For the Love of Food

Last week I promised that I would reveal to you the hidden location of these meringue mushrooms and the walnut forest. Well, they’re sitting on top of what is, currently, one of the proudest moments in my baking history.

That is, they are on top of a six layer Fall hummingbird cake that I made. Originally, this would have been my 8th Project Foodblog post, but, I am sad to announce, that I didn’t make it to round 8.  However, I am quite proud that I made it this far

So, you are probably asking yourself at this point:

a – what is a Fall hummingbird cake

and

b – why is this one of the proudest moments in your (my) baking history??

You may be familiar with the traditional hummingbird cake. It’s deliciously sweet, is filled with bananas, pineapple, and pecans, and has more granulated sugar than flour in it. It’s sweet. And, it’s good.

So, why mess with something so fantastic?

why not!

I went ahead and substituted half of the bananas with homemade pumpkin puré (by volume) and the pecans with walnuts (because walnuts are in seasonal over abundance in Europe right now). In the end, I created a cake as delicious as the original with the added flavor of pumpkin pie…hence the name the Fall Hummingbird Cake.

And, to answer your second question, this is why I am so proud of myself:

That (3,5 years ago) was my first and last attempt at a multi-layered cake covered in frosting. Then, I chocked my oozing cake off to lack of knowledge and a bad recipe. Now, after much research…and a lot more practice…I am pretty sure that the recipe I used 3,5 years ago was perfectly fine and that I just should have planned to make the cake over 2 days instead of 2 hours. In the case of a mulit-layered cake, patience is key.

Now, I’m not saying that my cake is perfect – it does taste perfect – but I would love to achieve something that looks more like a professional cake next time and less like a hill. And, yes, there definitely will be a next time.

And, for those of you who would love a meringue mushroom forest on top of your cake, you can find my recipe (with accompanying video) here. Just remember to add the mushrooms at the last minute with a dab of some left over frosting. Then, sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

You will love the look on everyone’s face when they see this cake! It brought big smiles to my kids as well as the 5 guests we had over that evening and the 3 friends we visited the next day…it’s a big cake.   And, if the cake is too large for you to finish in a few days, slice it up, bag it, and freeze it…then you can enjoy it at your leisure for months to come.

The original recipe, and my inspiration for this cake can be found here. Sweetapolita used 8″ round cake tins, and I only have 1 10″ round spring form which is why my recipe yields 4 cakes and not 6. I intend to remedy this as soon as a find a place that sell cake tins in town. I definitely need something smaller in diameter and at least 3 or 4 so it doesn’t take me 4 hours to bake 4 cakes (for 8 layers). I ended up with 6 because I became impatient and my first cake crumbled.

The cake recipe comes together really quickly, but turning it into a multi-layered, beautifully frosted cake, takes time and patience.  Don’t let that frighten you – it is amazing what you can do with practice and time.

Cakes
Ingredients:
780 grams Flour
800 grams Sugar
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
2 teaspoons ground Cinnamon
6 Eggs, lightly beaten
2 Cups Sunflower Oil
4 teaspoons Vanilla extract
220 grams Walnuts, finely chopped
454 grams canned crushed pineapple (with the juice)
2 Cups mashed Bananas (about 5-6 Bananas)
2 Cups homemade Pumpkin Puré

Directions:
Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).

Prepare 4 10″ round cake pans by spraying the bottoms and the sides with cooking spray and then lining the bottom of each pan with a cut-out round piece of parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together – by hand – the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and set aside.

In another bowl, combine the eggs, oil, vanilla, walnuts, pineapple, bananas, and pumpkin puré. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and mix well until everything has incorporated.

Pour the batter, in equal measure, into your prepared cake tins, and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean.

Remove to a wire rack and let sit for 20 minutes – do not remove earlier or your cakes will crumble! Once 20 minutes have elapsed, turn over the baking tins onto the rack to remove the cake, peel off the parchment paper, and let the cake completely cool.

Once the cakes have completely cooled, wrap each cake with plastic wrap and let chill in the refrigerator over night.

…the next day

Prepare the frosting (see recipe bellow) and then continue.

Remove your cake rounds from the refrigerator and prepare to cut each round in half. To do so you will need a large cutting board and a long serrated knife. Before cutting through the cake, score all along the edge of the cake where you wish to cut, then, with even, sawing strokes, cut each round in half.

Place 1 cake half top-side down on your cake plate (I used the removable bottom of my tart pan) and place a few scoops of frosting on it – spread so that it is evenly coated, then top with another cake half and repeat until all layers are used up.

Now your cake is ready to be crumb coated – which means that you need to cover the cake with a this layer of frosting on all sides and the top to seal in the crumbs – it does not have to look pretty – and then refrigerate for 1 hour before proceeding.

…1 hour later

Remove from refrigerator and cover with the final (pretty) coat of frosting. Refrigerate over night before slicing.

…the next day (again)

Remove from refrigerator just before serving. Slice, serve, and watch everyone smile and enjoy the silence of delicious cake.

Serves 28.

Frosting
Ingredients:
230 grams Butter, at room temperature
2 kg Powdered Sugar (yes – that’s 4 just over 4 pounds!)
4 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
907 grams Cream Cheese, cut into chunks, cold

Directions:
In an electric mixer with whisk attachment, cream the butter and sugar until just combined. Add the vanilla extract and all the cream cheese and whisk on medium speed for about 4 minutes. Turn the speed to high for one more minute, and it’s done.

I love cute notions – especially edible ones – so when I saw meringue mushrooms on Sweetapolita, I knew I just had to make them.

I had never made meringue mushrooms until a week ago.  At first it was very frustrating.  I had great directions, but still found myself lost and not knowing, for example, what stiff peaks were supposed to look like despite endlessly staring at Google Images.

My first batch was a flop and took 7 hours of baking to get the meringue to harden, and it deflated beyond salvage when I added the cocoa powder to make chocolate ones.  With my second batch I tried a whole knew recipe, but it came out so very hard that it wasn’t really fun to eat – crunch, crunch.  My third batch looked promising, but after some egg yolk slipped into the egg white, I had to beat it for 30 minutes to get soft peaks and bake 5 hours to get it to harden.  And, somehow – I’m not the kind of person who gives up easily – I decided to try a fourth time, and, even though I used the same recipe as the first and third times, I was able to pull it off perfectly without a hitch…even when I mixed into cocoa powder and matcha green tea powder.

The mushrooms are ever so light and fluffy, but still rich and chocolaty.

I think it wouldn’t have taken 4 times to perfect had I had some visual guidance.  And, I would like to share my hard earned knowledge with you in this video that I made with my husband’s cell phone for this week’s Project Foodblog Challenge:

Comeback next week to find out what I did with my meringue mushrooms. And, yes, it has to do with this mushroom and walnut forest.

And, for those of you, like myself, who like a quick reference text version of the recipe: Continue Reading »

And, now for the final dish in my Luxurious Iraqi Dinner Party series: velvety smooth, fragrant, and delicious saffron and rose petal labaneh.

This was the crowning moment of my evening. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, it was so delicious! In all my research on how to host a luxurious dinner party, one important piece of advice is that your first dish should be stunning – both in appearance and taste – to really impress your guests. And, while this is true and important, I find it just as necessary to end the meal with an equally stunning dish…you don’t want them to think you ran out of energy at the end!

However uncomplicated it is to make this dish, it does take some planning and time – as well as access to organically grown/pesticide-free fragrant roses. I happen to grow some in my garden. Unfortunately, mine bloom and are most fragrant in early summer. By the time September rolls around, they are on their way out. Luckily, one of my fellow gardeners, and author or Naturlich Fürth, had plenty still left growing on her garden plot that were a million times more fragrant than mine…and she was happy to share!

Now, the part that requires time is “making” the rose honey. The longer it sits, the more fragrant it becomes. I let mine sit for a week before using, but I’m sure it can be used as early as 2 days after making – it will just be less fragrant.

Just remember that when it comes to the fragrant roses for this dish that you pick some with a sweet smell. I have some beautiful, very very fragrant, red roses growing on my garden plot, and they smell like a nice, clean rose soap…not exactly a flavor that I would enjoy in a dish.

The original recipe can be found here. This is originally called a panna cotta, but labaneh is yogurt that has been strained to give it a much thicker consistency which is a major component of this recipe. So, I just renamed it. Continue Reading »

Most of them figured I slaved over this dish for hours, others could not believe how creamy it came out. This is my favorite part about cooking for guests – watching someone’s face light up when they eat my food. What I love even more is telling them how easy it was to prepare and encouraging them to try to make it at home as well…hence my love for blogging!

The recipe technically takes roughly 3 hours to finish, but you only have to take port in the preparation process for about 5 or so minutes of that time. This recipe practically makes itself.

Feel free to make this well ahead of time. I made mine 1 week before my party and it was deliciously creamy – and didn’t freeze into a block of ice – until the last scoop!

The original recipe can be found here. Continue Reading »

Voting is now open!  Please cast your vote for me here. 

Now, I have hosted many parties in my short life: impromptu dinner parties, lunch parties, brunch parties, garden parties, winter solstice parties, children’s birthday parties, Thanksgiving parties…I could go on for quite a while.  But, I’ve never hosted a luxurious dinner party.  So, when Foodbuzz challenged us to host a luxurious dinner party I hit the web to get ideas on how to host one.

To my utter surprise, there is not a lot of information out there on how to host a luxurious dinner party – needless to say a small intimate dinner party.  There is plenty of information on how to throw huge and elegant wedding bashes, but since I cannot seat 100+ in my home, I had to turn to other sources.

I quickly emailed the two people I knew would have detailed thoughts as to what a luxurious dinner party would entail.  Could I hold it in my home since my dining table is in my kitchen?  Would I need a server?  These are just some of the questions I had.  Surprisingly – well, maybe not – I got quite different answers from both sources, but good advice none the less.

So, what do you need to put together a luxurious dinner party?? Continue Reading »

This month is the big 3 for Taste&Create and to celebrate everyone is blogging about a dessert on their partner’s blog.

I chose to blog about Cupcakes, Food and Pretty Lil Things (my partner), Chocolate Caramel Seduction Cupcakes. And, although mine don’t look as awesome as hers, they sure did taste sooooo very deliciously sweet.

This is how good they were: Continue Reading »

I am always on the look-out for a good brownie recipe. I have been on the look-out for years now and have never found anything really worth mentioning. Well, it looks like my search ends here.

While searching my Taste&Create partner’s blog – My Sweet and Savory- I came across a blog post of hers where she raves about a fantastic King Arthur brownies. Well, she was right. They are perfectly moist, but not dense like fudge.

These are really the perfect brownies.  And, since I always love to see what a cupcake&brownie looks like from the inside, I thought I’d share this picture with you:

I would change 1 thing and one thing only. I would not add any cinnamon for a regular batch of brownies. However, I would leave the cinnamon for a Christmas batch of brownies. With the cinnamon they taste like a special type of cookie/cake that they have here in Germany.

Ok, here is the recipe: Continue Reading »

I am always on the look-out for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. In the search for a crisp chocolate chip cookie, I came across this fantastic chewy cookie recipe on Cooking On the Side.

I tried these cookies out in all sizes: small, medium, and jumbo. And, jumbo cookies were definitely best over all because these cookies are breadier than what most people are used to and the larger they are the better the chocolate to cookie ratio is.

I made some ingredient substitutions to adjust for my dietary needs at the time. That’s also why my cookies look a bit different than the ones on Cooking On The Side. Different ingredients react differently when baked.

So, while I continue my search for a crisp chocolate chip cookie recipe, you can enjoy this one! Continue Reading »

I had my first scone in Ireland…I believer we were stopping for lunch somewhere on the northwest shore of Ireland. They were delicious – studded with little pieces of dried apricot and raisins.

So, for St. Patrick’s day, I want to share with you one of my favorite food-memories of my trip to Ireland a year and a half ago. Continue Reading »

While searching for a vanilla ice cream recipe for Christmas dinner, I came across the most fabulous and beautiful-looking recipe with the promise of being creamy and not freezing into a solid rock.

This is the first ice cream I have had all around success with – flavor and creaminess. Wow..it is fantastic. I can recommend it whole heartedly…and I don’t like vanilla ice cream. Now, I am really itching to get my hands on a copy of The Perfect Scoop (where the recipe is originally from).

Oh, and it went really well with the homemade apple pie I made. The apple pie was ok…you can find my recipe here.

I also got to try out my new macro rings that my husband got me for Christmas. I have been dreaming of my own pair of macro rings since I was in 7th grade when I first tried them out on my camera – borrowed from my best friend.

So, on to other news…

Remember that apartment we were buying?? Well, we bought it and renovations are taking longer…and we have to move into another apartment. So, starting Wednesday, I will be offline for about 6 weeks until we are in our new home. So, while I may have some time to blog, I will most likely not get the opportunity to go online until sometime after Easter. Big bummer…

Ironically, I haven’t been very stressed the last few days and I am home with two sick kids, a whole bunch of moving boxes, and am coming down with a cold myself…and I just feel relaxed.  Crazy, huh?

In the mean time, enjoy this delicious recipe!