lizzardtears muses : September 2020

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

X for Xtra-special celebration cake

This cake turned out to be a lot more extra special than I realized it was going to be. I made this for my last big outing before the world came to a standstill. So yeah, I made it months ago.

I have wanted to make this cake, ever since I can remember I wanted this cake, but this cake was not meant to exist in my childhood. My mom had a favorite chocolate cake recipe which she insisted on using anytime she made a chocolate cake, and while it was a perfectly delicious chocolate cake it was not this cake and I longed for this cake. I longed for a large double layer with lollipops standing at attention showing me how bright and happy a chocolate cake could be.

This as it turns out though is the first time, I have ever made this cake. I don’t know why I never made it as an adult, I had longed after it so as a child, one would think I would have just done it, but, no I didn’t even think of it. Instead I have made several other chocolate cakes, including some not so great ones. One of the best chocolate cakes I have ever made was from a Betty Crocker cookbook at two in the morning. I am never up that late, but a friend was staying over and we decided we wanted cake and totally lost track of the time. I have never been able to replicate that cake again, no matter how many times I retried the recipe it never turned out the same, there can be magic when baking with friends. The worst chocolate cake recipe I ever made was a devil’s food cake from a world cake book, which has many, many wonderful cake recipes, but falls flat on the devil’s food. I didn't understand how a devil’s food cake be so lacking in chocolate, so I tried it twice thinking I probably messed it up the first time before deciding it was just a bad recipe.

In any case this recipe had a wide range to fall into. I figured it couldn’t be worse than the devil’s food cake, it would be almost impossible to be worse than that, but could it be as good as or better than the Betty Croker cake?

Turns out it could be just as good. I was pleasantly surprised at how delicious, fluffy, and moist this cake was, with a wonderful chocolate flavor to it as well. I was also impressed with how well the lollipops actually tasted with cake. I didn’t think I would enjoy that, but it was really good. They totally knew what they were talking about when they made this recipe. Another thing I found out is this cake is vegan. It uses baking soda and vinegar to rise.

I sure wish I had realized it had no eggs in it when I was a child. I spent a lot of time wishing for eggless desert recipes when we were out of eggs, this would have been perfect. But at the time I was unaware you could even make a cake without eggs. Oh the things we can learn if we just keep looking.

I did however totally erase the vegan-ness by making the frosting with cream and butter. The recipe calls for already made chocolate frosting, so I made one out of my Betty Croker cook book. While none of us are Vegan, in the event someone becomes vegan or we make a vegan friend this would be a good cake to make. I can definitely make vegan frosting.

This ended up being a wonderful cake and everyone enjoyed it. It was so much fun going out with everyone and sending them home with cake. We chitchatted a lot about how we were going to things like that more often and I hope in the future we will be able too. A funny thing though, we did some carpooling for this outing, using my car as the main car. A month or so later I was cleaning my car and opened up the back, and what did I find? someone had left their piece of cake. Oh no! It made me laugh though because it really showed how much I don’t get in the back of my car.

Another fun thing about this cake is sometimes we play an alphabet game where we choose a subject and try to name something that starts with every letter of the alphabet. thinking od a food or dessert to go with X is hard but we always fall back on this cake. anytime we have a new person play they tell us you can't use that for X, Extra starts with an E! we are quick to let them know not in the Alpha bakery book! so this cake always wins.

This is one I will make again when I can share it with everyone again. And when I do, I will make sure none of it is left in my car.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

W for Wonderful waffles.

I put off blogging too long and now don’t really remember much about these waffles.

They were Waffles I do remember that, and I had them with fresh blueberries, which the pictures reminded me of that. and also, real maple syrup, but I always eat waffles with real maple syrup I am a syrup snob so that was not hard to recall.

It seems I should have more to say about these then I do, as when I made them it was the first time in my life I have ever made waffles. I have eaten plenty of waffles, but I never had to make them. When I was a kid my mom used to make them from scratch all the time. We never had store bought waffles. But she didn’t make these waffles.

She made a simpler recipe. This one has you separate the eggs and beat whites till stiff then fold them into the batter at the end. whatever recipe she used was more just throw everything in, and truthfully it seems about the same result to me. I didn’t notice these being any fluffier than what we had as kids or even what my mom makes now, so I am wondering if the stiffened eggs are really worth the extra work.

I should try it without separating eggs and see. Now before you go telling me I probably over mixed while folding in the egg whites I will say I was very careful not to do that. And I have done the stiffened egg whites in cakes and seen a difference. It may just be this recipe, but I didn’t see it made much of a difference.

I will say these turned out well, but they were just a basic waffle, nothing to rave about. I think if I make them again, I will double the recipe, as this made a total of four rather small waffles.

My waffle maker is not very big and is supposed to turn out heart shaped waffles, but I didn’t fill it quite full enough to get the heart shapes. If I had it would have made only three waffles, which now that I am looking back in the book it says it only makes three 8” waffles, so maybe the fact I got four waffles at all is good enough.

Once I finish the book, I think I will go ahead and try them again without separating the egg see if it makes a difference. If it does, I will make sure to do a quick edit and put a note at the end of this post.
These wonderful waffles were good, but a lot of effort for very little payout so I do believe doubling the recipe is a good idea.

Thursday, September 10, 2020

V for veggie Bites.

Well I am officially so behind in blogging it’s funny. I should have gotten to blogging about this as soon as I found the pictures for the upside-down pineapple cake, but I put it off. I wish I could say I was doing something terribly productive, but I wasn’t. I am going to try to catch up though. Let’s see how that goes.

Ok so these are really good, and I have no idea why we never had them as children. It’s basically breaded vegetables maybe we would have eaten our veggies better if they were breaded. Of course, the key word in that sentence is maybe.

Like so many children my favorite food was not vegetables. They were something I only ate because I had too. When I was a kid the vegetables, I did like were Cheesy cauliflower, steamed spinach, potatoes, carrots and lettuce. So, I guess I did like some veggies, but if we had, had this I probably would have loved it.

It’s fairly simple to make, put the veggies in a egg, water mixture then bread the veggies in flour and salt then pour melted butter over them and bake. It turns out a crispy coated veggie of deliciousness.

Looking at the pictures I am realizing I didn’t picture the egg, or maybe its hiding behind something I have no idea but really there is an egg In this recipe.

The first time I had this recipe was only a few years ago my sister and niece made it one day and I was duly impressed. Thiers actually turned out better than mine, but mine was still good, and I will make this again. So far this book is everything I remember. The recipes are really good, and easy. There are the select few that are a tad more difficult but nothing too hard at all.