best food compliment…

pal “The chocolate ice cream you made is like Plato’s Theory of The Good ice cream. It’s what all ice cream should be. It is highwater mark for ice cream.”
me “its the form of chocolate ice cream?”
pal “it’s the Form of ice cream!”

(thanks david leibowitz! perfect scoop p.28 )

Daring Baking

3.2.08: Daring Bakers #1 (to me!) is a cake, which is no problem – I’ve made many cakes… But it’s the kind I never make, with layers and lots of frosting. I’m not big into frosting, usually its just too thick and sweet for me, but I need to work on my frosting (verb) skillz… so I’m going to make the recipe as is, rather than taking the easy way out with whipped cream as a sub. I’ll probably not make it til finals are over, which gives me plenty of time to track down some lemon extract… and for some reason reading this recipe made me think lavender, so I’ll have to think about adding that in some way…. I also have a lot of pans but no two identical ones, so I usually make my layer cakes as tiered things or trim down the bigger layer. I’m thinking that this might be the perfect opportunity to scavenge goodwill for a weird shape pan… duck? fish? who knows.

3.23
So I finally made the cake yesterday, didn’t end up using any weird pans or different flavors (decided to make lavender ice cream from The Perfect Scoop instead to go with it). Making the cake wasn’t a big deal. Cutting it in half was hard and didn’t work out too… evenly. Making the frosting was really annoying and kind of grossed me out with all the butter, but I had vowed to follow the recipe so I did it. I did it all. And since I had a bunch of people over last night who all like sweets, we got to share the (nutritional) pain. The frosting is much more soft and light than what my mom made growing up (basically butter and powdered sugar – the stuff that gets really hard as it sits), but still didn’t really change my stance on frosting. Once assembled though, the cake was good, and the uneven layers actually looked really cool going at strange diagonals, like archaeology… I should have buried some finds for my pals! The lavender ice cream was ok, but no one asked me to make it again… no matter, there are still hundreds of ice creams to try.

warming honey and lavender for ice cream. smells good.

lemon and sugar. smells good.

ready to bake

cooling

start on frosting…

best not to see how the frosting is made…

first layer of jam. this is a messy business.

All frosted! it was tough keeping the jam out of the white frosting (seemed important from the text of the recipe that the frosting be perfectly white.)

coconut for final touch. now to extricate the parchment….

ready to eat! check the stratigraphy…

Overall it wasn’t as much of a saga as I was expecting (I’m not complaining!). Sadly the past list includes lots of things I want to make, maybe I’ll do them retroactively… (bagels, french bread, pretzels…). Looking forward to the next one, and in particular the next savory one.

weekend

There was lots of eating out this weekend, so I didn’t cook much, but I did finally try a recipe for butternut squash lasagne from Gourmet that I’ve been wanting to make since I first got the issue (2001!!). It came out well but it took more work than I anticipated. Next time I’ll add a bit of spice or something to make it a little livelier. Also made baked coconut shrimp (quick, but a bit dry – had them with lime-cayenne sour cream) and Vietnamese coffee ice cream from The Perfect Scoop, which is delicious and way easier than his other coffee ice cream recipe. I really have to be feeling some special inspiration to be bothered to make custard… It’s just 3:3:1 of condensed milk:strong coffee or espresso:1/2+1/2 and some finely ground coffee and stick it in the ice cream maker. TOO SIMPLE! The library is bugging me to give the book back, so I’ve just ordered my own copy and am looking forward to blue cheese and honey, avocado, basil, lavender ice creams… it’s going to be a sweet spring.