Whew!

That was crazy. I spent roughly 10 hours yesterday just baking cakes!

To give you an idea of how crazy it was, I’ve compiled a list of just how much of each ingredient I used yesterday:

• 12 cups of sugar
• 24 eggs
• 12 sticks of butter
• 18 cups of flour
• 6 cups of milk
• 24 tsp. of vanilla
• 20 tsp. of baking powder

And that’s just for the cakes, don’t even ask me how much butter was used to make the buttercream! And speaking of buttercream, remember that giant vat of it I made on Tuesday? I ran out. In fact, I think that was about half the amount I actually needed!

I had work stations going on every available surface in the kitchen:

I had to hand-wash that mixing bowl 7 times, my hands are so dry now.

But, I finished em’.

Today, I need to:

1. Carve the cakes (they will have a rounded top edge)
2. Crumbcoat them
3. Frost them
4. Cover them in white fondant
5. Dye some fondant pink and purple for stripes
6. Adhere the stripes
7. Insert support dowels in the bottom layer

It’s daunting to look at that list. It’s a lot to do, but each thing shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes at most.

I have a sinking feeling that I don’t have enough fondant though, so I need to leave time to go get some if that happens.

Ok, back to it. I’ll try to take more pictures today since it’s less messy (didn’t want to drop my camera in cake batter.) Wish me luck!

April 14, 2011 Alayna Discussion 23 comments

No, not cake-bacon week….though that does sound intriguing.

My brother-in-law is getting married this Saturday, so the time has finally come for me to bake that wedding cake I’ve been talking about. We’re heading up there the evening before, so I need to have the cake finished a whole day early. So, pretty much this entire week has been and will continue to be consumed with activities related to cake-baking!

Yesterday, I spent most of my time taking care of tons of housework that I know I won’t have time for later in the week. I also needed to start prepping for the baking by getting everything in order. Here’s my list of solely cake related to-do’s for yesterday:

1. clean out fridge to make room for two large cakes and a vat of frosting
2. take all cake-baking paraphernalia out of wrappings
3. calculate how much I need of each ingredient for the whole shebang
4. clean and cover my prep table so cats don’t get fur on it
5. shop for any remaining ingredients needed
6. test fondant dyes on scraps of old fondant
7. locate and set out all baking tools

That was a lot of work.

Today’s assignment was to make a triple batch of the buttercream icing. I managed to snap a few photos of the process…

Kitchen is absolutely covered in powdered sugar!

Here it is resting in the fridge. I’ll take it out first thing in the morning before I start baking so it has time to soften up again.

So, tomorrow is the day that will require the most work. I’ll be baking cake layers starting immediately after breakfast until whenever I’m done. I’m hoping I can get them all baked, cooled, and assembled in one day. I’ve gotta hurry and get the buttercream on them so that they don’t start getting stale.

What is the most delicious dessert you’ve ever eaten?

April 12, 2011 Alayna Discussion 13 comments

Thanks so much for everyone that had nice things to say about my new haircut. I didn’t mean to be negative, but sometimes it just feels so good to whine! I’m sure you know what i’m talking about. I’m glad that I let my emotions about it out so that now I can really move on. (BTW, I’ve had the chance to style it myself a few times now and while I still don’t love it, I can deal with it until it grows out.)

Yesterday I had a very green lunch. Another salad, this time with creamy avocado, and a side of yet more avocado smashed on sprouted toast with seaweed flake. It occurred to me recently that maybe not everyone is sprinkling seaweed flake on everything like I do, so I think soon I’ll need to do a post on this stuff to extol its virtues, cuz it really is a wonderful and delicious thang.

Last night’s dinner was incredible.

I made a spicy pineapple pork dish over jasmine rice. This was kind of half-way between sweet and sour pork and some sort of Hawaiian dish. Jeff and I both swoon for hot pineapple, so this was much enjoyed by both parties.

I made it by first adding some sesame oil and red pepper flakes to a wok (pan is fine) and then sauteing the red peppers in the spicy oil. When those were half-way cooked, I added the pork pieces and let them brown on both sides. Then, in went the pineapple cubes and chopped scallions. To make it a little bit saucy, I crushed some of the hot pineapple pieces with the back of a spoon, then added a swish or two of fish sauce and rice vinegar. The whole thing got a small sprinkle of salt and black pepper and was done!

It takes more time for the rice cooker to finish making fluffy rice than it does to make that dish. Super easy.

This morning, I thought that I would be really clever and make green tea and blueberry pancakes for breakfast…

I wanted so badly to draw a smiley face on this one, but I restrained…

As usual though, any time that I think I’m being really clever with a recipe it kind of fails. While these were totally delicious and filling, I couldn’t really taste the green tea at all. I’ll try ’em again sometime and up the matcha addition quite a bit.

This afternoon was gorgeous out. 85 degrees but breezy, can’t argue with that! We took the open morning to start house-hunting in the area. We are not on track to buy for at least another year, but we’d like for our next rental to either be a single-family home all to ourselves or a nice condo really close to or in downtown Decatur, so that we can enjoy this town to it’s fullest.

After an hour or so of driving around and writing down numbers to call for rentals, we parked the car at home and walked into town for a relaxing afternoon beer break.

(Love that thermos!) We parked ourselves at the bar in Leon’s and spent some time drinking good beer and talking about the next few things we need to do to make RipeTrack better. SO much work left to do, but all worth it.

This weekend has felt long, and for that I can’t complain.

This next week is going to be tremendously busy. My brother-in-law’s wedding is Saturday so I’ll be baking and decorating the wedding cake for he and his fiance from Tuesday on. Yeah, it takes several days to put a wedding cake together, yeesh. I cannot wait to show you guys my mad cake-baking skillz!

What do you have mad skillz at?

April 10, 2011 Alayna Discussion 11 comments