Showing posts with label awesome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label awesome. Show all posts

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  

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  

Vacation Recap In Photos

When you spend 3 hours a day at the beach, you run out of things to do. But this makes a good cover for this photo album/blog entry, so I'm leaving it in.

We took my parents' minivan this weekend because we really didn't feel like playing tetris in the trunk and backseat with all the stuff we needed to bring. The cottage where we were staying hadn't been opened for the season yet, so it was a bit unclear what we needed in the way of napkins, plates, cups, pots, pans, etc. So we decided to err on the side of caution and bring many of those things with us. That area also runs off of well water, which tastes funky so we brought bottled water and a cooler.

Anyhow, none of that is important. My point is that now that you know why we had a van you'll have a better appreciation for what happens when we drive the van. On the way to any place, if Joss isn't hovering over my shoulder trying to figure out where we're going, then she is down on the floor in between the front seats sniffing the air conditioning vents. It is so weird. It goes on in roughly 15 minutes intervals, in this case for the bulk of a 3.5 hour drive.

These were our accomodations for the weekend, aka The Bat House. From what I remember it is called that because one of the first times my Aunt & Uncle stayed there after they bought it, they encountered a bat. It freaked them out, my aunt didn't want to sleep there for a while and then it became a running joke. It was literally the only time they had a ever seen a bat at that house. As you can see its a pretty densely wooded area. At night you can't see 50 feet into the area surrounding the cottage, which is really nerve wracking when you're with a dog who will stare into the darkness for no particular reason. As you can tell this dense foliage greatly hampered my ability to be friends with Mario Batali. He could have had a 15,000 sq ft mansion on the adjacent lot and we wouldn't have ever known. In addition to that, the road that circles the area that he reportedly lives in was described by my uncle as "drive down that road by invitation only".


The front room of the cottage, just inside the front door.



The kitchen and front door. There is a refrigerator, its a little dorm-sized wood patterned fridge, just in front of the cooler. Not pictured are the back room which is a bedroom with two twin beds and the bathroom.

I didn't take a whole lot of photos while we were out. I'm not sure why, but it just didn't occur to me to take photos of anything we saw while we were out wine tasting except for this. This was in Suttons Bay, outside an art gallery. I don't believe this was for sale, but a similarly constructed pig about 1/6th of the size cost $725.

I'll leave the wine tour to a separate post, but it was a really great time. We only hit three of a possible 9-12 wineries in the area, but I am pretty sure they were three of the best. Although I don't know anything about wine, couldn't tell you which are my favorite styles or why and that I get buyer's remorse every time we leave a winery, wine tasting is still one of my favorite things to do.

The remainder of the weekend was spent with this wet rat on the shores of Lake Michigan. Nothing can satisfy her urge to go swimming. She swam so much that at the end of the first day Lauren threw a ball out, Joss went to get and I though I was going to have to swim out and get her before she went under. She was so tired that she fell asleep standing up on the 5 minute car ride from the beach back to the cottage.

Every day was pretty much 2-3 hours of this:

But it was a great weekend. We also went strawberry picking on the way up, where I also did not take any pictures. Strawberries seem slightly less delicious after seeing the way that they're grown. I always pictured them hanging high off the ground from a majestic bush, not directly on the ground inside of a plant that looks like a lawn weed.

6:38 AM | Labels: , , | 1 Comments  

Northport

Last weekend I went to weddings on back to back nights. Or at least I tried to. I didn't feel so great after a few hours at the second wedding and went home to take a shower and hug an air conditioner. Last week was so disgustingly hot it ruined everything. I didn't really cook anything because the last thing I wanted was the oven heating the house and I didn't want too much time tending to a 500 degree grill outside in 90 degree heat with 90% humidity. So last week was burgers, cold sandwiches, grilled chicken and pizza.


This week the weather is considerably cooler, but its a 4 day week and Lauren and I have plans for the weekend. So cooking is nearer the end of the list of priorities than usual. We're heading north to Northport, Michigan where my mom's side of the family calls home. We'll be staying in a cottage/house owned by my uncle, a couple of hundred yards (but right next door) from my grandma's house.

During the 2000 census the population of Northport was officially registered as 648. But Wikipedia says that one of those 648 is none other than Iron Chef Mario Batali. Not only that but they list the area where he owns a house and it is really, really nearby. No matter how hard I try I can't get this fantasy out of my head where we run into him (flat tire on the side of the road or something) and become good friends, if only for a long weekend.
Also, you shouldn't infer anything about where we're staying by its proximity to Mario Batali's home. My mom's family has owned those two properties for more than 30 or 40 years, long before people started clearing lakefront property up there and building million dollar summer mansions.

So this weekend in addition to hanging out with Mario Batali and swimming in Lake Michigan, we're also going to have the opportunity to go wine tasting. See all these red dots and balloons? Those are all wineries. We're staying just north of the where this map cuts off.


And just to give you an idea of the scale of this map. That natural triangular loop between Northport, Suttons Bay and Leland takes 20 mins per side to drive. So in an hour's drive time we could hit 6 or 7 wineries no problem. Madonna's family has a winery in that area, I think its the B balloon or in that area on this map.

In addition to all these we're hoping to spend some time at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as well as some time hunting for Petoskey stones on the beach at Peterson Park (a 5 min drive). Anytime you can be within 5 minutes of Lake Michigan you know you're going to have an awesome weekend.

And if all of that gets boring we can always head to the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City. I really want to a 72 hour nap and wake up to find out that its Friday morning.

7:39 AM | Labels: , , | 3 Comments  

Sofia's Dr. Seuss Cake

This weekend, Lauren and I spent some time constructing our greatest cake yet. The inspiration was Sofia's 4th birthday and her love of Dr. Seuss. Sofia is the daughter of our friends Peter and Rachel. About a year ago Lauren and I made a two-tiered fondant covered birthday cake for Lauren's friend Julie. In the 12 months since that cake we've been seeing all sorts of competive cake building competitions on Food Network Challenge. So back in March I emailed Rachel about doing a Dr. Seuss cake for Sofia's birthday. This weekend Lauren and I created and delivered it.


Now before I go any further I want to explain how our cake building partnership works. Lauren is undoubtedly the designer/architect and builder. At any point in this entry if you see the word "I" or "we", it almost definitely means "she". My role in this is basically engineer/bus boy. Like an engineer I occassionally provide some good advice on the cost, feasability and materials for the project and in exchange for that I don't always correct people when they assume the project was a 50/50 effort between myself and the designer/builder. 

Also, I wash dishes and mixing pieces/bowls, clear space on the counter and in the refrigerator and perform accessory preparation (i.e. knead fondant, mixing more icing, etc.) as needed so that we're never forced to bring the project to a screeching halt. 
After making the fondant and Rice Krispy treats Friday night, Lauren began the baking on Saturday. She first made a three-tiered funfetti cake using 9-inch round cake pans. Normally the directions would tell you that one box makes two 9-inch cakes, but knowing that she'd be cutting off the dome of the cake to make it flat and stackable, Lauren used one whole box per pan.

She then laid icing between each layer and stacked them up. Once that was stacked, we covered that in icing and covered the icing with yellow fondant.

In order to make the hat, we made 4 separate pieces of Rice Krisy treat, iced them, wrapped them in red and white fondant and then restacked them.

Lauren did an amazing job of shaping the Rice Krispy treat into the wobbly hat. The picture above is a very early, almost uncut version of the hat.

This is the near-finished version.
Next it was time to make our book. Rather than make a ridiculous amount of cake, we decided to make the book base out of fondant-covered styrofoam. The styrofoam also provided some extra support for everything above it. Though it is inedible, that didn't really make the styrofoam any easier to work with.

At this point Lauren started decorating and icing the cake. We obviously chose The Cat In The Hat for the book, and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish for the cake.

Lastly, Lauren made the blue fish for the fish bowl. He was constructed out of the remaining blue fondant and some wooden toothpicks.

I feel like I don't yet have the words to describe everything that was done to make this cake. I may do a follow up as we get further removed from it because I feel like the words in this blog entry aren't doing it justice. Perhaps I'll reorganize my thoughts and type the descriptions in the style of a Dr. Seuss book.

If I can convey just one thing with this post, it is that this wasn't as easy it might look.

6:26 AM | Labels: , , , | 5 Comments  

Blackened Salmon With Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise

About twice a year I get a craving for a fish sandwich. This weekend I was watching Food Network and was basically forced to have one of them. I don't know if it was related to Lent or what, but every show I watched seemed to be preparing fish or some type of seafood.

Along the way I saw Paula Deen making blackened tilapia with cilantro lime mayonnaise. So I took that recipe to the grocery store and wound up making Blackened Salmon Sandwiches with Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise. Fresh salmon fillet was on sale for $6.49/lb, and much to my surprise 1 lb of salmon goes about twice as far as the same amount of chicken. So for about $9 we got 1.32 lbs salmon and made four blackened fillets, with a side of Zatarain's Yellow Rice and some steamed asparagus. As I recall from the show, Paula said her main reason for choosing tilapia was that it is relatively inexpensive, so we figured salmon we be an acceptable substitution. We also couldn't find fresh tilapia and were wary of defrosting frozen fish.

On to the recipe:

1/4 cup sweet paprika
2 tablespoons ground thyme
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
4 (10-ounce) tilapia (or salmon) fillets
4 Kaiser buns, split, buttered and toasted

Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon fresh lime

In a shallow dish, combine first 6 ingredients.

Pour melted butter into another shallow dish. Dip fish fillets in melted butter and coat with seasoning mixture.

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Cook prepared fish, in batches if necessary, 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Spread Cilantro Lime Mayonnaise evenly over toasted buns. Place blackened fish on bottom half of bun, top with mango salsa, and cover with top half of bun.

Now I don't know what sweet paprika is, but I couldn't find it at the store so I used paprika. The rest of the recipe is solid. We didn't bother with the mango salsa, though it would have been awesome. My best suggestion is that if you aren't using cast iron, which we weren't, you may want to consider either pouring the seasoning mixture into an empty spice jar and shaking it on your fillets or taking a pastry/basting brush and lightly brushing away any extra spice mixture that isn't adhering to the butter after you dredge it through the seasoning. Dredging the fish as though the seasoning is flour is a bit of overkill, and I don't think a normal skillet has enough heat to completely blacken it without burning the fish.

5:21 AM | Labels: , , , , , | 1 Comments  

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