Friday, March 4, 2011

30 Whoopie Pies

To celebrate my general love of baking this X-mas, and to let everyone know who is truly important in my life and who I wish would go die in a fire, I decided to make whoopie pies for my friends and also for those co-workers that I don't want to murder on a regular basis.  Since I've written about whoopie pies here before, I'm going to gloss over most of what went down.



This was my first experience with attempting to increase a recipe on this scale.  Unfortunately, before I even started baking, I was running into problems.  It was uncomfortably close to the holidays and my local chain grocery store had somehow managed to run completely out of flipping unsalted butter.  The had miles upon miles of salted butter, but when it came to the unsalted stuff, they only had super-expensive organic shit.  I was in a time crunch and so, after a wrestle with my inner cheap-face, I went ahead and picked up the more expensive stuff.



Above:  A dangerous amount of boiling sugar.  Seriously guys, this much molten-lava sugar was completely frightening the shit out of me.



Above:  What four quarts of meringue looks like. 

Below:  What ten pounds of buttercream frosting looks like.  I had to use both hands to lift this delicious disaster.



I'm a little proud that the only item I over-bought on for this recipe was the buttermilk. 

Which is still in my fridge. 

Almost three months later.

Maybe I should combine it with my left-over creme de menthe and they can form a disgusting monstrosity that will never ever be eaten.



And this is roughly half of my whoopie pie bounty laid out across my kitchen counter.  I wrapped each one in plastic wrap and then placed it inside a small holiday-themed gift bag.  That day I was the weirdo carrying a tote-bag stuffed with cake into work.  I felt like Santa.  Santa in the bizarro-world where he only gives people cake.



I've not got much more to say about whoopie pies.  They're delicious.  They're not too difficult.  People like them.  I love them.  I've been encouraged to try out different flavors of whoopie pie, but this is such an all-around perfect recipe that I'm not sure I want to mess with it at all.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Mystery Cake with Tomato Ganache

I'm a fan of using atypical ingredients in baking.  When I saw the recipe for a chocolate cake using Tomato soup in Rose's Heavenly Cakes, I jumped at the chance to try it out. 

This picture was taken before I realized I had pulled the wrong can of tomato-thing out of the cupboard.  I realized my mistake before it was too late, but forgot to take another picture.  But seriously, this looks disgusting.  Tomato soup, chocolate and cream?  Yuck.  Just, yuck.



The completed ganache didn't look too bad.  However when I tried a taste of it, all I got was the sickeningly-sweet flavor of tomato soup.  Even long after, the tomato taste lingered on my tongue and was not exactly the awesome-est thing I've ever eaten.



This cake also used a scary three and a half sticks of butter.  Honestly it kind of felt like overkill when I had everything laid out for my mise en place



The cake layers turned out fluffy and moist due to the tomato soup.  Everyone who tried the cake raved about how delicious it was and nobody was able to guess what the mystery ingredient could be.  Unfortunately, I knew what it was and so all I could taste when I ate this cake was the tomato soup.  Just tomato soup all over the inside of my mouth.  And the after-taste.  Ugh.  Have I mentioned that I don't really like tomato soup?  Taking that into account, this cake might have been a mistake.

But since no one else was bothered by the flavor and most people seemed to like it, I consider this a general success.  Maybe not one which I will ever attempt to repeat, but a success nonetheless.



And holy shit, but my camera is a piece of crap.  I hope everyone reading this is enjoying how it refuses to focus on the massive cake-y object in the foreground and instead has captured my dish soap and knife block in perfect focus.  I think it's about time to upgrade my hardware...