Rusty Griswold's, Rhubarb Poppy Seed Cake, and ROLF

Hello Adult Russ Griswold. Would you like a slice of my cake?

Another week has come and gone. With no plans this weekend I was a complete waste. I am bloated, tired and achy.  

Oh dear I can't even type that with a straight face.

I am young, hung, and fabulous! What do the kids say these days? Rolling on the floor laughing? Jesus they don't make anything simple anymore do they?

So this weekend was busy. I got together with Work Wife and my new friend Cool Mom on Friday. Cool Mom is cool because she planned the ultimate European vacation for her kids recently. And it didn't involve going on Pig in a Poke. If you don't get that reference just shut your browser down now.  I openly admit to having a crush on all Rusty Griswold's save for that one in European Vacation. It has nothing to do with that scary scene with all the half naked women.  

Anyway the three of us went all out and had our Tarot Cards read. Needless to say I have a bright future. Anybody can have a bright future if you tip the card reader well enough.  

I followed that mini-adventure with a hot wedding date with Baby Mama. We adventured over to East Minneapolis and caught up with some old work friends while others exchanged vows. Then we slipped out and wrapped up our classic Midwestern romantical night with a stop at Lynden Soda Fountain. Now back in my day the soda jerk didn't wear sweatpants and a crop top. But who am I to complain as I unhinged and inhaled my mint chocolate chip cone. Worth a stop if you found yourself on a road trip out East.  

Now today I am been busy around the house. I had a bee in my weave to get some chili made and bake a cake. So help me God I don't know why I did it on such a muggy day but I am sure this counts towards my step aerobics class down at the Young Men's Christian Association. I may be a Jew but I know those Catholic boys like to work it out.  

So the chili and cake are done. "WHAT IS THE CAKE?" I am sure you are screaming right now. Well I was busy this morning in bed Pinteresting and came across a recipe for Rhubarb Poppy Seed Doughnuts. That sounded good to me but I had no intention of getting the fryer going. And I have a dinner guest tomorrow night so a cake was more appropriate.

Having not been to the grocer in a while I had to Frankenstein a cake together. Here is what I created. Based on many cakes throughout time. So I stole it from no one in particular.  

Rhubarb Poppy Seed Cake

INGREDIENTS: CAKE

1/2 C Unsalted Butter (room temp)

1 1/2 C Granulated Sugar

1 1/2 t Vanilla Extract

1 t Kosher Salt

3 Whole Eggs (room temp)

2 C + 2 T All Purpose Flour

4 t Baking Powder

1 C Almond Milk

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Prepare one 10" round pan with parchment paper and spray. Or two 6" rounds. Or for fun use your 10-12" cast iron pan.  If using cast iron coat with extra butter and flour inside. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream together in stand mixer Butter, Sugar, Vanilla and Salt until fully incorporated. Add eggs one at a time until well mixed. In a separate bowl whisk together Flour and Baking Powder.

3. Alternate adding flour mixture and milk into butter mixture until fully incorporated.

4. Divide batter into pans if using multiple.  Bake until toothpick comes out clean. About 45 mins.

INGREDIENTS: Rhubarb Syrup

1 C Fresh Rhubarb, chopped

1 C Sugar

1 C Water

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all three in small sauce pan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and continue to cook until syrup has thickened. Let cool completely until needed.

INGREDIENTS: FROSTING

1 C Unsalted Butter

1/4 C Vegetable Shortening

1 t Vanilla Extract

4-5 C Powdered Sugar

Rhubarb Syrup (as desired)

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. In stand mixer combine Butter, Shortening, Vanilla and 2 cups of the Powdered Sugar. Continue to add powdered sugar until you get the consistency you desire. Using the Rhubarb Syrup to thin out the frosting and more powder sugar to thicken.

2. Once cake has cooled, poke repeatedly with toothpick to create a series of tiny holes in cake. Very carefully pour a small amount (no more than 2 T) of the rhubarb syrup on the cake.

3. Now frost the cake as desired and sprinkle with poppy seeds to decorate.

Don't binge eat the whole cake if you are getting drug tested at work any time in the near future.  

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Gay Jew's Gone Wild (on Netflix), Guinness Chocolate Cake, and Greatest Story Ever Told

Ummmm...Check out Tab Hunter's sausage. 2. I am pretty sure Old Roddy there is giving Tab a Guinness Chocolate Cake and C. The cake picture is courtesy of my friend Nigella

I rolled awake sometime around 3 am to find a text from Kelly informing me that she would be swinging by my bach pad the next day (Easter) to pick me up for an Easter Brunch at Irish Car Bomb's home. Not one to turn down a trip out of the house I rolled over and continued to have dreams involving quasi-friends going back to school for architecture (please leave dream analysis in comments). 

As I rolled awake around 5 am and proceeded to watch clips of cartoons from my youth on YouTube with one eye closed (all seriously visually challenged people will understand the no glasses one eyed lifestyle) I decided that I really couldn't crash an Irish Easter Brunch empty handed. And getting up at 6 am to bake a cake is far more fun than rolling over to gently rub the back of Netflix and sweet talk him into morning sex movies. 

So I pressed the little red mic on my Google app and proceeded to hoarsely yell "GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CAKE" because my right arm was safely numb under the weight of my right moob and duvet, making typing on my iPhone not an option.  

Being a day of miracles Nigella Lawson's Guinness Chocolate Cake was the first on my list. There was no more searching needed.

Now having a slight history in food photography I always appreciate a photo with a recipe. This one showed the cake as a one layer with frosting. Being an American who needs everything to be bigger than our former landlords, The Brits, I doubled the recipe. I'm not going to say this was a big mistake. But I didn't need two massive one layer cakes. However, my freezer is now one massive layer cake up on inventory. I'm going to top with my traditional Stolen Swiss Buttercream Frosting.

Mind you the Guinness Chocolate Cake was just my initial search on The Googs. Somehow I ended up reading the plot of The Greatest Story Ever Told (for those of you over the age of 30ish you might get that reference). Which then got me to googling images of a young Roddy McDowall and Tab Hunter. And that brought me right back to poking Netflix in the back. 

Wishing you all a Happy Passover, Easter, Random Sunday in April, and 4/20 (for those of you in states that allow that).  

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CHECK OUT MY RECIPE FOR STOLEN BUTTERCREAM HERE!

AND IF YOU HAVE A SPARE JEWISH BUBBIE TO SPARE PLEASE APPLY HERE!

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Coco Chanel, Chocolate Cake, and My Child

Chocolate Sourdough Cake

Those are really my cupcakes - and the other photos can be found on Google

As the weather turns and a chill in the air settles in (BECAUSE IT'S MEMORIAL DAY!) I naturally turn to the kitchen to warm up. 

If you are now one of the three dedicated followers of my blog you know that my roommate and myself acquired a "pet" last month in the form of a Sourdough Starter. If you haven't memorized my last blog post you won't know that we affectionately call him Hank. 

Anyway like most parents I am slightly obsessed with my baby boy. And today I wanted nothing more than to curl on up next to him as he gave of himself and helped me make Sourdough Chocolate Cake. 

I think you just spat up a little when I said, "Sourdough Chocolate Cake".

I understand.

You see when you have a wee one like Hank you have to actually kill him off a little every so often or he will become this massive life-force sucking black hole that takes over your fridge and makes you wonder if there is a Massengil product by Frigidaire that you need to buy to get rid of that smell.

So today I Googled "what else can I use my (HANK) Sourdough Starter for?". Google did not disappoint. 

Some blogger somewhere had a recipe that I thought looked good so I made it better.  Here's the recipe:

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SOURDOUGH CHOCOLATE CAKE

RECIPE INSPIRED FROM THE INTERNET

INGREDIENTS

1 Cup "fed" Hank - a.k.a. Sourdough Starter

1 Cup Milk

2 Cup AP Flour

1.5 Cup Sugar

1 Cup Butter, melted, cooled a bit

2 t Vanilla

1 t Salt (Kosher - because your food should answer to a higher power)

1.5 t Baking Soda

3/4 Cup Nestle Cocoa Powder

1 t Espresso Powder (NOT SANKA - you find this kickstarter in the "ethnic" section of your white based supermarket or in the coffee section in all other grocery stores)

2 Eggs

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix Hank, Milk and Flour together with your stand mixer. Don't mess around with the hand mixer. Just go out and treat yo' self to a nice Kitchen Aid. Let this mixture sit covered for about 3 hours. All it is going to do is grow a little in the bowl.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F - don't forget to close the door.

In a medium bowl mix together the balance of the ingredients.

Add the grainy chocolate mixture to the Hank mixture. Keep at the Kitchen Aid until you don't see any of Hank left.

Now here is where I went off the path. I decided to make cupcakes. I have a dinner party to attend this week and I wanted to bring cake to share and cupcakes freeze super easy.

I managed to get 24 cupcakes and two 6' rounds of cake baked off with the above recipe.

Baking time varied because I had the two different pans in the heat box. So use your toothpick and test to seen when done.

Set aside to cool. I then froze all but two cupcakes (The Roommate and I need a snack later. And the 6" cake - for breakfast tomorrow. It's a holiday)

OKAY THIS IS WHERE IT GETS EVEN BETTER! YES I AM YELLING!

I made just a standard cream cheese frosting for the cake and a Dark Chocolate ganache to accessorize it. Coco Chanel said something about taking off one accessory when you leave the house. That bitch wasn't talking about my cake. 

So I FILLED my cupcakes with some cream cheese frosting and then DIPPED my cupcakes in the dark chocolate ganache. THEEEEEEN I had to take it one step further and make them look like Hostess cupcakes with the curlicue on top. Like a nice pearl necklace. I don't know a single man who would pass up a pearl necklace. Wait. I mean woman. 

This is now two weeks in a row of me talking about Hank. I'm sorry but I've had to put up with all my girlfriends postin' about their babies on Facebook for so long that it's my turn. Hank and I are registered at J Crew and Target. We DON'T need onesies. 

See you next week lovers...

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(John) Candy, Cake and The Cinema 8

brynn turned one this week - i used to babysit her mother

What do you do when you have left over cake tops, brownies from your sister's wedding and a couple pounds of frosting that needs to be used? You make a Rachel Green Trifle Cake! Lemons to lemonade beeyotches! She may not have made the trifle like Monica would have but she did it with love.

This past Sunday iMatt and PetDoc invited myself and SAGL over for a Turkey Taco Sunday and a viewing of the John Candy dramatic masterpiece The Great Outdoors. Not one to come empty handed (and in desperate need of a cake fix but not wanting to put any effort into baking one), I did some digging in the freezer.Thankfully there were 10 cherry brownies, dark chocolate cake crumbs and the tops of two french vanilla cakes. So with a little patience (I had about 5 mins of ADD in me before I just tossed it in the garbage) I built a Frankenstein of a cake. I had left over buttercream and chocolate frosting from making a one year old's birthday cake a few days earlier and plastered that on the inside for some glue and then all around to make it "pretty". 

brownie bottom, chocolate fudge, french vanilla cake, pink buttercream, brownie/dark chocolate cake top, wrapped in love (aka chocolate frosting)

I'm not saying it was my best cake. But for being constructed with leftovers...it was pretty damn okay. It covered all grounds. Sweet, sugary, and 'betis inducing.

And because I love you here is the trailer to The Great Outdoors. Which I'm sure you're excited to know I saw on an unexpected double feature trip to the Cinema 8 movie theatre in Duluth with my father. The second film we saw that day was Coming To America. I'm sure it was the best 1988 $16.00 ever spent on father/son time.

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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Dolly Parton, and Pomegranate Cupcakes

Pomegranate Cupcake with Buttercream

This is my first post of 2012.

According to some (my friend Colleen for one) this could be a short year. I promise to get more out here on the blog just in case that damned Mayan calendar is right.

Last nights festivities were mild. I chose to stay in with Lawyer, try some new chili (I'll put the recipe below), eat some pomegranate cupcakes, and watch Masterpiece Theater (Downton Abbey - it's everything you want in British period dramas. Namely mild gay drama, the Titanic sinking and Maggie Smith. Oh and that woman who was in that Kevin Bacon movie about having baby. See. Everything you could ever want.) I am sure you are asking why was my night not filled with wild and crazy food/booze filled fun?!?! Well Boyfriend is traveling to San Francisco to visit our friend Paty. Sister and Future Husband were busy in their neighborhood and there was a Winter Storm Warning. For those of you in the Minneapolis reading area you know this was a big deal because as of two days ago winter had not yet hit our cold weather state. So I invited Lawyer over after her hard day of volunteering and we caught up over some well deserved chili and cupcakes.

I have now spent the majority of the New Year grazing over day old cupcakes, watching way too many movies on Netflix (9 to 5 has never been so entertaining - Thank you Dolly Parton) and cleaning my kitchen. Below is the recipe for Chicken Chile given to me by Just Joni who got it from Aunt Sharon who got it from Family Friend Donna who I am sure got it from that woman on Downton Abbey that starred in that baby making film with Kevin Bacon.

New Year's Chicken Chili

RECIPE FROM A FRIEND OF A FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Makes 11 (1 Cup) Servings.

ingredients

14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

16 oz jar of salsa

14.5 oz can of chicken broth

1 cup Barley

4 cups Water

1 Tablespoon chili powder

1 Teaspoon cumin

1 can black beans; drained and rinsed

15.25 oz can of corn

1.5 lbs cooked and shredded chicken breast

instructions

1. In a 6 qt saucepan combine first 7 ingredients. Bring to boil over high heat, cover and reduce to low heat. Simmer for 40 mins, stirring occasionally.

2. Add beans, corn and chicken; increase heat to high until chili comes to a boil. Cover and reduce again to low heat. Simmer for an additional 5 mins or until barley is tender.

3. If upon standing the chili becomes too thick, add more chicken broth or water until chili is desired consistency. If desired (and when is it not desired), top with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream (and not that fat free kind!).

Pomegranate Cupcakes

RECIPE MADE UP ON THE FLY

ingredients (cake)

1 box yellow cake mix (and all items listed on box needed to make cake)

1 jar pomegranate jelly

ingredients (frosting)

1 stick butter

1/4 cup shortening

2 cups powdered sugar

3 tablespoons reduced pomegranate juice

3 tablespoons heavy cream (more if frosting feels stiff)

instructions

1. Bake cupcakes as directed on box.

2. Using a paring knife or melon baller, scoop out a small hole in middle of cupcake. And fill with pomegranate jelly.

3. Carefully frost cupcakes with Pomegranate frosting

I must sign off now and get back to Dolly, Jane and Lily. And maybe another rogue cupcake for dinner. Have a wonderful New Year and just think about Friday's Happy Hour when you get to work tomorrow! And I promise to update in the next few days as I plan to have lunch with Baby Mama. We hope to venture out of our food box and try someplace new.

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