boiled egg. I certainly hope that I never get tired of eggs.

This may look like a completely innocent egg cooker/steamer,
but you have to watch out for the metal spike.
It is for puncturing shells and unsuspecting childrens' fingers.

Oh, and did I mention that the hard boiled eggs this contraption makes are ridiculously easy to peel?
So wonderful that it is hard to believe.

The Thing about Soy Sauce

The thing about soy sauce is, you can put it on anything. But that is a relatively obvious and mundane thing to state. However, since my recent return from Japan (school trip and paid for entirely by a sister city alliance, I wouldn't want you getting the wrong idea) I have found that soy sauce should be put on everything. Or about close to everything. Soy sauce on fried eggs. Yum. It's like salt and pepper only way better and much more flavorful. Soy sauce on baked potatoes. Even better. Baked potatoes really have no taste in the first place, so why not?

We even have a genuine restaurant style soy-sauce dispenser now.

 Soy sauce is even the second ingredient in another one of my favorite sauces, peanut sauce! Soy sauce is also delicious on usual things like rice.
I suppose instead of discussing the merits of soy sauce I should have an introductory paragraph about this blog. So people will read it and all. But you can learn plenty about me and my eating/cooking/writing style by just observing this wonderful post. Examine what I included in it, but also what I did not include. For example: I did not include any measurements whatsoever. This is a hint about my cooking style. I rarely worry about exact measurements because I often invent ingredients to add to a recipe or simply substitute them in lieu of one another. Especially chocolate chips. I always add more chocolate chips than I intended to. However, I do tend to be significantly more careful when baking, and may occasionally follow a recipe to the T.
In any case I hope you all, dearest readers, enjoy my blog. Expect many more posts, and much more photography. Also the 'Whetstone' blog may change appearance from time to time, so don't be shocked if it does. I'm very fickle with my tastes in both food and websites.
Enjoy! (the last step in any recipe you could find on the side of a cereal box)