Beet cake for potluck

Back in 2013 I discovered that my family's carrot cake is perhaps even better when made with beets. The Benevolent Overlord thinks there is no reason to ever make carrot cake again unless made with beets. I have been hankering for a slice of beet cake, but given a desire to eat healthier, above all smaller portions and less sugars, I was not going to make a cake and have it hanging around the house. Bad idea. Bad. Luckily, the beginning of the semester came to the rescue: the Labor Day Departmental Pot Luck!

I love cream cheese icing, but decided I needed to jazz it up somehow. While the cake baked and cooled I did some happy Internet searching, and settled on a Honey Ginger Buttercream Frosting from GroupRecipes.com as the filling layer. As you can see I slathered it on nice and thick.

For the actual icing that I would use to ice and decorate the cake, I went with Wilton's Cream Cheese Icing. Instead of the orange juice I used ginger liquor, and instead of the grated orange peel I used dried ginger - grated ginger would clog the icing tips. An issue I had was the icing was highly volatile and softened much quicker than usual, even given the temperature or the room. As The Benevolent Overlord pointed out, alcohol has properties that will soften butter. Note to self - ginger liquor gave a fabulous flavor, but makes icing harder. 

Carrot cake is very crumbly, so I started with a thin layer of icing just to seal in the crumbs:

I edged the cake with a cheerful yellow basket weave - always fun to do! - and topped it with beets:

The color is obviously off, but here's a close-up of the beets:

I am particularly pleased with the beet tops. And you know, the beets I peeled for this cake did have a bumpy look, even if not quite so "dog turdy" in appearance as these. While doing the veins in the leaves, I managed to brush the piping at the top of the basket weave, which was already compromised by the heat/alcohol. There was no saving the edge without mussing it up, so I added a helpful caption in case someone was wondering what kind of cake it is:

Hah! The hosting professor's daughter was quite fascinated with how I got my elbow in the cake, so I got a story out of it as well. 

Over all, it was a truly delicious cake, even if I do say so myself. The beets and the ginger married beautifully, and everyone liked it. We got to take leftovers home, so we ended up having only two pieces, which is plenty. Yes, we had it for breakfast the next day. Decadent!

And here's the full view: 

I will definitely make this combo again, and am glad I discovered the ginger icing!

Carrot Cake

Honey Ginger Buttercream Frosting

Wilton's Cream Cheese Icing (with orange)

What to do with lots of squash? Part 1.

We love delicata squash! So, now that we live in a house (the landlord said we can do anything we want with the yard), we decided to plant some. We put them in a plot behind the cedar trees. However, only a few of the seeds in the package are actually delicata - most are butternut squash. We love butternut as well, so we are only slightly disappointed. Over the summer the plants have grown, and above you see how they are growing up over the cedars and around the cedars.  It is hard to capture in a photograph, but it is pretty awesome.

The first butternut squash was emergency harvested as a deer had nibbled on it. Here is a picture of it from its non-nibbled on side, along with (left to right) everclear being infused with a mint variety nicely called "julep" (I'm looking at you TMV and LH!), everclear infusion based on Samovar Blend tea (KT, this one is for you!), and my felted teacosy. The beer in the background is leftovers from a departmental pot-luck (more on that later. Maybe). When I cut into the squash a few days later, it smelled more fragrant and delicious than any butternut squash I have ever purchased.

One day a week or so ago the Fuzzband - although I think we decided to call him Benevolent Overlord after Doug Berman, who is titled thus on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! (The best radio show in the 'verse!)... So, Benevolent Overlord declared we need to find at least ten butternut squash recipes. Well, I did. I went through our cookbooks, because I am a cookbook person. We have a pretty exciting lineup of butternut squash and pumpkin recipes!

Here is recipe #1 (complete with an attempt at food photography):

This is perhaps my favorite cook book: 400 Best-Ever Soups,
edited by Anne Sheasby (Hermes House, 2008). The recipe is on p. 150.

Squash Soup with Horseradish Cream

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash
1 cooking apple
2 Tblsp butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1-2 tsp curry powder - I used hot + extra for garnish
900 ml / 3 3/4 cup vegetable stock
1 tsp chopped fresh sage - I used dry
150 ml / 2/3 cup apple juice
lime rind, shredded, to garnish - I did not use this
salt and black pepper

Horseradish cream:
4 Tbsp heavy whipping cream
2 tsp horseradish sauce - I used freshly grated
1/2 tsp curry powder - again, I used hot

1. Peel squash, remove seeds, chop the flesh. Peel, core, and chop apple
2. Heat the butter in a large pan. Add the onions and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the curry powder. Cook to bring out the flavor, stirring constantly for 2 minutes.
3. Add the stock, squash, apple, and sage. Bring to boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes until the squash and apple are soft. 
4. Meanwhile, make the horseradish sauce: whip the cream until stiff, add the horseradish and curry. Refrigerate until ready to serve on soup.
5. Puree the soup. Return to pot and add apple juice. Season to taste. Reheat gently, without bringing to boil.
6. Serve the soup  in bowls topped with a spoonful of the horseradish sauce and a dusting of curry powder. Garnish with shredded lime rind, if you like.

Tadaa:

It was delicious! Seriously. And it was even better the next day. While "best ever" is an absolute I don't like to put in writing outside hyperbole on Facebook, this book sure does live up to its name. Benevolent Overlord said it was the best squash soup he has had - and we've had some darn fine ones. I would rate it at a solid 8 out of 10, Benevolent Overlord at 9/9.5! Regardless, we are remembering this one.

If you try this, I would love to hear how yours turns out, how you modified the recipe, etc.

While my food photography is crappy, to say the least, here is one more shot:

P.S. The drink shown above is actually worth a note in and of itself. It is a mudslide with banana... (Ooo! The webpage has some other promising recipes, too!)We made our own creamed whiskey for the mudslide, since we had the ingredients for it, and did not want to go out and buy Bailey's, the most famous creamed whiskey and staple in home-bars as well as commercial bars. I have to say, the home made turned out more to our palette than then purchased version. What is left of the creamed whiskey now stored in an old everclear bottle in the fridge waiting for further adventures.

Fuzzband's Birthday - Featuring Cake!

My Husband had a birthday on Friday. Now, the problem when we lived in New Haven was that it was always too hot to bake and decorate a birthday cake for him. However, now we live in Cincinnati - in a house! - and we have air conditioning. So it is cool enough to actually, you know, bake AND spend hours playing with buttercream! This was a very drawn out process, but lots of fun!

The Process

1. I bought on-sale Malted Milk Balls at Easter.

2. Decide on a surprise birthday party and coral the guests. I decided on a very small gathering of friends from the area, although I did try to get The Best Man to come from Pittsburgh... Fuzzband has dreamed of a pot-luck appetizer dinner, so that is what I asked peeps to bring.

3. Monday, 5 days before B-day, I stayed home because I had a doctor's appointment, which I combined with lunch with my friend KR. She also took me shopping for ingredients for the B-day. The Fuzzband has the car, and it would have been suspicious if I had borrowed it. PLUS I got to hang out with KR! I had drawn a plan in my little memo book, "Dichtung und Warheit" - KR did not get it, apparently, but when she saw the cake it all made sense. The Fuzzband'd engineering mind grasped it immeidately when he saw it on the B-Day. Although by then he had also seen the cake....

4. Wednesday I had a dentist's appointment, so once again I stayed home. And baked meringue, using the Joy of Cooking's Meringue I recipe.  I left them in the oven, hoping Fuzzband would not get inspired to use the oven. The gamble payed off!

5. Friday, B-day. I stayed home on the pretext I need foot X-rays. My medical issues sure have been agreat for excuses not to go to the office and prepare for the party! While I did figure out where I need to go for X-rays of the sore foot, (the joys of the US health care system! Aaargh!) I actually spent most off the day in the kitchen with the Birthday cake:

The meringue had gotten a bit sticky on the surface, so I turned the oven back on and dried it out. Worked like a charm! Must remember for future reference.

While first aid was going on for the meringue, I made chocolate ganache from our Chocolate cookbook - it goes with Stephen's favorite dessert, their Tropical Fruit Vacherin, of which there is a photo on Facebook. I also melted the chocolate for chocolate buttercream - Wilton's recipe - to be mixed with whipped cream for a less sweet and lighter filling. While those were cooling I baked the Devil's Food Chocolate Cake from The Joy of Cooking.

This is what I turned out in the end:

I googled some molds to make my own three dimensional fish cake topper, but came across a tile design, which had a neat textured relief thing going. As it is flat, it would also mean I could make a higher cake!






I wanted to make the sides have a sort of under the water vibe. They're supposed to be water grass and the Malted Milk Balls are bubbles or rocks in muddy water. :

Fuzzband really liked the cake! Yay! Everyone else did, too!

Below you can see the layering: chocolate cake at the bottom, then meringue, chocolate cake, and topped with meringue. There were Malted Milk Balls between they layers. I put the meringue at the top to get a super smooth top and no crumbs. Fuzzband is not big on buttercream icing, so I filled the cake with chocolate ganche flavored whipped cream, and did my very best to have as thing a layer of buttercream icing. Having a top layer that does not release any crumbs makes this easier. Please take a moment to admire the thin layer of icing at the top - the chocolate layer is ca 1 mm thick, or less in places, and then there is the colored buttercream icing - and sprinkles to make the fish glisten! KR and I picked those out.

The Surprise: Friday!

On Fridays we often go out for Mexican, so to keep the Fuzzband at home, we came up with a plan that our friend MF was coming for dinner - she lives a bit further out so this is rare enough to warrant a Special Occasion. I also told the Fuzzband that I had told her of our new meal plan - The Fresh20 - and had mentioned the black bean quesadillas on the menu for this week, and that she was excited, so I would make those for her on Friday!

The plan was that our friends the Ms and KR would just pop in around 6 pm and as the Fuzzband opened the door, they would say "surprise" and hand over their appetizers. HOWEVER! Once MF had arrived, I noticed we were out of toritllas, and thought "Shit! Now he'll have a good excuse to go out!" but instead he offered to go to the store to buy more! Woot! Off he goes. The Ms and KR arrive at the same time minutes after the Fuzzband left, KR parking partially in front of our driveway as she always does, thinking the Fuzzband was at home. I told her Fuzzband would be irritated first, but then realize what the situation was, and she should help set the party up and not move the car. So, we pull out the table to make it bigger, set it with cheerful napkins in the birthday boy's favorite color - green - and set it up with all the appetizers everyone had brought!

The Fuzzband gets home, and as he comes into the kitchen from the garage (the guests were hidden behind the corner in the dining room) he's griping "Somebody has parked partially in front of our driveway! I would like to let you know I did NOT spit on the car"!!!! He walks into the dining area and  - SURPRISE!!! He was completely surprised! And delighted! And speechless! And his griping about the offending car was not only hilarious, but he completely forgave KR. I was a bit worried he's recognize the car, but luckily he did not. An absolute success! Thank you, gang!

Everything was delicious: Ocra and veggie patties; prosciutto, melon and goat cheese canapes; chile-cheese dip and tortilla chips; quacamole; Italian orange and egg salad; potato veggie salad; and potato chips and Amerikan Dippi from Finland we love, and had told the Ms and KR about the previous weekend. I had made a HUGE pitcher of Singapore Sling. The Fuzzband loves it, and he was born in Singapore!

It was a lovely evening of chatting, laughter, and a garden and compost tour for the gang.

Other things we did on the B-Day weekend: Saturday!

We drove south to Kentucky, and had lunch: our first visit to Chick fil A! We've been getting their calendars from family friend sin Maryland for years, ever since the chain came out with a Cows in Shining Armor version. The calendars are all about celebrating the glory of cows, so we should all eat more chicken to spare these noble beasts!

We went to the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky - Kentucky is gorgeous!

On our way back to Cincinnati we wen't to Miyako's in Crescent Springs for Hibachi dinner. Crescent Springs is just across the river from Cincinnati in Kentucky. 

When we got home, the Fuzzband's newest hobby of ax collecting was initiated with the arrival of this beauty:

Isn't he handsome, this Canadian lumberjack of mine?!

We capped the B-day celebrations with cat-sitting our neighbors' cat, Zoey, eating cake, and watching Call the Midwife on their Netflix. Lovely!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOVE!

R is a skier.

The Fuzzband and I have been blessed with wonderful friends. Sometimes these friends are glorious enablers! In the summer of 2012 we were at our friends' M and R's - delicious food, fun people, croquet in the back yard, the neighbors' kids had a party and ended up playing a game that involved running around with glo-sticks. It was fabulous!

One of the outcomes of the party was that R - a dashing gentleman with the most sincere kindness you could ever hope to meet (Fuzzband and I do not think he is capable of a negative thought) - got to talking about sweaters. Now, R is an AVID cross country skier. He told me it had been his dream since for ever to have a sweater with cross country skiers on it. Really? Well, let's Ravelry it! I'll knit a sweater if he pays for the yearn. Really? Really. We did some searching on Ravelry, and found little. In the end we decided to combine the pattern from a hat with a sweater I would make from scratch. Exciting! And R got a hat out of the bargain as well: 

The pattern is by Bea Ellis Knitwear, which can be found on Ravelry, Facebook, and e-Bay. It seems they are no longer in business. I caught them at a moment when there were a couple of items up on e-Bay, and after a few messages, I managed to get in touch and actually purchase the pattern. They only sell kits, so R and M decided which colors they wanted from the beautiful Falk yarns at Dale of Norway - that's the yarn the kit uses. It was very nice of Bea Ellis to accommodate the colors I requested, and the kit arrived nice and prompt. Score! The hat was very much appreciated:

After this, I did some serious measuring, knitter's math, and figuring things out based on Ann Bud's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns:

Much tea was consumed. I ordered the yarn from my Dale of Norway purveyor of choice, www.woolubaabaa.com - and service was cheerful, friendly, and prompt:

I don't like knitting to deadlines, and R was the perfect recipient - cheerful, grateful, excited, and always telling me to take my time. I cast on Dec. 9th. I ended up unraveling the ribbing and trying out the tubular cast-on (thank goodness I bought Nancie M. Wiseman's The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques all those years ago!) - it is cast-on love! Where has it been all my life? 

I copied the skier pattern and multiplied that until I had a ribbon on skiers. The lower band - I think of it as the snowbanks R skis over - also grows out of the ribbing. I am a little bit ridiculously proud of the back as well, and the collar is a Kitchener Stitch bind-off - again my first! I did the body in the US, and the sleeves while teaching in Germany.

I ended up finishing the sweater on August 4th, 2013. In other words it had dried from blocking, and I sewed my "handmade by Miti" tag into it. Apparently I did a marvelous job:

To add to the incredible excitement of this year has been M and R's little baby J! I had leftover yarn from daddy R's sweater, so of course a matching piece had to be produced, right? I settled on Valerie Wallis' Presto Chango which I'd also knit for another friend. I like the option of multiple panels so grandma can hold a kid without milk drool, should that be an issue. It also meant I could do two panels - duh!

Presto Chango calls for heavier weight yarn than the Falk I had, so after a bit of knitters' math, it was easy to cast on the number of stitches needed for a one year old, and do the measurements for 6 months, and with a bit of luck it will get cold enough in New England for J to actually, you know, wear it before he gets too big. I feel I have done the patterns as well s the yarn justice. Not much more I can eke out of that combo. 

The Cake that Beet Carrot Cake

Once upon a time, my Fuzzband and I were hanging out with friends, and somehow we got on the idea "what would happen if one substituted beets for carrots in carrot cake"? This is of course a question undoubtedly many have had over the years. 

I love, love, love beets. Love them. Love! So I decided to test this theory at the first opportunity:

And because I know everyone wants to see a close-up of the cakes pre-baking:

Yes - that is the Pepto-Bismol pink batter, ready to go in the oven! To maximize the oven-usage on a hot summer day, I roasted the leftover beets at the same time.

Disappointingly, the baked result is not as tantalizing a color:

Seriously. Not pink? No. 

As this was an exercise in test-kitchen hysteria, I resurrected some cream cheese icings from the freezer and iced the loaves to take to an evening with the same gang of friends. I believe shooting a BB-gun from inside the apartment at a target on the patio was involved later in the evening...

At the top left is featured my spiral bound recipe book that I put together to take Mother's (and other peep's) recipes with me when I moved out from my parents' place. Since then it has moved to Rome, Canada, and now Connecticut. The Carrot Cake recipe I revamped was my grandmother's. It is without a doubt the best Carrot Cake recipe in the world. Despite this, my husband has declared that the Beet Cake is the better of the two, and asks: "Why should we ever make Carrot Cake again?" 

It is true: the Beet Cake is delicious! Not unlike Carrot Cake, but earthier, and a bit less sweet. Everyone at the dinner loved it, and our friend LH swore repeatedly that night, and later in a 100% sober state, that it is her favorite cake EVER! She asked me to make one for her birthday later in the summer. I, of course, did, but added some cake decorating flare:

Yes, it is cream cheese icing, and it was very much appreciated. Several people have asked for the recipe, so here goes:

1,5 cups canola oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp soda
2 tsp baking powder
3 cups grated beets
(1 cup raisins or nuts - optional)

0. Heat the oven to 175 Celsius (350 Fahrenheit)
1. Beat the oil and sugar until pale and fluffy. Or until you get distracted...
2. Blend and sift the dry ingredients (I never sift, and barely blend...)
3. Mix the sugar-oil goop with the dry ingredients.
4. Add beets (and raisins and/or nuts)
5. Bake for 30 mins, or 1 hour in a tube pan. When a wooden tooth pick comes out clean, it is done.

Slather with your favorite cream cheese frosting.

Enjoy!

Boobies!

Men like breasts. I will not even qualify that with "heterosexual" - some of the men I know most interested in breasts are in fact not sexually attracted to them in any way. The bra discussions we have had... You know who you are...

Anyway, I have a cake pan that is meant to make the dress portion for a princess cake. I have made a nun cake with it. Now, obviously they beg the thought: "two of those would make great boobies"! I just needed the excuse. Of course, I am married, so by "excuse" I mean time, place, inspiration, and temperature have to come together. My Fuzzband's birthday is in July, and there is no, I repeat, no baking happening in this apartment in July. But never fear! I have friends! Not that I need to wait for a birthday, but it adds solemnity to make a special cake. Wait, I just used the word 'solemn' in a post titled 'boobies'... Nevermind.

Back to cake. My friend JG happens to be heterosexual, and like boobies. Other things he likes are food, baking, cooking, beer, compost, outdoor toilets, crass jokes, whiskey, and his wife, also a J, but JW (or JayDub as my Fuzzband sometimes says). My kind of guy! To make the combo even more precious, JW is a dear friend who has helped me though some tough times, like qualifying exams. 

For JG's birthday last May I decided to make him the boobie cake! Some investigation (I have connections!) told me he is very fond of caramel. I also happen to know he likes whiskey. My friend AR once made a DIVINE cake (recipe from our friend LB... It is complicated, I know...) with butterscotch and whiskey. It is really something else. I have also made it with a maple buttercream frosting that caused another friend, AV, go into some kind of epileptic spasms... Instead of maple, I decided to use whiskey and caramel as my themes.

Hence was born the whiskey butterscotch boobie cake with caramel icing:

 Two cake batters baked in form later - you can see the butterscotch chips in the cake. You can also, just, see the holes in the tops of the cakes - that is where a hollow aluminum rod is screwed into the cake pan to ensure cooking the center of the "skirt" cake evenly.

 I forget what we were drinking, but it must have been good - JW's camera angle is wonky...

 Note the Jack Daniels bottle on the counter...

 J testing the caramel buttercream frosting.

 Marachino cherries add the final (realistic?) touch. You can tell the smoother boobie was done by the then fiancée of JG, JW. We had a blast - girly time spent to make one fiancé a happy camper! Officially we were studying - bootcampage as we call it! Hah! Little did HE know!

 The happy birthday boy!

One half consumed boobie. 

I have a serious crush on JG's sense of humor. And of course the cake was perfect for bringing out the best (worst?) in everyone present. Several at the party were part of my friends collectively called "friends from Church" - a Church they go to regularly, and we sometimes crash, but still. They are some of the most upstanding citizens out there, and wild and crude humor is brought to the group by yours truly, and JG. So imagine my delight when CB, who does cuff links like few others, commented that my cleavage is delicious! I almost peed myself laughing. It was great! 

Blogging elsewhere!

Well,

Despite my list of ideas (chicken of the woods, knitting, felting, baking...) I have done nothing here on Cirsia Fortuita. Bummer.

However, one of the things I have gotten done, is work at the Yale Graduate Teaching Center! I lead workshops, offer teaching consultations, and talk about teaching with an amazing team of Fellows and the two directors. I wish I had applied to do this years ago! As part of this endeavor, I wrote a blog post on the GTC blog. You can check out my thoughts on how the teaching statement (a two page document that introduces the job search committee to me as a teacher - almost all History department job announcements specify that they want one to be submitted as part of the application packet) here.

And because why not, here is a Novembery set of photos from the hood and beyond: 

 Nica's Market

 Our local dry cleaner

 Pumpkin patch at Bishop's Orchard

The Day Missions Library at the Yale Divinity School. I am currently teaching at the Div School (and I LOVE it!) and so I study in this amazing room a lot more than during previous years.