Oh, Martha...

Today when I went to Macy's I found something I didn't realize I needed: an 8-inch cake stand, of course. Obviously perfect to go with the 6-inch layer cakes that I've been making lately. I couldn't resist. Anyway, my whole point of making another post was to share the amazing forest-themed cakes that I just found on MarthaStewart.com. There is a forest theme for a wedding that is making me dream and drool over the idea. Obviously that is the theme I will (eventually) be going after: birds, branches, trees, leaves, etc. The cakes, the place setting, the leaf croissages. I want this cake. Or any of these cakes. Enough said. 

I couldn't resist. It's just all so, so beautiful. In the meantime, I will be dreaming and imagining this for my future.

Thank goodness for Martha Stewart. Where would I be without her great recipes, decorating ideas, amazing cake inspirations, and the annual Halloween issue? Yes, the HALLOWEEN ISSUE. Fall is so close I could scream with joy!

Fig and Lavender Goat Cheese Galettes

About two weeks ago, this amazing combination of wonderfulness caught my eye on theKitchn.com.  Usually I don't even like to delve into these pastry projects that tend to take several hours but I couldn't resist. One Saturday morning I felt inspired and ambitious and went for it. 

I have to admit, I was actually thinking about making this the second I woke up at 5am. I kept thinking, "where am I going to get the dried lavender?!?" Until it dawned on me that my next door neighbor had some in their front yard. So what did I do? Sleep walked outside at 5:30 in the morning and picked lavender sprigs from my neighbors garden, in the dark. Then I could relax about having all of the ingredients. I went back to bed for a few hours, but I was just so excited to start making the dough and starting the process that I just gave up and went into the kitchen. 

All in all, I think it took me about 3-4 hours, off and on, to make these. It's a nice thing to do on a lazy weekend morning. They turned out really quite good, very buttery, almost baked a little too long as the crust was somewhat burnt and flakey. But seriously people, figs, goat cheese, honey, and lavender? Best combination ever. Those are just a few of my favorite things. You don't even really need the whole pastry part. Just make a little fig salad with those simple ingredients. Oh and I also didn't have enough fresh figs on hand to make all four galettes, so I used dried figs for two, and a fresh peach for the last one. There are so many combinations you could come up with for these, get creative! 

Fig and Lavender Goat Cheese Galettes

Makes four 7" galettes

Dough:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces

7 tablespoons ice water

Filling:

1 1/2 pounds fresh figs (or dried, or whatever other fruit you'd like to use)

8 ounces lavender goat cheese*, softened (I used Purple Haze from Cypress Grove)

1 tablespoon honey, plus more for drizzling

1/4 cup ground almonds

1/8 teaspoon dried lavender buds

1 tablespoon melted butter

1 teaspoon sugar

To make dough:

Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cut 4 tablespoons butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender, just until the biggest pieces of butter are the size of large peas.

Dribble 7 tablespoons ice water into the flour mixture in several stages, gently tossing and mixing with your hands between additions, until the dough just holds together. Do not pinch or squeeze the dough together or you will overwork it, making it tough. Keeping tossing the mixture until it starts to pull together. If it looks like there are more dry patches than ropy parts, add another tablespoon of water and toss until it comes together. Divide the dough into four pieces, firmly press each piece into a ball and flatten into a 3-inch disk, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before rolling out.
To roll out the dough, take one disk from the refrigerator at a time. Let it soften slightly so that it is malleable but still cold. Unwrap the dough and press the edges of the disk so that there are no cracks. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the disk into a circle about 1/8-inch thick. Transfer the dough to a parchment-lined baking sheet and refrigerate at least 1/2 hour before using.

To make galettes:
Preheat oven to 400F.
Trim stems from figs and quarter them lengthwise; set aside.
In a small bowl, combine goat cheese and one tablespoon honey.
Remove rolled-out dough from the refrigerator. Spread a fourth of the goat cheese mixture over each dough round, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Evenly sprinkle ground almonds over goat cheese. Arrange figs on top in overlapping circles. Lightly drizzle with the honey and sprinkle with lavender buds.
With cool hands, fold the dough border up over the figs and form pleats. (Don't worry about making it perfect; galettes are meant to be free-form.) Brush dough with melted butter and lightly sprinkle with sugar.
Bake until crust is golden and filling is bubbling, about 40 minutes. Transfer galettes to a wire rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

*To make lavender goat cheese
Mix up to 1 teaspoon dried lavender buds into 8 ounces softened goat cheese. The potency of lavender buds can vary, so add 1/4 teaspoon at a time and taste; it should be fragrant, but not overpowering.

Vegan Crimson Velveteen Cake

Lately I've been going crazy with the cake baking. Fortunately I had some good excuses to be able to put some recipes to the test due to all of the August birthdays that have been going around. Here's one that I made at the beginning of the month for my good friend Courtney that just turned 20: a vegan Crimson Velveteen Cake.

This cake turned out amazing. It was one of those VCTOTW recipes that I had initially put aside in my mind, not jumping at the gun to go in and bake these as cupcakes. But the more and more I'd flipped through and scanned over the recipes, this sounded like such a great idea. As she claims that she doesn't really like sweets, I'll admit I was a little nervous about what I wanted to make, but the hint of cocoa and the beautiful dark, burgundy color called out to me as a good old-fashioned-hard-to-mess-up recipe that anyone would love. And boy, did she love it.

Vegan Crimson Velveteen Cake with Old-Fashioned Velvet Icing

Adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World 

Note: I omitted the chocolate extract and instead added more vanilla. And this really uses a lot of red food coloring, so be sure to purchase the 1 oz. bottle instead of the mini multi-colored food coloring box. I learned this the hard way...

The cake:

1 cup soy milk

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup canola oil

2 tablespoons red food coloring

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon chocolate extract

The Old-Fashioned Velvet Icing:

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 cup soy milk

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated shortening

1/4 cup margarine

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup superfine or castor sugar

1/3 cup finely chopped (glazed) pecans, for garnish

The cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and lightly spray two 6-inch cake pans with cooking spray or oil. 

2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle.

3. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and mix.

4. Add the oil, food coloring, chocolate extract, and almond extract to the curdled soy milk. Whisk well to combine. Gently fold wet ingredients into dry, mixing until large lumps disappear.

5. Fill cake pans evenly (about half way through). Place in hot oven and bake 24-28 minutes, depending. Just keep checking in on it. 

The icing:

6. In a small saucepan over medium heat, whisk together the flour and soy milk. Stir constantly until the mixture starts to thicken and has a puddinglike consistency, about 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool 2 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and press plastic wrap onto the top of custard to prevent a "skin" from forming. Allow mixture to cool completely before next step. (This is very important, as warm pudding might melt the fats).

7. Cream together the shortening, margarine, vanilla, and sugar then beat in cold custard. Beat with electric mixer for 4-6 minutes; frosting should become lighter in color and have a very creamy texture, similar to very thick whipped cream. Frost on cooled cake and sprinkle sides with chopped pecans. 

Banana Bread with Rum

I have been baking and cooking so much the past two weeks, it's hard to keep up. Hopefully I'll be able to display everything relatively soon before I go back to school in two weeks. Here's something I did with some really ripe bananas and a little bottle of rum. Obviously that equals rummy banana bread. It was quite good! Simple ingredients, lots of bananas, and the rum definitely shined through. Oh and the best part: the "loaf" was shaped into a pumpkin, due to my pumpkin cake mold. Yes, I'm starting my Fall sooner than others. It's the only way to do it! 

Banana Bread with Rum

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups very ripe bananas, mashed (about 3)

2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

1/4 cup dark rum

2 tablespoons molasses

1 egg

1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and lightly flour a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan (or pumpkin pan!).

Sift flours into a mixing bowl. Add sugar, baking powder, salt, bananas, butter, rum molasses and egg. Beat for 3 minutes with an electric mixer set on medium. Stir in walnuts.

Pour batter into loaf pan. Bake in preheated 350°F oven, on rack set on middle rung for 55 to 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in pans for ten minutes on a wire rack. Then invert and remove from pan to finish cooking, also on wire rack.

Cupcakes Take The Cake!

So just a few minutes ago I decided to do my weekly look at the Cupcakes Take The Cake blog to get some inspiration and view some cupcake food porn inspiration, and to my surprise, they featured a post about my cupcake photos! I am so completely and totally flattered, I don't even know what to say. Thank you, girls! That makes me day/week/life. 

They think my Vegan Raspberry Cupcake photo is one of the best they've ever seen! 

Ah, I'm so flattered!

Vegan S'mores Cake

About a week ago, I finally scored myself a pair of 6-inch cake pans at the local cooking ware store. I'd looked high and low online and they were no where to be found! It just so happened I felt the gravitational pull into the store that one particular afternoon, and wah-lah! there they were. I'd seen some inspiration around on the web recently about making VCTOTW recipes into cakes using two 6" pans, instead of having to double the recipe to fit into two 8" or 9" pans. My creative juices started flowing thinking of all the variations I wanted to create, having one big (or teensy) cake to decorate instead of 12 little individual ones. The first cake I decided to make was from the S'mores Cupcake recipe. And it turned out quite well. My only complaint was that it was way too sugary for my liking and maybe a bit too oily. The brown sugar and molasses kind of did me in, but all in all, the whole cake idea was successful. It didn't really taste like "s'mores", because there wasn't enough chocolate, and the frosting wasn't as fluffy and marshmallow-y as I would have expected it to be. But it's still a great idea, and the vegans I fed it to seemed to like it. 

S'mores Cake adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup brown sugar 

1/2 cup canola oil 

2 Tablespoons molasses

1/4 cup soy yogurt

1 1/4 cups soy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs (crumbled in food processor)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly oil two 6-inch cake pans with spray or margarine.

2. Mix the brown sugar, oil, molasses, yogurt, soy milk, and vanilla in a large bowl.

3. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a separate bowl and mix. Add the graham cracker crumbs and mix it up.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in three batches, mixing well after each addition.

5. Fill cake pans evenly (will be about half full). Bake for 28-32 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool before completely frosting and decorating.

Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting (I halved the recipe because it typically makes a lot)

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated shortening

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated margarine

1 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted if clumpy

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 cup plain soy milk or soy creamer

DIRECTIONS: 

Beat the shortening and margarine together until well combined and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat for about 3 more minutes. Add the vanilla and soy milk, beat for another 5 to 7 minutes until fluffy.

TO ASSEMBLE CAKE:

Invert cakes out of pans once cool. Spread a thick layer of Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting on to one layer of the cake. Add second cake layer on top, and frost until completely frosted. If you have a bar of chocolate lying around, shave pieces of it on to the top using a vegetable peeler. Sprinkle with leftover graham cracker crumbs if available, or do whatever you please! And eat!

Hitachino Nest Beer

I finally got it! 








Oh, I am so excited! I haven't tasted one yet, but I will write a review once I have done so. The shipping was really expensive (it ended up being $9 a pop) but I think it'll be worth it. Even if it's just for the bottle and label. Anywho, just wanted to share...