Happy Birthday Baby: The Tale of the Cake Explosion

For my niece’s third birthday I volunteered to bake her cake. My cousin requested that I make two cakes, a large one for everyone to eat and a small one for K-Lynn (name shortened to protect the cute and adorable). Easy task? I sure thought so. My kitchen looked like a pastel bomb exploded, and I was covered in mad amounts of frosting when all was said and done. My cousin and her fiancé were thrilled and impress, but the perfectionist in me died a little working in it.

The cake itself was simple. My cousin asked for white cake, and I decided to jazz it up with some color. The original plan was pink and purple cake with a light blue frosting and pink trim, but when the cake didn’t turn out very purple, I let it stay more blue and went with purple frosting. Using two boxes of Duncan Hines White Cake mix, prepared as directed, I dyed one half pink and one half a light purple/blue. I marbled the cake batter and made two 9 in layers, and one 6 in cake (to be the birthday girl’s special cake).

Next came what I am calling the Great Cake Explosion, although really it should probably be known has the Great Frosting Explosion. Armed with disposable pastry bags, my decorating tips, and two couplers, I embarked on my first ever attempt at cake decorating. I really need more tools because honestly this was huge mess that took hours to clean up later. Ok, so hours is an exaggeration but it really was a huge mess. Using three cans of Duncan Hines Creamy Vanilla Frosting, I dyed some of purple, thinned it with a little milk, and used it to ice both cakes. I really need an actual angled spatula, but it didn’t turn out too bad for a first try, Next I dyed some of the frosting pink and attempt to pipe shells around the bottoms of both cakes and stars around the top edges of both cakes. I discovered later that I should have used twist ties to hold the tops of the bags shut and that my icing was beginning to thin. I ran short of pink half way through K-Lynn’s cake and had to add purple to the bag. The problem was that while I got a really cool tie-dye effect my icing was too thin and some of it ran.

Lessons learned:

• Angled Spatulas are a must for icing cakes.
• Always make sure to tie the pastry bags closed properly so that you can hold them.
• Mixing thinned icing with stiffer icing will cause your trim to run.
• I really need more tools—decorating tips, pastry bags, silicone spatulas, twist ties
• Making your own buttercream icing is the wise move.

Dusted Chocolate Stars

I am terrible. Can you ever forgive me? Is anyone out there even reading my randomly updated blog?

I had such high hopes for this blog, and here I am with no updates and barely any cooking. Those of you who have read a post or two know that I am in the awkward position of running a food and cooking blog with no money; when I started this I had planned to cook and bake and experiment, but then our kitchen (since I am still at home with my parentals) took much longer to finish. The kitchen is still unfinished, which is sad because it’s been over a year, and money has been tight. So blogging is difficult.

I have many weaknesses, one of which is chocolate. My love affair with chocolate is absolutely ridiculous, and it is second only to my passion for caramel and candies. I also love to experiment, and my life, while unemployed and working on getting back into school, often revolves around digging around for recipes and trying new things. So when I came across this chocolate cookie recipe on Bake at 350, I couldn’t resist. Chocolate cut out cookies? Yes please. The recipe calls for a cocoa frosting, but I’m not big on frosting like that on my cookies, so I decided to dust my cookies with a light dusting of powdered sugar. I also modified it by splashing it a bit of vanilla extract to balance the strong taste of the cocoa.

Over all, they are good cookies, though to me they taste more like brownies than cookies. They aren’t quite my style, but it was work a shot. I bet they would be fabulous with a scoop of vanilla ice cream between two of them. Anyway, onward to baking and really bad food photography.

 
Blend together flour, salt, baking powder, and cocoa

    
This ladies and gentlemen is my ancient but trusty stand mixer. It may not be pretty, but it knows what it’s doing. Here I blended together the sugar, eggs, shortening, and milk, along with a splash of vanilla.

Here’s part of why it got messy for me. Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet, I switched from my paddle attachment to my dough hook. It makes a world of difference if you ask me.

  
After the dough was chilled for two hours I rolled it out and cut it into stars. The recipe pictures were scalloped circles, but I don’t even have a circle cutter unless you count my biscuit cutter. And let’s try to ignore my ugly cookie sheet, huh?

  
Baked at 375 for eight minutes, and once they were cooled I removed them from the cookie sheet and onto waxed paper and dusted them with powdered sugar.

Recipe for Rolled Cocoa Stars

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

• Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa
• Blend sugar, shortening, eggs, milk, and vanilla
• Gradually add in cocoa mixture until all is blended in.
• Chill dough for two hours
• Roll out and cut into shapes
• Bake at 375 for 8 minutes, cookies will still be soft to the touch

I’m a Cheater who Doesn’t Update Enough (Chicken and Dumplings Made Easy)

I keep promising myself I will blog more, and somehow I always wind up failing to do so. I have been a very busy woman in the kitchen. I’ve probably baked ten dozen cookies, and I’ve baked several pies; obviously I’ve cooked a variety of meals, though mostly it’s been simple stuff like hamburgers or fried chicken. I even made the crust for some of my pies. However, I haven’t done much worth blogging about. I’m going to make it my goal to cook more and blog more, so if you are reading this, welcome to the show.

ON TO THE FOOD

(without pictures because my batteries were dead)

Simmering in a large stock pot in my kitchen are what I like to call Chicken and Dumplings Made Easy. The trick is not making the dumpling from scratch, even though if you can make biscuits you can make dumplings easy enough. However I do have a new tag called Easy Peasy which will have meal ideas that are simple to do and require minimal ingredients, like the meal at hand.

Basically you boil chicken breasts, on the bone and with skin, with a little butter, salt, pepper, and any other seasoning you like, and then you drain them, saving some of the broth. Remove the bones and skin and put the meat back in the pot, covering them with chicken stock, some of the broth from boiling the chicken, and extra water.

To make the dumplings, all you do is take store bought homestyle biscuits, the kind that come in a can from the refrigerated section of the grocery store, and roll them out thin. With sharp knife, slice them into strips and drop them into the pot. Sometimes I add a bit of flour to the pot to thicken it, but otherwise just simmer until the dumplings are tender and not doughy. Simple as can be!

Recipe (not really) for Chicken and Dumplings Made Easy

4 Large Chicken Breasts still on the bone with skin
2 T Butter
Salt & Pepper to Taste
4 Cans of Homestyle Biscuits
32 oz. Chicken Stock (more if you’d like a stronger flavor)
Water

• Boil the chicken with butter and seasonings until tender and falling off the bone
• Drain chicken, remove bones and skin
• Pour stock and water over chicken
• Roll biscuits until they reach desired thickness, slice into strips, and drop into pot
• Simmer until dumplings are tender and not doughy

Southern Style Biscuits

This morning I made biscuits for breakfast, channeling my nanny, and they turned out pretty fabulous. Using a recipe pretty much adapted from the back of a bag of self-rising flour, I managed to make a batch of soft light biscuits. The thing about making biscuits the way my nanny made them is that you basically take the recipe and double it, adding a bit of shortening and milk to make sure the amount of moisture in the mixture is right. I apologize for the lousy picture quality; food photography is another talent I am working on cultivating, and I haven’t gotten close to mastering it yet. But I will keep practicing and eventually I’ll get better.
You start by blending together the shortening and flour until crumbly; you can use a either two knives or a pastry blender, but I prefer my pastry blender because its much easier. I can blend things one handed, while holding the bowl steady, and I simply use a fork to occasionally scrape the shortening off the blender into to the bowl.

The next step is mixing in the milk with a fork; I normally discover that I need more milk to make sure that the entire mixture is moist. Don’t over mix the milk and dry ingredients; all you have to do is mix it until the dough forms and begins pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Once that’s done, sift a little flour onto your hands and dump the dough onto a floured surface. I cover my counter with wax paper because I don’t want my biscuit cutter to scratch the counter. If you don’t flour your hands and the surface, you are going to wind up with a sticky mess.
Then you knead the dough until smooth; I recommend sifting all-purpose flour over the dough and over your hands frequently to avoid having it stick to everything it touches.  Work from the outside in, pulling the dough toward the center; don’t over or under work the dough or your biscuits will be tough and hard. Once the dough is smooth, sift flour over your roller and roll the dough to a quarter inch thickness; the thicker the dough, the higher your biscuits will rise. You can also fold the dough over before cutting it to make larger fluffier biscuits. Dip your biscuit cutter in flour and press straight down to cut.
Lift the biscuits from the trimmings and place them on a pan; if there is enough flour on the bottom of the biscuits after cutting, you shouldn’t need to spray your pan with non-stick. Re-knead and re-roll the dough to cut remaining biscuits. Before baking, I recommend dusting the excess flour from the tops. Bake at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, and if your biscuits are not brown enough you can pop them into the broiler for a few minutes.

Southern Style Biscuits

4 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cup milk

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees
• Blend shortening and flour together until crumbly
• Stir in milk with fork until dough forms and pulls away from the sides of the bowl
• Knead dough on a floured surface until mostly smooth; roll to about 1/4 inch thickness
• Cut biscuits out with floured biscuit cutter, re-kneading and re-rolling trimmings if needed.
• Bake on cookie sheet at 450 for about ten minutes; more time may be needed for thicker biscuits.

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Passing it On

In Southern families, recipes and cooking tips are often passed down from mother to daughter; there is something very powerful and important about the way that works. It’s way of passing not only family traditions, but also preserving the memory of someone you love. I’m writing this entry because I am losing the person who inspired me to get into baking and cooking in general. My mom can cook, but she doesn’t have the same ridiculous obsession I seem to have with food and cooking and baking; I think it skipped a generation, and my Nanny (maternal grandmother for those of you who don’t know) passed her love of cooking to me.

When I was younger and my Pa (my Nanny’s third husband and the man I counted as my true maternal grandfather) was alive, Christmas Brunch was done at their big house on the farm, and it was huge. My Nanny would cook so much that you would think she was feeding an army. Massive piles of homemade biscuits and bowls of homemade gravy, plates full of sausage, ham, and bacon, plenty of scrambled eggs, a huge turkey, real mashed potatoes, corn, pinto beans, rolls, macaroni and cheese, and so much more. There were probably twenty of us back then, maybe a few more, and the spread was always more than we could eat; on top of that she made desserts, pecan pie, chess pie, chocolate cake, plus a variety of candies she’d made. Thanksgivings and Easters were similar, though breakfast food was not prepared. Her habit of cooking large meals was not deterred when the number of people was smaller or when it was just a Sunday dinner; my Nanny always cooked for an army. I honestly think her enthusiasm inspired my own interest in culinary attempts, and I will always be grateful for that. There is a picture of me, when I was no more than a year old or so I think, sitting on the counter, covered in flour, while my Nanny made biscuits; I know for a fact that I was the only grandchild who was ever permitted to do such a thing, and I remember her excitement when I first expressed interest in learning to cook.

Mama is often full of advice when I need it, but often, when it comes to cooking, Nanny is the person I need. I always ask my mom things like “How did Nanny do this?” or “Do you remember if Nanny had a recipe for this?”, and her typical response was to tell me to call her; now I won’t be able to do that. My Nanny is very ill, and she is not going to get better; she was such a big part of my life, and now she is going to be gone. It’s breaking my heart, and I am barely handling it. I was so proud of myself for making her “No Fail Chocolate Pie” on the first attempt, and when my biscuits turned out perfectly for the first time, but I only got to share the pie moment with her because by the time I attempted biscuits from scratch (for some reason I never got around to it until just recently) she was already far too ill; it killed me that while I could tell her all about it, she couldn’t laugh and joke about how easy it was and suggest something new for me to try. Soon I will only have her recipes and the memory of her voice, and I’m not sure how to handle it. I love my Nanny, and I will miss her so much; I already miss her. That is why I’ve made up my mind that the bakery and sweets shop I plan to eventually have will be called “A Taste of Joy” in honor of Barbara Joy Smith, my Nanny, the woman who opened my eyes and introduced me to the joy of cooking. This blog has officially been retitled permanently as “A Taste of Joy”, and hopefully I will get the money to purchase a decent domain name as well.