May 19 is Food Revolution Day. This is a “day of action” organized by the Jamie Oliver Foundation to promote better food and food education – essentially, to get more people engaged in the acts of growing, buying, cooking, and eating real food. Food enthusiasts are encouraged to take part by hosting Food Revolution events that focus on getting back to basics, learning healthy food habits, and understanding the importance of where food comes from (ie, grown on a farm and prepared at home from scratch versus industrially processed, individually wrapped, and sold ready-to-eat at the store). I am currently re-reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which relates to these issues, and Food Revolution Day really struck a chord with me. I wanted to “host” something on my blog, but I wasn’t sure what….
Cookbook Review: Whitewater Cooks with Friends (plus a bonus recipe!)
A few months ago I was asked if I would write a review of Shelley Adams’ newest cookbook (her third so far), Whitewater Cooks with Friends. I jumped at the chance, because 1) free cookbook! Yay! and 2) my Mum has Shelley’s first book, Whitewater Cooks, and has very good things to say about it, so I was pretty sure I would enjoy this one. However, I’ve been putting off reviewing it until now, when I’m off work for the summer and actually have time to do a proper job of it. Also, the whole tone of the cookbook is so summery that I couldn’t face concentrating on it too much while it was still grey and dreary outside – not when it was taunting me with its fresh, sunny flavours, colourful pictures, and outdoor potluck-worthy recipes….
Fettuccine Alfredo with Smoked Sockeye Salmon
Some fun things have been happening behind the scenes here on my little piece of the internet, one of which is that I’ve started a stint as a guest blogger for SeaChange Canadian Gifts. SeaChange is a company based on Salt Spring Island, BC, where I grew up, and they are known for their delicious smoked salmon products (among other quintessentially Canadian edibles). I’m really excited to be working with them and using their products to develop recipes, the first of which is this Fettuccine Alfredo with Smoked Sockeye Salmon. Head over to the SeaChange blog for the full post and recipe!
Ingredients Health Food Store & Apple Café
I love grocery shopping. Browsing through the aisles, checking out new and different products, gaining inspiration by imagining what to make with all these interesting ingredients. I especially love exploring a new grocery store (yes, I said exploring!), particularly when it’s a specialty grocery store. To me, a health food store fits into that specialty category – aisles full of gluten-free this and 100% organic that, all natural cosmetic products and bulk sections to die for. I definitely have a soft spot for a good health food store.
So imagine my delight when I came across a brand new (2 weeks old!) health food store down by Capital Iron, called Ingredients Health Food Store & Apple Café. Despite the store’s newness, the staff were very knowledgeable about their products, and incredibly friendly on top of that. I spent a good thirty minutes in the store, perusing the grocery aisle (organic, gluten-free, vegan, sprouted grain, unprocessed, naturally sweetened products), cooler aisle (various soy and tofu products, nut butters and milks and more), produce section (organic/local) and bulk section (extensively gluten-free and very well priced). The bulk section was the most impressive: they had all the expected grains, dried beans, pulses, and fruit, as well as a ton of dried herbs, loose teas, coffee beans, and about four varieties of TCHO chocolate pieces (which I will definitely be back to purchase for the upcoming orgy of Christmas baking that will be taking place in my kitchen over the next few weeks). The store encourages people to bring in their own bulk containers to fill up right in the store, and they sell mason jars and other containers at cost to encourage people to use them instead of disposable bags.
I didn’t venture into the café part of the store, but a quick browse of the website shows that they make their own almond milk, specialize in organic, vegan, gluten free, and raw goodies, and serve Drumroaster Coffee (roasted in Cobble Hill).
Places like this make my inner Salt Spring hippy hippie do a happy dance, so I will be looking for any excuse to go shopping there. I would encourage anyone in town to check it out too: Ingredients Health Food Store & Apple Café, 2031 Store St., Victoria BC.
Wedding Cake Teaser
Alright, I know I keep saying this, but the wedding cake post is coming, I PROMISE! There’s just been so much going on, and I was hoping to get some good photos from the wedding photographer, but alas, they are not ready yet. In the meantime, here’s a few “in progress” pictures to keep everyone happy.The real post will be up next week 🙂
Wedding Cake Trial!
I finally got the replacement power cord for my computer so I can post about the wedding cake trial run I did a few weeks ago – yay!
First of all, cake size: there are about 55 guests at the wedding, so I’m making a three-tiered cake with 10-inch, 8-inch, and 6-inch round tiers, each about 4-inches high. I used the Wilton party cake serving guide and Earlene’s cake serving guide to come up with those sizes, which should yield about 60 pieces of cake (including the top tier, which will be eaten at the wedding rather than being saved for the bride and groom’s first anniversary). Wilton’s wedding cake serving guide gives much smaller servings, so I opted for larger pieces and slightly more cake than might be needed, to be on the safe side.
Based on the comments from the post where I asked for advice on which flavour to make the cake, the lemon cake with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting is the clear winner! This was actually the combination I was going to go with in the first place, so thanks for validating my choice! So, now that my paralysing indecision was dealt with, I had to actually choose recipes for a lemon cake, raspberry filling, and cream cheese frosting, and then do a test run to figure out recipe yields and make sure they came out alright and tasted good!
After looking at dozens of cake recipes, I finally settled on a lemon butter cake from Margaret Braun’s book Cakewalk (she did the swirly yellow and white cake from my previous wedding cake post). I chose this recipe because she uses it for stacked cakes, so I know it will hold up, and also because it doesn’t require whipping egg whites separately, which is time consuming.
I halved the recipe to make two 6-inch cakes, and ended up with 4 3/4 cups of batter, which turned out to be more than enough (I’ll need two cakes to get the 4-inches of height). I took some advice on baking a level cake from i am baker and sacrificed a towel to cut into strips to wrap around the pan before baking.This is supposed to act as insulation and stop the edges of the cake from baking faster than the middle, thus preventing a domed top (which has to be trimmed off when stacking the layers, meaning you’re wasting a bunch of cake). As you can see, it didn’t really work. Later I realized that the towel strips are supposed to be wet, so I’ll give that a try when I bake the cakes for real! (Also, doesn’t it look like the pan is wearing a diaper?)
Anyway, using the amount of batter suggested by Wilton, I baked the first cake with 2 cups of batter and it rose up in a dome about an inch higher than the pan, which meant I would have to slice off a bunch from the top, so I scaled back on the second cake to 1 1/4 cups of batter. This one baked in a shorter amount of time so it didn’t get the same golden crust as the first one, but it didn’t overwhelm the pan and I wouldn’t have to trim as much off the top.
Based on this second cake, I calculated that I will need about 14 1/2 cups total for all the cakes, which is one and a half times the original recipe (or three half-batches, which will be easier for my mixer to handle!). Doing this required all of my math skills and I definitely can’t explain how I figured it out, but it does make sense. Thank goodness for calculators! Math problems aside, the cake itself tasted really good, with a pound-cake like texture (firm rather than airy) and a nice moist crumb. I will add a bit more lemon juice and zest next time though – it could have been more lemon-y.
The frosting: cream cheese frosting is usually quite soft and heavy and not exactly fluffy, so I spent a long time looking for a recipe that would give me something both spreadable and light, but that would also be able to sit unrefrigerated for a while and not lose its shape. I found this recipe for Professional Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting, and the only thing that I wasn’t sure about was that it contained shortening. I know that lots of decorators use shortening-based frostings because they are light, fluffy, pipeable, and hold up well at room temperature, but I’ve never even bought shortening (ie, Cristco) before, so I was wary. I made a quarter batch for this 6-inch cake, which gave me 2 2/3 cups of frosting. I liked that it got really firm in the fridge, which would make moving and stacking the cakes easy, but it was not as fluffy as I wanted and WAY too sweet. Upon further research, apparently this is usually the problem with confectioner’s sugar-based frosting, so I’m going to try a cream cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting instead, like this one. This method sort of scares me but I think it will taste much better, so I will just have to get over my fear! I got the idea for vertical stripes on the sides from i am baker. The swirly stuff on top was just me trying to use up the rest of the icing (actually I was trying to do this, but I failed. Among other things, my star tip was too small!)
I used store-bought raspberry jam to spread between the layers, because I figured that making my own jam or filling would be too difficult, but now I’ve changed my mind. The jam was not quite raspberry-ey enough, so I’m going to try a no-cook freezer jam recipe instead, which is essentially just mashed berries with sugar and pectin. Hopefully this will result in a suitably rasberry’d filling!
I also made a simple syrup of sugar, water, and lemon juice and zest to sprinkle on the cake layers before spreading them with raspberry. This tasted great and helped keep the cakes moist.
And finally, the cake base: my trusted friend Martha suggests that you can use regular 3/16-inch foam-core board to put the cakes on, which I did, but I covered it in foil because I wasn’t sure how well cake and paper go together. The foil was a bad idea though, because when I cut the first slice of cake it came off with a chunk of foil stuck to the bottom. Now I don’t know if I should buy real cake boards from a bakery, or just use the foam core au naturel, as Martha suggests…
So, the plan: I will bake the cakes ahead of time and freeze them, then fill/frost/assemble the cake the day before the wedding. I will add more lemon to the batter, be careful about sifting and not over-beating, and use wet towel strips when baking in hopes of ending up with a level cake. I still need to try the cream cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting, and make the raspberry filling. Figure out what to do about the cake base. Oh, and did I mention I need to transport all of this plus equipment on the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver and assemble it in my grandparents’ kitchen before moving the cake to the venue?? Did I also mention how EXCITED I am about this?!?!
Here’s some helpful wedding cake-related links:
My trusted friend Martha puts together a tiered wedding cake from start to finish
A helpful video on how to get a smooth finish on a frosted cake
A really pretty decoration idea for a wedding cake
Cake and filling/frosting recipe ideas from Martha
Deb at Smitten Kitchen made a wedding cake for her friends: read about it here
PS: I’m off to California for a week to visit my aunt and uncle starting tomorrow, so I might not update again until I get back. Rest assured, however, that I will have lots of delicious things to write about!!
Cake Madness!
The power cord for my laptop is busted and I’m waiting for a replacement to be shipped, so I have been unable to update the blog… Also the batteries in my camera died and I’ve been too lazy to replace them… However, I got this fancy iPhone which lets me both take photos AND write (short) posts, so here’s a teaser for what’s to come once my computer is back up and running 🙂
First of all, this week I did a small trial run for the wedding cake I’m making. The overwhelming majority of people voted for the lemon cake with raspberry filling and cream cheese icing, so that’s what I’m going with. There’s going to be a whopper of a post about this one, but here’s a picture in the meantime:
Also, today is my birthday, so I spent the day making myself a birthday cake – a Dobos Torte, to be precise. I first heard of Dobos Torte via the Daring Bakers and it was something I wanted to try, and then I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen (she made it for her own birthday) and it looked so good I knew I had to make it. A Dobos Torte consists of several layers of thin sponge cake spread with buttery, creamy, chocolatey frosting and topped with a caramel-sponge cake layer. I’m having some friends over for a birthday dinner tomorrow and I can’t wait to try the cake!
So that’s two cakes in a week, which works out to a lot of cake. Stay tuned for the details 🙂
Wedding Cake Dilemma
My good friend Markianna is getting married in August and she has asked me to make her wedding cake. I’m very excited and have been making all kinds of plans and doing wedding cake research – how to stack it, decorate it, move it, cut it… It’s a small wedding (only about 55 people) and the “inspiration cake” (above) is quite simple and rustic, so baking and decorating it should be fairly straight-forward.
It’s not like I have to make a 7-tiered cake to feed 360 (really, Martha has DIY instructions for this!):
Or paint a stained glass design on it:
Or pipe swirls and grape clusters all over it:(This one is made by Margaret Braun, who is a cake superstar. I have her book. It is AMAZING.)
Thank goodness for that.
No, for me, the overwhelming part is not the making or decorating of the cake. The overwhelming part is deciding on what kind of cake to make. The bride and groom have given me free-reign in the flavour department (one less thing for them to worry about, and apparently I’m “the expert”), but of course now I am paralysed with indecision about what flavours to choose. So, people of the internet, I am relying on you: please tell what kind of cake I should make!
Keeping in mind that I want the cake to look pretty when sliced (ie, colour contrast) and also that I want the outer layer of frosting to be white (I think!), the combinations that I have come up with are as follows:
1) Lemon cake with raspberry compote filling and cream cheese frosting (or plain white buttercream?)
2) Butter cake with caramel and chocolate fillings and vanilla buttercream frosting (or maybe chocolate?)
3) Coconut cake with chocolate filling and white buttercream frosting (or 7-minute frosting?), decorated with shredded coconut curls
4) Chocolate cake with mocha filling and vanilla buttercream frosting (or maybe chocolate?)
So which one should I make? Please leave your feedback in the comments!
The Anti-Inflammatory Diet and Buying Organic (or not!)
I was Stumbling around the web today and I came across Dr. Andrew Weil’s website – specifically, his Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid, which piqued my interest. His position on food and health is that some foods promote an inflammatory response in the body, while others are anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is a natural process by which the body heals itself, however prolonged inflammation (think heat, swelling, redness, etc) can be harmful, and eating anti-inflammatory foods helps to reduce inflammation and promote better health. Whether or not you subscribe to this way of thinking, I like the food pyramid he sets out, and I also like his dietary recommendations. He talks about “diet” in the same way that I like to think about it: not as a quick fix way to lose weight by eating only grapefruit or cabbage soup, but the daily practice of choosing what to eat to make your body healthy – looking at food as something good for you, rather than as something bad that you need to deprive yourself of. Ultimately, we need calories from food to live, and making healthy choices to get the most out of those calories (health-wise and enjoyment-wise!) is the best way to do that. Also, I like that chocolate is right at the top of the pyramid 😉
Anyway, enough preaching about that. This article gives the dietary recommendations that go along with the pyramid.
While browsing his website, I also came across these two lists: produce that can be bought conventionally grown because it does not carry a large pesticide load, and produce that should always be bought organic (when possible) because it does carry a large pesticide load.
Foods you don’t have to buy organic, aka the Clean 15:
(Assuming that the produce is washed)
- Onions
- Avocados
- Sweet Corn
- Pineapples
- Mangoes
- Sweet Peas
- Asparagus
- Kiwi
- Cabbage
- Eggplant
- Cantaloupe (Domestic)
- Watermelon
- Grapefruit
- Sweet Potatoes
- Honeydew Melon
Foods you should always buy organic, aka the Dirty Dozen:
- Celery
- Peaches
- Strawberries
- Apples
- Blueberries (Domestic)
- Nectarines
- Sweet Bell Peppers
- Spinach
- Collard Greens/Kale
- Cherries
- Potatoes
- Grapes (Imported)
Looking at this list, I need to start making some more organically-minded choices at the grocery store.
I’m reading David Suzuki’s Sacred Balance right now, and in it he talks about how the pesticide and toxin loads that humans carry in their bodies are on the rise – ironically, they are highest in the least industrialized areas of the world, for various reasons (I recommend reading the book if you are interested in knowing why!). We dump pollutants into the natural environment pretty indiscriminately, and it is only a matter of time before it comes back at us. While the trace amounts of toxins and pesticides in our food might not seem like a big deal, humans are at the top of the food chain, so those small amounts of toxins concentrate in our bodies – pretty nasty. Limiting that toxic concentration is a good argument for making organic choices when buying from the Dirty Dozen list! Again, I think it comes down to choosing your diet: balancing food choices that will make you healthy and happy.
(I know I haven’t mentioned it here, but I also think that buying locally and ethically is just as important as buying organic (and sometimes more!), not only for our personal health but for the health of our communities and the planet. However the links between organic, local, and ethical food are fascinating and complex, and that’s a kettle of fish to be saved for another post!)