The Wedding Cake

August 30, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 14 Comments

To recap the journey thus far…

Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream: an Exercise in Perseverance

A few days before the wedding, I took the frozen cakes, icing, and all other bits over to Vancouver, then layered/filled/frosted the individual cake tiers at my grandparents’ house the day before the wedding. The morning of the wedding I recruited Lynette to babysit the cakes in the back seat of the car as I drove carefully across town (thank goodness it was cool in the morning and there was very little traffic!), where I assembled and decorated the cake at the wedding venue (The Beach House Restaurant in West Vancouver, overlooking the water – beautiful!). The whole time I was praying that the cursed frosting wouldn’t melt off the sides of the cake, but despite all the trouble it gave me, it held up just fine (even after sitting out unrefrigerated for several hours during the wedding reception) and tasted fantastic. However, it was so impossible to work with that I will not be using that particular frosting recipe again. 🙁

In the end, the cake as a whole turned out beautifully and it was delicious – and it didn’t melt or fall over or anything! I was hoping to get some pictures from the wedding photographer of the bride and groom cutting the cake (during which I had my fingers AND toes crossed and a horrible grimace on my face because I was terrified the whole thing would collapse!) but apparently the photos might be a while, so a) stay tuned! and b) I don’t have any pictures of what the inside looked like – but just know that this was a lemon cake with raspberry jam filling (a very easy, very delicious freezer jam – I used half a batch to fill the cake) and the-most-frustrating-but-nonetheless-delicious cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream frosting, and everyone agreed that it tasted wonderful. 🙂

I got most of my wedding cake assembly tips from my trusted friend Martha, and some frosting tips from Zöe Francois’ blog post and video on frosting a cake. I would highly recommend a revolving cake decorating stand for easy frosting, as well as a large offset spatula – these were the two most useful tools I used….

Banff Cobbler

August 23, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Yesterday was my first day back at work after four months off, and in answering the inevitable “what did you do this summer?” question several times, I realized that I had a jam-packed summer: a ten-year high school reunion, a trip to California, a concert in Vancouver, a stagette and two weddings (the wedding cake post is coming, I promise!!), and a road trip to Banff, Alberta, with Lynette – not to mention a ton of cooking and baking in between it all. No wonder it’s been a while since my last post!

The Banff road trip was an almost-2000 kilometer round trip across British Columbia and into the Rocky Mountains to visit our friend Tangle and her boyfriend Tyler.

Banff is really beautiful, even without the fancy iPhone camera filter

It was a beautiful drive (but looooong), and the visit was full Disney musical singalongs, mountain climbing, picturesque views, and great food courtesy of Tyler.

Dinner one evening

Breakfast the next morning (notice the icing sugar heart!)

On our last day there, we picked up some raspberries and blackberries at the Farmer’s Market, and the fruit guy threw in a slightly bruised peach for free. Another friend gave us some more raspberries from his garden (of both the red and pale yellow “Champagne” variety), and we decided that we needed to make some kind of berry dessert. Quite frankly, I was dying to get into the kitchen myself, and my uncle had sent me a link for a berry cobbler that I wanted to try, so I eagerly volunteered to make a raspberry-blackberry-peach cobbler as the dessert course to our meal of elk and bison steak.

A cobbler is sort of like a crumble, only the topping contains an egg and baking powder along with the flour, butter, and sugar, so you end up with a layer of cookie-crossed-with-biscuit on top of the fruit. The filling is just fruit and sugar but it thickens up during baking so that you end up with juicy (but not runny) fruit topped with a buttery, sugary, crisp pastry. The only thing that would have made it better was a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a drizzle of heavy cream. My advice is to make and eat this RIGHT NOW – it’s perfect for all the fruit and berries in season!…

Daring Bakers: Fresh Fraisier

July 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 21 Comments

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

A fraisier is a French pastry consisting of two layers of cake soaked in simple syrup with strawberries and pastry cream sandwiched between. Essentially, it is a free-standing trifle, but the special thing about a fraisier is the exposed fruit around the sides. To make a true fraisier, you have to use strawberries (fraise = strawberry), so I’m not really sure what to call my strawberry-raspberry-blueberry combination – a baies mélanger-ier doesn’t really have the same ring to it. But whatever you want to call it, it was tasty!

I did this challenge while I was in California visiting my aunt and uncle, and it was extra challenging because I was baking in an unfamiliar kitchen and also contending with a wheat and corn allergy. But it turned out beautifully and just proves that you don’t need fancy equipment or lots of space to make a spectacular dessert. …

Dobos Torte Birthday Cake

July 21, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

I’m back from California, and after I recover from the travel part (which was horrendously awful) and get a chance to go through all the photos I took of food, I’ll have some posts about the awesome restaurants I visited in California… but in the meantime, you can hear all about my birthday cake 🙂

I turned 28 a few weeks ago, and it required a cake. Since baking is pretty much my favorite pass-time, I was more than happy to bake it myself – it meant I got exactly what I wanted and I also got to have the fun of doing it. I came across this recipe for Dobos Torte on Smitten Kitchen, where Deb had made it for her own recent birthday, and I immediately promised I’d make it for myself. So I did 😉…

Daring Bakers: Baklava with Homemade Phyllo Pastry!

June 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 37 Comments

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

Did you read that? Homemade phyllo pastry… do you have any idea how thin that stuff is? It’s really really thin!!

Anyway. Baklava! I love it, but I’d never made it myself, so I was excited to give it a try. The challenge this month was in making the dough, and we could be as creative as we wanted with the baklava. I’ve had my eye on a cherry chocolate baklava recipe from Canadian Living for a long time, so I knew I wanted to try that flavour profile.I also wanted to do a more “traditional” one (based on the conversations in the Daring Bakers’ forums, there are many different traditional versions of baklava!), so I followed the suggested recipe and used walnuts, pistachios, and almonds.
And then, of course, I had to get creative with the shape. I did the traditional flavour in the traditional stacked layers, and the cherry chocolate one in a roll.I made a 9″x5″ pan of each kind – turns out that one pan would have been plenty! And after spending 3 HOURS rolling out enough dough for two half batches, it was definitely enough!! This was a fun challenge though, and making something like homemade phyllo is exactly why I joined the Daring Bakers – but be warned: it is very time-consuming! I’m pretty strong and I’m actually quite handy with a rolling pin, so it wasn’t a question of me being wussy or too weak to roll out the dough. The rolling plus the stretching just took forever! And now my hands feel bruised and I won’t need to do any push-ups for a week……

Daring Bakers: Mexican Chocolate Marquise

May 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 22 Comments

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle. Check out the challenge details and all the other Daring Bakers’ interpretations of it at the Daring Kitchen.

Last week Nate and I agreed that we’d been eating like crap lately – too much sugary junk, not enough vegetables – and we made a pact to eat better. Then the next day I started making this Daring Bakers Challenge, which is definitely sugary and doesn’t contain any vegetables, unless you count cocoa or tequila as a vegetable.

They were both vegetables/plants, once upon a time, right? Right?!

Oh well. Our fridge is overflowing with lettuce right now, so we’ll make up for it in salads 😉

This is a complicated looking dessert that is actually fairly straight forward, once you get your ducks in a row. The original recipe comes from a restaurant in Seattle, and the yield was for 18 servings!! Thank you Audax Artifex for cutting it down to a more reasonable 6 servings – although this could have easily made 8 servings. It was so rich that only Nate and I managed to clean our plates – everyone else tapped out, so next time I’ll definitely serve smaller portions!…

Lemon-tastic: Birthday Cake with Lemon Curd Filling and Candied Lemon Slices

May 3, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Yesterday was Nate’s birthday, and I wanted to make him a cake. He suggested something lemony with cream cheese icing, so I came up with a layer cake filled with lemon curd and covered in white chocolate cream cheese icing. Sounds good, right?

In theory, it was good. It looked good. In reality, it could have been better in several ways. One thing is for sure, this cake was SWEET. Holy sugar headache, Batman!

Sometimes I get a little over-enthusiastic about trying something new, in that I start trying to re-invent the wheel. I Googled “lemon layer cake” and came up with several tried and true recipes (many of which used a 1-2-3-4 cake as a base), but did I go for one of them? Nope, I wanted to do it differently – better, I was hoping….

Daring Bakers Challenge: Maple Syrup Mousse in an Edible Container

April 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

I recently joined an online cooking challenge group called the Daring Bakers (their website, the Daring Kitchen, is also home to the Daring Cooks). Every month members are challenged to make a certain recipe, showcasing their creativity and skills to interpret it. The members keep it a secret (no blog posts or online mention of the challenge) until the 27th of the month, when everyone posts a write-up on their blog, recounting their kitchen adventure with that month’s challenge recipe. April was my first Daring Bakers’ Challenge, and it was a good one!

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

I have to admit that I was a teensy bit disappointed because mousse isn’t exactly a challenging baking recipe, and the previous months’ challenges had definitely employed more advanced baking skills (including a Jaconde sponge/entremet and a yeasted meringue coffee cake, both of which I want to try out at some point!). However, the edible container part was intriguing, and gave me a chance to try two things that I have wanted to make for a long time: tuile cookie cups and chocolate cups using water balloons. I got over my initial disappointment pretty fast after that, because I love maple syrup (and coincidentally, I had just bought a litre of it for a relatively good price!) AND because Evelyne suggested incorporating bacon into the edible container – and who doesn’t love bacon? Plus the maple/bacon combination is just so delicious…

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