Madeira Cake w/ Strawberry Chocolate Ganache

As part of expanding our (her) cake repetoire, Lauren and I have sort of committed to abandoning boxed cake mixes and using straight from scratch recipes. With the assistance of a cake decorating book that Rachel got for us, we took our first step in that direction last night. I don't have recipes for this entry because I don't have the book in front of me, and on top of that I didn't actually do any of the baking last night because I was busy doing the cooking (chicken salad and potato salad) and the dish washing so we didn't get in each other's way.What Lauren made was a Madeira cake filled with strawberries and chocolate ganache and covered with buttercream icing. No fondant this time around. The results were mixed. First off our biggest problem is that we aren't cooking by weight. So next on our list of ways to expand our culinary arsenal is a digital weight scale. Its way too much of a hassle to try to figure how many cups or tablespoons 310 grams of butter is, and if that number of cups/tbsp is the same for 310 grams of sugar (which it isn't).

The second problem was the icing. We added some almond extract for flavoring, but it easily overpowered the icing and made it way too sweet. Not only that but the recipe we used gave us a very dry consistency. We should have stuck with the recipe we used for the Dr. Seuss cake.

As for the Madeira cake, it was okay. Nothing too special. From what I remember of the recipe it didn't call for any lemon, vanilla or any other type of flavoring. It was simply various amounts of self rising flour, butter, sugar and eggs. So it turned out to be essentially a pound cake. Good for carving, stacking and building, but nothing to really talk about.

The ganache was fantastic. Lauren has a block of expensive chocolate that she uses for these sorts of desserts, and it never ceases to amaze me how different that stuff tastes than candy bar/milk chocolate.

The three flavors together (icing, cake, ganache) didn't really complement each other either. That was more of a result of mad science than it was a mistake. We wanted to try a few new recipes/methods and just sort of Frankensteined them together rather than plan it out and make a true presentation out of it. In fact the icing was supposed to be white, but it didn't spread very well while she was trying to cover the sides and ended up turning brownish as the ganache oozed out the sides. So Lauren fixed that.

4:55 PM | Labels: , , | 1 Comments  

The Lady & Sons Restaurant

I just realized I never actually posted anything about our vacation. The vacation was great, and I'll return to share some words and pictures about crabbing and fresh seafood. But I'm going to use this post to focus on Savannah, Georgia and our trip to The Lady & Sons restaurant, owned by Paula Deen of the Food Network.


We got in late on Tuesday night and walked the city. Great city. A little dark and forested for a downtown but I suppose if you live there that starts to seem normal. I was a little on edge about catching whooping cough or the bubonic plague in some kind of freak accident, but that was a testament to historic look of Savannah at night, not its hygiene.

So late Tuesday night after we checked in we decided to walk over to The Lady & Sons to get an idea of how far away it was, where the line would form and what the restaurant looked like.
The following morning I woke up at 8am with the understanding that the restaurant started taking reservations (in person only) at 8:30am. When I got there I was 10th in line, behind 3 groups of 2-4 people. I let Lauren sleep in since it seemed like a stupid idea for both of us to get dressed and stand in line for a half hour. Not only that but it would have meant an hour less sleep as she would have needed to be up by 7am to be out the door by 8. By myself I felt totally comfortable rolling over at 7:55am, washing my face, brushing my teeth and throwing on last nights clothes to go stand in line.

The only problem with that is that the information we got about the restaurant was not correct. The Lady & Sons begins taking reservations at 9:30am. So there I was standing in line for 90 minutes, hoping each half hour in line was my last. By the time front of the line had started moving the back of the line had stretched all the way down the block and must have been a good 150 people long.

We had a lunch reservation for noon. I went back to the hotel, showered up, ate breakfast and then we walked the city again while we waited for lunch to roll around. Sometime later in the morning The Lady & Sons had turned on a mist zone for anyone still standing in line. As we were waiting inside The Paula Deen Store for our reservation, I saw an unsuspecting family (since there was no line outside) walk up to the hostess' booth and ask for a table as anyone would at a normal restaurant. It was 11:30am and hostess told them the earliest they could get a table was 8:30pm. On a Wednesday. In August.

That restaurant must make a killing. As for the atmosphere, it wasn't all that high-end, but I don't think it was trying to be either. The lunch menu is just good Southern cooking. Fried chicken, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes, those sorts of things. Not too much in the way of cold plates/sandwiches which is kind of disappointing when its 95 degrees outside and you're on foot. But that may just be me. Most of the foods I saw were what I'd associate with winter comfort food in Michigan.

It was a good experience and definitely something worth doing if you're in Savannah, but I'm not sure its type of lunch/dining experience that you're going to talk about for years to come. Which at around $40 (w/ tip) for two people probably shouldn't be expected.

8:28 AM | Labels: , , | 2 Comments  

Salley's Birthday Cake

Last week while on vacation, Lauren and her sister decided to make a fondant cake for their younger sister's birthday. I thought it was borderline insanity given that we were out of Lauren's kitchen, without any of her cake supplies and most importantly without a KitchenAid stand mixer. Bu they were determined to make it happen, so I looked up the fondant recipe, gave them a few pointers and then backed away slowly. Obviously the picture shows that it turned out just fine and here is why: the fondant recipe I was using worked, but it didn't create the most workable fondant.

  • 1 - 16oz pkg mini-marshmallows
  • 3 tbsp water
  • 1 tbsp vanilla
  • 6-8 cups 3-4 cups powdered sugar
  • Vegetable shortening (for greasing everything that touches liquid marshmallow)

You can use about half the amount powdered sugar. The fondant is every bit as sturdy, but 10 times more pliable. Maybe you won't get 3 lbs of fondant out of this recipe (we didn't measure) but what you have will be so much easier to work with.

In other news, Lauren and I may be making a cake this weekend. Rachel dropped off an incredibly awesome and generous thank you gift to us for Sofia's Dr. Seuss cake. The gifts included a variety of cake decorating and fondant working tools. Lauren will be making a baby shower cake in September and wants to test out some ideas we've seen on Cake Boss and Food Network Challenge. On top of that we've also been contacted by an acquaintance of mine about doing a John Deere tractor wedding cake for August of 2010.

So in short order we're going to need to find some solid "from scratch" cake recipes and start fancying up the actual cake and frosting.

We'll see how that goes this weekend.

6:28 AM | Labels: , , | 1 Comments  

Black Magic Cupcakes

Lauren made these last night as a peace offering for her coworkers. We're leaving Saturday morning for Charleston SC. We'll be gone for a week and from what I gather her vacation might hamstring a few people at work. Our agenda on vacation should provide for several food related post when we return:


Saturday (Aug 1) - Drive to Clemson, visit Lauren's sister

Sunday - Drive to Anderson, have lunch with Grandma. Drive to Orangeburg, have second lunch
with Granny. Drive to Charleston to Lauren's parents' house.

Monday - Go crabbing. I'm not sure how this works, but I will probably be acting like a dork, imitating things I see on Deadliest Catch, even though I'm fairly certain we'll be in maybe 10 ft of warm harbor water.

Tuesday - Drive to Savannah, GA (2 hours). Do stuff, hang out with more of Lauren's relatives. Stay at Savannah's oldest hotel, The Marshall House.

Wednesday - Wake up and try to get lunch reservations at Lady & Sons, Paula Deen's restaurant. Do stuff in Savannah, then drive home.

Thursday - TBA?

Friday - Wine Tasting/Agro Tourism?

Saturday - TBA

Sunday (Aug 9) - Drive Home

We'll almost certainly need a vacation from our vacation. By the way, here is the recipe for those cupcakes:

1 3/4 c. flour
2 c. sugar
3/4 c. powdered cocoa (unsweetened)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 c. strong coffee
1 c. buttermilk/sour milk or 2% milk
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix the dry, mix the wet ingredients separately and then combine. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes in greased and floured pans (or cupcake skirts). When cool frost with Buttercream Frosting.

7:27 AM | Labels: , | 1 Comments  

Macaroni & Cheese Bake

I haven't had macaroni and cheese in a while, so I decided to make some last night. I wanted to take another run at a baked mac and cheese because our previous attempt turned into an egg souffle. I'll never understand what Delia was thinking in the Mac & Cheese throwdown. 12 eggs? Ridiculous.


The recipe we used came from Alton Brown and Good Eats. Its pretty straight forward, but we made some changes so that it was more of an adult entree:
  • 1/2 pound elbow macaroni
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 3 tablespoons flour
  • 1 tablespoon powdered mustard
  • 3 cups milk
  • 1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 large egg
  • 12 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Fresh black pepper
Topping:
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 1 cup panko bread crumbs
Additions:
  • 1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
  • 1/2 cup corn
  • 1/2 cup peas
Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes. Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk, onion, bay leaf, and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes and remove the bay leaf.

Temper in the egg. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fold the macaroni into the mix and pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese.

Melt the butter in a saute pan and toss the bread crumbs to coat. Top the macaroni with the bread crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five minutes before serving.

Remember to save leftovers for fried Macaroni and Cheese.

We added the additional vegetables when we folded the pasta in the cheese sauce. The recipe is pretty simple. My advice would be once you've gotten past the simmer stage and you're preparing to mix in your cheese, turn the stove off. It will give you a little more leeway with how quickly you need to finish the last few steps. It will also prevent the cheese from getting grainy.

If you're not sure how to temper the egg, you beat an egg in a bowl, then mix in the hot cheese sauce into the bowl 1 tbsp at a time until the egg mixture reaches a temperature close to the temperature of the cheese sauce. If you just beat the egg and toss it in without tempering, the egg will cook immediately and nothing will bind.

Overall this dish was pretty mediocre. The texture was great and I wouldn't change much about any of the preparation, I just felt like the flavor was little bit bland. Maybe adding the extra vegetables necessitated adding more seasoning, which I didn't do, but it wasn't quite as flavorful as I expected. If you follow the instructions I'd recommend you find a spot to mix in some salt.

6:27 AM | Labels: , , , | 1 Comments  

Grilled Chicken Wings


Friday night I drew some food inspiration from FoodNetwork.com and a food blog linked to the profile of person on a message board. I wanted something quick and simple, with little or no mess which usually means grilled something or other. The first recipe was Bobby Flay's Grilled Chicken Wings. I'm not going to bother pasting the recipe here because in reality I only followed the cooking instructions. I'm sure the sauces were amazing, but I didn't want to end up with 2 pints of greek yogurt blue cheese dipping sauce in the refrigerator.

So going back to my previous Chicken Wings post you'll need to butcher your wings in the appropriate spots, and then thats it.

No steaming or refrigerating. Get your grill up to 400-500 degrees, take all of your wings put them in a large mixing bowl and toss them with 2-3 tbsp olive oil, some salt, pepper and any other chicken friendly spices you enjoy.

Grill the wings 4-5 minutes per side, then toss them in your favorite sauce (1/2 cup per dozen), plate and serve.
Nearly as good as the oven roasted preparation and light years quicker. The main difference is that when you steam some of the fat out of the wings in the oven method the skin shrinks up and loses much of its elasticity and gains some crispiness. In this grilled method it is just the opposite. Ideally I'd say the best method for homemade wings is to steam them, rest them in the refrigerator, then toss them in olive oil and cook them on the grill.

9:41 AM | Labels: , , | 0 Comments  

Wine Tasting In Northern Michigan

Last Saturday (July 4th) while we were staying in Northport, Lauren and I drove around to some of the local wineries. Leelanau Peninsula is very proud of their wine and a few of the wineries like to point out that they're located along the 45th parallel (north), which is the same parallel as some of the finest wine producing regions of Italy and France. Presumably that implies that they have the ability to grow the same grapes as those regions and thus produce comparable wines. I think there is more to it than that but its not like I would know the differene one way or another.


Our first stop was Leelanau Wine Cellars in Omena. The picture above is not from our trip (I didn't think to take any pictures of any place we stopped) but it is the room we were in. The balding sommelier in the foreground is the same one that guided us through our tasting. Much to our surprise Leelanau Cellars didn't charge for a tasting and didn't have a set number of wines that were available for tasting. We were presented with a split list of wines, one side being wines available in retail stores throughout the state and the other being premium wines available only in Leelanau Cellars tasting rooms/gift shops. I think we tried at least 10-12 wines. It was very fun and with each winery we visit we being to participate in discussions with the sommeliers about what we like or dislike about the wine we're tasting.

But I'll admit that I still don't know if I am supposed to smell the wine before I drink it or if I'm supposed to drink it in two sips or one. So about half the time I probably look like a mix between a polite drunk and a trained monkey counting the seconds until I can push my glass forward for more wine. However thats not because I don't care or that I'm pretending to care for the sake of free alcohol. I just get awkward very easily and knowing how inexperienced I am with wine (I have probably drunk less than a dozen glasses of wine in the last year) I don't feel comfortable voicing my opinion about how this wine "finishes" or that wine "has oaky characteristics". I'd just as well leave it as "I liked that" and "I didn't like that" rather than attempt some profound observation, only to find out that my palate prefers Salisbury steak to New York Strip.

Of the wineries we visited I think Leelanau Cellars benefited the most. Their wines have always been around at local wine/liquor stores and Meijer. If I am remembering correctly our sommelier told us that Leelanau Cellars is the largest winery (in terms of sales) in Michigan. However Lauren and I have always been really unimpressed with their labels. I understand that is probably the worst way to judge a wine, but if you don't know exactly what you're doing with wine the most reassuring decision is to choose the wine that looks most professional. Many of their retail wines look similar to their Winter White label, which in its defense is hugely popular wine that sells at a great price $8-$11 per bottle. So as a result Leelanau Cellars has always been a ways down our list of local wines options.

We ended up leaving with two bottles of a Baco Noir Rose (I think). More importantly I didn't want to make the same mistake we did a year ago, when we bought 2-3 bottles of good wine at our first stop and then went to a great winery and regretted only having enough wine budget left to buy 2-3 more.

Our second stop was Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay, which was a huge vineyard/farm/estate just off the main road. They describe it as "an agricultural destination" which I would agree is pretty accurate. They do weddings, events and weekend room reservations.

Again the photo is the room we were in, but definitely not the day we were there. When we went there were decidedly fewer retirees than in this photo. The "tasting club" cost $3 per person at Black Star, which got you a branded tasting glass and five complimentary tastings. The Black Star Farms Arcturos Late Harvest Riesling is one of our favorite white wines. So we elected to skip that one and try more reds. I don't recall everything we had but I think it was two Cabernet Francs, a Pinot Noir, a fruit wine, a Pinot Gris and the semi-dry riesling. Our sommelier was very good at making recommendations and pouring different wines in each of our glasses so that our five tastings stretched much closer to ten. I don't remember what we walked away with from Black Star but I think it was a Pinot Noir and the latest Riesling which has been bottled but will not ship to stores for a few more months.
The last stop we made for the day was at 45 North Winery in Lake Leelanau. I believe this winery is relatively new (less than 10 years old), but they are certainly on their way to becoming an outfit like Black Star Farms. They are in the process of building a tasting room, but for now have things set up on the floor of a bottling building. We tried another 8-10 wines here, but were rushed because of a large crowd and a small bar. In the end we bought three bottles from this winery, but I don't know what they were. It was here that we discovered northern Michigan wineries seem to buy into the idea that corked wine bottles have outlived their usefulness. Everything was a screw top cap. We found that to be very disappointing. I understand the technological argument that says screw caps work as well or better, but it still feels cheap and childish. When we got back in the car we checked out earlier purchases and noticed that all but one or two were also screw tops. Oh well. By the way, 45 North has won awards at some pretty impressive sounding wine competitions, but at the moment they aren't in stores outside of northern Michigan. One of the employees gave me information about how to get in touch with their distributors that have Grand Rapids area connections, but it didn't sound like the type of thing you would go through to get just one bottle or two.

All in all it was a good time. We picked up seven more bottles to go with the four or five we have from wine tasting last summer and we've still got 17 of Leelanau Peninsula's 20 wineries left to visit on any future trips up north.

7:10 AM | Labels: , , | 0 Comments  

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