Leora's Birtday Cake
Yes, Leora's birthday was in the beginning of November. Let's leave it at that.
Leora and Anwyn think that it is their pleasure in life to come up with increasingly difficult cooking challenges for me. This generally culminates with their choice of birthday cakes. Leora, in particular will spend hours pouring through the dessert selections in our cook books. She currently limits her choices to things that have a great picture. I am frightened of what may happen once she can visualize the outcome just from the recipe.
Leo's inspiration this year was from a great garage-sale find of 10 or more years ago, Time Life's The Good Book: Classic Desserts(Amazon.com). It's part of an awesome series, of which I own several. They give wonderful descriptions (with informative photos) of classic techniques followed by a series of recipes in the back to which those techniques can be applied. For anyone who has consumed it; my fudge comes from the companion book entitled "Candy".
Following is the page from the desserts book which inspired Leora. If you download the original from my Picasa site, you can read the text. The actual recipe we based the cake on is there too.
You probably know that I fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants... a lot! So we didn't bother about specific ingredients or shapes. By this time, even specific directions are optional, but it is nice to have a reference.
In short, we:
And above we have the finished product (half eaten already). It was a huge success with kids and parents alike. Having done it once, it would now be a cinch to do it again.
You can see a few intermediate steps over here...
Leora and Anwyn think that it is their pleasure in life to come up with increasingly difficult cooking challenges for me. This generally culminates with their choice of birthday cakes. Leora, in particular will spend hours pouring through the dessert selections in our cook books. She currently limits her choices to things that have a great picture. I am frightened of what may happen once she can visualize the outcome just from the recipe.Leo's inspiration this year was from a great garage-sale find of 10 or more years ago, Time Life's The Good Book: Classic Desserts(Amazon.com). It's part of an awesome series, of which I own several. They give wonderful descriptions (with informative photos) of classic techniques followed by a series of recipes in the back to which those techniques can be applied. For anyone who has consumed it; my fudge comes from the companion book entitled "Candy".
Following is the page from the desserts book which inspired Leora. If you download the original from my Picasa site, you can read the text. The actual recipe we based the cake on is there too.
You probably know that I fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants... a lot! So we didn't bother about specific ingredients or shapes. By this time, even specific directions are optional, but it is nice to have a reference.In short, we:
- cooked a chocolate ice-cream(ish) filling -- twice, cause we wrecked the first batch :)
- lined an angel-food cake pan with low-fat frozen yogurt
- lined the yogurt with frozen garden raspberries
- filled the centre with our chocolate filling
- stuffed the gap with more yogurt
- put in freezer
And above we have the finished product (half eaten already). It was a huge success with kids and parents alike. Having done it once, it would now be a cinch to do it again.
You can see a few intermediate steps over here...
Comments
Since it's a cinch, and all ;)