Cake is Tax-Free

Another tax season done, and another pair of cakes to celebrate the occasion.  I wanted to duplicate and elaborate over last year's delicious cakes offerings, and looked to increase the complexity of both taste and presentation.

Cake the First: Adding Machine
Devil's Food Stout Cake with Raspberry Italian Meringue Buttercream Filing

The underlying theme for both cakes this year was "cook with what you like to drink." For the first cake, I paired Ninkasi Oatis with a devil's food cake.

While researching Italian meringue recipes online, a common fix to any meringue-whipping troubles was to "just keep whipping" and the filing should straighten itself out. Lies. I eventually just gave up, mixed in a bunch of raspberries and smeared it all over the cake.

The YouTube "how-to" videos about draping fondant over an oblong cake did prove to be useful though, and my food pen brought my cake vision to life.

Will not do math

Cake the Second: Master Tax Guide 
Ginger Rum Cake with Citrus Curd Filing and Candied Citrus Peel and Candied Habanero

The second cake was a bit more complicated as it included components that I hadn't ever attempted before.

I made the citrus curd filing a couple days ahead just in case I screwed it up, proceeded to eat most of it on waffles, then made a second batch so that I'd have enough.

 A small part of me wanted to shape the rectangle into a tax guide just so I could snack on the scraps.

While I don't see Geordi LaForge selling this book to kids any time soon, tax accountants got a kick out of it.

Maybe it was just the fully functioning flask of rum that I brought to work...

I think the best compliment I got was when I showed the adding machine cake to a non-accountant, she thought I was weird for just randomly having a picture of an adding machine on my phone. It's not weird, it's scrumptious.

--Isaac.

Playing With Our Food

Can't get enough bacon and/or pie? Us neither. Here is the next best thing to get your fix after you have cooked the last bacon strip and sliced the last piece of pie:

Bacon v. Pie: The Game!

Collect ingredients and create delectable bacon and pie dishes to persuade the town to cast their support for either bacon or pie!

Beta testing is currently underway, and bacon has been the big winner so far.

So far...

--Isaac.

Sometimes Cake Happens

I don't always bake a cake, but when I do, it is probably Mary's birthday and it is absolutely a banana cake. And delicioso.

I could claim that I like baking pies better because I don't get frosting all over me up to my elbow trying to frost the damn cake. But that wouldn't hold much merit as I am usually covered in flour when I finally get that pie in the oven.

I wanted to do a little different tweak on the 2013 edition of the banana birthday cake. Since I had a ton of bananas laying around even after pulverizing enough for the recipe and for quality control, I thought about trying to incorporate the fresh fruit for decoration and to kick up the banana-ness of the baked good.

I first tried to brulee some banana slices with the idea of decoratively places them around the cake top. Not good. I just ended up cooking the banana with the blowtorch and the burnt sugar didn't want to stay on the slices.

Ok, new plan: caramelized banana compote to be used as a filing.

Winner. The layer of banana filling was a perfect accompaniment in between the two cake layers in place of the standard inside layer of cream cheese frosting.

The matching purple sprinkles and purple plate seal the deal.

--Isaac.

Smokin'

The Traeger has been working overtime so far in 2013. I think some of the local livestock farmers are going to move their farms to the park down the block just to save on transportation costs from their pastures to my kitchen.

Out of all the awesomeness that has found its way onto the grill grates, the pork ribs on Super Bowl Sunday have been the clear winner so far.

Three hours in

I used the "3-2-1" method that all the BBQ professionals supposedly commonly use in competitions: Three hours on the grill at 180 degrees, two hours wrapped in foil at 225 degrees, then finished for one long final agonizing hour sauced straight back on the grill. I used a butter knife to cut up the ribs for serving when a dull, plastic spork would have likely been plenty. This is the way ribs were meant to be eaten.

I've tried pork shoulder a couple times to varying success, once for some carintas action and once for pulled pork. The recipe I am trying to follow is for a full bone-in pork shoulder, and I've been using small cuts of boneless shoulder, so I may just have to go all out one of these days.

Since the start of fun times tax season, I've haven't been able to get in much extended smoking time, and have just stuck with sub-60 minute meals.

Chicken and Veg

Brats and Onions

Delicious and Awesome.

--Isaac.

National Pie Day II

I found myself in a familiar situation this year. The Niners in the NFC Championship, my pie in local pie contest on National Pie Day (observed). Last year, all teams lost, so I was hoping that at least one of us would bring home the gold this year.

A couple days before my self imposed Christmas break (cashing in a bunch of PTO before losing it), I saw that the second annual pie contest was a go. At the time, I was stuck in the middle of a fun tax accounting class at PDX and thus I spent the rest of the afternoon listening intently to the speaker sketching pie presentation ideas.

I was present for the judging over the summer, and I noticed that there is a lot of room in the pie contest world for grandiose, over the top presentations. Why should birthday and wedding cakes get all of the decoration fun anyways?

My day dreaming during class ultimately led to a fantastic pie-vision: a chocolate silk pie topped with seafoam meringue, inside of a rum-poached spiced pear pie, topped with a pirate ship battling a kraken: "The Pie-rate and The Octo-pie".

I'd been mulling the idea of doing a pie within a pie for a while, kind of like how you can get a pizza that is half pepperoni and half veggie split down the middle. I thought a circular pie sitting in the middle would be a little more impressive that just a pie divided in two. During some internet browsing for pie crust decoration ideas, I stumbled across some pictures of a pirate ship made out of pie crust, and knew that was a winner.

Since pirate ships cruised around the ocean, I wanted the center pie to play off of that imagery, and my first thought was chocolate filing with seafoam frosting. The pie surrounding my ocean-scape therefore needed to represent the land, so I considered a fruit filling and crumble topping to represent the land and sand. I settled on a spiced pear filling because I felt that it would pair (pun!) with the chocolate, and I could booze the pears up with some black spiced rum.

The plan was set, now I just needed to practice.  I first made mini pear and chocolate silk pies separately just to test the recipes in a simple manner. They turned out nice, so I knew I was on to something good:

Next, I did a mock-up of the pie within a pie concept. Since the pear portion was going to be baked in the crust, I made the outer edge first, and used a ramekin in the middle to hold the void where there chocolate silk was going to be poured.

Then, the day before the contest, I made some pirate ship molds out of foil mini loaf pans and baked up pirate ships made from pie crust. I think every pie needs one now. I also made my kraken the night before out of marzipan.

I think the final product really represented my initial inspiration:

While the pie didn't win, it sure was a show-stopper when I walked into the pie shop on the day of the contest with a pie topped with a frickin' pirate ship battling a frickin' kraken. Oh, you made a nice lattice weave on your pie? That's nice. I made a pirate ship. Fighting a kraken. I'd like to think that I raised the bar for pie presentation. Y'all been served.

Oh. And Niners. Super Bowl. Let's get it!

--Isaac.

2012 Holiday Season Part 2: Christmas

Much like our Thanksgivings, our Christmases turned into a marathon. I'm pretty sure I was 80% Christmas cookies by the end of it. The other 20% was likely rum. And while we didn't match Vince Vaughn's "Four Christmases" in quantity, we far surpassed him in quality (dude needs an "off" switch).

Christmas The First:

We started in St. Helen's with Mary's immediate family. I led off with a very solid apple pie with a pecan crumble topping:

The pie came in handy when I needed to drown out my sorrows of having to watch the Niners get embarrassed on national TV by the Seahawks. (Guess it has turned out alright now though as the Niners are in the Super Bowl!)

Christmas The Second:

The festive tour continued the next day with Mary's extended family. The proteins were covered by the hosts, so I roasted some Traeger vegetables. I think one of everything from the produce section is represented below:

And an excellent Emma Torte made an appearance. So that was nice.

 

Christmas The Third:

Day three of three was an extended stay at my family, first with the immediate peeps, and then with the extended. The salmon I smoked and took to my parents on Thanksgiving got invited back for Christmas. But since we inhaled it in record time and it ceased to be many weeks prior, I couldn't invite it back and so had to get bring a new smoked salmon. A younger, hotter smoked salmon.

I'm pretty sure we plowed through it before the extended family arrived.

Another successful three month holiday marathon. Having a house the entire time helped, as did a stellar showing by the magical Traeger. Mostly the Traeger.

--Isaac.