another birthday cake

I made another birthday cake, this time for Mike, using a similar recipe to "yellow cake with chocolate frosting" just below. This time, I filled the cake with seedless raspberry preserves, and used a different frosting recipe, courtesy Martha Stewart. Overall the cake was really good, but I wasn't 100% into the frosting. I'm not a frosting lover, though; so often buttercream-style frosting is too fatty, too sugary, too much. This frosting contains three sticks of butter, and nearly a pound of chocolate! Now that's decadent.

I would have tried a ganache, but Mike liked the sound of a buttercream. Actually, Martha S.'s ganache recipe sounds a little flabby too. Two and a half cups is a lot of heavy cream. Maybe a chocolate glaze is the ticket.

Really, what I want to try is a 7-minute frosting, light and fluffy. I've never tried it before, but it seems completely unlike a fat-based frosting. Maybe a chocolate cake, with heaps of feather-light vanilla icing. . . .

Still, a tasty cake. I'm going on and on about the issue of frosting, but it was lovely and delicious, and I'm coming to rely on the yellow cake recipe below. It's a keeper. Happy Birthday Mike! I love making birthday cakes.

yellow cake with chocolate frosting

For a recent birthday, I made a yellow cake with chocolate icing. It needed to be dairy and soy free to accomodate food allergies, so I adapted this recipe, Moist Yellow Cake on epicurious.com. It turned out so good. I'm still thinking about it. Because I replaced butter and buttermilk with coconut milk, it has a slight coconut taste, but that's all to the good.

3 cups (330 g) cake flour
1 tablebspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 can coconut milk, thoroughly chilled in refrigerator
2 cups (454 g) granulated sugar
5 large eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
rice milk, or other milk
1 T. white vinegar or apple cider vinegar or lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease and line with parchment paper two 8x2-inch (20x5-cm) round cake pans. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Open the can of coconut milk. Drain and reserve the watery liquid, and scoop the solid coconut oil into a measuring cup. You should have one cup of solid oil. With electric beater, beat the coconut oil until light and creamy in a large bowl. Stop and scrape the bowl. It will get very airy and light--even more so than butter. I was amazed at how well this worked.

4.Add the sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating 1 minute after each addition. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally. Add the eggs one at a time.

5. Measure your reserved coconut water, and add rice milk to equal one cup. Stir in vinegar and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Mix just until incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl and mix for 15 seconds longer.

6. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a knife. Lift up the pan with the batter, and let it drop onto the counter top to burst any air bubbles, allowing the batter to settle.

7.Center the pans onto the lower third of the oven and let bake 45 to 50 minutes or until the cake is lightly brown on top and comes away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Then, I iced it with frosting based on Billy's Chocolate Buttercream, from MarthaStewart.com, adapted to be dairy free and more chocolatey.

1 cup Earth Balance soy-free margarine (comes in a tub)
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled (I used Enjoy Life brand, which is dairy and soy free)
1.5 tablespoons rice milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2.5 cups confectioners' sugar
several tablespoons sifted cocoa powder, optional

In a big bowl with electric mixer, beat margarine until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add chocolate until just combined. Add milk, vanilla, and sugar; mix on medium until well combined. For extra chocolateyness, add cocoa powder by the tablespoonfull as desired.

My final frosting was a bit stiff--it didn't spread 100% smoothly. Probably the added cocoa powder, not in the original recipe, was to blame. It tasted terrific, though, and without it the icing was very light brown. I thought it needed extra chocolate punch.

This was enough icing for a double-layer cake, but you might want to make a bigger batch for a triple layer cake or if you want lavish icing.

Also decorated the cake with a quick chocolate ganache--3 tablespoons rice milk, boiled in microwave in glass measuring cup. Add 1/3 c. chocolate chips, mix until all melted, cool a few minutes, then place in ziploc bag with a sharp edge. You can then snip off the edge and use it like an icing bag.

Trio of orange vegetables soup

This soup that i threw together last night turned out so good I want to jot down the recipe before I forget it.

2 T. olive oil
1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 large leeks, cleaned and roughly chopped
4 large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
4 stalks celery, roughly chopped
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped into large pieces
1.5 cups pumpkin puree (1 small can)
2 sticks fresh rosemary, leaves stripped and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups water (or vegetable broth)
2 T. white balsamic vinegar
1/4 c. heavy cream, optional (or coconut milk, or 2 T. butter)

Heat olive oil in large soup pot over medium to medium high heat. Saute onion with a sprinkling of salt for a few minutes, then add leeks. Stir frequently until slightly softened and browned. Add carrots, rosemary, and celery and saute a few minutes more. Add sweet potato, 6 c. water, and pumpkin (or more water, if this doesn't seem like enough). Bring to boil, and simmer until vegetables are soft, about half an hour. Turn off heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth, but not too smooth. There should be some texture and small pieces of vegetables in the soup. If too thick, add a bit more water. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste. Stir in cream, coconut milk, or butter if desired.

I added the heavy cream as an experiment, since i have some left over from thanksgiving. Even a small amount of cream adds a lot of rich flavor. But the soup is very good without also. A little butter or coconut milk would have the same effect. A topping of sour cream or plain yogurt would be nice as well.

Thanksgiving

Here's what we had for Thanksgiving dinner this year:

Mushroom and Farro Pie

Smashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic Gravy

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Rosemary and Sage

Galicky Kale

Pumpkin Tart with Anise-Seed Crust

Haagen-Daz Five Brown Sugar Ice Cream



Mostly the same menu we had at our Thanksgiving dinner last year.

Chickpea Tomato Soup

Made a simple soup from the Orangette blog last night:

Chickpea Tomato Soup with Fresh Rosemary

It's good. I knew it would be.

Coffee Couponing

Just to make sure anyone who accidentally reads this blog is bored to death, let me recount my recent forays into couponing.

#1, Dominick's.

3 12 oz. bags Caribou coffee regularly 9.99, on sale for 4.99. I use 3 coupons for $2 off 1 bag. So, coffee only 2.99/bag. I also bought a big container of yogurt and a pack of tofu for a total of $14.40.

#2, Jewel. A Catalina deal.

2 12.-oz. bags Dunkin Donuts coffee, regularly 8.79, on sale for 6.99. Two jars Smuckers jam, 2.95 on sale for 2.00. I used two "$4.00 off ground coffee" coupons that I snagged off some liquor bottles. In IL you don't have to purchase liquor to use the coupons.

Paid 10.38, plus got a $5 Catalina back. Regrets: 1) the Smuckers contains HFCS. 2) Using the $4.00 off coupons makes me feel like I'm cheating. Maybe taking coupons from the Bailey's Irish Cream display is wrong, although other couponers do it. (Of course that's not a justification for unethical behavior.) 3) Decaf Dunkin Doughnuts coffee was sold out, so I bought more regular coffee. What I really need is decaf. 4) DD coffee isn't fair trade or shade grown as far as I know, so it's probably harming the environment and screwing over the people who harvest it. Caribou coffee is a little better. It has a Rainforest Alliance medallion on the packaging.

#3, Jewel. Trying to find some decaf coffee.

3 DD decaf coffee bags, on sale for 6.99. Total 21.44. Paid with $5 Catalina from yesterday plus $16.44 out of pocket. Got a new $5 Catalina back.

I tried to use the $4 off coupons, but the checker wouldn't accept them. Oh well.

So we're well stocked in coffee for a while (although still need more decaf, since I drink a 3/4 decaf concoction). Will this type of active couponing pay off? I'm not sure. I've also bought tofu at Trader Joe's and produce at Stanley's and Tony's, so it's not like I'm spending no money.

It's a little bit fun.

Stir-fried Winter Squash and Tofu with Soba

Winter squash, tofu, and soba are all favorites of mine, so how excellent to find a dish combining all of them, right? But no, Stir-fried Winter Squash and Tofu with Soba is not a keeper. It's not terrible, but suffers from "would you like some starch with your starch?" syndrome. Like potato tacos, or the complete breakfast of cereal with milk, toast, and orange juice once recommended by cereal commercials. Or grain-based veggie burgers on a bun. Yuck. I would not like some starch with my starch.

Not that butternut squash isn't delicious and healthy, but I feel like the soba noodles need something more zingy. And the squash took forever to cook, so my dish wasn't all pretty and bright orange like the picture, but brownish and messy looking. It seemed sort of bland, too.