Red Velvet Birthday Cake

Recently a friend of mine celebrated a birthday, and I took the occasion as a chance to try out one of the many fabulous celebration cakes smitten kitchen has posted on her blog. (If you're wondering where I am when not posting on my blog, there's a good chance I'm reading hers.)

I chose to try my hand at Red Velvet Cake, as it seemed to have the best balance between being fun and birthday-like, while still being classy. The bottom line on this recipe: it was somewhat time-consuming, but a huge hit and it made my friend feel very special, so it was a good choice.

Now for the blow-by-blow. The recipe is a 3-layer cake, so I borrowed my mom's cake pans and was glad I did, because they have this little thing you run around the rim of the pan to get the layers out. I also lined the pans with parchment, per directions. (Post to follow where I did not follow these directions.) Getting ingredients was also interesting--cake flour was hard to find at Fareway, but the butcher was able to find it for me. I ended up going to Hyvee for the red food coloring, because it called for 3 oz (one of the largish bottles is 1 oz), and all you get at Fareway were those multipacks. I figured I'd have to buy like 20 multipacks to get enough. I did cut it down to 2 oz, and was satisfied with the result.

To explain the pictures, from top left, clockwise: The frosting is cream cheese frosting, and I made a double batch so as to be able to do a crumb coat, as seen here and explained here (you need to read this post if you want to do layer cakes!)--especially important with white frosting and red crumbs. The final coat was not perfect, but pretty close, as you can see in the third picture. The 2nd--well, my fingers got really red, as did pretty much everything in the kitchen. I was thankful for bleach for my towels, and I used paper towels to immediately wipe up the counter.

Decorating: I put a cookie cutter in the middle and sprinkled red sprinkles in the middle, spreading it around with a pastry brush. Then I tinted a bit of frosting and put dots all around the edge. Dots and circles are all the rage these days, for reasons I don't entirely understand.

The last two pictures are just to show how messy my counter got, and how I cleaned it all up in a matter of minutes thanks to my fabulous dishwasher. I love my new kitchen and its appliances!

Preserving fall's bounty

As we continue to live through the seasons' change, I continue to try to live out principles I was motivated by from reading Animal Vegetable Miracle this spring. I did some preserving of berries, zucchinni, tomatoes, and green beans this summer.

This fall I decided to concentrate on butternut squash and apples. When we were in MI for a cousin's wedding, we ran across some beautiful butternut squash for 18 cents a pound. Crazy, eh? I got 11 pounds for $2. That's about as cheap as food gets, and this food is good!

Easy squash recipe: Wash it. Prick it. Put it in a slow cooker whole (as seen in picture) with 1/2 inch of water. Cook on low until soft when pierced (4-7 hours). Remove; quarter lengthwise to cool. Scoop out flesh. Mash--add butter, ginger, salt, pepper, whatever--eat and then freeze the rest in freezer bags.

The applesauce is a little more time-consuming, but this is the easiest way I've found. Peel, core, and quarter the apples (I like to use my Pampered Chef cook's corer). Put in slow cooker. Shake cinnamon and sugar over them (I just guess on this, sorry!). Pour 1 cup or so apple juice or water over them. Cook on high until they're soft, about 2 hours. Mash, add sugar if needed.

I had visions of freezing a whole lot of applesauce too, but so far we've mostly fed it to guests. It goes great with ice cream (see picture) and/or yellow cake. I guess if we are using seasonal bounty to feed our guests that's a good thing too--it doesn't all have to be about preserving!

Purchasing notes: Fareway has 1/2 peck white tote bags of cooking and eating apples from Deals Orchard in Jefferson for 89 cents a pound, so that's a great convenient way to eat local and in-season! We've enjoyed the Fujis (may be done now), Red Delicious, and Jonathans.

New Auditorium!!

ps--for those of you who are curious about Cornerstone's recent building addition, click here (you'll also get a couple of cute kid pictures). Then come visit on Saturday afternoon for the Harvest Festival/Open House! (Details here.)

goodreads

We took a blogger vacation for about a week because we thought it had a virus--not entirely sure if it's cleared up, but we're giving it a shot.

I wanted to point out a new feature on our blog. If you look on the right hand side, underneath the list of recent posts, you should see some small book cover pictures. These are books I've read recently, most of them young adult books, and if you click on a book, you should be linked to my rating and whatever review I have posted of it.

Hopefully this will be a way for you readers to keep up with my reading if you're curious--and I've really been enjoying using goodreads as a way to organize books I've read, am reading, and want to read. I love being able to see the covers!

predicting the future

One definition of stupid is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Normally the way we predict what is going to happen in the future is by looking at the past. And it works pretty well. If I had to guess, the American League will win the All-Star game next year too, just like they have won the last dozen or so in a row. Were I into gambling and someone gave me that bet straight up, I would take it despite being a National League guy. But the thing is streaks eventually end. I remember a long time ago hearing about how the United States had won the "America's Cup" yahting race for alike a 100+ years in a row. And then some guys in New Zealand built some crazy boat that Dennis Conner still thinks was illegal and they win. I just looked it up and the US has not won the last four times.

I have been thinking about this as I have been listening to statistics like "inflation has averaged such and such over the last 20 years" or "The Stock Market has averaged such and such over the last 70 years." On the one hand, past track records are about the best thing we have to go on for predicting the future, but on the other streaks end. I like to think of someone in Augustine's day saying "The Roman Empire will not fall apart. People have been saying that it will happen for centuries and it never does." But of course it did. Or like assuming that the world will always go on like it has been going on for thousands of years. The reality is that there are unique events (the beginning of the universe for example). Empires rise and fall. We need to have the humility remember that all of our preditions are only predictions, not guarantees, and that the only solid guarantee is that eventually the streak will end.

too many stars

I have lots of theories. One of my theories about movies is that too many big name stars in the same movie is often a recipe for a disappointing movie. Big stars don't normally like bit parts and so you end up with movies where they try to gives serious time to 6-12 characters and you end up not really very connected with any of the characters. It is the same problem we still have when we put our olympic basketball teams together. Guys normally become big stars because they are good at scoring, but there is only one basketball to go around. The team needs to play (and even start) some guys who are really ok with not scoring a lot of points but who can play defense, rebound, and knock down an open shot if the person gaurding him tries to double team Lebron James. Three cheers for role players.

updates

Well, we've been away from the blog for a while. We've been clearing brush and pulling invasive plants out of our new backyard, organizing our new house, etc. etc. I've also been reading a lot of YA books (posting reviews on goodreads.com under username atuckness--I'd love to be your friend there!) and reading a few cooking blogs and trying out their recipes. I'll post some links to them in the next little while.

Here's a few pictures of things I've been making. I can't figure out how to get blogger to insert the pictures after the text, so sorry this is kind of out of order. Feel free to ask for specific instructions for any recipe you're curious about!

At the top is a photo of my efforts to preserve summer tomato loveliness. I used a friend's dehydrator and followed a recipe from the web; I was inspired by Animal Vegetable Miracle to try this. I used cute little plum tomatoes; it took forever to seed them (which I did so they'd dry faster)--if I do it next year I won't seed them. I froze them; later I'll throw them in olive oil and herbs and they should be just like the ones you buy in jars.

Next is a photo of a dinner that looks better than it tasted. I tried a seasoning mix for the rice and it was too salty; the fish was tough for some reason as well. The salad was great, and the sauce on the fish was okay.

We do enjoy a little bacon sometimes, as the next photo shows. I buy a package, split it into 4 bags, and freeze it so we just eat a little at a time. It adds nice flavor to bean recipes and is of course great with fried eggs and fried potatoes. A word to the wise--yukon golds make better fried potatoes than russets!

And last is a blueberry brie quesadilla from August--the original recipe was much more complicated, but it's delicious just as is--blueberries, brie, and a flour tortilla toasted on the stove.

Happy fall!