Black and White and Cake All Over

It's been a little while now since I baked like a maniac. Fortunately, one of my labmates again gave me a good excuse to destroy my kitchen. We decided to go with 4 dozen cupcakes and a two-tiered cake to match! I was really conflicted over what kind of cake I wanted to do. For some reason I was just stumped. Then, it came to me. My bedroom curtains were the perfect inspiration! I have an eclectic mix of black and white striped and black and white floral curtains in my bedroom that made for what might be my favorite cake yet. I decided to add to the mix of patterns by stacking a round cake on top of a square one.

On the cupcake side of things, I went with 4 different designs to give everyone a good choice. First off were vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream adorned with pearlized silver sprinkles and gold-dusted white chocolate "J" pieces. Second were (my favorite) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing adorned with silver sprinkles and gold-dusted dark chocolate finials (generously gold-dusted by E.!). Also with cream cheese icing were a set of carrot cake cupcakes (easy as pie to make!). Finally, I went with a unique caramel cupcake with a caramel buttercream (E. and I ate all the extra out of my bowl!) and spun sugar abstract decorations on top. All this baking taught me one thing: I need to make cupcakes more often. The most difficult thing: keeping Chris away from all the cupcakes for any appreciable amount of time.

I was very pleased with how it all turned out and even more surprised we got everything to the park in one piece! I had good help with the transport. Hopefully there will be more cupcakes in the future.

Stormy Weather Stew

It may not have been what many of you east coasters would call stormy, but it was stormy enough by my Pasadena standards to warrant a good, hot, rustic stew. This is a little late coming, but a few weeks ago, it got cold (for about 2 days) and even rained! When I say cold, I mean it got below 70 (in the 50s at night!) and when I say "rained," it might have drizzled for 20 minutes. That's a big deal here in October! I seized the opportunity though to bust out my first real winter dinner of the year! My favorite nasty weather recipe is none other than my mom's beef stew recipe. I have no idea where it comes from or how old it is, but it does the trick when I feel icky and cold. It takes a little while to braise the meat and get the veggies to the right amount of "mushy," but it's worth the time and little bit of extra effort. In the end, it may not look pretty, but it always hits the spot.

I started with 1.5 lbs of pre-cut stewing beef and dredged it in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. In a small amount of heated oil in a heavy bottomed cast iron enameled Dutch oven (my FAVORITE!), brown all the meat, being careful not to crowd it too much. After all the meat is browned, add 2 32 oz. containers of low sodium beef broth (I use low sodium so that I can control the level of seasoning). Once you add the beef broth, you get to the best part: DEGLAZING! Make sure you get all those brown flavorful bits off your pot and into your broth (wood spoon, please). After you've delgazed, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour. While that's simmering, give 8 carrots and 6 red potatoes (peeled) a rustic chop job and set aside. After the 1 hour, toss in your veggies (and whatever else you want really) and simmer covered for another 45 minutes. If your stew doesn't thicken up enough during the cooking process, you can use Wondra mixed with a little water to thicken the stew after cooking is done. The last thing I add is a little salt, pepper, and gravy master. You can dress this up however you please; it's kinda like a blank canvas in that sense. I serve it steaming hot over egg noodles with fresh sourdough bread and a good red wine.

This is the first real family recipe I've made recently and posted. I'm hoping to get a few more of my mom's favorites up here in the near future.