RECIPE PROFILE
Recipe Type: Dessert
Vegetarian Classification: Vegetarian
I love cake.
I can't even tell you how much I love cake.
My husband, The Economist, has a big birthday next week (he is entering his LATE TWENTIES--shocking!) and I have promised him a big, beautiful, two layer, dark chocolate cake. However, I am not a big chocolate cake fan. I needed something just for me, my favorite kind of cake. So I made a pre-birthday cake. No rules, no recipes, just pictures ahead.
Of course, any cake starts right here:
Butter, baby.
You’ll notice I use only the finest Irish butter. This is one thing I’ll miss when we move back to the States.
And…
eggs.
Now let me introduce you to my good friend, Salter.
Every once in a while the British really, really impress me with their ingenuity. (This is really, really rare. No one innovates like Americans.) The British made the decision years ago to switch to the metric system and stopped using imperial units (i.e. cups) Now they give all their recipes in weights (except for TBSP, tsp, etc). So you’ll get a recipe that says ‘250 grams white flour’. I first looked at these measurements with boggled eyes and ran franticly to Google volume and weight equivalents, metric to imperial weight conversions, and so on.
Way too much trouble.
I finally met this little friend (he was a birthday present [yes, I’m calling him a ‘he’]), and I will never look back.
The advantage of weighing things is that you can add ingredients to the bowl one after another without having to mess around with cup measures. You just sit your bowl on top, zero the scale (i.e. push a button), add your ingredient to the bowl until the scale reads the right amount, zero the scale again, add the next thing, and so on.
And so much neater. I hate having to measure butter in cup measures. Plus, one less dish to wash later. All you have to wash is the mixing bowl.
Voila le sucre!
I mixed the flour with a bit of salt and a bit of baking powder. Et voila la farine!
Next, I measured the butter into my big clear Pyrex bowl and started mixing it up with my hand mixer. I do own a Kitchenaid mixer, but it is in storage in Iowa while my husband, The Economist, and I are living in the UK. *Sad face.*
Adding sugar little by little…
And you get this grainy, fluffy mix.
Then you add 3 eggs, one at a time.
And you get this gorgeous, billowing, buttercup-colored froth. Resist the urge to eat it!
Once the eggs are in, you add the vanilla. Use the good stuff! It’s so delicious.
Now add the flour and the milk, alternating a bit at a time. This is a long process, but stick with it.
Scrape that bowl out, and into a buttered sheet pan. A layered, frosted cake is something for another day. Today, I want a vast expanse of cake and frosting. It’s sheet cake time.
Smooth that batter out. I never realized this, but it makes a big difference. A domed cake is amateurish. I’m a professional when it comes to (eating) cake.
Now clean up your workspace, do the dishes. Don’t let them pile up! (… as I look at my full sink…)
The cake is done, maybe a little more brown than I like, a little sunk in. But you know what? It still tastes like a dream.
I’m letting the cake cool while I make the frosting.
I measure out the butter straight into the mixing bowl.
And this is how I do the powdered sugar. It makes a mess BUT less than when I try to use cup measures. And this way you can sift as you go. I need 550 grams of powdered sugar.
I put a sieve on top of a bowl, on top of my Salter. Zero that thing out.
And bob’s your uncle.
Okay that’s a lot of powdered sugar. But it’s sifted, light and airy and not a lump in sight. Lumpy frosting sucks.
And that’s still quite a mess.
Now I whip up that softened butter.
Kerrygold, I love you.
And now…
The two get together.
This is the messiest part of the whole venture. There is a whole lot of dry powdered sugar and seemingly very little whipped up butter. This can become a gummy, sticky mess very quickly. Just stay calm!
And a bit of vanilla.
Okay, now that is one gungey, icky mess.
Perseverance!
And you end up with this…
Aaaaaahhhh, now that’s better. You see it was all worth it.
Afterwards I picked up everything from the counter to clean it off. The black shapes are where various items blocked the spray of sugar dust. As for me, I think I may have the white lung.
Clean counters… looooovely.
Let’s frost this baby.
Num…
Yum…
Oh my.
Empty, forlorn looking bowl.
I cannot tell you how much I love my new off-set spatula. It makes things so smooth.
Jealous?
First bite…
Hmm… contemplating…
The perfect accompaniment to a sweet is a cup of tea.
You’ll notice I use only the finest Irish butter. This is one thing I’ll miss when we move back to the States.
And…
eggs.
Now let me introduce you to my good friend, Salter.
Every once in a while the British really, really impress me with their ingenuity. (This is really, really rare. No one innovates like Americans.) The British made the decision years ago to switch to the metric system and stopped using imperial units (i.e. cups) Now they give all their recipes in weights (except for TBSP, tsp, etc). So you’ll get a recipe that says ‘250 grams white flour’. I first looked at these measurements with boggled eyes and ran franticly to Google volume and weight equivalents, metric to imperial weight conversions, and so on.
Way too much trouble.
I finally met this little friend (he was a birthday present [yes, I’m calling him a ‘he’]), and I will never look back.
The advantage of weighing things is that you can add ingredients to the bowl one after another without having to mess around with cup measures. You just sit your bowl on top, zero the scale (i.e. push a button), add your ingredient to the bowl until the scale reads the right amount, zero the scale again, add the next thing, and so on.
And so much neater. I hate having to measure butter in cup measures. Plus, one less dish to wash later. All you have to wash is the mixing bowl.
Voila le sucre!
I mixed the flour with a bit of salt and a bit of baking powder. Et voila la farine!
Next, I measured the butter into my big clear Pyrex bowl and started mixing it up with my hand mixer. I do own a Kitchenaid mixer, but it is in storage in Iowa while my husband, The Economist, and I are living in the UK. *Sad face.*
Adding sugar little by little…
And you get this grainy, fluffy mix.
Then you add 3 eggs, one at a time.
And you get this gorgeous, billowing, buttercup-colored froth. Resist the urge to eat it!
Once the eggs are in, you add the vanilla. Use the good stuff! It’s so delicious.
Now add the flour and the milk, alternating a bit at a time. This is a long process, but stick with it.
Scrape that bowl out, and into a buttered sheet pan. A layered, frosted cake is something for another day. Today, I want a vast expanse of cake and frosting. It’s sheet cake time.
Smooth that batter out. I never realized this, but it makes a big difference. A domed cake is amateurish. I’m a professional when it comes to (eating) cake.
Now clean up your workspace, do the dishes. Don’t let them pile up! (… as I look at my full sink…)
The cake is done, maybe a little more brown than I like, a little sunk in. But you know what? It still tastes like a dream.
I’m letting the cake cool while I make the frosting.
I measure out the butter straight into the mixing bowl.
And this is how I do the powdered sugar. It makes a mess BUT less than when I try to use cup measures. And this way you can sift as you go. I need 550 grams of powdered sugar.
I put a sieve on top of a bowl, on top of my Salter. Zero that thing out.
Now I whip up that softened butter.
And now…
This is the messiest part of the whole venture. There is a whole lot of dry powdered sugar and seemingly very little whipped up butter. This can become a gummy, sticky mess very quickly. Just stay calm!
Add a bit of milk.
Now add all the rest of the powdered sugar, bit by bit.
Afterwards I picked up everything from the counter to clean it off. The black shapes are where various items blocked the spray of sugar dust. As for me, I think I may have the white lung.
Well, don’t mind if I doooo!
First bite…
Hmm… contemplating…
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