Cake #5: Black Forest

Just so you know, I'm starting to think this is a very bad idea. Some day soon my family is going to come to me pleading,

"Please Mom, no more cake!"

LOL. Okay. That might not happen, but there is very little room for other desserts in our cake-filled lives.

To answer a commonly-asked question, "Why do I make cakes that I don't eat?"

To put it bluntly, for the sake of my rear. I'd weigh a ton if I was making something I couldn't resist. Very few cakes meet that criteria. Bread, on the other hand, is Delilah to my Samson. 

This week we have lots of gorgeous special-occasion meals so I made my husband a birthday cake I despise. Lucky for me, it's one of his all-time favorites.

To make Black Forest Cake all you need is your favorite chocolate layer cake (for me, it's Chocolate Beet Cake) a batch of chocolate frosting and a can of cherry pie filling.

Bake and cool your cakes.

Spread three-quarters of the filling between layers and wait a few minutes for the syrup to ooze out.

Wipe off the worst of the ooze and frost with chocolate frosting. This is a teensy bit tricky, the technique I use is to load my knife with a big gob of frosting and press it along the cake for about three inches. This will allow it to nicely cover the gap in the cake made by the filling.

See the smooth side? You'd never know what's lurking in the center.

The frosting holds in the filling so when you cut it you get this:

Make up a batch of real whip cream, for mine I put cream in the blender with a tablespoon or two of confectioners sugar and a splash of vanilla. Whirl on high speed until it "clunks" and stops moving. Turn it off immediately or it'll turn to butter.

Put the whipped cream in a zip-loc bag, cut of the corner and pipe little tufts around the edge. spread the remaining pie filling in the center area.

Add candles, sing the song, celebrate.

January and February Art Calendar Pages

February is here and with it a new calendar page just waiting to be filled. I might have gone a teensy bit overboard... it looks like the art journal equivalent of Vegas *grin*

Click to see the pics in all their radiant, sparkling beauty

My girls decided to wear vinyl this month:

Even my guy is a little splashy with his jeweled flower and high contrast piping. 

Some corner detail, the wings got the glossy treatment too. Restraint wasn't the tone of the page:

I think the celebratory mood of birthday/birthday/birthday/anniversary/Valentine's Day got me a little carried away. 

On to the comparably restrained January~

Now that it's all filled out I absolutely love the size of the boxes. They're just perfect for jotting down a snippet about the day.

Yes, I have absolutely no idea what I did on January 3rd and 4th. My vision disturbances made typing near to impossible and without Twitter or Facebook I couldn't remember a bit about those days. See, it pays to write as you go.

I made the title by tacking down some ugly old alphabet stickers and then inking over top of them to change the tone a bit. Then I outlined the stickers with my Micron pen and peeled them off. The result is nicely understated; the letters stand out enough to be notice but don't take away too much from the background which was my favorite part.

I had all these travel and immigration themed acetate that I'd won in a prize box. Never knew what on earth to do with them. Then we got our citizenship this month and suddenly "immigration officer" was a great embellishment to have on hand.

Featuring Bombshell Stamps

Cake #4: Coconut Lime Layer Cake with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

Can you believe we're already on Cake #4 of 52 Cakes! Wow!

This is one of those cakes that I just kept tweaking and even though it was AMAZING!!!! I still would like to take at least one more crack at it.

The recipe I used was was posted with minor adaptations at Calico and Cupcakes, Heidi's Recipes, Smitten Kitchen who originally got it from Gourmet Magazine back in March '09. Still floating around two years later... yeah, it's that good.

The first thing I did was double the cake recipe to make two dense layers that I could fill with frosting. Joy!

Lime Coconut Cake

1.5 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1 cup (2 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2.5 cups sugar

2 tablespoon grated lime zest (key limes or standard limes)

4 large eggs

3.5 cups self-rising flour (or 3.5 cup all-purpose flour + 1.5 teaspoon salt + 3.5 teaspoon baking        powder whisked together)

1.5 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla (it adds a tropical touch that I think the other recipes lacked)

.5 cup freshly squeezed lime juice, divided

2 cup confectioners sugar

Lime Cream Cheese Frosting 

This is all me. So please adapt to your hearts content. Adding lime zest would be nice. I was going for a pure white look but zest is fab too!

1 Package of Cream cheese (8oz)

1 Stick Butter (.5 cup)

3 TBL lime juice (or to taste)

1 tsp vanilla

4-5 Cups of Powdered Sugar (we used 4.5)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Generously butter or spray two 9 inch round cake pans and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper.
3. Spread coconut on a baking sheet.  Toast coconut at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, stirring twice. Cool coconut. 
4. Beat together butter, granulated sugar, and lime zest with an electric mixer until fluffy (about 2 minutes).  Beat in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla.  
5. Whisk together flour and 1 cup toasted coconut (reserve remainder for topping).
6. Stir together milk and 2 tablespoons lime juice. 
7. At low speed, mix flour and milk mixtures into egg mixture alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour.
8. Spoon batter into prepared pan and smooth top.  Bake for 35-40 minutes or until top of cake is slightly golden and a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool slightly, then turn out of pan and discard parchment. 
9. Whip together butter and cream cheese. Beat in lime juice and then powdered sugar. Add more lime or sugar to taste.
10. When cake is completely cooled put bottom layer on serving plate and top with frosting.   Add top layer of cake.
11. Whisk together confectioners sugar, remaining 2 tablespoons of lime juice (add more if icing is too thick),  and spread on cake.  Sprinkle with remaining coconut. 

And your done! Um...no... we sampled a large slice bite and it seemed like a cake that forgot to get dressed that morning. Where's the frosting????

So we took a gamble and I tried my hand at frosting a decorated, glazed cake. Nutso, right?

Nah! It was STONE! COLD! AWESOME! I even had a small piece, and I never eat cake. 

Next time I want to make a few changes - and yes, there will definitely be a next time.

Most importantly, I plan to skip the glaze and instead make a simple syrup reduction of water, sugar and lime juice. Then I'll brush the cake layers with - or possibly poke them with a fork and pour it down the holes *swoon* and then frost with the lime cream cheese and top with coconut. Yum!

What's Cool in my World

I'm laid up today so I thought I'd tell you about things we're newly crazy about:

1. Artisan Bread

As a bread baker, I was really skeptical about no-knead bread; especially recipes without milk, butter or eggs, but now, I'm a total believer. Having dough in the fridge ready to be baked is 57 kinds of awesome!

2. Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction 

I don't think my boys have ever loved a project book with the ferocity and obsession they love this one with. Here's what Popular Mechanics has to say:

...with the advent of modern household products and office supplies—binder clips, clothespins, rubber bands, ballpoint pens, toothpicks, paper clips, plastic utensils, and (of course) matches and barbeque lighters—troublemakers of all stripes have the components needed to build an impressive, if somewhat miniaturized, arsenal.

Toy designer John Austin provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for each project, including materials and ammo lists, clear diagrams, and construction tips, for mayhem-loving MacGyvers. The 35 devices include catapults, slingshots, minibombs, darts, and combustion shooters. Build a tiny trebuchet from paper clips and a D-cell battery. Wrap a penny in a string of paper caps to create a surprisingly impressive “bomb.” Several of the projects even include variations where combatants mount laser pointer sights to their shooters to increase their accuracy.

Finally, once you’ve built your armory, the author provides plans for a Top Secret Concealing Book to hide your stash, as well as targets for shooting practice. Never let your personal space go undefended again!

3. Small Batch Baking. 

What an awesome concept. The basic idea is that when you want brownies (or cake or cookies, or pie) that's fine. The problem comes in when you make a 9x13 pan of brownies, have the one you wanted and then six more because the whole pan is sitting there tempting you. With small-batches you make individual desserts and have none of those pesky leftovers to deal with. Brilliant, no? 

In our house this is especially wonderful as my boys love to bake and this saves us having a cake, cookies, brownies and cinnamon rolls all at once.

4. Safety Can Openers

I know we're a little late to the party on this one, but these are great and so much cleaner then the blade dipping into your food. A lot of the small batch cakes are baked in cans so having a dull edge was a must for me - can't have the kiddos slicing up their fingers. this is the one we have. It's awesome.

5. Stainless Steel Cookware

I wanted to get away from icky, toxic Teflon for years now, but the horror stories about the sticking-ness of Stainless scared me away. We took the plunge as our pots and pans were in truly desperate need of replacement (the Teflon peeling reminded me of bad sunburns I'd had in the 80's) and I love them. Yes, there is a right way to cook with them and it's no big deal. We've made all sorts of things including fried pot stickers and the browning you get from stainless is amazing! Here's mine:

Thanks for letting me share the things we're excited about right now.

Linking up to Maggi's Friday Night Fab Five

Just so you know, the links are affiliate links so I'd get a commission if you bought something. This has never happened, I just like the convenience of the links imbedded in Blogger - no wandering the internet to find pics etc.

Valentines Day Cards

(click to see it up close)

I'm really enjoying using Tiff's great sketches. This is the one from last Sunday:

 I accidentally cut several doilies at once so I decided to make a second card with a different vibe:

Special thanks to my model, Diggy. He's one of the most treasured members of our household and he is better at sitting still for photos then our Bubby is.

A layout, a New Header and Advice Needed

Do you like the new blog header? I realized the old one had been up for about a year and a half... oops.

Thanks for all the kind words yesterday. I got to thinking and seeing the same old me in the mirror could be a lot worse.

My foot is less swollen today though still discolored - I'm getting there :-)

Here's another one of the sketches I'm trying to clear off the table.

Isn't it a fun design? I can see using it again and again.



While I have you here, can I get some advice?

I was cleaning up my sewing space and couldn't bear to throw out my itty-bitty scraps. So instead I found some fusible webbing (?) that I bought for some project years ago and ironed them all together into one gorgeous piece.

Then I covered the whole she-bang with matte medium and added bits of Gauche Alchemy ephemera. I saw this technique in the most recent CPS and thought - why not?



What should I do with it now?

Belated Sketchy Thursday Page and Some Whining

Should I start with the page or with the whining? 

*Sigh* I have an overuse injury in my left foot. The doc was awesome, he's a post-back-surgery running enthusiast so he really got me. He has me off my feet until the weekend, short 5 mile run on Saturday and reduced mileage until my race in February. It could have gone a lot worse. That said, there's a swollen area above my 5th metatarsal and the peroneal brevis tendon is looking freaky. I can't make my baby toe do what it should... like stay down for an x-ray. See above... it's standing while everyone else is sitting. What a rebel.

I'm feeling a little persecuted. So far in the last week I've had severe vision disturbances (spinal related),   an ovarian cyst ruptured (sorry if that's TMI) and I passed my one year NOW EVERYTHING IS SUPPOSED TO BE WONDERFUL date and... well... everything's not wonderful.

I jumped out of bed that morning excited to see the new me and the old me was staring back. Kind of naive, no?

As they say though, on with the show :-)

I love Sketchy Thursdays. It's my favorite sketch site ever (sorry Page Maps, I'm very fond of you too). Each week this month I've printed the sketch (or drew it on old junk mail envelopes), printed my photos, picked out some paper and then piled them in a neglected stack at the end of my table. Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this?

So, in an interest of clearing said table I started with this one. 

And I kept it simple. 

Paper: Echo Park
Cardstock: Bazzil