The Cakening

When I say I'm not much of a baker, I'm not being falsely modest. I can read a recipe as well as the next gal, but I just feel like I lack the touch for baking that I have for making other things, like really tasty soups and stews. I never feel like I can judge how things are going with baking, and I'm not particularly good at cooking that requires precision or deft handling of ingredients.

But dammit, I really would like to be able to bake an attractive cake. And along came the Halloween Howl Cake Walk.

A Cake Walk, it turns out, is a sort of musical chairs game whereby contestants walk around a line on which there are numbered spots. When the music stops, if the number you're standing on is called, you win a cake.

My children's elementary school was holding a Halloween party including a Cake Walk. I figured volunteering to help out was a great way to get to know other parents and to practice baking. I starting having cake ideas -- something with red velvet seemed apt for the holiday, and I thought it would be fun to ice it to look like a graveyard or decorate it with skeletons, but after that I was fairly clueless. I got a little frightened when one of the mothers at the planning meeting said she was going to have her cake professionally decorated, the kind of thing I'd thought I'd left behind in New York. But other parents assured me that a home-baked item was perfectly normal.

Luckily, I made a new friend, Kim, at exactly the right moment. Kim assigned me to bake my layers the day before she came over, bag of tools in hand. She assured me that though my layers had come out rather flat (more on this later), buttercream covers a lot of sins. Under her tutelage, I learned the tricks of the trade -- put on a thin primer layer of frosting and chill, work on a lazy susan, dip your spatula in hot water for smooth spreading -- and at the end of the day, we had a smoothly frosted layer cake ready to decorate.

This was where things got fun. She suggested I make a cherry compote to use as fake blood in the design, and I ended up dripping and spattering the cake with it, then topping with a skeleton. I was terrified the gory cake was going to get me blackballed from all future school activities, but it seemed to go over very well in a community where virtually every parent showed up at the school party in costume.

Heady with success, I offered to bake another cake. This time, it was my son Lucas who was the client. He'd just read Harriet the Spy for the first time and was deeply envious of the fact that Harriet gets cake and milk served by the family cook every day after school. Well, I couldn't provide a cook, but I could bake a cake, and if he'd promise to down a glass of milk with it, that was a win-win. So while he was in school, I got out the baking pans again and decided to make a simple yellow vanilla cake, promised by the Gourmet cookbook to be almost as quick and easy as making a mix.

And again, total pancake layers. This time it couldn't be a fluke of the recipe, it had to be that I was doing something wrong, but what? I texted Miss Cake, who is a much more talented and experienced baker than I am, and she immediately diagnosed the problem -- was the riser I was using very old. I got out the canister of baking powder and OOPS, three years out of date.

That left me with two skinny, dense cake layers, a bowl of buttercream, and an expectant kid due home from school shortly. I frosted the cake, using the good tips I'd learned from Kim, dotted it with pastel sprinkles, and put it on a cake stand (see above). It passed. The flavor was good, despite the obvious texture problems. I'm looking forward to trying it again with new baking powder.

Sadly the deal is off, though. Lucas refused to drink his milk.

The Cookiestuffs Revival

Greetings earthlings!

Since last we posted, there have been many changes in the Gateau Family. We left Long Island and decamped for Vancouver, British Columbia in August. Now, instead of practicing law, I am a stay-at-home mother, with plans to resume work as a director and teacher of theater sometime down the road.

What this means in terms that might interest a reader of Cookiestuffs is that I am cooking CONSTANTLY. With three hungry (yet picky) sons and a more limited budget for eating out, we are eating most of our meals at home, and having more dinner parties with family and friends. With that comes a lot of fun and experimentation, but also a lot of daily grind and frustration.

My friend kayo from The Well (and founder and host of the fabulous chow.ind conference there) encouraged me to blog about my eating and cooking experiences, so here I am, again. I'll try to keep up this time, and also catch up a bit on what we've been eating and cooking since August.

Really, I Meant to Post

Honestly, I did. It's just that stuff kept happening, such as I had another little Gateau. Lucky me, with each pregnancy my experience of morning sickness got worse and more prolonged, this time coupled with a freaked-out sense of smell that sometimes made it very dangerous to go into the kitchen, so my cooking (and writing about it) fell off sharply.

But now I'm back. It's sometimes hard to cook with a babe in arms, but on the upside, I've pretty much mastered the art of quick vegetable soups that then get pureed into oblivion with a stick blender. They're delicious and good for you, and since they get pureed smooth, it really doesn't matter how nice the chopping job is, as long as the pieces are relatively even in size so they cook at the same rate. In addition to a family favorite White Bean Soup with Red Pepper Swirl from Jeanne Lemlin's Simple Vegetarian Pleasures, one of my recent successes has been with carrot soups. Nobody in our house likes sweetened carrot soups -- and there are a lot of them -- but we all liked this Moroccan Carrot Soup from Epicurious and I recently did another deliciously spicy one based on this chilled soup with curry and coconut milk, though I served it hot. I think the addition of Thai yellow curry paste was a great addition.*

Actually, now that I'm poking around on Epicurious, this one sounds worthy too.

So very much looking forward to the summer cooking ahead of me. A few herbs are in the garden, we have strawberries that actually look like they might turn into something, and I recently planted blueberry bushes. Tomato seedlings are due to arrive soon. The Bobcats are kicking off tonight with a margarita-laden group cookout, and next week we take on Greek mezze. Stay tuned.

*Special thanks to Chef Jane at the Institute of Culinary Education, who taught the Thai cooking class Ms. Cake and I took together. She encouraged us to think of the numerous ways that Thai yellow, red, and green curry pastes can enhance other dishes, and ever since then I've been incorporating them all over the place. A few of her great idea were red curry in barbecue sauces, yellow curry anywhere you'd use curry powder, and green curry in guacamole.

Bobcats Post Dump

Because I am the worse blogger in the world, I have neglected to update the Bobcat Chronicles, and I know all three of my readers are feeling the lack. So here are some reports to bring everyone up to date.

Les Chats de Robert Go Frenchified
We had decided to go regional/country French, and loosely settled on Provence. We started the evening with savory Quiche Lorraine, paired with Patricia Wells's Chanteduc Rainbow Olive Collection, which figured into another of the evening's recipes. Our specialty cocktail of the evening was French Martinis, with an alternative beverage choice of Raspberry Lemonade. Of course Edith Piaf and accordion music were in heavy rotation on the playlist.

Our main meal centered on another Patricia Wells dish, tuna daube in a sauce of red wine, garlic, tomatoes, olives, and onion. With this we had a spectacularly rich potato gratin, grilled asparagus with vinaigrette marinade and Parmesan, and salad. We followed this with an expertly curated cheese course, complete with breads, fruits, and all luxe accompaniments. Because we had not consumed all the calories in the world, we then moved on to dessert of the world's most divine dark chocolate tart, paired with lavender-honey ice cream, and silky creme brulee. Wine? It goes without saying. Also muscato.

The most amazing part of all? We finished virtually everything, a Bobcats first.

We Deep Fry Everything Imaginable
From the sublimely sophisticated to the pinnacle of downhome goodness, we decided to mix it up and go for a Festival of Deep Frying. It's hard to be exhaustive with a list of what hit the hot oil, but the meal started with appetizers of mozzarella with marinara, chunks of mac & cheese (amazing), taquitos, spring rolls, jalapeno poppers, mushrooms with homemade ranch dressing, plantains, and hushpuppies with choice of hot sauce or maple butter.

Then it was time for the serious eating -- good thing we had invited all our kids to participate. Main dishes included chicken, chicken fingers, halibut, french fries, corn dogs, tempura asparagus with herb mayo and lemon mayo, crimson cole slaw, cucumber salad, and green salad with feta. Of course no deep frying extravaganza would be complete without the entire party gathered around the fryer, giddily battering and frying every conceivable sweet. Dessert was consumed on a grease-stained square of butcher paper and eaten off of paper towels in the garage, mortifying our hostess. What we fried: Oreos, Nutter Butters, Devil Dogs, Twinkies, Milky Ways, mini fruit pies, ice cream balls, ice cream sandwiches, chocolate-chocolate chunk cookies, everything covered with clouds of powdered sugar. To wash it down we had a bowl of fruit salad, which my little asked if we were going to deep fry (no, even we have limits).

At the end of it all we were all desperately in need of a facial and swore to never eat again. Of course within minutes we were thinking of all the things we didn't fry, and will have to include next year -- calamari, falafel, corn fritters, apple fritters, chicken fried steak, churros, zeppole, doughnuts....

A Tour of Asia
For a perfect summer dinner, we gathered for pan-Asian grilling. We started on the patio of our hosts with an assortment of appetizers -- shrimp summer rolls, five-spice ahi tuna, beef satay, minced pork in lettuce cups. To drink, Singapore Slings, Asian beers of many nations, and lemonade. We inhaled that and moved inside.

Our main course was centered on a spectacular assortment of meat -- grilled beef with two marinades, chicken satay with Thai peanut sauce, pad thai with chicken, sauteed string beans, and Thai cucumber salad. Copious amounts of sake.

For dessert, which we enjoyed outside, we had the world's most gorgeous and fluffy coconut cake, which was presented as a birthday cake for me. Haven't had such a charming birthday celebration in years. We had that with pina colada sorbet, fruit skewers, coffee, and green tea.

Up Next
And that brings us up to date. We will gather again in September for a culinary exploration of Louisiana -- Cajun, Creole, and New Orleans inspirations.

Notes from the Tomato Garden

The tomatoes are now tantalizingly appearing. I say "tantalizing" because with the exception of two medium-size yellow ones, nothing is ready for picking and eating yet. I expect we'll once again have our "all at once" glut in the coming weeks, where I find myself pressing papers bags of tomatoes on friends and neighbors, until the end of the season comes where I harvest the half-ripened stuff left around and turn it into chutney.

Pictured below is what we are expecting this year. I'm dubious about the Flamme (the orange ones) -- the catalog copy said they were like my beloved Sungolds, but a little bigger than a cherry tomato, and quite prolific. What I'm seeing so far is a much bigger fruit, and of course where they're bigger you don't get quite so many of them, but we shall see. I love The Tasteful Garden where I get my plants, and their customer service is incredible, but last year what I thought were going to be Green Zebras turned out to be the even tastier (but not green) Black Zebras. Ah, the mysteries and excitement of gardening.

At any rate, if all goes well we should be enjoying some exceptionally tasty and amazingly colorful heirloom tomato salads, with or without the spectacular fresh mozzarella we get at North Shore Farms in town.

Carbon:
Yellow Taxi:
Black Cherry:

Flamme:

Green Giant:

Macaronapalooza

So since macarons are the new cupcakes, Ms. Cake and I signed up to take a class at ICE on how to make them. It turns out that they're the most finicky cookies imaginable, and if you ask 30 pastry chefs how to do it you'll get at least 30 different answers.

But we paired up and persevered. Ms. Cake and I were assigned to make orange-flower-scented macarons with a turkish delight filling. The cookies themselves proved more comprehensible to make once we launched in -- we used the Swiss method of making the meringue, which involves whisking the eggwhites and sugar over a double boiler for a few minutes before whipping -- and we were pleased with the way they turned out. Nice rise, a smooth surface, and a classic "foot" at the base. They were a little underdone, though, so we put them back in the oven to dry out a bit, at which point they got a bit browned, but since they were tinted orange it didn't really matter.

The filling turned out to be a bit of a problem, despite the help of an assistant instructor, because the recipe neglected to incorporate a key ingredient in the instructions, and the chef instructor (whose recipe it was) was less than helpful. But we managed, and then managed to coat ourselves in sticky perfumed gel as we filled our cookies.

In the end, some groups had more success than others, but as the chef helpfully pointed out, while it's nice to achieve the perfect look, they still taste good no matter what. We divided the spoils to take home, which included German chocolate, lime with lime meringue, raspberry with raspberry ganache, rose with chocolate-raspberry ganache, and hazelnut with hazelnut-chocolate ice cream, which of course were consumed on the spot.

We look forward to future experimentation, at which point my kitchen and dining room will inevitably be draped with endless parchment sheets of piped-out meringue in unnatural colors. Can hardly wait.

Okay, Okay

I know, I've been lax. I owe a full recap of Les Chats de Robert and will bring it soon, along with a full, illustrated report on today's extravaganza entitled Five Hours of Deep Frying. I neglected to bring the pore-unclogging Noxzema, but the local cardiologists are going to be able to buy some very lovely summer homes this year. Among the topics of discussion: what can we fry next year, and should we all go in on a smoker.