I am so excited to share with you my recent cake baking adventures! As you may know, I made my first wedding cake ever last year for Jeff’s younger brother. It was a long and difficult process and at the time I was sure I’d never want to do another one again. But, I learned so many things last time about how I could have done it better if I had it to do all over, so naturally I began to wish I had another chance to put this new-found knowledge to use.

The engagement of Jeff’s youngest brother; Bryan, to his lovely fiance; Caitlin, gave me just that chance. I offered to do their cake for them and was both excited and nervous when they accepted. Caitlin decided on a sophisticated and classic design that I was sure was in the realm of my abilities, but there was one component to it that I had absolutely no experience with… jam.

Sure, I could have just bought jam, but I saw an opportunity to learn a new skill and create something really custom and unique. And so, this cake baking journey begins with $18 worth of strawberries and some seriously good strawberry vanilla jam.

I started the Monday before the wedding (which was on a Saturday.) It took about a half hour or so to chop up the 4 quarts of strawberries I needed for the recipe. I used about 3/4 of the giant flat of berries I purchased, leaving me with a huge gallon bag of them that’s now sitting in my freezer ready to become smoothies.

I had to learn all about jam-making for this project, and one thing I learned was that a jam needs pectin (a complex sugar naturally occurring in plants that acts as a gelling agent) in order to set up correctly. Strawberries are very low in pectin naturally, so you need to add some to get the right consistency. You can buy pectin in powder form, but for the life of me I couldn’t find the stuff anywhere, so I went with another technique to introduce pectin to the jam: citrus zest.

Citrus fruits; especially their rinds, pith, stems, and seeds, are all high in natural pectin. I wasn’t sure how much of it I needed, so I just used what I had and hoped it worked. Thankfully, the zest of 3 lemons combined with their juice ended up being plenty to get this jam gelled.

The next step was to let the berries macerate in the juice and sugar until they became soft and released much of their own juices. I let them sit for about 2 hours while I ran an errand, but I think even one hour would have been plenty. I could not resist to eat a few of the sticky sweet strawberries right out of this bowl. They were incredible!

After that, it’s pretty easy to turn them into jam. I put them in a large pot and let them boil away for close to an hour, making sure to skim off any foam that formed on the top to keep it from boiling over.

At the very end, I mashed them up a bit with a potato masher to make it a bit smoother (better for putting in a cake so there are no chunks to make the cake layers uneven,) and then added a few tablespoons of vanilla for a sweeter, more rounded flavor. The vanilla took the tart edge off the jam, making it a “strawberries and cream” type flavor.

And here’s how you can tell when it’s done…

I put a small plate in the freezer before I started boiling the jam. You can put a small dollop of jam on the cold plate, count to ten, then tilt the plate to see if the jam is still runny, or if it moves more slowly across the plate. This jam looked ready!

And there it is in my biggest plastic container. I don’t know exactly how much this made, but I know that I only used half of it on the cake. Now I know for next time not to make so much d@mn jam!

Here’s the recipe for the quantity I made. You can easily half or even quarter this for your own use though. It really is excellent, I’ve been putting it on toast and yogurt all week!

Next up, making 6 lbs. of buttercream and layering it with the jam between fluffy vanilla cake!

Yes, I used all 6 lbs. of frosting!

Whew! The wedding was this past weekend and now I can finally say that I’m done with cake decorating for a while (I have another one to do in September.) I’ll show you the week-long process I went through to make it next time, but for now let’s wrap up our Boulder vacation with more delicious food!

If you know me, you know that I love Japanese food. Every time we go on vacation I try to find the best sushi restaurant in the area for us to try. This time, I found two that I could not choose between, so we went to both!

First up was Amu Izakaya. An izakaya is a casual restaurant that focuses on sake and beer with an extensive menu of small dishes, few of them being what most people would consider sushi.

We started off with a small bottle of sake which was served to us in this gorgeous earthenware pottery. Now I really want one of these for the house!

We ordered lots of small dishes to share, starting with a fluke sashimi and snapper carpaccio in yuzu cream with salmon roe. I’d never had fluke before but loved the clean lemony flavor. The snapper was soft and bright-tasting.

We had two kinds of Pacific oysters, one was Kumamoto but I can’t remember the name of the other. Both were excellent and still chilly on their bed of ice. We also shared some grilled eel with the skin still on. It was fatty and soft and delicious.

Then our favorites of the night, gindara misoyaki and a green tea soba with duck soup for dipping. Gindara (black cod) is my very favorite fish but I can rarely find it anywhere to prepare at home, so it’s become a treat I just have to have anytime we see it on the menu. This one was fall-apart perfect with it’s little ribbon of crispy skin and thin salty miso glaze.

The duck soup was out of this world with big chunks of duck floating in the rich broth. The soba were cold and springy, chewy and sweet. Easily the best soba dish I’ve ever had.

Finally, dessert. I’ve had mochi ice cream once before and didn’t care for it. Apparently I just had a bad one, because these little mochi ice creams were so addictingly good! There was only a thin skin of mochi incasing the creamy, not-too-cold ice cream in flavors of green tea, red bean, and pistachio. The pistachio was the clear winner for both of us.

Amu is the kind of authentic izakaya experience I wish we had in Atlanta. There are a few very good ones in Atlanta, but none as classy and traditional as Amu. Definitely check this one out if you have the chance.

Before I show you yet more Japanese food, here’s a few shots of one of the best lunches we had on the trip at a Latin restaurant called Aji.

We decided to share a bunch stuff because there were too many yummy things on the menu to choose from. We had a snapper ceviche with pickled red onions, a pork empanada with a corn masa crust, and duck taquitos with a spicy slaw. All of these were excellent and we had a hard time deciding wether to order something else or just get more of these!

We did eventually decide to split the enchiladas though, and it was definitely the right choice. They were filled with crisp grilled vegetables and topped with the freshest guacamole, salsa, and thin tomatoey enchilada sauce. I could have eaten ten of these if I weren’t so stuffed.

And onward to our sushi dinner! We hit up Sushi Tora after reading many reviews claiming that it’s the best sushi in Boulder

We started with the tempura mushrooms that were amazing. There were shiitakes, oyster, and a few enoki mushrooms, all lightly fried and served with bitter green tea for dipping. I could not stop eating them. Usually mushrooms soak up too much oil when fried, but these were still fresh and springy with a deep earthy flavor.

We got two snapper nigiri in a yuzu pepper vinaigrette that were outstanding. And any time monkfish liver (ankimo) is on the menu we have to have some. This was a particularly good bit of it too, firm but creamy with a slight peanut butter flavor.

Various maki rolls that were all really tasty and cut to the correct size. I have a pet peeve about sushi that is prepared too large to be eaten in one bite. Very happy to be able to inhale these as intended. 😉

Jeff got an uni gunkan. I can’t stand the stuff. I used to try it every time we went out for sushi hoping that I just hadn’t had the good stuff yet, but it always makes me gag. Tastes like ice cold runny peanut butter and fish flavored snot if you ask me.

And because why not, more mochi ice creams! This time we got blueberry and salted cherry blossom. The blueberry was crazy good, and the cherry blossom tasted mostly like vanilla but with a faint almost rose-like aroma in the back of the throat.

Sushi Tora definitely lived up to the hype. So glad we were able to find two excellent Japanese restaurants in Boulder.

Well that wraps up the trip. Overall, we enjoyed ourselves a ton and really liked Boulder, but we didn’t quite fall in love with it the way we did with the Pacific Northwest. I happen to love rainy gloomy weather, so a city like Seattle is actually a good match for me. It’s kinda funny to say that I would miss the rain in such a sunny and beautiful place as Boulder, but that’s just what I like.

Ok! I cannot wait to show you the wedding cake process from last week. I’m still editing the photos from the wedding, but I should be able to show it all to you soon.

If you had to pack up your life and move to another city of your choosing, where would you go?

It wasn’t all beer guzzling in Boulder, there was also tea!

Apparently, Boulder’s sister city is Dushanbe, Tajikistan. As a gift, the Dushanbe Tea House was assembled in Tajikistan then taken apart piece by piece and transported to downtown Boulder where it was reassembled amidst a garden of roses and a trickling stream.

As you may know, Jeff and I are kind of tea nerds, so we knew we’d be spending a long afternoon at this tea house for sure. It’s so hard to find tea shops that specialize in Chinese teas, they’re usually English “afternoon tea” type places with a sprinkling of heavily-flavored Assam and Ceylon teas, none of which we really care for. So we were excited to find that Dushanbe carries mostly Chinese teas of a high quality.

I loved seeing the authentic Persian-inspired painted ceilings and intricately-carved wooden columns.

And there was the constant sound of moving water from the Fountain of the Seven Beauties in the center of the tea house.

And the tea was excellent. Jeff had a Chinese black tea and I opted for a tea cocktail made from oolong, pineapple, and mango juices. Kind of like a tropical Arnold Palmer.

We also decided to have lunch there, starting with these curry-filled samosas with mango chutney and raita. So good!

Jeff had one of the most amazing dishes I’ve ever tasted. It was a thai panang beef curry with bok choy and shaved jicama, the richest and most flavorful curry ever. I could not stop stealing bites from him!

I ordered a salad of spinich and shaved pear in a pu-erh tea dressing with salmon and a bleu cheese-stuffed pear half. The stuffed pear was horribly underripe and hard as a rock, but I just scooped out the bleu cheese and ate the rest, which was an incredibly yummy salad without it.

We ended up splitting a pot of oolong together and digging into dessert. This was the most soft and delicious gingerbread I’ve ever had. It was accompanied by a drizzle of blood orange syrup and five spice whipped cream. Yum!

Dushanbe Tea House was incredible. I was worried that a place that specializes in tea couldn’t possibly also make great food, but WOW they do. The whole place felt very authentic and natural, not gimmicky and contrived as these types of theme places can be. I can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re ever in Boulder!

One place that was just ok was Chez Thuy, a Vietnamese place walking-distance from our rental. The free rice porridge was the best part of the meal!

The spring rolls were dry and flavorless, Jeff’s green curry was bland and full of watery vegetables, and my sampler plate of nori rolls, skewered beef, tempura shrimp, and stuffed chicken wing was way too heavy and strangley spiced.

I ended up taking mine back to the rental in hopes of snacking on it later, but it began to smell so atrociously within an hour that I never ended up eating it and it just stunk up the place for days. Skip Chez Thuy if you’re ever in town.

Back to the good stuff!

We caught up with some of our friends who moved out to Denver a while back and they could not stop raving about Snooze, a brunch place on Pearl St. that we’d passed a few times that was always crowded. We decided to take them up on their recommendation one morning and headed over expecting a long wait. Lucky for us, we were seated immediately on their lovely patio for prime people-watching!

I got the Blueberry Blossom pancakes: two super-fluffy and light pancakes studded with fresh berries and drizzled in local honey, topped with a sugary oat crumble and lavender butter! Best. Pancakes. Ever.

Jeff got the OMG French Toast which totally lived up to it’s namesake. Decadent when swirled in the vanilla cream sauce!

I wish we had a Snooze in Atlanta, I’d be waking up early to go there every weekend. There were so many things on the menu that I wanted to try!

Alright, one more Boulder recap to go. Tomorrow is the wedding and I’m rushing to get all this cake stuff done in time. Wish me luck!