Another Birth-day

Well here again I have arrived at another birth-day.  They come around only too fast.  Why I'll soon be an old woman.  I used to think when any one was thirty he or she was real old, but although I feel a little down, I feel no older than I ever did.  - Frances, February 1892

As I look back at my calendar, I realize that it has been quite a while since my last post.  My goal is one post per week, but the past few weeks have gotten the best of me.  I kept meaning to schedule a few posts, but for some reason, I couldn't make the time.  To those who read this blog regularly, thank you, and I'm sorry I've been such a slacker!  After teaching at a wonderful music camp for middle- and high-school students, I then took a week off to celebrate my birthday in Washington, DC. 

I love birthdays.  I love having an excuse to celebrate my birthday for a whole week, filling the days with activities, food, travel, friends/family, and of course, cake!  This year was no exception.  I had some amazing meals in our nation's capital (Rasika and Le Diplomat come to mind).  I went to a folk festival and danced with the President of Catalonia.  I visited museums and monuments, and even snagged a last-minute ticket to the National Museum of African American History, where I could have spent an entire week. 

Something about this birthday, though, has me dragging my feet, so Frances' birthday post from 1892 really resonated with me - even though I am a good bit over thirty!  Maybe I am letting 'the number' get the best of me, but this year, I feel myself getting bogged down by all the things I want to do but haven't yet done.  I like to think of my birthday as a 6month check-point for my New Years resolutions, and this year, I'm feeling a bit lacking.

This month also marks the 1-year birthday of the Three Journals blog.  I've had the Three Journals idea in my head for so long that it seems impossible that I've been sending out bits and pieces for a whole year now.  Even though my goal was just to start the blog (which I have obviously done), I had still hoped to have accomplished more with this project.  

Birthdays are a reflective time for a lot of people, I think.  Even though I am feeling 'a little down,' as Frances said, it is only fair to remind myself of all the big things I did this year - graduated 5 clarinet students, visited a new country, planned an awesome wedding, married the love of my life.  Not too shabby!

Like many people out there, the "not good/successful/kind enough" voice in my head tends to be louder than the "hey, you're making it work" voice.  This year, I'm going to try to turn up the volume on that one.  As the years go on, I'd rather celebrate my number than not have a number at all!

Molasses Layer Cake

I made some gingerbread today (without ginger) and the Wengers were over for pinochle tonite.  Are using red sugar now - sort of like molasses in our cooking and baking - its much cheaper.  Have certainly cut down on our cakes - haven't had a pie for months.  - Annette, April 1943

I have always loved gingerbread.  It breaks my heart a little that we consider it a 'seasonal' flavor, because I could eat gingerbread any day of the week.  My dad loved ginger snaps, and anything molasses-based.  I wonder if his love of molasses came from Annette.  Many of her recipes use molasses - perhaps, because it was cheaper and easier to acquire in China.  Maybe she continued to bake with molasses once they were stateside.  In honor of Father's Day today, I baked this Molasses Layer Cake from his mother's recipe.  I wonder if he grew up eating this very same cake.

Once again, Annette's recipe is not the most forthcoming.  I made a small adjustment with the amount of butter - the entire cake only used 2T!  I doubled that amount, to better facilitate creaming the butter and sugar.  I'm guessing the baking soda dissolved in buttermilk gives it lift while adding a bit more fat.  I baked the cakes at 350degrees for 30min, then turned off the oven and let the cakes sit for another 4 minutes.  After 2 minutes of resting in the pans, I turned them out onto a wire rack, then let them cool completely.  The cakes are so tender and fluffy.  I made a quick Cinnamon Buttercream Icing, to compliment the cinnamon in the cake.  Recipe and photos below!

Molasses Layer Cake

1 cup sugar

2 tablesp butter (I used 4T - half a stick)

2 eggs

1 teasp cinnamon

1 teasp soda diss. in 1 cup sour milk

1 cup molasses

2 1/2 cups flour

Cream together butter + sugar.  add eggs and molasses and flour + milk alternately.  Bake in 2 layers.

Standard ingredients shot. I added a bit of salt to the batter, just to balance the molasses sweetness.

Pans greased and floured.

Baking soda - buttermilk mixture. I love that it used to be called ‘sour milk’!

I added the cinnamon to the dry ingredients for more even incorporation.

Go mixer go!

Batter evenly spread between the two prepared pans.

The cakes were so light and delicate, but packed with big molasses flavor.

Cinnamon buttercream to finish it off! Yum!

Cocoa Cup Cakes - Or, Devil's Food Cake?

I'm still in a cake-baking mood, and since Annette mentioned Devil's Food Cake in the last post, I think it's time to try it out!  Devil's Food Cake is such a decadent treat.  It's no surprise she made it to celebrate her anniversary.  The fact that she made it in rural China in 1943 just blows my mind.

Unfortunately, the only chocolate cake recipe in her diary is for Cocoa Cup Cakes.  I have yet to find a definitive answer to what differentiates chocolate cake from Devil's Food, so maybe that recipe is Annette's version.  I doubled her recipe, then used a modern-day Devil's Food Cake recipe (from Ina Garten) to modify Annette's recipe as needed.  Kind of like in Jurassic Park when they used amphibian DNA to fill in the gaps of the dino-DNA.  Here is Annette's recipe.

Cocoa Cup Cakes

6 tablesp. fat

2 cups sugar

1 cup milk

2 eggs

3 cups flour

6 teaspoons baking powder

2/3 cup cocoa

vanilla

No instructions - just a list of ingredients.  As always, Annette's recipes leave me with more questions than answers.  First of all, the amount of fat is strangely low, compared to the sugar and flour amounts.  Also, it just calls for 'fat'.  Her other recipes specify butter or lard - maybe they are interchangeable.  I chose butter, since that's what I had, and I bumped up the amount to match Ina's recipe.  Another oddity is the amount of leavening compared to the other ingredients.  Ina's recipe calls for one teaspoon each baking powder and baking soda, but Annette's required six teaspoons of baking powder!  I am always stumped by the type of flour she used.  Was it wheat, like the bran muffins?  Or something else entirely?  My guess is that she needed the extra leavening to lighten up the flour.  I decided to go with cake flour, just for something different.

I used Annette's lower sugar amount and Ina's higher egg amount (using large instead of extra-large eggs to offset the amounts a bit).  I swapped out Annette's milk for Ina's sour cream, and dissolved the cocoa in a bit of hot coffee before adding it to the batter.  Plus, I added the salt from Ina's recipe, to balance out the sweetness.  I made the cakes in large cupcake-style wrappers to mimic Annette's cup cakes.  I also made my favorite chocolate buttercream - Billy's Chocolate Buttercream from a Martha Steward episode (you can find the recipe here).  I must admit, I didn't have semisweet chocolate on hand, so I tried making the icing first with a dark chocolate cocoa powder/butter/sugar combo.  The result was tasty, but looked a mess!  It was grainy and thick, with a grey/black color.  I tried to mask it with silver sprinkles, but ended up making a new batch later.  I'll include a picture here, so you can see my disaster in all its glory.

Just like Annette, I messed up the icing.  I tried to use what I had in my pantry, and the end result wasn't what I wanted.  Like grandmother, like granddaughter, I guess!

Behold!  Annette's Cocoa Cup Cakes + Ina Garten's Devil's Food Cake =

Miranda's Devil's Food Mini-Cakes!

The ingredients. A bit of Annette, plus a bit of Ina.

Mini-cake wrappers all lined up. These are great for individual cakes - especially when you are worried you might accidentally eat an entire layer cake by yourself.

Creaming butter and sugar.

Chocolate!! Dissolving the cocoa powder with the coffee made it much easier to integrate into the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

Dividing the batter into the mini-cake wrappers.

As you can see, the results were very different for each pan. I rotated the pans halfway through, but sill got mixed results. Also, I am still an over-filler. The cakes were tender, but a little too floury.

The first icing attempt. If you need to make a cake that looks like asphalt, I would recommend this method. Not so pretty, but still delicious!

This batch looks much better.

Piped with a star tip! Fun little mini-cakes!

Messed Up The Icing - Or, Wedding Cakes For Everyone!

Still no sunshine.  Had our wedding anniversary dinner tonite.  I made a nice devil food cake but I messed up the icing.  Had a nice supper - Doc + wife came over and we played monopoly.  Even Miss Simon played with us tonite.  - Annette, March 1943

I have had weddings on the brain lately!  My favorite part of weddings is always the cake.  Well, the whole 'love and commitment' thing is pretty great, too, so I guess cake is a very close second.  My own wedding was just a few weeks ago, so the cake was crucial.  None of that inedible fondant, thankyouverymuch.  Luckily, I found an amazing baker in Atlanta - Amanda Faber, the Season 2 winner of the Great American Baking Show on ABC.  Amanda made a beautiful cake and it was DELICIOUS!  It was my favorite wedding cake - and wedding - by far.  :)

Annette and Clary were married on Leap Day, February 29, 1940, so they celebrated their first 4 anniversaries in China.  Annette made a cake for every single one.  In 1943, on their third anniversary, she baked a devil's food cake.  I love that she wrote about her 'messed up' icing.  In our social-media world, it is so tempting to only share the perfect parts of our lives - the perfect Insta shot or Facebook post.  Annette's diary was her safe place, her honest place.  She wrote about her real experiences and feelings.  I can completely relate to a less-than-perfect baking experience because....

This past week, I caught Royal Wedding Fever!  I just could not get enough of the details, the story, and of course, the cake!  As soon as I heard the cake description, I knew I had to give it a shot.  Lemon elderflower sponge cake with Swiss meringue buttercream.  I've never made either of those, so I jumped right in!  I did a bit of research to narrow down the cake and icing recipes.  To honor Harry and Meghan blending English and American families, I used a sponge cake recipe inspired by Mary Berry, queen of English baking, and a buttercream recipe inspired by Martha Stewart, an American baking master.  Spoiler alert:  not my best bake.  By far.  Check out the pictures for all the ways I went wrong!  

Regardless of the missteps, the cake was delicious.  I woke up early to watch the Royal Wedding celebration, and had delicious lemon elderflower cake for breakfast.  As Rev. Michael Curry said during the ceremony, "There's power in love."  That is always worth a celebration.

Since I didn’t have access to elderflower syurp made with Queen Elizabeth’s elderflower bushes, I used Belvoir Fruit Farms elderflower cordial. Much easier to get - at World Market.

I weighed out all the ingredients for the sponge. I had great intentions. Instead of buying caster sugar, I blitzed regular sugar in the food processor so it was extra-fine.

Here I am, adding the ingredients separately. This was not the best plan. Mary Berry said to combine all ingredients, then mix, which I did not do. I decided to cream the butter and sugar first, then add eggs one at a time. Except two eggs plopped into the bowl at once, thus breaking the emulsion I had just made.

Here, I added the flour mixture slowly. And then proceeded to overmix the batter. Not great.

The cakes are out of the oven, and they both sank in the middle. I did not spin or tap the pans, so they were tough little cakes with some sizable air bubbles. Mary Berry would not approve. Oh well! Good thing I planned to drench them in syrup and cover in icing!

Speaking of icing, hand-whisking is no joke. Especially over heat. My tiny kitchen was quite warm.

The stand mixer whisking was MUCH more fun. The egg white/sugar mixture was glossy and smooth and beautiful!

Add the butter a little bit at a time, then the flavorings. You could swap out the lemon juice and elderflower cordial for any other flavoring you like - vanilla, almond, etc.

The finished product! I used a ton of icing to fill in the sunken middles of the cakes, but overall, it turned out ok! A few swirls and some silver sanding sugar added a bit of Markle-sparkle.

You can see the extra-thick icing in the middle, and the extra-tough sponge cake texture. But hey, it’s still cake! And after all that work, I earned my ‘messed up’ slice!

Lemon Elderflower cake with Elderflower Buttercream

Lemon Sponge Cake:

4 eggs, room temperature - weighed

Caster sugar

Butter, softened

Self-rising flour

1 T baking powder

Zest of 1 lemon

Elderflower Soak:

1/4 c elderflower cordial (I used Belvoir Fruit Farms Elderflower Cordial)

1 T fresh lemon juice

Elderflower Buttercream:

5 large egg whites

1 cup plus 2 T caster sugar

1/8 t table salt

1 pound butter, softened

2 t fresh lemon juice

1 T elderflower cordial

Preheat oven to 356 degrees F (or 350 - Mary's recipe required 180 degrees Celsius).  Grease two 8in pans with butter, line the bottom of each pan with a circle of parchment paper. 

Weigh the eggs, and place in a large mixing bowl.  Weigh the same amount of sugar, butter, and flour in separate bowls.  Add the baking powder to the flour and sift together.  Add sugar, flour mixture, and butter to large bowl with the eggs.

Using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, mix all ingredients until just combined.  Stir in lemon zest. 

Divide batter between two pans.  Spin or lightly tap the pans on the counter to remove air bubbles.  Bake for 25 minutes, until the cake tops spring back when pressed lightly with your fingers.  Remove cakes from oven and set on a wire rack - cool in pans for a few minutes.  After cakes have cooled slightly, turn the cakes out, remove the paper, flip over, and allow to cool a bit more. 

While the cakes are cooling, prepare the elderflower soak.  Once the cakes have cooled for 30min, use a wooden pick to poke holes in the tops of the cakes.  Using a pastry brush, brush the tops of the cake with the elderflower mixture.  Allow cakes to cool completely.

While the cakes are cooling, prepare the buttercream.  Combine egg whites, sugar, and salt in a heatproof bowl of stand mixer and set over a pan of simmering water.  Whisk by hand until mixture has reached around 140 degrees F.  Mixture should feel smooth when rubbed between your fingers.

Move the bowl to stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.  Starting on low and gradually increasing to medium-high, whisk mixture until soft peaks form.  Continue whisking until glossy and the bowl is completely cool to the touch (about 10 minutes).

With mixer on medium-low speed, add butter a few tablespoons at a time.  Once all the butter has been added, whisk in lemon juice and elderflower cordial.  Switch to the paddle attachment.  Continue beating until all air bubbles are gone (about 2 minutes), and icing is completely smooth.

Prepare a piping bag fitted with a star tip (or other design).  Fill the bag with buttercream and set aside.  To assemble the cakes, place one cake on a cake stand.  Add buttercream to the top and smooth out.  Add the second layer, and add enough buttercream to cover the top and sides of the cake.  Once the cake is covered, use the remaining buttercream to pipe designs on the cake.  Garnish with lemon slices, fresh edible flowers, sprinkles - anything that feels festive!