Kai's Soccer Ball Birthday Cake


Its time for another cake! I still owe this blog one entry on a baby shower cake we did in September. I don't have any pictures of it in part because the shower was at 4pm on the day that Michigan played Notre Dame at 3:30pm. So I was mainly concerned with getting the cake out of the house so I could watch football. Pictures were taken, but I don't have them yet.

This cake was for Kyle and Tricia's son Kai, who turned 1 year old on Saturday. The cake seemed to take us a long time, but that was mostly because it takes a long time to cook a 12" x 18" cake, it takes almost equally as long for the cake to cool and it takes a lot of space to make all of that possible (which means lots of stopping to clear space and clean). Other than that there isn't a whole lot of setup that you need to know. Enjoy the photos:

Here are the two halves of the soccer ball. Rice Krispy Treats were the base and a funfetti cake on the top. Both halves were formed using a soccer ball cake by Wilton.
We used buttercream to stick the two halves together, then draped it in white fondant.
Once the fondant was down Lauren lightly pressed the lines for the paneling and then used her stitching tool to complete the look.This was our original idea for the cake, but there was no good way to cover the 1 in a solid color. Fondant would have left ugly seams all over the place and nothing else would have been as smooth as fondant. I am sure we could have figured something out eventually, but we ended up abandoning the #1 in favor of a Happy Birthday placard.

The base cake is three layers. The first and third were a white buttermilk cake and the middle layer was a pumpkin spice cake. The layers were filled with a cream cheese frosting and the exterior was covered in buttercream. Everything was made from scratch, except for the half a soccer ball made from Funfetti.
A closeup of the finished soccer ball. Lauren did an awesome job making the Puma logo out of black fondant. The K is for Kai. It does not indicate that the cake is kosher.

The birthday boy and his cake.


From left to right: Kyle, Tricia, Lauren and I posing with the cake. You might notice the section of mostly missing cake to the right of the soccer ball. That plus most of the unseen back cake half of the soccer ball managed to feed everyone at the party. Lauren and I kind of eyeballed how much cake we needed. 13 x 9 seemed small, especially given the size of the soccer ball. So we got a 12" x 18" pan, but when we baked the first layer it seemed really thin. So we decided three layers would be better than two. It was only time constraints that stopped it from being 4 layers. Of course when we stacked it up the cake ended up being enormous. A catering website I looked up after the fact informed us that a 2 layer 12" x 18"cake serves 54 dessert sized portions. So I'm thinking this cake served roughly 81 from the bottom cake alone, plus another 10 or so out of the soccer ball.

Tricia, let me know how many new best friends you make from being the cake fairy this week.

7:37 AM | Labels: , , , | 2 Comments  

Chicken, Pesto & Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza

This recipe ought to look familiar. Its essentially the same as the Margherita Pizza, with the obvious changes with the toppings and the use of bread flour instead of all purpose flour. The flour change wasn't special to this pizza, I just happened to be out of flour and decided I'd give the bread flour a shot since its higher gluten content is supposed to create a chewier crust.

Chicken, Pesto, Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza:

  • 1/4 cup pesto + 1 clove minced garlic (or to taste)
  • 1-2 cups mozzarella cheese
  • 1 lb diced, cooked chicken
  • 1 pkg sun-dried tomatoes
  • Shredded parmesan (optional)
  • Feta cheese crumbles(optional)
You'll want to get the toppings ready before the dough, or at the very least while you're making the dough. So before you do anything else, do this:
  • Preheat the oven with your pizza stone/baking sheet inside to 500 degrees.
  • Cook your chicken. I typically dice it raw, marinate it in Italian dressing for 5 mins then saute it until cooked through (5 mins). If not that I'll use 1/4 - 1/2 cup chicken broth and poach the diced chicken and season it will salt & pepper. Either way make sure to strain or pat your chicken dry with paper towel before putting it on your pizza.
Thin Crust Pizza Dough:
  • .25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
  • 1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup warm (105-115 degrees) water, temperature measured with a thermometer
  • 1 3/4 cups bread flour (AP works too, but bread flour tastes better)
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water; let the yeast sit for 5-10 minutes or until frothy. Combine flour and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer (with the dough hook attachment). Pour yeast mixture into the flour mixture and turn the mixer on medium speed until your dough ball forms (2-3 minutes).

At this point you can either let the dough rise for 1-2 hours for a normal pizza crust or you can use it immediately for a thin crust pizza.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 2 minutes. Stretch or roll your dough into a 12" or 14" circle on a flour, parchment or corn meal covered surface. Brush the top surface of the dough with olive oil.

Remove your preheated pizza stone or baking sheet from the oven.Transfer your dough to the baking sheet/pizza stone, and quickly spread your pesto. Add your 1-2 cups of mozzarella cheese and top with the chicken and sun-dried tomatoes.
  • Sprinkle feta and/or parmesan cheese (optional).
  • Bake at 500 for 8-10 minutes. Let cool 2-5 minutes. Enjoy.
This recipe (plus a little extra mozzarella) is enough to make two 12" pizzas. We will typically make both pizzas, eat one and save the other for lunch or leftovers.

While we were eating Lauren said "I could eat pizza 3-4 times a week if we made it like this and mixed up the toppings". Do you know how long I've been waiting to hear something like that? Right now we might eat pizza once a week and thats typically because we've got something going on after work and don't get a chance to think about dinner until after 8pm, at which point neither one of us wants to cook for 30 minutes or an hour.

6:52 AM | Labels: , , | 0 Comments  

Margherita Pizza

Okay, its been a long, long time since I've posted anything here. I am back in school full time this semester and working when I don't have class, so that doesn't really leave me much time to throw caution to the wind and tackle new recipes consistently enough to entertain the people that may or may not read this blog.


However last night Lauren and I had a chance to try our have at wood fired/brick oven style pizza. There are very few ways that homemade pizza can be cheaper than delivery pizza and practically none that are cheaper than frozen pizza. Except this one. Just a couple weeks ago Lauren and I got this same pizza at downtown restaurant and it cost us $12.95.

Margherita Pizza:
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 lb. Roma tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/8 tsp. pepper (or to taste)
  • 6 oz. (1.5 cups) mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 6 fresh basil leaves
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 cup fresh shredded parmesan cheese
You'll want to get the toppings ready before the dough, or at the very least while you're making the dough. So before you do anything else, do this:
  • Preheat the oven with your pizza stone/baking sheet inside to 500 degrees.
  • Combine 2 tablespoons olive oil, chopped tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl.
Thin Crust Pizza Dough:
  • .25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
  • 1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup warm (105-115 degrees) water, temperature measured with a thermometer
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
Dissolve yeast and sugar in water; let the yeast sit for 5-10 minutes or until frothy.
Combine flour and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer (with the dough hook attachment).
Pour yeast mixture into the flour mixture and turn the mixer on medium speed until your dough ball forms (2-3 minutes).

At this point you can either let the dough rise for 1-2 hours for a normal pizza crust or you can use it immediately for a thin crust pizza.

Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 2 minutes. Stretch or roll your dough into a 12" or 14" circle on a flour, parchment or corn meal covered surface. Brush the top surface of the dough with olive oil.
  • Remove your preheated pizza stone or baking sheet from the oven .
  • Transfer your dough to the baking sheet/pizza stone, and quickly add your 1.5 cups of mozzarella cheese and top with the chopped tomatoes.
  • Drizzle lightly with olive oil and stick the baking sheet/pizza stone back in the oven for 8-10 minutes.
  • Top with basil and parmesan (if you want), let the pizza cool for 2-5 minutes and enjoy.
You could also use fresh mozzarella instead of the shredded kind, but the grocery store was out when we stopped by, and I get the feeling it would probably cost $8 in cheese alone to cover the pizza that way.

For this pizza we only had to buy 4 Roma tomatoes (0.75 lbs at $1.59/lb so about $1.30) and shredded mozzarella ($2/8oz). Sure at some point we also had to buy the flour, olive oil, yeast, garlic and sugar, but those are all staple ingredients that are in the kitchen cabinets regardless of what we're making.

You can also improve the quality of your pizza by using bread flour instead of all purpose flour, fresh mozzarella instead of shredded and fresh basil instead of dried. Those are things we'll try at some point with this recipe. Of course with pizza the toppings are mostly irrelevant, its figuring out how to make a decent dough and cook it properly that makes or breaks the home made pizza experience. Now that we've established those two things its time to begin the experiments.

So I just can't imagine myself paying $12-$18 for a "gourmet" pizza any time in the near future.

By the way, that is not my pizza in the picture. That one clearly used fresh mozzarella. It was cut and I was eating it before I even thought about taking a picture. It was delicious. If I had my way I'd make it again tonight and then again next weekend while I watched football.

6:47 AM | Labels: , | 2 Comments  

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  

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