rainbow cake!

So fun!

I've had this recipe pinned forever, and we decided to make it for Ambrose's birthday party. We got a car this weekend, visited our dear friend Carolina, Brazilian coffee-maker extraordinare and juicer-owner, and juiced a bunch of fruits and veg for dyes, then had a little peach juice party. Just juicing was good fun! We want one now!

I greased all the pans but didn't flour them, so they generally didn't cooperate well in coming out. Still, the whole process was really neat, the cake tastes great (we slapped it together for family sampling), and it really doe slook gorgeous, even though my purple layer looks kind of gray. Whatever! Rainbows and clouds (cream cheese and yogurt, no sweetness at all, just a bit of nutmeg) and rain drops (edible silver ball bearings)!!! So much cuteness!

I have to make more spinach juice and make a new batch of cakes, lined with parchment paper this time, and freeze them for thawing and assembling Saturday, the day of Ambrose's party. Yee haw!

Recipe note: I don't have 5.5" cake pans, so I used a multiplying factor of 1.45 on all ingredients to translate it to 8" dimensions. The flour combo was 40% ground almonds, 60% white rice flour. As usual, no lab gums. Delish! I also used an extra egg yolk with the carrot juice for the orange layer. Next time will use more beet juice.

lined up for duty! my faith in the blackberry juice faltered so I also bought grape juice. not a good idea actually.

look how frothy and abundant the beet juice was!!

Beating the dry ingredients - my kitchenaid mixer needs to be repaired, so I actually had to use a hand mixer. Weird! Also notice how white it is!! I bought white sugar for the first time in... ever? for this cake.

dyes mixed into the batter portions

"look at all the fascinating colours!!" he said.

Ambrose was delighted with the colours, and we had a lot of beet, so I used tiny amounts of beet juice to dye his yogurt (and a few cups of milk) pink.

mixed. notice how similar the blueberry and blackberry/grape look? They do look distincitve when baked.

tah dah!

It was fun. I need to get silicone cake pans. I don't know how I can go back to eating regular cake, now.

why not to use glutenous recipes with GF baking

These mutant cupcakes were made, foolishly, with the One-Egg Cake recipe from my mother's Joy of Cooking. I used 2/3 rice flour and about 1/3 almond flour. FAIL. I made them just two days ago at my mom's house, with refined wheat flour, for her birthday, and they were BEAUTIFUL. I didn't taste them, obviously, but they were perfect, fluffy, fragrant little puffs of magic. I iced them with, at her request, a basic butter and icing sugar frosting (I hate icing sugar, I never use the stuff), with a dollop of sour cream, and she said they were the best cupcakes ever. I wanted to recreate the magic at home... and failed. So, kids, lesson learned - it's worth looking up official, tested gluten-free recipes if you want to bake GF goods.

Soaked

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Ive been really hanging back on the whole soaked flour thing. Mainly because the idea of leaving flour mixed with buttermilk on a counter overnight at room temp, and then cooking it the next morning kind of creeps me out a bit. It hard to put aside lifelong ideas about the way a certain product should be used (i.e. you do not leave milk on the counter overnight and then eat it). Yes I read about it, yes I understand everything, that doesnt make the instinct go away. Just like how, for the life of me, I just cant do frog legs. I dont care if it tastes like chicken, Im sure it does, I just dont want to eat frogs.

Anyways, I decided to grab the bull by the horns and make a damn woman out of myself, and try this shizzle out. I followed this recipe to the T, which I never do, but I didnt want to play around with things I wasnt sure of myself. I made the buttermilk with vinegar and milk. I set it on the counter and went to bed, and I literally prayed that I wouldnt poison myself out of foolishness.

Next morning, Im taking my sweet ass time to delay going to look at the bowl full of counter-pancake mixture. I finally got the courage to edge my way, took a deep breath, prayed once more that I wouldnt see a bug infested, lumpy soured milk thing that would smell 'comme le yawb' as we say in real good quebecois. Looked down and saw this:

Ok, no bugs, no weird colored growth, and when I smelled it, it didnt smell off. Very surprising, and reassuring. Time to see if these babies can actually be cooked:

Nce and bubbly, like real pancakes. This was going pretty good, nothing jumped at me from the mixture so far, so I was gaining confidence. What I didnt realize was that regular pancakes seemed to have a much shorter cooking time than soaked pancakes, so right off the bat I got either really burnt pancakes, or thick, still uncooked inside pancakes.

Sad burnt pancake face. So after readjusting my pouring sizes, after a few scrap batches of trial and error, I finally got these beautifully cooked pancakes which I immediately stacked and poured a goodly amount of our provincial treasure aka maple syrup. Time to try these babies out! Well, end result is, they tasted pretty much the same as the regular ww pancakes. The difference was how my belly felt after eating them. I think they were noticeably easier to digest, and I didnt feel bloated like I sometimes do when I eat pancakes. Of course, like a dodo head, I forgot to take a picture of the end result. Just imagine a delicious stack of pancakes. Totally sold.

Catching up

Sooooo...

my culinary life has been completely devoid of anything thoughtful lately. Im having a hard time adjusting to my new (much extended) schedule. After driving home through traffic, I have just about zero motivation to do anything, and more than likely forgot to take something out anyways. I havent made my usual menus, and grocery shopping has been quite minimal.

Result: Subways & the caf at work has been getting alot of my hard earned money as of late.

Unfortunately for us both, we cant afford that sort of lifestyle. So I need some tips of some kind. Have any of been/are in the same situation? How do you overcome it?

I would write more but my break is up. -_-'

Bipity Bopity...BOOOOOO!

just say no... to canned pumpkin

I have this weird fascination with canned goods, even though I should know better.

I always imagine the contents to taste amazing, as magically tasty as the packaging makes them look.

I am weak.

But I can attest that this. Stuff. SUCKS. Stay away from it. It also has an odd, bitter after-taste. I was also expecting a completely different consistency than home-roasted squashes, but alas, the result is the same. Roast your own magic pumpkin and have the bonus of having the house smell like pumpkin pie heaven, too.

Now, back to (holy) sex....