Category: Cooking

Anya’s 10th Birthday Cake: Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream

Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream
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Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Whipped Cream

Recipe by LisaCourse: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Medium
Servings

12

servings
Prep time

1

hour 
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • 14 oz all-purpose Flour

  • 2 tsp baking powder

  • 1 tsp baking soda

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • 226 g unsalted butter, room temperature

  • 284 g sugar

  • 1 Tablespoon lemon juice

  • 170 g egg whites, room temperature

  • 125 g strawberry reduction, room temperature

  • 170 g heavy whipping cream

Method

  • Preheat oven to 350F. Flour three 8″ cake pans and set aside.
  • Whisk together the cream, strawberry reduction, and lemon juice.
  • In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
  • In the bowl of a stand mixer, place the room temperature butter and beat until smooth and shiny.
  • Gradually add in the sugar, beating until the mixture is fluffy and light colored.
  • Add the egg whites, one at a time, and beat at a medium speed.
  • On a low speed, add about 1/3 of the dry ingredients followed by 1/3 of the wet ingredients, mixing until mostly incorporated into the batter. Repeat until all ingredients have been added.
  • Divide the batter evenly between the three pans.
  • Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes (a cake tester should come out clean).
  • Place pans on a wire rack to cool for ten minutes, then turn the cakes out onto the rack and allow to cool.
  • To assemble, place a cake on the cake plate. Cover with strawberry reduction, and top with a second cake. Cover with strawberry reduction, then top with the third cake. Coat liberally with strawberry whipped cream and serve.

Commentary

  • This year, Anya chose a strawberry cake. We looked through a lot of recipes online and merged a couple into what we hoped would be a very strawberry flavored cake. It was — the strawberry whipped cream was specially tasty. I think it could have used more strawberry reduction between the layers, though the cake was already very moist.

Recipe: Tomato and Pear Salad

Ingredients (1 serving):

  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp maple syrup
  • 1 tomato
  • 1 pear

Method:

  • Remove stem and core from tomato and pear. Cut each up.
  • Put tomato and pear in a bowl and drain juice (to remove acid).
  • Mix together the salt, pepper, lemon juice, and maple syrup.
  • Put the tomato and pear into non-draining bowl.
  • Pour the dressing onto the pears and tomatoes.
  • Eat and enjoy!

Turkey Pot Pies

I wanted to use the left-over turkey from Thanksgiving to make some quick(ish) pre-cooked freezer meals. Turkey pot pies sounded like a neat idea — make a couple batches of pie dough, saute a bunch of veggies, add diced turkey, and turn stock make with the bones into fresh gravy.

The first step was to dice up all of the left-over turkey — then put the bones along with some salt, onion, and garlic cloves in a pressure cooker to make a stock. I used a combination of roux and corn starch to thicken the stock into a gravy.

I diced carrots, broccoli, onion, garlic, and green beans and sauteed it all. Then mixed in corn kernels and the diced turkey.

After stirring in the gravy, I’ve got turkey pot pie filling.

I assembled a large pie for dinner.

Since the filling is wet, I blind baked the bottom crust for twenty minutes then filled the pie and added a top crust. The large one for dinner went into the oven. The six small pies were topped and put into the freezer to firm up.

Once everything was frozen, I used the vacuum sealer to package up my pies. Since I have ceramic mini pie plates, I need to take these out of the freezer and sit the package in a water bath to warm up the ceramic. Then bake at 350 F for about an hour for a simple (but not really quick) meal.

They turned out well — the extra baking of the mini pies made a nicely caramelized and crunch bottom crust. For next time, gravy absorbs into everything, so I need more gravy. And I think it would be a lot easier to have one larger pie instead of the three individual ones. Just need to pick up a few stainless steel deep-dish pie plates so I have something that can actually go from the freezer to oven directly.

Chicken and Dumplings

I made chicken and dumplings (well, spaetzle) this evening. Pressure cooked chicken bones with some garlic, onion, and salt for an hour to make broth. Added sauteed onions, carrots, corn, green beans, and diced chicken. I thickened the broth with a little corn starch. And we each mixed in some hot pepper sauce to make it spicy 🙂

Decaf Coffee

I used to call decaf “what’s the point” coffee … because the whole point of my coffee consumption was staying awake on as little sleep as possible. Since I’ve cut back on work hours (a.k.a. set some boundaries), I had stopped drinking coffee. But I really like good coffee. So I got a bag of decaffeinated coffee from the grocery store. Strange experience from the last time I got a bag of coffee — now, half of the coffee section is Starbucks which I don’t much care for, at least 3/4 of the remaining bags were ground … which struck me as strange because the whole bean coffee is going to keep much better. And there was only one whole bean decaf option — a $22 bag that seemed like a lot of money for a pound of coffee. If we use this whole bag, I’ll probably buy a bag of whole bean decaf online.

Pancake Molds

I had purchased silicone pancake molds a while ago — Anya likes to make fancy shaped pancakes, but I really do not like scrubbing cookie cutters that have been used as pancake forms. Finally tried them out today — they are really easy to use. If you put the part with the lip facing down, pour in some batter, and let them cook … you can pick up the mold and flip it to continue cooking the other side.

Voila — we’ve got heart and flower shaped pancakes:

BBQ Ribs

Scott and his friend Joe smoked ribs tonight — I baked potatoes and cooked up some of the corn from our garden. Very tasty — and I need to remember that I like BBQ sauce when it’s been heated on the grill for a while and has gotten caramelized and sticky!

Cornbread Waffles

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp ground chipotle pepper
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
2 duck eggs
4 tablespoons melted butter

Mix all of the dry ingredients together. Mix the buttermilk and eggs together and add to dry ingredients. Blend well, then drizzle in melted butter and mix to combine. Cook in a waffle iron.

Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Topping — 2 T melted butter, 2 T maple sugar, 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F
  2. Whisk together brown sugar, pumpkin puree, buttermilk, oil, and eggs
  3. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and spices.
  4. Gently fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients.
  5. Divide batter between 12 muffin cups. Bake about 20 minutes, test with toothpick or skewer.
  6. Allow to cool for 10 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool.
  7. Stir together all of the topping ingredients and brush on top of muffins.