S'more update

Tonight I went to Uncommon Ground.

We ate a S'more Tart.
Graham Cracker crust, chocolate ganache, with bruleed homemade marshmallows.
It was great! Especially because the chocolate was cold and the marshmallows were hot. If only the crust had been a little thicker. But the ambiance and the company made up for it...after all everything tastes better in a warm orange light.

However, as a self proclaimed authority on S'mores - It was delicious and you should go try it with a nice cup of tea or a glass of Pinot Noir.

Campfire Classics

We grew up in the great outdoors. Our first family camping trip took place between San Jose, California and Reno, Nevada, and back. (It actually might have been our first American road trip too now that I think about it.) We were visiting our Aunt, Uncle, and cousins who live in Cali. It was quite an adventure for all of us. We rented a big conversion van so we all traveled together and stayed in a couple random camp grounds. We ate A LOT of Ramen, which was perfect because we had never had Ramen before and I didn’t OD on it again until college. So we ate Ramen and went camping and I used all my birthday money to buy Wedding Day Midge, who also came camping with us. Besides seeing tumbleweed for the first time and enjoying trying to wrap my 9 year old arms around a giant redwood, my favorite thing about our entire vacation was sitting around the campfire, telling a round robin story, and eating S’mores.

Our round robin stories always started with someone saying something and then the next person finishing off the thought and adding a new one until a story developed. For some reason, I still remember parts of one of those stories. Part of it might have been because it was SO outrageous and ridiculous or because I have this vivid image of the family sitting around the fire telling it. The main character was Barbie (I was nearing the end of my Barbie age, but she was still a part of our lives at that time) and she chose Peabody to be her boyfriend. (Peabody was one of the boys Barbie could choose in the 1950’s Barbie Prom game, which we played non-stop during that trip as well as a handful of times throughout my childhood. We never had it, but some of my awesome friends and family were the owners of this amazing board game.) There was some sort of accident/problem, but the moral of the story was “Always wear clean underwear when you leave the house because you never know what kind of trouble you’re going to get into.” (My dad may have gotten Barbie and Peabody whacked during that story, but the details are blurry.)

This moral and S’mores have stuck with me for almost 20 years, but this blog is not devoted to my undergarments, so lets move on to the other topic:
S’mores…
Nothing beats the taste of fire burned marshmallows between chocolate and graham crackers – so simple and so delicious.

I’ve dappled in s’more desserts in the past, including some super cute mini graham cracker cupcakes where we toasted the marshmallows over the stove and smashed them in between a halved cupcake with chocolate. They were quite interactive and pretty delicious, however, they weren’t overly complicated and using graham crackers would have been just as easy and delicious. I was also a S'more last year for Halloween, so our ties run deep.

My co-worker Tracy’s birthday was a week ago, and since we work in the outdoor industry I decided to track down a spin on S’mores and make her birthday cake. My friend Lauren sent me a recipe she found online for a S’more cake, so I decided to take my spin on it.

S’more Cake Adapted from Baking Bites
Graham Cracker Cake Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups graham cracker crumbs (If you buy a box of graham crackers it’s two enveloped packages so 2/3 of the box)
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup milk
3 large egg whites

Chocolate Ganache
1 cup Semi-sweet Chocolage Chips
¼ cup Half and Half
2 TBSP unsalted butter
2 TBSP corn syrup

Marshmallow Filling
1 – 7 oz jar Marshmallow Fluff

Graham Cracker Cake
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease 2 – 9” round cake pans with cooking spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
In a large bowl mix together the butter and sugar until it’s creamed together. Add the egg yolks and the vanilla.
In a smaller bowl mix together the graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt. Stir in a third of the graham cracker mixture with the butter and sugar, followed by half of the milk, alternating until you end with the graham cracker mixture.
In a separate bowl beat the egg whites to soft peaks.
Fold the egg whites into the graham cracker mixture in two batches, making sure it’s folded in completely with no white streaks.
Divide evenly into pans.
Bake for about 24 minutes until it’s dense and a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cakes cool for a couple minutes before dumping them and let them finish cooling on a wire rack.

Chocolate Frosting
Using a double boiler melt the chocolate chips and butter until smooth. While still under the flame add the corn syrup and stir until combined. Turn the heat off on the double boiler and add the half and half. Stir until smooth. It has more of a ganache consistency than a thick frosting.

Assembly
Place one layer of the cake, bottom side up, on a plate. Spread half of the chocolate ganache/frosting over the top of the bottom layer. Spread the entire layer of fluff on top of the chocolate. The fluff is not easy to spread. It kind of glops on and is a sticky mess.
Stack the next graham cake layer on top of the fluff. Spread the rest of the chocolate frosting over the top of the cake layer. It looks awesome if the chocolate drips down the side of the cake.

I made the cake the night before I took it to work and stuck it in the fridge overnight. Something about the fluff makes it a little volatile. Overnight, the entire top of the cake slid off the top and did not look like the nice stack it had been when I put it in the fridge at night. Because I had stuck it in the fridge, the fluff was not only sticky, but kind of hardened too, which made shifting the top half back onto the cake a little difficult. The cake continued to do this off and on while it was in the process of being eaten. I think it only took 2 days to polish it off…so it wasn’t overly annoying. I’d probably increase the chocolate frosting when I make this again so I can pour the frosting over the fluff as well as underneath it and on the top of the cake. It might help keep the marshmallow encased and help it from sliding. I thought that maybe I frosted the cake while the frosting was too warm and that caused the marshmallow to slide, however, it kept happening so I don’t think that’s the reason.

I know Barbie and Peabody would have loved to go on a date at the soda shoppe and eat S’more cake and I think you’d like it too. Just remember to wear clean undies.

This may not be the most flattering angle...but you get the point. I love S'mores!

Death by Cake...

Pegleg Penny has joined those great Chefs and kitchen utensils in the sky. During an intense batch of cream cheese frosting, Pegleg gave a last little hum of the engine and just stopped spinning. She was there until the end, but it is with a heavy heart that I write this entry. This happened over three weeks ago and I am still saddened by it.

In honor of Pegleg I will share some of her favorite memories in the kitchen.

Pegleg suffered her first injury shortly after she came to live with me at the Wellington house. I accidentally put the beater with the flat disc in the improper side. Her leg got stuck. Maybe I should have recognized that moment foreshadowing her fate, but not being one to let the mixer win, I took her casing apart and fixed her up like new. Well as new as possible, she definitely had some war wounds.

While Pegleg had a TURBO button, we rarely needed to use it. She had an abnormally fast heart, much like myself, which really expedited the beating of egg whites and getting the job done. Naturally that makes her more prone to passing out on the street while exercising.

Her favorite thing that we ever made was a cake for our friend Andrew. It was a Red Velvet cake with a brown sugar cream cheese frosting and a pound of fried bacon on top. Miss Piggy’s Delight for sure.

She was always dressed to the nines in her sleek silver outfit.

Her favorite song was Blueberry Pie as sung by Bette Midler and No Scrubs by TLC.

Her political views tended to be more Independent than anything. In the 2008 election her write in candidate was Eric Ripert. He was her Silver Fox. (The fact that he’s French is only a minor detail according to PP.)

Her lifelong goal was to have as many high profile romantic conquests as Gael Greene. She did not have the opportunity to meet Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, or Elvis, but she did have an on again, off again relationship with the Microplaner.

Pegleg’s favorite TV show was the Price is Right, but she only liked it when Bob Barker was on.

The chef she most wanted to meet was Gale Gand. Gale’s pastry just astounded PP to the point where she was slightly obsessed. Pegleg was so jealous of my little sister who had the opportunity to meet Gale like 6 years ago.

The one thing you would never guess about Pegleg was that she was an excellent letter writer. She believed in the power of snail mail and of people getting an actual piece of correspondence physically in their hands. Pegleg tried to write 10 letters a week. (That postage was pricey!) She was a big fan of sending fan mail, although she never received any back. She wrote weekly to the cast of the Harry Potter movies (she has a thing for redheads), Mayor Daley (on ways to improve Chicago), Kathy Griffin (she was obsessed with fame), Oprah, and more recently she went on a letter writing campaign to Sony Pictures in an attempt to stop the production of the movie Julie and Julia. Pegleg went on and on about it not doing Julia Child justice and how her great, great, great, cousin, three times removed had been Julia Child’s mixer and how dare they write such blasphemy.

Pegleg’s favorite memory of me was when I made a Gingerbread, Mascarpone, Candied Apricot Trifle for Christmas last year and burned the tip of my finger to a blister because I stupidly stuck my finger in the boiling sugar. She thought it was funny. I laughed about it later.

Pegleg’s favorite movie was the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. Ironically enough, she uttered her last breath creating a cake to take to an outdoor version of the play my friend Nicole was in. Pegleg loved the dancing kitchenware in Be Our Guest. As a young mixer, she would twirl around the kitchen practicing the choreography. (High School Musical 2 was her second favorite movie because they have a great kitchen song scene in there too.)

You could say Pegleg had a strong sense of self or you could say Pegleg was a little flighty. No matter what, that girl could cook. I miss her greatly and I leave you with her parting recipe. It’s not completely original, but it’s an adaptation of sorts because that’s how we worked best, adapting to make things ours.

Pegleg Penny’s Spice Cake of Death (Death in a good way, of course)* Adapted from Spice Cake with Blackberry filling and Cream Cheese Frosting

Cake Ingredients
2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Ginger
1 tsp All Spice
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
½ tsp Salt
2 cups Sugar
2 sticks of Unsalted Butter, very soft
¼ tsp Orange Extract (or 1 TBSP Orange Peel)
4 eggs
1 cup Sour Cream
½ cup of Whole Milk (I used ¼ cup of fat free milk + ¼ cup of light whipping cream)
Blackberry Filling:
2 – 12 oz containers of Blackberries
½ cup Sugar

Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 ½ - 8 oz packages of Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 ½ sticks Unsalted Butter, room temperature
5 cups Powdered Sugar
2 TBSP Sour Cream
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Cake Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour 2 – 9” round pans and 1 – 5/6” round pan. (I made 2 cakes with this recipe, 1 – 9” layer cake, and one smaller cake I could take the to outdoor play. You can definitely make the 9” layer cake a three layer cake. The smaller cake I split in half horizontally because it was considerably thicker than the larger layers.) Line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper.
Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, all spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt into bowl and set aside.
Beat the sugar, butter, and orange extract together in a large bowl. Once they are sufficiently mixed, beat in the eggs one at a time.
Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture, alternating with the sour cream and the milk.
Divide into the prepared pans.
Bake approximately 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. The thicker, small cake took a couple extra minutes (about 28 minutes total).

Filling Directions:
Mix berries and sugar in a bowl. Using a fork, work your way through the fruit, mashing it up. Don’t make it too fine, keep it chunky. Let it stand up to an hour, but no less than 20 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting Directions:
So I used a little different Cream Cheese frosting recipe than I normally use. This one has the sour cream in it. Since I had bought sour cream for the cake I decided to give it a try, while I prefer my simpler recipe, it was still tasty.
Beat the cream cheese and the butter in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in the sugar, then the sour cream and vanilla.

Assembly:
For the two layer cake, place bottom layer on serving platter/plate, top side down. Spread a good amount of frosting over the top of the cake. Make the frosting a little thicker around the outer edges of the cake so that when you spoon the filling in it doesn’t seep out. Place the second layer on top of the bottom layer, top side up. Frost the top of the cake and it’s sides so that there is a nice thick layer of frosting. Refrigerate cake until an hour before you’re ready to serve. If you immediately serve from the fridge it’s just a little too cold. For the smaller thicker cake, cut cake horizontally into two equal layers. Follow the same assembly directions.

Pegleg gave out during the final stretch of cream cheese frosting. However, my roommates, knowing how sad and upset I was to lose PP have replaced her with a white KitchenAid hand held mixer. She may not have as much moxy, yet, we’re only just getting to know each other.