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Shipments of Tortuga Rum Cakes The past week, the kind people of Tortuga Rum Cake shipped me a bunch of their wonderful rum cakes as gifts. Flavors ranging from their Original to the more exotic flavors like Orange, Banana, and Blue Mountain Coffee. Coconut Rum Cake A few of my favorites of the bunch [...] Happy New Year, Everyone! I hope you all haven’t partied too hard on New Year’s Eve… To ring in the New Year, I wanted to make (not much baking involved in this particular cake) a showstopping cake. Since my GREs are done I had time to kill and might as well do something ambitious than the typical layer cake.
The past weekend I baked my birthday cake early. I don’t mean a few days early, I meant a week early. Why? you ask. Well, this weekend I’m pretty busy with going to the Cook.Eat.Live food event, meeting up with a bunch of friends for dinner, and trying to fit in some studying time for the GREs in between (I’m planning to go back to grad school.) I thought I might as well bake it early and eat my way through with the help of my parents and Helen.
Once again, the good people of Scharffen Berger came to my aid, providing me the milk chocolate for this cake recipe. The recipe, white velvet cake with milk chocolate ganache is also from Scharffen Berger’s The Essence of Chocolate. Frankly, after trying multiple recipes from their book this is a great book for baking anything chocolate-related. Six recipes attempted and all were successes. I highly recommend.
To explain what’s in the white velvet cake, it’s basically a pale yellow/white cake with a very fine texture due to the use of cake flour. It’s a very simple cake that my mom wondered why I want to do such a thing on my 24th birthday? Frankly, I don’t want to deal with a fussy recipe and don’t want to put in too much time with my birthday cake. I’m aiming for simplicity this year.
Anyway, the cake was good as it sounded. A delicate crumb cake, that has a hint of butter, barely sweet, sandwiched and coated with milk chocolate ganache. What’s so great about Scharffen Berger’s milk chocolate is the caramelized milk flavor that’s very swoonworthy. (Heck, when I was decorating the cake. I was scraping a third of my ganache into a pastry bag, my mom walked over to the counter where I placed the nearly empty bowl, picked up the spatula, and licked it. She told me the ganache was delicious and wanted more! Alas, I can’t spare any.)
Last Friday, my former boss (sort of – it’s complicated) invited me to his lab’s holiday dinner. Problem was, his current assistant told me about his plans the last minute (technically, three days prior to the dinner) and needed some suggestions as to where to eat. Thankfully, me being the crazy, food-lovin’ girl that I am I figured we should go to Payard. It’s close to work, the food’s good from what I heard (I only tried their desserts), it’s within the budget he wanted to work with and they have vegetarian options. As promised from the previous post, here’s the recipe for my mom’s chocolate cake. It’s decadent, chocolate-y and nutty from the use of almond flour. Again, I had to make my own almond flour since the grocery stores I shop in don’t carry it. The other changes I’ve done was to add on the chocolate glaze that was left over from my brother’s cake and used Lindt’s Excellence 85% Cocoa Bar for the chocolate solids. What surprised me was the fact that it was easy to make.
For the past week, I had three midterms and a ten-page paper due, all crammed within four days. I was suffering with stress that I want to scream in vexation due to my aching head. Isn’t college life just awesome? At least I survived the roughest week and there’s a little sprinkling of tests for the next two weeks, which the last one would be two days before my birthday. At least my professors spared me of pain and torture on that day. Thankfully. On Monday, I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast at home, so I head over to Bouchon for the sake of having something before I pass out in class due to low blood sugar levels and my need for caffeine since I stayed up ’til 1 AM; having 4 1/2 hours of sleep isn’t fun. I know…I said I’ll stop going to Bouchon but then again, they’re kind of my savior for the week since my stressed mind doesn’t want to think where I could eat as well as where I haven’t been to.
Continue reading “Surviving the Major Chunk of Midterms: Bouchon, Grandaisy, Prem-On Thai” » For a long while now, I’ve always wanted to go to The Spotted Pig but I never have because I keep forgetting to go there because it’s somewhere hidden in the crazy maze of West Village and the fact that I need someone else to eat with me since I don’t want to make multiple visits. But finally, I went there the past Thursday for lunch with my friend (that I know from Kim) Eno. As my original fear for coming, Eno had a bit of trouble finding the place (thankfully I was prepared by remembering the map online) and we eventually found each other by talking to each other on the phone and I moved my butt over to the busy intersection off Hudson Street to make it easier for her to find me. Anyway, we exchanged greetings and complained about our apparent state of starvation as we walked to the Pig.
Continue reading “A Great Burger and Chocolate Cake at The Spotted Pig” » Yay! I’m done with the LSATs…just oh, a little under 7 hours ago (approximately 2:30 PM, NY time it was over). I have to say, whoever took that test has my sympathies since that was the worst testing experience I ever had in my life. Seven hours stuck in the same building (the Metropolitan Pavillion in Chelsea for me); the same stark white, frigid (temperature-wise) room with over 100 people taking a freakin’ test for the aspiration of becoming a lawyer. Jesus, I hope I did well before I’ll have to shoot myself (mentally), pay another $123, and do it again in December 1st. I really don’t want to do it again and go through that torture. Despite the fact I still haven’t filled out my law school applications yet…UUGH! The paperwork never ends. Well, I survived the past week fairly well despite being sick for a little more than half of that week (that I mentioned to you on the last post) and managed to lose weight unintentionally. I guess stress does that to me… So, back to what this blog’s mainly about: FOOD. I’m going to talk about what I’ve visited and eaten back two weeks ago starting on September 16th. Jeez, that was eons ago! Continue reading “I’m Back! Also A Recap of Two Weeks Ago (Part 1)” » I know I haven’t written in a loong time. It’s not that I’m ignoring you intentionally, it’s just that my life is flooded with a lot of drama that I don’t want to go into depth. If you can recall recently about my mom being sick and all, she has been operated a couple of days ago and she’s doing okay so far. She’s just fatigued and a bit dizzy since she’s been in bed for a while and the surgery has taken a bit of a toll on her. As I’ve said earlier I’m behind so I’ll catch you up with the food things that happened since my last post that was notable. Back two Friday mornings ago, my parents and I went to Mt. Sinai Hospital to meet the surgeon and consult about what will happen to my mom and schedule the surgery. After that, I have to run a few errands in regards to school so I left my parents and walked down Madison Avenue. Somehow I was curious to about Yura & Company’s food when I was about to pass by, and just dropped in to see what they have.
Some things in life are better simple. Take cake for example. I know a typical person would love cake slathered in buttercream or any smooth, sweet frosting. I would too…but I wasn’t feeling fussy these days since a batch of buttercream wouldn’t survive the heat in my kitchen since these days the weather in New York City it is hot and humid: a baker’s worst enemies. I just wanted a simple pound cake – unadulterated, simple but nevertheless delicious.
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