Just Taste the Rainbow Already!

(Okay, you so don't want to know all the images that Google gives you  when you search on "taste the rainbow."  Trust me on this one.)

If I were to take one of those inane Facebook quizzes about "what kind of bird are you?", I would probably score as a crow or a magpie, based on my love of shiny and colorful things. In this episode of "Baked:  or Why Don't I Just Go Ahead and Put My Head in the Oven Already," I get distracted once again by something pretty on a baking blog of someone who has way more luck and experience than I do with getting something edible out of the oven.

I know I whine a lot about baking, but I really, really, really want to be able to do it.  And I don't understand why I can't.  I know practice makes perfect, but sometimes, you need more than practice.  I think you need either magic, the appropriate gene structure, or possibly voodoo.

And, we can just blame it on Linna for sending me links to the The Food Librarian's celebration of Bundt cakes, appropriately named "I Like Big Bundts."   (You have to love the Sir Mix-a-Lot reference...the man is nothing, if not honest.)  Somehow, I got a link from there, at least I think it was from that site, to this one for the Kitchen Koala, who posted one of the coolest looking cakes that I have ever seen:  a Rainbow Cake.

It's not just enough that all the layers are different colors; they are all different flavors, too.  KK got her recipe from the Cheeky Kitchen, which is where I got the actual recipe as well.  I used some of the techniques described in the Koala post, like using thawed frozen fruit and pureeing the beejeezus out of it, and the Billowed White Chocolate frosting recipe that Cheeky Kitchen used.  And, this is what I got:

 Pretty cool, huh?  Each layer is obviously a different color, but they are also different flavors.  The red one is raspberry with pureed raspberries; orange has orange zest and orange juice; lemon has lemon zest and juice, as does the lime, with lime zest and juice.  I whirled up some blueberries for the blue layer, and blackberries for the violet layer.  (Indigo was put in the corner and had to wait this one out.  I suppose I could have gone right on out on the crazy tree limb and made a 7th layer for indigo, combining blueberry and blackberry, but I feel that 6 layers was quite enough, thank you.  "ROYGBV" works just fine in my spectrum.)

While making this cake, I felt a kinship with Tim "The Toolman" Taylor--I got all the tools and a lot of enthusiasm, but I might be a little lacking in the innate talent department.

The slippery slide down the path of baking construction started out auspiciously, when I borrowed 3 8-inch cake pans from Linna to add to the 3 8-inch pans I already had  and discovered that I have no idea how to measure.  I have 9-inch cake pans, and as with most things, an inch makes a BIG difference.  And, really cake pan manufacturers, is it so hard to put the size on the darn pans?  Pyrex manages to do it...just sayin'.

You know that I have already mixed the cake batter up and divided it out and mixed the colors and flavors in by the time that I discovered the discrepancy.  I call Linna in a panic, and she talks me off the ledge and assures me that I can just run a little cool water in the pans after I take the first 3 layers out to cool, and I should be fine to bake the next three layers.

I am very concerned about making sure that my batter is divided evenly--the recipe says to scoop out 6 cups and divided them in to 6 different 1-cup containers.  I double-checked that all the layers had the same amount of batter by weighing them to make sure they all weighed the same before adding the fruit and color.  I was kinda proud of myself for thinking of that method, if I do say so myself.  (Yes, if you look closely, that is a ladybug toaster on my counter, which was a wonderful Christmas present from Linna.)

When I added the fruit for the red, blue,and purple layers, I measured out 4 oz of each fruit before pureeing it and adding it to the batter.

Yep, that is ladybug tea kettle...

Before I put the pans in the oven, I spun them around and tried to make sure that I had distributed the batter evenly in each pan.  I have no idea what happened in the split second that it took me to stop the spinning the pans and toss them in the oven, but they came out in all different depths.  I was rather surprised when the green layer came out, and it was significantly flatter than the other 5 layers.  I had expected that the red, blue, and purple layers might have been a bit thicker, because they had more ingredients with addition of the pureed fruit.  I assume there must have been some sort of extra reaction to the acidity in the lime juice which caused it not to rise more.  (If I'm wrong, don't tell me...just let me add it to the mythos and madness of what I think baking should be...it will keep me happy and stop me from over analyzing my fool ass off.)  I was afraid to try and level them, especially that ol' green layer...Hulk say leveling bad.  Besides, I figure I can fill in the gaps with icing. (Hah!  I can hear you all laughing about this now.)

I watched them very carefully, since my oven tends to run a little hot, and did my best not to overcook them, and started preparing the icing.  I used the Billowed White Chocolate recipe from Cheeky Kitchen's original post, which involves 2 sticks of butter, a bag of white chocolate chips, milk, and 3 pounds of powdered sugar.  Yeah, that was 3 pounds and not a typo.  I am fascinated with how you can take an enormous amount of powered sugar and have it absorbed by a small amount of liquid and become frosting.  When I turned to the Internet to find out why, I got distracted by this post of baking substitutions on Joy of Baking and remembered that I really needed to finish this post...

The icing just about did my little hand mixer in...at this point in the evening, I did not have the strength nor the mental acuity to wrestle with the stand mixer.  Besides, I think my stand mixer hates me, because it knows I don't have any baking genetics.  The frosting came together well; it was just hard going at times when adding in a fresh dump of powdered sugar..."dump" might not be the best word to use here, but I'm going with it anyway.

I start stacking and frosting and stacking and frosting, until I end up with something that looks like the Leaning Tower of Cake-a.  I put about 5-6 long wooden barbecue skewers in to try and hold the cake together while I finished frosting it, so the whole thing wouldn't slide off into the floor, possibly crushing the Goldfish and have the other two devil poodles in cake and frosting sugar coma heaven.

Frosting this cake is tiring and a real arm workout. After I get frosting all over the cake and me, I decide that I am throwing it into the fridge overnight and dealing with it tomorrow.  Hopefully, it will magically straighten up and be perfect when I pull it out.  Because, you know I wasn't just making this completely for my own amusement...I was going to inflict it on people who were Coming Over.

A couple of hours before the victims guests were to arrive, I pulled it  and the rest of the frosting out of the fridge to soften and come to room temp before trying to finish it off.  Kimma showed up early, and I immediately threw myself at her mercy, handed her an offset spatula, and begged her to "fix it."  She smoothed out the icing, filled in the gaps, and then we sprinkled multicolored sugar on it to liven up the stark white frosting.  It was pretty darn impressive looking, all tall and white, and not quite so leaning, if I do say so myself.

At this point, I have ingested so much cake batter and frosting in the process, trying to determine how the finished product will taste, that I am so over and done with this cake that I can barely stand to look at it.  My guests are brave and try it, proclaiming it to be delicious, and that all the fruity layers seem to work together...which is good, because I had visions of it tasting like a bad bowl of Froot Loops.  Everyone seems to have a favorite layer, and not necessarily the same flavor.  I was sort of worried about all the flavors, because in tasting the batter before baking, the purple/blackberry layer was the only one that seemed remotely edible.  Amazing what a little heat and a tone of frosting can do, isn't it?

I foist off as much as I could on folks and wrapped up a couple of slices to throw in the freezer, waiting until I could work up my nerve and appetite to try it.  The Poodle Sitter came over the night before Thanksgiving, and she was pretty excited about the rainbow cake, so we pulled some out of the freezer to try.  And, you know what?  It was pretty tasty.  It was moist and tender, even after being in the freezer, and the fruit flavors really did taste fruity and light and did not clash with each other.  I think my favorite layer was the purple one (blackberry), followed in a close second by red (raspberry).

Lessons Learned

First and foremost, I would not attempt this cake again in a single session...especially not on a work night.  It's a 2-day project at the very least.  If I ever get crazy enough to do this again, I will definitely make the layers in advance and refrigerate or freeze them.

I would also like a better frosting recipe...as much as I hate to say it, the old standby cream cheese frosting might have worked better for this cake.  The white chocolate one that I used was just too sweet and didn't really have any flavor but sweet, if that makes any sense.  I am right fond of marshmallow icings, and I realize they might be an acquired taste, but I think that would have went well, as would a basic butter cream or 7-minute.

And, I will start leveling my cakes better...even if the green layer becomes nothing more that a sliver between the yellow and blue.

Also, since this started life as a box mix and all the fruity flavors seemed to turn out well, I'm thinking that might be a tasty way to quickly jazz up the cake and have something a little bit out of the ordinary when you need a cake in a pinch.

Part of me (probably the logical rational part that I keep buried in a box) says give up and leave well enough alone and stick to the Bundt cake, because it is hard to screw one of those up.  Bundts always looks nice and neat, with those handy lines for portion control.  The Crow side, the wild and crazy part that is sucked in by bright colors and shiny things, is wondering if we can conceivably turn this rainbow cake thing into a Bundt and then cover it with those little silver dragees.  Luckily, Crow is in her cage and distracted from picking the lock because I threw in one of those Fushigi balls to keep her occupied.

Am not completely sure why it's art and why "everyone loves" it, but it keeps her out of baking trouble...

Chicken & Champagne

It was a damned hot summer here, and I grilled out like nobody's business.  I even ran out of propane, and a tank usually lasts me a year.  (Not going to debate the charcoal versus gas thing...yes, I prefer charcoal, but I also like to grill on the spur of the moment, which is hard to do if you are waiting for coals.)  I even grilled so much that I ended up getting a new grill, because the grates on the old one were wearing through.

R., a friend and former co-worker who now lives in Food Central of the Pacific Northwest (and we are jealous!), sent me a marinade recipe for chicken that he had at a cookout.  He said it was so good that his son forsook pork chops in favor of this chicken, which really piqued my interest--pork over chicken?  The heresy!!  He didn't provide a name for it, but I have dubbed it Sake Chicken, because it has sake in it...brilliant, am I not?

Most of us know sake as the drink they serve in sushi bars and, to my palate, may as well be called Asian moonshine...it always tastes very harsh to me.  It come hot, in cute little bottles with cute little cups, or cold in cedar boxes with salt on the rim.  And that's about the extent of the average person's knowledge of sake...and mine too, up until this post.

As it happens, the day I was out looking for ingredients to this marinade, I went to Earth Fare, our newest food market and total bane of my bank account.  While wandering through the amazingly well-stocked cheese and wine section, just past the olive bar of no return, there is a vendor offering sake tastings.  I am intrigued, of course, because who turns down a free drink?  I look at offerings, and the one that really sticks out is a bottle with a pale milky pinkish liquid...is that sake or just the bottle?  No matter, it's pretty, so it must be good!

This sake is Snow Maiden sake, and it gets its name from a breed of koi, which are ornamental carp.  It is a nigorizake, or "cloudy" sake, which is why it appears milky in my little plastic cup.

The vendor starts babbling about how the garden variety sake you get in sushi bars is essentially crap...sounds like she thinks it's one step above paint thinner.  She starts waxing and waning about how to tell "good" sake, that you need to be able to tell the prefecture that it came from, the type of rice it was made from, heck, possibly the color of the master brewer's underwear.  I sort of tune her out, because I'm just here for the free drink, and I think that sake is sake, and it can't be all that different from the sushi bar house sake.  Yeah, you knew I was wrong about that, didn't you?  I was totally surprised by the Snow Maiden. 

It was smooth and creamy, a bit nutty, and not anything at all like the harsher sake that I've had in the past.  I'm acquiring a whole new respect for this stuff, and I might go so far as to actually order it at dinner or buy it for home consumption.  However, I am not using it as a marinade ingredient.  While the Snow Maiden is not horrifically expensive, I think the garden variety Gekkeikan will be just fine...and it might be quite possible to leave it out altogether, but you would need to add something for acidity, I think...maybe a flavored vinegar.  Or, I can lend you a cup, because you know I'm not drinking this stuff.

Sake Chicken

4 lbs of chicken (breasts, thighs, tenderloins--your preference; I used boneless skinless breasts, but I'm sure boneless or bone-in parts are fine)

1/2 cup soy sauce

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup ketchup (I am a firm believer in Heinz and only Heinz for my ketchup needs)

1/4 cup sake

1 Tbsp. sesame oil

1 inch or so ginger root (peeled and grated)

1-2 cloves garlic (grated)

1/2 bunch of green onions, chopped

Method

(NOTE:  I made the recipe using the full amount of marinade and only 2 pounds of chicken.  I would suggest doubling the marinade if you use the full amount of chicken...it makes a wonderful dipping sauce.)

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients, including the sugar.  Use a Microplane grater to grate the peeled ginger into the marinade, and then use a garlic press to smash up the garlic and add it, or grate with the Microplane.  Thinly slice the green onions and add to the marinade.

Place the chicken parts in a zippered freezer bag and add the marinade.  Seal and marinate at least 2 hours, up to overnight.  Remove from the marinade, reserving the liquid, and grill until done.  Place the reserved marinade in a small sauce pan and heat until boiling.  Boil for at least 5 minutes to reduce and also make the marinade safe to use as a dipping sauce.  Serve sauce along side the chicken or pour over.

This is some mighty fine, lip-smacking chicken.  I made some rice and steamed a little broccoli to go with it, and it was a fabulous feast. 

I know I'm a little lax in my posting these days (yes, okay, VERY lax!), but honestly, I have not cooked ir eaten anything highly exciting lately...well, wait...there was the Great Pink Champagne Cake experiment.

I was scheduled to have lunch with a group of ladies that I used to work with, and one of them was just coming off of chemo (for the evil breast cancer), and it was also her birthday, so we decided to surprise her with a cake and cards.  So, I volunteered for dessert, because my friends are very good at encouraging me in my efforts (and probably because I can always bring a killer banana pudding if all else fails). Since it was her birthday and the whole Save the Ta-tas theme of pink, I thought I would like to do a Pink Champagne Cake.  Remember the rose-shaped Bundt pan?  From the time I opened that as a gift, I have wanted to do a Pink Champagne Cake.  I've read about them, and they just sound yummy.

So, off to the Internets I go to search out a recipe and maybe some tips and hints.  I found a recipe at GoodThings Catered blog, and it sounded good, and all the commenters were pretty rah-rah about it.  The only thing that is odd is the inclusion of powdered milk.  I hate reconstituted powder milk with a white-hot passion...we used to have it occasionally for lunch at my kindergarten, and I refused to drink it then, and I ain't agonna drink now.  So, any recipes to pass along to use the remainder of the box of powdered milk would be greatly appreciated.  (Yeah, I guess I could have used regular milk, but I wasn't quite sure why it called for powdered milk, and I am such a baking 'fraidy cat that I always make it by the book when making a cake for the first time.)  I make the cake in the Rose pan...after spraying it within an inch of its little Bundt life with some Baker's Joy.  No stickage!!   Whoo hoo!

While the cake cools, I find a recipe for a Champagne Glaze--it's hard to frost a Bundt, much less a rose-shaped Bundt, so I thought a glaze would be good.  It essentially was a simply syrup with champagne and butter.  How bad could that be?  Yeah, pretty bad.  It was like syrupy butter...the smell of the champagne was good, but the taste was almost non-existent.  I added more champagne, but it was just too buttery tasting.  I know, buttery is not usually bad, but in this case it was, because there was no balance.  The butter flavor overwhelmed the glaze.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with the cake, because it's just not what I had in mind when I started this project, and I decide to make another cake, but this time as a regular 2-layer cake.  I know I'm not the world's best baker, and I kind of suck at icing and decorating, but what did I have to lose?  If you slather enough buttercream icing on a cake, people will eat it it, no matter how lumpy it is.

While the second cake cooked, I surfed the web and checked Facebooks to see what my peeps were up to...probably not at home wrecking their kitchens on a Friday night, that's for sure.  I spy a link in someone's status to this post at inchmark.squarespace.com.  This is a pretty cute cake, and it seems like it should be pretty easy to do...then, I read the blog author used to be senior art director at Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Kids.  Crap.  Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound at this point.  It's midnight, and I gotta figure out something for that cake.

And, really, how hard can it be?  It's royal icing piped on wax paper and left to harden overnight.  Famous last words.  Royal icing is a bitch to work with, because that stuff will harden like cement in a matter of minutes.  So, I had to keep it covered while coloring it and piping it.  And, you know, anytime you use food coloring, especially late at night in semi-panic mode, things are going to get wild.  Hollywood, who has a very bad habit of sitting practically on my feet while I am in the kitchen, ended up with a bright pink top knot after I dripped icing on him when I tripped over him...the oven door was similarly coated in the same incident.

And, of course, it took me to the last set of dots to actually get the hang of it and feel good about my dot making. 

The next morning, I get up and stumble into the kitchen, which looked like Barbie exploded in it, not to mention that one of the poodles was still pink.  All in all, we were looking at a qualified success here...snort.  The dots looked pretty good; they held their shape and seemed to have dried okay.  I start peeling them up and poking them onto the cake, and it's working like a charm.  Those Martha Stewart folks really know their stuff.  A couple of the larger dots were a little too flexible and could have used a little more drying time...they cracked just a little, but this was actually turning into a bonafide success story.   Check it out; it looks pretty good for rank ol' amateur me. 

I went ahead and took the rose-shaped cake, too, and dusted it with a little powdered sugar.  I figure it you don't like icing, then you had an option.  I was bit underwhelmed by the actual eating of the cake...maybe I was just pink champagned-caked out, but it was not all that and a bag of fondant.  It tasted okay, but it wasn't fabyooolous by any means.  And, I don't know if it was me or the recipe...I'm willing to go with a little of both, just to save some face here, plus the dots are darned cute.

I will totally try the dot thing again, and I liked Inchmark's suggestion of how to successfully pipe letters for decorating as well.  I think shall work on mastering dots first, then maybe some punctuation, before I try an actual letter.  And, next time, I will give the dots more time to dry.  The leftover dots that dried for about 15 hours were perfect--easy to pick up, no cracking.

Oh, and the poodle is no longer pink.

Rollin' Out the Red...

...Velvet that is. Yep, you know it's holiday time at Poodlevania when the kitchen looks like a set for Saw XXIV or whatever number that unholy franchise is up to now.

Seriously, I feel that it is my duty to seek out and consume as much red velvety goodness as I possibly can during the month of December...for some reason, it doesn't taste the same during any other time of the year. Probably goes back to my grandmother only making it during the holidays, so it really was a special treat.

(Do not get me wrong--you put a slab of Red Velvet cake in front of me in the middle of July, I'm eating it...don't even try to stop me. "Seasonal" only goes so far...)

So, I'm in the process of making my first one this year, and I have decided to try something new. I know, I know, it sound sacrilegious, but sometimes, you just have to think outside the cake pan.

I was going through the recipe folder in my inbox and found one for a Red Velvet Roll cake. Never having made a roll cake before, I thought why the hell not? Plus, I'm supposed to bring something to a party tonight, so why not experiment! These are probably famous last words...

Here's the recipe, and I'm not really sure where the heck I got it. I apologize profusely for not giving credit. However, I think I got it from the Baking Bites blog, because it seems to be the exact same recipe, but I am not 100% sure. I could have gotten it from somewhere else on the vast Internets, and that person swiped it from Baking Bites.

Red Velvet Roll Cake

3/4 cup sifted cake flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a jelly roll pan (approximately 17"x12"x1") with aluminum foil and grease it well with some vegetable oil or cooking spray.

Sift together sifted cake flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into asmall bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs together with an electric mixer on high speed. Once they are frothy, slowly add in the sugar. Beat until light, approximately 5 minutes. Beat in the vegetable oil, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food coloring. Working steadily, but gradually, mix in the cocoa mixture with the electric mixer at a low speed.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 12-15 minutes, until cake springs back when lightly pressed in the center.

While cake is baking, sift some confectioners' sugar onto a large, clean dish towel. When you remove the cake from the oven, carefully flip it over onto the dish towel. Peel off the foil (it should come off easily because it was greased) and roll the cake up in the dish towel, beginning with a short end.

Place cake, hot but wrapped in the towel, seam-side down on a wire rack to cool completely (at least 1 hour). Prepare filling (below) while it cools.

Cream Cheese Filling

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat all ingredients together until light and spreadable. When cake is cool, gently unwrap it and spread the inside with the filling. Re-roll and place on a serving platter. Dust with more confectioners' sugar before serving. Serves 8-10

The batter for this cake was extremely thin and seemed a bit more cocoa-ey than a regular Red Velvet. I jacked up the food coloring a bit, because I like my Red Velvet to be r-e-d. Otherwise, it's just a dirty brown chocolate cake. And, I was kind of worried about what it would look like, based on the sheer amount of cocoa...this was really leaning into the "dirty brown" category.

I used parchment paper as well, instead of foil, because I could and I had more parchment than foil in the cabinet. I don't know if that change contributed to the outcome or not...'cause you know there was an "outcome.'

The hardest part at first was trying to get the batter evenly spread over over the parchment lined pan. Of course, one side has to be thinner than the other, always. I envy people who can get their batters even for cakes...envy them.

So, I cook the cake for about 12 minutes, popped it out onto the dish towel and removed the parchment. I rolled it up in the towel, knocking over the box of vanilla extract on the counter. Hmm...it was a new bottle of vanilla, still in the box, which meant I forgot to put it in the cake. Yeah. Well, hell, with all that cocoa powder, who is going to notice if there's a wispy little note of vanilla or not.

I pulled the cake out and rolled it in the dish towel...so far, so good, but it really is more brown than red. I cooled it for the requisite hour, unrolled it, and spread the filling inside. During the unrolling process, part of the cake stuck to the towel...sort of like the "skin" of the cake. The resultant "log" looked like it had the mange or some other affliction.

I dutifully cut the ends off to tidy it up and ate them and was extremely disappointed. It was dry and too chocolatey...not red velvety enough.

The ends/edges were drier because the batter didn't spread evenly, but there really was way too much cocoa powder involved in this train wreck of a cake. I think if I were to make it again, I would definitely reduce the amount of cocoa...and feel free to chime in with suggestions of your own. Also, more red food coloring. Don't care that it might make me crazy or cause tumors, I want me some R-E-D velvet cake. Besides, I think I already are crazy.

I had some serious misgivings about the amount of cocoa in the recipe, because this is not really a chocolate cake...I've read articles and other blogs' posts about it being just a "chocolate cake colored red," but it's not. Most of the recipes call for 2 tablespoons at the most, which is half the cocoa in this recipe. IMSBO (that would be "in my seriously biased opinion," the cocoa's purpose is to give more complexity and depth to the cake's flavor and not be overwhelming...sort of like all those fancy wine descriptions that involve "hints of oak and notes of kumquat." (When kumquat start writing you notes, then you know you've had too much wine...I'm just sayin'.)

However, the one good thing to come out of this is that the parchment paper was a great success in keeping the cake from sticking. I like that part.

And, all was not totally lost for the day, because I made a smacking good dip, which was the main thing I was taking to the party anyway, and I'll post that recipe in my next entry, 'cause I'm tired and I have to get some sleep and put on my game face for the customer tomorrow...kind of like the Fat Dog.

Strawberry Gal

When I was a child, I read a series of "regional America" books by Lois Lenski, who wrote about girls and boys in and around the South and other areas of the country. I remember reading Strawberry Girl when I was about 8 or so, and thinking that I was glad I didn't have neighbors like the Slatterys, and that I didn't have to pick strawberries...even though I like to eat them.

Florida strawberries seem to be in season now--my local Publix has them for 3 quarts for $5.00. The berries are a nice deep red, and more importantly, they smell like strawberries. It's sometimes a crap shoot as to whether or not they taste as good as they smell, and the ones I've had lately have been pretty good.

Then, I was reading Slashfood last week, and they had a link to this page with a very, very attractive fresh strawberry Bundt cake. It looks beautiful and sounds pretty simple...which is where I always get into trouble with the baking, you know.

I had strawberries, I had a lemon and eggs, so why not whip it up? So, I start working on the puree--about 1.5 quarts of strawberries will make 1.5 cups of pureed strawberries. That might not be an exact ratio, because at first, it was seeming like 1 quart of strawberries = 1.5 cups of puree, but then I read the recipe again and noticed the part where Dash of Sass says to strain the puree. Strawberry seeds are crunchy little buggers when appearing in quantity, so I'm in agreement that it's probably a good idea to strain.

I get out my little wire mesh strainer and it's not fine enough. I try another strainer, and again it seems not to be working. I rummage around in the kitchen gadgetry and find a package of cheesecloth. I take a square of it and put it in the strainer and start trying to strain out the seeds again. This is so not working like I envisioned it. The puree is thick and doesn't want to drip out in a nice rapid fashion and leave the seed behind...and this makes me impatient. 'Cause I'm not the most patient of bakers, I start trying to speed up the process.

I think that maybe I gather up the edges of the cheesecloth, forming a little pouch, and gently squeeze it to force more of the liquid and solids out, leaving the seeds behind. Yeah, great theory. I squeeze and the top of the little pouch explodes, and my kitchen counter starts looking like CSI: Muffin Man.

Let's just say that I probably have more seeds in the batter than one would ideally like to have in the batter, but we'll just call it Rustic Strawberry Cake and let it go. (And this was why it took a half a quart more of strawberries for the puree.)

Like Dash of Sass, I only had all-purpose flour, so I hit the Internet and found a formula to add baking powder and salt to my AP flour to get self-rising. And, I was out of red food coloring, so my batter was not as pretty in pink as hers. But it was in the pink family (pinkish-beige is pink, right?), and since it was pink, I decided to make it in a rose-shaped Bundt pan that was a Christmas gift from Linna several years ago.

Granted, the first time I made a cake in the rose pan, I didn't get all the nooks and crannies properly oiled and floured, and it was an unmitigated disaster trying to get the cake out. Now, that I have discovered Pam for Baking or Baker's Joy, both cooking sprays with flour designed for baking, I feel much more confident in getting things out pans now. (And, I don't care about the naysayers who say that the cooking spray with flour thing is bad for your baking, blah, blah, blah...these people have never had to chisel cake out of a rose-shaped pan. And, using a cooking spray is the absolute least of my worries with baking...the very least.)

I don't seem to have as much batter as the recipe's author seems to think I should--3 round pans worth? So, I start to worry that I screwed up the converting of plain flour to self-rising flour, but there does seem to be too much for the Bundt pan. So, I grab a muffin tin and make 6 cupcakes as well...which probably would be good with the cream cheese frosting listed in the recipe, but who thinks ahead to the frosting part, when whipping up that spur of the moment cake? Most people do, I'm sure.

Besides, it's a Bundt cake... I really just need a glaze, right? Right?

So, I pop the cake out when the cake tester comes out clean, having taken the cupcakes out a little earlier, and after cooling in the rack for 10 minutes, it popped right out of the pan, rose petal detailing intact. Whoo hoo! I think...this is going great!

I mixed up a little sugar glaze and dribbled it over the cake...which was really more beige than pink by now, and got ready to eat a slice. Yeah, that whole picture worth a thousand words thing? or launching ship or something? I should just stop with the baking attempts and stick to desserts that don't have to rise or bake completely, etc. With this pan, I think I needed to put the cake tester in closer to the tube, because the part closest to the middle...still a little underdone.

And the cake itself was just bleh. It smelled like strawberries, but it just sort of underwhelmed me with the flavor, or lack of flavor. Maybe, the strawberries weren't as ripe as they looked and smelled, although the ones I tasted were pretty sweet. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating about half of the cake, but that was in the interests of science, I tell you...Science!

But all was not lost, culinarily-wise last week...I made a rockin' sausage lentil soup in the Crock-pot that I'll write about later. It was most redeeming.