C is for Cumpleanos! Carlos! Chocolate! and Crumblesplosion :(

3 part cake batter

For Carlos's birthday party, I wanted to make a super awesome & amazing cake! In order to have it be a semi-surprise, at least in variety, I decided to try to find a recipe that combined two of his favorite flavors: chocolate and caramel. When I consulted with my baking skilled brother on it, he told me that our very favorite Baked cookbook had just such a recipe, the Sweet & Salty cake. This recipe was for a 3 layer cake with salty caramel ganache frosting. YUM!

mmmm all mixed!

They came out so well :)

When I quickly read the description, the cake seemed intensive but doable. I was so dedicated to making this thing awesome that I even finally splurged for a hand blender in order to make this thing totally perfect. I also had to get some round cake pans for the house. The recipe called for 3 8" pans. Bed, Bath & Beyond only had 9" pans... so I was lazy and decided to buy two of those instead. This could have been my fatal flaw.

ahhhh boiled over cream :(!

After some quick Safeway-ing, I started a little past noon on Sat. I decided to make the cake first, then follow up with the frosting. The cake itself took a very long time. All the ingredients had to be mixed separately and then combined. The problem was that it required 7 mins per item to combine, so time quickly racked up. As I say in every baking post (since I'm always conned in to this :p) I don't like chocolate cake at all. This batter was really tasty though, and I fully licked the spoons. I was planning on not completing filling the two pans since it had supposed to have been 3, but there was plentiful room so I did it anyways. In the oven for 40 mins they went.

burned caramel ganache WIP

I then looked at the recipe and realized I had made a big miscalculation. I realized that the "1/2 cup salted caramel" was different than the ganache frosting, meaning there were actually THREE different recipe items to prepare :(. I freaked out because I hadn't bought ingredients for the mix. Upon some inspection, I was lucky and found out that I had everything but sour cream, and some cursory internet searching taught me how to make a substitute from a few items int the fridge. Crisis averted.

very cooled cakes mmm

but it came out ok still!

I started first on the more intensive ganache. It involved making caramel, and then combining it with rich choco frosting ingredients. I don't know if you guys have ever tried to make caramel before, but it's really freaking hard >: |. You have to boil a corn syrup mixture for just the right amount of time. If you have it for like a minute too long or on too high of a temp, it will burn and completely harden on the bottom of the sauce pan. What made this trickier was that you also have to bring heavy cream to a boil and then let it cool for like 2 mins and then combine them and immediately pour over sectioned bakers chocolate. Of course I was doing this while the cake alarm kept going off... so basically I burned the caramel, boiled over the milk and didnt chunk the choco. Good times!!! I kept trucking and somehow the ganache came out ok. there was so much chocolate and cream that you couldnt taste the burned caramel. It was way too fluffy chocolately, but still good!

caramel attempt #2

success!!!!

The cakes themselves came out well and I left them to cool. Next, I attempted homemade caramel #2 for the inner sauce. I learned from my previous fail, and this time I made sure to not burn the caramel or overcook the cream. Mmm, a pot of boiling & delicious caramel a la Sharon! <3

look at these killer ingredients

how could anything go wrong?

By this time, I was feeling like a million bucks. Somehow, I had successfully prepared all 3 fancy ingredients! All that was left was to combine. It was like 4:00 by now, so the cakes were quite cool. I put the bottom layer on, caramelized it, ganached it, and moved on. :(. I was trying to be uber classy, so I started by cutting the rounded top off the second layer. Big mistake. For some reason, the structural integrity of the top layer was not there, and cutting the top was the final straw. As I carefully tried to flip it on top, the horror hit me. It was totally breaking apart. Being the brilliant one I am, I decided that putting tons of caramel and frosting on it would glue it together. Not so much. Quickly it all started crumbling to pieces. The more I tried to glue it back together, the worse it became.

AHHHHH!! note: this is after I cleaned it up a ton

Soon I had a giant pile of gushing, exploding mush on one side of the cake. It's hard to describe here, but there was a good 5 mins of me screaming profanities and crying and trying to fix the poor gourmet mess. I had to leave the room for awhile to calm down. When I returned things had settled a little bit, and I had to start excavating out the ruins of my poor cake. Choco was going everywhere (walls, ceiling, floor) I was grabbing it and dumping it by the handful in to the trash :(

piles of cake in garbage

Much mourning later, I decided I needed to salvage what I could, and used my artistic talents to pretend it was a C. It was mistaken for a PacMan.

final product. i tried to salvage what i could

All-in-all, the cake was totally delicious and amazing, I was just sad about wasting 5+ hours and like $50 on something that came out so crappy looking. Kind of want to try again :(

More Birthday Baking

I enjoy making people desserts for their bdays :D. A couple weeks ago was Camilo's and due to the fact that he is totally amazing and that I feel endlessly guilty about my mass imposition on his living space, I definitely wanted to bake him delicious. He was very not picky and just requested some type of "cupcake," so I tried to choose something beyond awesome: cinnamon coffee cake. 

I am a huge proponent of anything snickerdoodle, so I was very confident in the choice. Things were going well, the recipe itself is pretty easy to follow. I am always careful to pick stuff on all recipes that is from scratch because it seems lame to me to doctor a cake mix :p. The batter was very yummy, and as I put the cakes in the oven, I was already congratulating myself on being awesome. 

Even though the recipe didn't call for it, I thought it would be a great idea to add on cream cheese frosting... because let's be honest, cream cheese frosting is pretty much never a bad thing. I found a simple recipe for the spread and whipped some up. Then I got inspired, why don't I make it cinnamon cream cheese?! How could this go wrong?? >: |. 

DO NOT PURCHASE

My mom always sends me giant boxes of random crap that I have nothing to do with. One such item was a Walmart's own "Great Value Imitation Cinnamon" extract. It came in a small bottle similar to vanilla. I was like, hey, why not? Faiiiiiiil. After a couple drops of this stuff, the whole room smelled like nasty fake cinnamon crap. I freaked out and tasted the large bowl of frosting... but the flavor had already penetrated the entire batch. I started adding in mass amounts of powdered sugar and regular cinnamon to counteract the flavor, but like nothing was working!! It was a tough battle, and I didn't decide to give up until the cupcakes were totally cooked and cooled. 

At first I thought that maybe it would be ok so I frosted the first cake. The smell alone made me know it was not worth it, and I decided to leave the rest dry. I had some cute little sugar decorations for them, so I risked using a drop of the frosting on each to glue them on. Even that was too much!!

All the frosting issue aside, the cupcakes were REALLY tasty :). They were very soft and home-made feeling. It was a terrific light cake with a subtle but very noticeable cinnamon-sugary flavor. I would definitely make these again any day, and this time be less ambitious with the frosting :P

Gag Reflex Pasta >: |

I am so not a picky eater. As you've prolly noticed, most of my reviews describe the foods as "awesome!!" I can appreciate almost all types and I'm not even that elitest, so it takes work for me to dislike a food. Congrats Pascucci on State St. in downtown Santa Barbara, you did it.

My road trip was pretty sporadic, so we didn't really make plans for much. After arriving, we hit the beach for awhile, enjoyed the scenery and freshened up at the hotel. We heard that State Street was the hott place to be, so we headed out. By this time it was around 8 on a Sunday, so we figured we'd be ok. NOPE! I think it was like UCSB back to school weekend. SO MANY PARENTS AND KIDS! Most of the places down there were getting $$$ and $$$$ yelp reviews, so we were a bit limited in selection. We put our name down at 3 or 4 places before finally ending up at this Italian place, Pascucci. I was starving and excited. It was cute inside, very fake but cute. They started us off with garlic cheese bread! Ok, great so far! I excitedly saw a pumpkin and squash ravioli dish and was decided.

Little known fact- I don't actually eat out THATTT much. I try to bring frozen dinners to work everyday to save money and calories. One of my favs is Lean Cuisine squash ravioli, so I figured a nice restaraunt would rts. >: |

It finally arrived and I excitedly bit in. I was punched in the face with a stronggg pumpkin taste that was followed up by cinnamon. Weird. Ok, keep going. By the time I had finished my second ravioli I started feeling nauseous. This thing was sooo strong. And with some flavor that just tasted off. It had a strong cinnamon and some other spice after taste that destroyed me. And not in like a fun pumpkin pie way, in like, I just ate a rancid rotting gourd way. 

    >

Turns out Eugi was hating his salmon bowtie pasta as well. There was just an off flavor about the whole dish, and the salmon was so ridiculously smoked tasting that it kind of permeated the taste of the whole entree. We were so disgusted that we asked for the check after 5 mins. Didn't even want to bother complaining (mainly cuz it was almost 9 at this point, and I was concerned that the Yogurtland that I'd seen a few blocks down would be closing). Thankfully Yogurtland was open till 11, and so I had a most delicious froyo for dinner :D. They even brought back pumpkin pie flavored, so I had a sweet and satiating squash experience to carry me through the night. 

fried food fail

This was like the shizziest work week ever for a multitude of reasons (including an airplane almost crashing in to our office!). Gee Unit and I decided that we needed to go out to lunch on Friday and celebrate it being almost done. By suggestion of his Louisiana bred friend, we ended up at Picadilly's Catering in Foster City. I was totally starving, so honestly, any food would have been great. The service was great and the prices were affordable, so I was stoked. I ended up ordering the 2 piece fried chicken with a side of mac & cheese and cornbread. It came and look how yummy it appeared :O 

mmm, right??? NO!!! The chicken was cooked weird. I couldn't even eat any of the meat on the drumstick because it seemed dark and undercooked. The thigh wasn't much better, and there was nothing special about the fried outside. At least the mac + cheese would be good, right?? No again :( it was very starchy tasting, and the cheese was bland. I ended up eating all of that and the corn muffin just cuz  I was so hungry. Not the best feeling afterwards. I even tried Steve's fried catfish which looked way better. Once again, I was way disappointed! The outside fry was super corn-mealy tasting, and the fish itself was pretty nondescript.

FAIL!

it seemed like a good idea at the time

sometimes i do stupid. kinda frequently when it comes to my adventurous eating habits. the other night my padre and i went to Shalizaar persian cuisine in Belmont for a "quick" dinner. The kabob meat was totally incredible :) but meat is BAF so i'm not going to type about it. the main point of this post was the nasty @$$ drink i ordered. it was like, liquidey yogurt beverage with salt, pepper, and mint leaves. i guess it wasnt even a good idea at the time. i knew what i was getting in to and i did it anyways. so dumb. so nasty. i drank like 2 sips and had to stop. by the end of dinner it had all separately into yogurt and oil clumps. gross.

oooog look at the nasty floaty things