Barefoot Contessa - Home-Made

It’s rather ironic that tonight of all nights I choose to sit down and write a post about my son’s birthday cake, since I am forbidden from eating such things at the moment. Forbidden might be a strong word to use given that my ban from indulging in such sweet pastries is self imposed. I am on a Spring cleanse. That means many delectables are off limits for a week and a half. And so I must satisfy my cravings through the only means I know how: eye candy. Literally.

My younger son turned three last week and I got it into my head several weeks back that I had to make him a spectacular cake. Put my new found cake decorating skills to work and turn out something fabulous. Being the over ambitious person that I am and with only borrowed time to do it, I thought I was picking a rather easy design in the form of a Lego cake. Lego has become a favourite past time for my boys so I thought it fitting to make a cake in the shape of bricks. The bonus came in the form of a Lego man cake mold from a neighbour. So I started by baking Ina Garten’s flag cake as well as her chocolate butter cream cake. I baked slab cakes AND mini cupcakes. Once baked, cooled and refrigerated, I sliced the slab cakes in thirds and constructed two rectangular cakes, four layers high alternating the flag cake with the chocolate cake. I topped them off with the mini cupcakes, all with a mocha butter cream that I kind of made up a recipe for. Once crumb coated and cooled, I applied home-made marshmallow fondant. I know, I know, I’m crazy. I just could have bought the fondant from the store, but no, I had to make this damn cake FROM SCRATCH! I didn’t love the way the fondant turned out but it was definitely more malleable than the store-bought kind. To make myself super crazy I decided the two bricks needed to sit atop one slab cake, which I covered in green fondant (that one was store-bought). And with a star tip I decorated the Lego man in coloured vanilla butter cream. I think I must have made enough cake to feed a small army. While there were plenty of leftovers there was no man left in sight. He was devoured by the kids and the adults had to satisfy their sweet tooths with the giant bricks of cake (too bad!).

I think it was well worth the effort, and while I’m nowhere near as talented as some of the crazy cake decorators who do this for a living, I did give myself a pat on the back for my attempt. I’ll leave it to you to be the judge. Unfortunately I can’t give you a taste, but I can leave you with the recipe for the mocha butter cream.

MOCHA BUTTER CREAM RECIPE

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

4 cups of icing sugar (sifted)

1/4 cocoa powder (sifted)

2 Tbsp. (give or take) strong brewed coffee

Cream the butter and shortening together

Add the icing sugar and cocoa powder and whip until fluffy, adding the coffee to thin consistency of icing as necessary.

Lego Man Cake — What a cute tasty looking Lego man!

cialis

There are few things in life I find more rewarding than baking a wonderful dessert for a special occasion. For some, that might seem a bit provincial. How could baking a cake possibly bring one the satisfaction that others derive from much loftier activities like running a marathon or building a freestanding structure for all to admire? Yes, it’s true, I get off on the small things in life. It’s not that I bake to impress or gloat. I bake for the sheer pleasure of it and simply because I enjoy seeing others enjoy my “bakery.” Today was no exception when I baked two delectable desserts I served at a bridal shower for my colleague, Angela. Angela is getting married in just under a month and I wanted to make something appropriate to the occasion, so why not bake something sweet and pretty and something sinfully and naughty? The “angel” dessert was a lovely layered lemon cake I discovered on Martha Stewart’s website. It’s called a 1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake. This cake is very finnicky to assemble; first I made a lemon curd filling the night before. Then I had to split the batter into two pans for baking. Once cooled I sliced both cakes in half with a serrated knife and then reassembled them with the lemon curd in the middle of each layer. The cake is topped with a whipped cream sweetened with vanilla extract and icing sugar, followed by fresh berries and a light dusting of icing sugar. It looked magazine worthy in presentation and the flavour was spot on; not too tart, not too sweet with a nice, light texture. If the remaining wedge on the plate was any indication of the cake’s success, I would hazard to guess people liked it. A lot.

For the “devil” dessert I made Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten’s brownie pudding. Just as the name suggests, this is a gigantic, rich chocolate brownie baked in a water bath (or as the French like to call it, “au bain marie”) for EXACTLY one hour. If baked correctly, the brownie has a cake-like perimeter and a pudding-like centre. I think the secret to the success of this dessert is not only in the texture, which truly is heavenly, but also in the vanilla bean scraped into the batter….and the chocolate….and the butter. Did I mention the chocolate?

Both were a hit with the crowd. I did sample each of the desserts and even I would pay money to serve them at my next soirÃ©e. As I have mentioned in past posts, if anyone were willing to pay good money for my baking talents, I’d hang my shingle outside my door. But I’m not sure anyone would be willing to pay, say, $500 for a lemon cake or, say, $250 for an oversized brownie. Ah, sweet dreams. Truly sweet dreams.

Tag: Barefoot Contessa

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gingerlovestobake

gingerlovestobake