Friday, August 21, 2009

Look What I Made (You Can Make it Too!)


Old fashioned Chocolate Cake with
Orange Ganache and Orange Blossom Buttercream

My Brother got married three weeks ago. I couldn't make him a proper, big wedding cake because there were about a million people staying at our house. But, I did make this little one for him and his lovely bride, Habiba. Making a wedding cake is pretty messy business and you have to completely take over the kitchen and the dining room table to get it done. So, due to the high volume of people moving through our house, I had to bake and build the cake at my sister's place.

I used recipes from three different sources to build the cake. If you want to make a simple 9 inch party cake, follow the instructions below.

Bake one recipe of Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake
(from Cook's Illustrated March 2006 issue)


  • 12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), very soft, plus extra for greasing pans
  • 1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (8 3/4 ounces), plus extra for dusting pans
  • 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate , coarsely chopped
  • 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa (3/4 ounce)
  • 1/2 cup hot water
  • 1 3/4 cups sugar (12 1/4 ounces)
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon table salt
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 large egg yolks

INSTRUCTIONS

1. FOR THE CAKE: Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch-round by 2-inch-high cake pans with softened butter; dust pans with flour and knock out excess. Combine chocolate, cocoa powder, and hot water in medium heatproof bowl; set bowl over saucepan containing 1 inch of simmering water and stir with rubber spatula until chocolate is melted, about 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup sugar to chocolate mixture and stir until thick and glossy, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove bowl from heat and set aside to cool.

2. Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl. Combine buttermilk and vanilla in small bowl. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, whisk eggs and yolks on medium-low speed until combined, about 10 seconds. Add remaining 1 1/4 cups sugar, increase speed to high, and whisk until fluffy and lightened in color, 2 to 3 minutes. Replace whisk with paddle attachment. Add cooled chocolate mixture to egg/sugar mixture and mix on medium speed until thoroughly incorporated, 30 to 45 seconds, pausing to scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula as needed. Add softened butter one tablespoon at a time, mixing about 10 seconds after each addition. Add about one-third of flour mixture followed by half of buttermilk mixture, mixing until incorporated after each addition (about 15 seconds). Repeat using half of remaining flour mixture and all of remaining buttermilk mixture (batter may appear separated). Scrape down sides of bowl and add remaining flour mixture; mix at medium-low speed until batter is thoroughly combined, about 15 seconds. Remove bowl from mixer and fold batter once or twice with rubber spatula to incorporate any remaining flour. Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans; smooth batter to edges of pan with spatula.

3. Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool cakes in pans 15 minutes, then invert onto wire rack. Cool cakes to room temperature before frosting, 45 to 60 minutes.

(from Gourmet September 1996 issue. I found it on the internet)

  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 8 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
  • 2 teaspoons freshly grated orange zest
  • 1 tablespoon Cointreau or other orange-flavored liqueur

Finally, make the Frosting
NeoClassic Buttercream - Orange Blossom Flavour
(From The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Bernbaum)

  • 6 large egg yolks
  • 150 grams sugar
  • 164 grams corn syrup
  • 454 grams unsalted butter (room temperature)
Flavouring
  • 1 teaspoon Tang dissolved in
  • 1/3 cup orange flower water
  • 1 tablespoon orange zest
  • 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier

INSTRUCTIONS
Have ready a greased 1-cup heatproof glass measure near the range

In a bowl beat the yolks with an electric mixer until light in colour. Meanwhile, combine the sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan (preferably with a non-stick lining) and heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the syrup comes to a rolling boil. (The entire surface will be covered with large bubbles.) Immediately transfer the syrup to the glass measure to stop the cooking.

If using an electric hand-held mixer, beat the syrup into the yolks in a steady stream. don't allow syrup to fall on the beaters or they will spin it onto the sides fo the bowl. if using a stand mixer, pour a small amount of syrup over the yolks with the mixer turned off. Immediately beat at high speed for 5 seconds. Stop the mixer and adda larger amount of syrup. Beat at high speed for 5 second. Continue with the remaining syrup. For the last addition, use a rubber scraper to remove the syrup clinging to the glass measure. Continue beating until completely cool.

Gradually beat in the butter and, if desired, any optional flavouring.

Now assemble the cake

  • Split the cake layers and fill them with ganache. Stack the layers.
  • You will have 3 layers of ganache and 4 layers of cake.
  • Coat the outside of the cake with ganache.
  • Put the cake in the fridge for 15 minutes to make the ganache firm and to glue down any crumbs.
  • Now frost the cake with the room temperature buttercream
  • Decorate with dragees, rose petals, or anything else you want. Do NOT use poisonous flowers like lillies, daffodils, and clematis.
If you want to make a 4 inch tier stacked on top of a 6 inch tier. INCREASE the cake recipe by half and make cupcakes with the leftover batter. There is enough frosting and ganache for a small two tier cake. Don't forget to put supports and cardboard cake circles between the tiers. Cake cannot support the weight of cake. A little physics is required to make it all work.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Escape from Richmond: My Canada Line Adventure


My Canada Line Souvenir Passport (not a real passport)

I rode the Canada Line on Monday with my Dad and 80,000 of our best friends. We parked at King Edward Avenue and then spent 30 minutes in a line-up for the southbound train to Richmond. All we wanted, was to go to Aberdeen Mall to eat in the Chinese food court. Once we were on the train, we realized we were surrounded by a mass of riders who thought they were
going to YVR. There are two types of trains: one type goes to Richmond/Brighouse and the other diverts at Bridgeport station and goes to the airport. It was kind of funny when people realized they wouldn't be seeing the airport if they stayed on our train.

Once we arrived at Aberdeen, we did all sorts of cool stuff.
We sat in the $7000 massage chairs. Then, we went in the Taiwanese dry goods store and touched all the bags of dried fruit, which almost made the high pressure sales lady yell at us. After
that we went to Daiso (the $2 store) and I bought a bunch of cool stuff that I didn't know I needed (really cute pocket tissues and cloth tape). We also looked at the high tech Japanese toilets that have heated seats and automatically spray your bum. Then, we went up to the top floor food fair and ate takoyaki (octopus balls).

Afterwards, we wanted bubble tea, but we decided to get it at Yaohan centre. On our way to Yaohan, we walked through a small T&T supermarket in the Radisson Hotel. Then, we took the newly planted promenade beneath the skytrain track. It is really beautiful and pedestrian friendly. It was pretty amazing to see all the people walking along Alderbridge Way. Once at Yaohan, we went to Osaka Market (yes, another T&T within half a block of the last one). We bought some baked sweet potatoes and cold mussels for a snack. After our little rest we went to check on the skytrain line-up: it had stretched to over an hour long. That's when we decided to walk back to Aberdeen Mall. We went back to the food court and had really great prawn dumpling, noodle soup. We forgot to get bubble tea and when we went to get some the mall had closed. Dad and I could not believe it was already past 7 pm. When we went to look at the line up for the train, it had stretched to over two hours long. So, we decided to walk along Alderbridge Way to the Lansdowne Station.


Along the way, we stopped at PJ Pet's and Superstore to peek
around. Once we arrived at Lansdowne, we headed for the skytrain line up. As luck would have it the workers cut the line off right in front of us. We were told we could not get on in time for the 9 pm cut-off. We ended up catching the 98 B-line along Granville Street to 41st Avenue, then we took the #41 bus to Oakridge. At 41st and Cambie, we finally got our bubble tea (by now it was past 9 pm). Then, we caught the #15 bus back to King Edward Avenue where we got in the car and finally drove home.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Back to School!

This egg is your baby.


It's official. I am back to school in September, but not as a student this time. Back in June, I accepted a job at Vancouver Technical School's Spectrum Alternative Program. My new course load will consist of Senior Foods, Textiles, Grad Transitions, and Human Services 11.

The foods block is not your typical home-ec. class. Rather, the class and I will be making the daily hot lunch for 50 to 60 staff and students. So, in a way, I will be a bit of a student for a year. I've been a camp cook and I used to make lunch for 100 at a weekend fine-arts program, but a year of lunches will be an exciting challenge. That, paired with the job of instructing and grading 15 to 20 students who may, or may not be interested, in cooking should be an adventure. I feel that my year of study is already helping me organize my mental lesson plans. Now I have to put them down on paper and make my recipes user friendly for teenagers. EGAD!!!

Also, I need to develop a year's worth of sewing/felting/knitting/textile projects. This is something I am very excited about. I love making and I sure hope my students do to.

Possibly the most challenging part of my new course load will be the Human Services class. From what I understand, this class is a combination of sex ed., financial planning, drug awareness, and "how to be a grown up" lessons. Considering my state of quasi-arrested development, I'm not sure I'm the best role model but, I am up to the task. Apparently, I get to do the "this egg is your baby" lesson plan. I can't wait.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Okay, I'm back

Hello readers. . . (that's if I have any left). I know I have been terribly neglectful of my blog. That is why I don't have a cat or a dog, because if you can't take care of a blog. . . well you know the rest. Since my last blog, I have completed my Culinary Studies. It was a exciting, strange, and ultimately fulfilling year that included a number of surprises. Here is a little summary of what went on.

Throughout the months of January, February, March, and April, I had a very fierce flare up of my arthritis. It made school challenging to say the least. During this time I completed the following classes

January/Block 6 - Butchery
The block where I nearly developed gout for the second time.
This was one of the most fantastic blocks. Our instructor Chef Feist is probably one of the most brilliant instructors at VCC. I thought that I was going to be able to work off some of my Christmas weight during this month. Boy was I wrong. A strange phenomenon occurred when I started working with the large sides of meat. Some sort of bloodlust set in, and my inner carnivore could not get enough red meat. I think I ate more veal, lamb, and beef this month than I have in my life. This made my month of bacon seem like a foray into veganism. Speaking of bacon . . .we smoked our own bacon in the butchery from pork bellies that we butchered ourselves. It was awesome.


February/Block 7 - Cafeteria Cooking Lunch Service
The block where our class went crazeeee!

Bring on the madness! During this block, we were under the tutelage of Chef Bain. This was one of the funniest and most kooky teachers we had all year. That, combined with the fact that we were serving lunch to nearly 200 people. It was goodtimes all round. . . sort of. Unfortunately, during this block it had become painfully clear that our class was divided into two factions: group one was made up of high achieving students with great attendance (I was in this group) and group two was made up of lazy, excuse-making, poor-attending, monkeys that didn't do their dishes. Needless to say the class was polarized. It was sort of, just like, highschool except for the fact that we were all supposed to be adults. A couple of goofballs had decided way back in block two that I didn't belong in the class because of the mere fact that I was a school teacher and not planning to enter "the industry". Apparently, lifelong learning was a foreign concept. Too bad for me that this attitude was also accompanied by aggressive hostile behaviour that was generally directed at little ole me. Somehow, I was seen as a symbol of institutional authority. I found all of this ironic considering my last eight years were spent teaching some very difficult special ed. students in one of the toughest inner-city schools in Vancouver. Lucky me, I was in a great group during this month, so it was pretty easy to ignore the nasty behaviour of the trolls in my class. What was hard to ignore was how one especially aggressive student would make crucial cooking errors in the class, and then when he became frustrated would bully weaker, less assertive students. What his motives were, I do not know, but he was very hard to be around.


March/Block 8 - Baking & Desserts 2
The block where I fought a bully and I learned the truth about rumballs.

Flaming rumballs! Guess whose group I ended up in this month!!! That's right Mr. Friendly. This was a rough month. This was one of the blocks I was most looking forward to. I was hoping I would learn some new techniques to add a to my cake baking repertoire. Well, it was not to be. Instead, I was stuck baking pastries and cakes with super disgusting high ratio fat, while trying to get along with a really unpleasant human being. To compound this problem, the very lazy students had somehow developed an over-inflated sense of entitlement and they were out of control. They were super-lazy, messy, petty, and nasty. It felt like the class had been hijacked by the dysfunctional, angst-ridden, smoke-pit-hanging-out lurpers from some nightmarish highschool horror flick. It was unbearable. And then it happened. Mr. Friendly snapped. My dislike for him was as palpable as his dislike for me and on the last day of class, he couldn't hold it in anymore and he unleashed a very loud, abusive, misogynistic, ageist tirade directed at me. I asked him several times to "stop talking to me" and to "please be quiet". Then, when it was all over, I went home and wrote a letter to the Culinary Arts Department Head, the Head of Student Services, and the Human Rights Co-ordinator for the school. I asked that I never be paired with this individual again and that he be forbidden from speaking to me. Initially, the Culinary Arts Department Head was going to hand down a one day suspension, however, after some back room talks (which I was not party to) with the Head of Student Services, Mr. Friendly was removed from our Block and put in the block behind (the same block Anger Soup had been placed in a couple months earlier). All in all, baking was an exhausting month and I don't think I learned very much about, cakes, or bread, or pastries. I did learn a lot about what it feels like to be bullied, how unsatisfying it is when teachers and administrators offer platitudes and quick fixes, and how difficult yet ultimately worthwhile it is to stand up for yourself.

P.S. Rumballs are made up of all the stale cake scraps, rum, leftover icing, and old hot dog wieners. Eat them at your peril.


April/Block 9 - Fine Dining and Front of House
No wine was spilt during this block.
Ahhh the peace. For this month, our class was divided into a nighttime and a daytime shift. We were allowed to pick our own groups, so you can guess how it all shook down. During this block we learned some of the finer points of bartending and waiting. I loved it. One of my first teenager jobs was waitressing in my Aunt and Uncle's Diner, The Jasmine Inn.
I get a kick out of wacky customers and carrying big trays full of glasses. And, I had a great group of people to work with. My classmates for the month were Seamus, Tyson, Diana, Andrea, and Vivian. We were also joined by a handful of students from the Aboriginal Culinary Arts Class. This month was soooo relaxing. There was no stress and we got to learn a whole lot about wine, beer, and alcohol production. I think I can now confidently go into a BC Liquor store and buy a decent bottle of wine for under $15. The other great part about this month was the tips. Every night I made at least enough money to pay for my $7 parking and I often had a little bit leftover for just one at the Railway club.


May/Block 10
The Block Where We Ate Everything
So many canapes!

That's right, this was the block where we ate everything. For the first time in 10 months, we were not in a production kitchen. This block was set up to teach us the finer points of plating
and to allow for palate development. When I said we ate everything, I meant it: quail, game hens, liver, fois gras, sweetbreads, rabbit, veal, lamb, beef, chicken, lobster, crab, spot prawns,
clams, mussels, potatoes (every way they can be made), vegetables (1 million different ways),
and desserts. All sorts of desserts. Our instructor was the ever calm and cool Chef Gill. In a
typical day, we would have a very short lecture and then we would each be assigned a task. At the end of the class, we would plate our assignment, review what we had made, and then we would eat it. Oy vey! I had to buy new pants.

If you look closely at the photo to your left you
may note a vacant lost, look in our eyes. Andrea is about to cry and I think Tyson fainted right after this photo was taken. Melek and I soldiered on.

A sidenote: Normalcy gradually returned to the class once the bully was removed. The universe seemed to re-align itself and everyone relaxed a little bit for the final three months.


June/Block 11 - Fine Dining Lunch Service
The Block where I seethed and renewed my "feminist card".

There are no pictures of this block because it stunk. I didn't like the food and our instructor was a JERK. He was unpleasant, abusive, and nasty. Most of the class was on constant high alert, wary that our "teacher" was going to lose it on one of us. This was my worst experience as a student. . . ever. I didn't appreciate being called "darling" by an insecure older man, who assumed that because his chef's hat was bigger than mine, he could behave like a chauvinist. I also did not take kindly to classmates who tried to tell me this was what "the industry" was like. Chauvinism and bullying are not "the industry". They are just good, old fashioned, un-evolved, bad behaviour. If this had been a university course, I would have withdrawn on the first day. This experience reminded me why its important to be a feminist. The feminist movement didn't necessarily change men, but it did change the way a lot of women think about themselves (including me). My second foray into post-secondary education, has truly made me appreciate the liberal arts education I received the first time round. I was so mad I almost stopped shaving my legs.

On a positive note: During this month, four of us were awarded culinary arts scholarships. Melek, Tyson, and Andrea were honoured for their hard work and good scholarship. I was awarded the Dr. Gerald Korn scholarship for top student. The scholarship helped cover the last of my tuition! Huzzah! It was a good surprise and it helped lift me up during a month when I really needed it.


July/Block 12 - And so it Ends. . .
Chef Gill saves the day.

And then it all just ended. Our final month was great. Chef Gill was our instructor once more, and boy oh boy was he putting on a show in the dining room. The menu was fantastic, local, and super-fresh. On top of that, whenever a staff member or relative was dining in JJ's, Chef Gill would often make a special first course, or let us make a special something for the VIP guest. During this month, I finally felt like I was experiencing that culinary fantasy I had dreamed about before this adventure began. The food was great. The instruction was fantastic and the class had finally gelled as a team. And then. . . it all just ended.

Our last day was a buffet night. I experimented with a few desserts. After class, there were short speeches and we all had a champagne toast from the bubbles Andrea, Diana, and I had snuck into the class. Afterwards, we headed over to the Commodore Lanes for pirate-themed bowling. Our group was small, but our fun was big. Of the original 19 students only 10 of us had made it through the whole course. Along the way we were joined by Billy (block 7) and Melek (block 9). And only 8 of us went to the bowling extravaganza. Melek had dinner with her family to celebrate her shiny new Canadian citizenship. The other three, less than stellar, students were a bit sheepish in the final days and they found some cosmic reason, that involved hospitals and out of town relatives, not to bowl.

The rest of us had a pirate-tastic time. Since I am nearly tea-total due to my arthritis, I had the fun time of watching my classmates get progressively drunker, and less interested in bowling, throughout the night. It was certainly amusing.

Here is the evidence:

Super-Sexy Pirate Diana

Also Super-Sexy Pirate Andrea.
Please notice that she is wearing a Betsy Johnson pirate belt.

Me and Pirate Vivian
(Please note my home-made pirate shirt and hat.)

Pirate Brie
Sooo scary!

Pirate Baby Kam also in a homemade shirt.
He had homemade pirate pants but they were too tight.

Me and Pirate Tyson and Pirate Seamus
Seamus went for the modern pirate look.
We were just glad he abandoned his first idea to come as a Somali Pirate.
I know, it's one of those do I laugh or cringe statements.

And then. . . it was all over!

However, there is more. Fate has decided that my adventures in the kitchen will continue. I'll tell you all about it in the next post. And yes, I will post.