Tag: Birthday

Buttermilk Devil’s Food Cake

November 6, 2013February 5, 2017

My Mom’s birthday was a month ago today, so it seems appropriate that I’m sitting in a tea shop, writing this post, looking at pictures of her with the birthday cake I made for her.

My mother is a pretty damn incredible woman. I don’t know if I’ve told you about her before, but let me. When we were growing up, she was always encouraging us to play. I don’t just mean my sisters and I playing with each other, or playing with dolls, or playing with crafts, but in the larger sense too. She encouraged us to be adventurous, boisterous, and reach for the stars.

If we wanted to make cookies, she was there to help. If we wanted to go out for the basketball team (a mistake I made only once, trust me), she was there at every game. If we wanted to be in plays (which we did… a lot) she drove us to auditions, sat with us while we waited nervously, drove us to rehearsals, helped create costumes, and was always in the front row on opening night, grinning from ear to ear, and often mouthing the words to the songs along with us. She pushed my creativity, she pushed me to try really hard, to do anything I wanted to do. That’s an incredible woman.

When I went off to college and my parents split up, my mom and I had a rough time. It’s been a hard few years of rebuilding, getting to know each other again, and finding the foundation that we had built when I was younger. But it seems since her birthday, my mother’s true unbridled joy and adventure and creativity has reappeared. It has been slowly creeping back for the past couple of years, especially since she has found David, but in the past month, it seems like she’s here to stay.

This year was my mom’s 60th birthday (hopefully she doesn’t kill me for writing that…) and we went big. Rather, David went big with many many surprises, and we all helped scheme and plan. She was surprised four separate times: by the arrival of me, my older sister, and Jonah on Friday afternoon; the arrival of her mother, sister, brother-in-law, brother, and sister-in-law on Friday night; by my little sister’s arrival on Saturday morning; and by a surprise party with all of her friends and a live band on Saturday afternoon.

It was the most pure joy I’ve ever seen her exude. It was a beautifully sunny weekend, and on Sunday we all made dinner together, like families do. When I asked my mom what birthday cake she wanted, she said “That buttermilk devil’s food cake I used to make you guys for your birthdays.” Emily, my older sister, immediately remembered this cake, but it took me a while. My mom dug around in her recipe box and pulled out this magazine page from 1985. Under the title it says “Makes 10 servings at $0.88 each.”

I didn’t remember this cake until I smelled the frosting, and then it came rushing back, which seems appropriate. The cake, and that weekend, reinforced the woman that my mother is and always has been. It’s rich, deep chocolate with an unexpected but welcome twist from the buttermilk and sour cream, perfect for a birthday, but especially perfect for my mother.

Buttermilk Devil’s Food Cake

Ingredients

Devil’s Chocolate Cake

Unsweetened cocoa powder (for dusting the pans)
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 eggs
3 1/2 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate, melted
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup boiling water
2 1/4 tsp vanilla

Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting

15 squares (1 oz. each) semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt

Instructions

Devil’s Chocolate Cake

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Butter 3 9-inch round cake pans. Line the pans with parchment paper, and butter the paper. Dust the bottoms and sides of the pans with cocoa powder.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer (or whatever) beat the butter until it’s light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar until it’s light and fluffy too. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Blend in the melted chocolate. My aunt (the cookbook author) had a great tip for this. Anytime I mix warm ingredients (like melted chocolate) into eggs, I get nervous that the eggs are going to cook. Her tip was to start with a little bit, blend it, and then add the rest of it. It makes a big difference. To me anyway.

Alternate adding the flour and buttermilk to the butter mixture, beginning and ending with the flour, until it’s well combined. Stir in the boiling water and the vanilla and divide the batter equally into the 3 prepared cake pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool them in their pans for 5-10 minutes, then turn them out onto cooling racks and remove the parchment paper to cool the rest of the way.

Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting

To make the frosting, melt the chocolate in a double boiler over barely simmering water. Remove from the heat, and beat in the sour cream, vanilla, and salt. Beat until it’s creamy and holds it’s shape. Be warned though, once this frosting cools, it hardens because of the chocolate. So frost your cake while the frosting is still soft and warm.

You may want/have to trim your cakes. I didn’t and it work ok. Put a layer on whatever plate you’re using to serve, and spread evenly with some of the frosting. Repeat with the remaining layers, and then frost the sides.

Enjoy with a glass of cold milk, family, and lots of laughs.

Jonah’s Birthday: Mint Chocolate Chip Cake

February 17, 2013February 4, 2017

Jonah’s birthday was a little over a month ago, but I am just now getting around to posting about his birthday cake. It has been a little busy around here! We are finishing up the recording of Jonah’s first solo full length album – I was in the studio Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, and am going back today. Let me tell you guys, it sounds amazing. I’ll tell you all more about it when we get closer to the release. But big cool things happening, I promise.

Anyway, for Jonah’s birthday, my roommate Carmelle and I made him a mint chocolate chip cake, a recipe I’ve been eyeing for quite some time. And let me say, of our birthday treats, this one has been my favorite. This chocolate cake recipe was definitely one of the more perfect ones I’ve made. It was perfectly chocolatey, light, and moist. In the future, I will use this cake as a base for many exciting things, I can tell. The frosting was wonderfully minty, but not overpowering. Overall, the flavors were really nice, and it’s definitely a good occasion cake because it’s unique.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cake

Ingredients

Cake

9 Tbl unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups cake flour (If you don’t have cake flour and don’t want to buy a whole bag for 1 1/2 cups, use plain flour and replace 3 tbsp with cornstarch)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup coffee
1/2 cup milk

Frosting

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
~4 cups powdered sugar
2-3 tsp peppermint extract (plus some for taste)
Milk, if necessary
150g dark chocolate, very finely chopped
green food coloring

Instructions

Cake

Butter and line with parchment paper two 9-inch cake pans and preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, sift together the cocoa, flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. In an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar fora few minutes until it’s smooth. Add the eggs, mixing after each addition until fully combined.

In a cup, mix the milk and coffee together and set aside. Add half of the dry ingredients and the coffee/milk mixture to the butter mixture, and stir. Add the second half of the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. Split the batter into the prepared cake pans, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until you’ve had a successful toothpick test. Remove from the oven and allow the cakes to cool for about 5 minutes in their pans, then remove them onto a wire cooling rack and allow them to cool completely before icing them.

Frosting

Now it’s time for the icing. I will give full disclosure: Carmelle and Mac made the icing, iced the cake, and decorated while I was out… doing something… I can’t quite remember at the time. I advise rinsing out the bowl of your electric mixer and using that again. Cut the butter into smaller pieces and put them in the mixing bowl. Beat until it’s fluffy. Now add the powdered sugar one cup at a time (or 1/2 cup at a time once you’re getting closer to the right consistency), beating between each addition until combined. If it gets too stiff, you can add a little bit of milk (think 1 Tbl at a time) to get it back to the right consistency. Add the peppermint extract and enough green food coloring to get it to that pretty mint green color. Slowly add the chocolate pieces until it looks the way you’d like and, more importantly, there’s a good amount of chocolate.

Put the first cake on whatever you’re going to use to serve: a cake stand, a plate, etc. Using about 1/4 of the icing, frost the top of the first layer. Place second cake one top of the first, and cover the whole dang thing with the rest of the icing. Carmelle pointed out that one of the beauties of this cake was that if little crumbs came off the cake and got in the icing, it didn’t really matter, because there were already little brown bits of chocolate in it. Mac used the extra chopped chocolate to make a lovely little design op top. Serve with candles and a glass of milk!

Birthday Dinner at Beast

November 7, 2012February 4, 2017

As some of you may know, my birthday recently happened. It was a day full of wonderful gifts and time with friends (and cousins!) out and about. Long before my birthday (on Nov. 1) Jonah texted me and said he was making plans for Nov. 2 (a Friday night), so to please reserve that night. I was really good and didn’t look up anything happening in Portland on that night. But as the day came closer, I started asking more questions. It went like this:

“Are we going to a concert?”
“Maybe.”
“Are we going to a restaurant?”
“Maybe.”
“Will any of our friends be there?”
“Maybe.”

The worst. Not actually, because I did really want to be surprised. But Jonah is usually not so great at hiding surprises, so I was impressed. He helped me dress (“Portland fancy”), and we headed out. I had no idea where we were going, and I almost feel like he took a complicated route just to mess with my head. But finally, we parked, and walked down the street to arrive at Beast for the 8:45 seating!

I could not have been more excited. I never thought I’d tear up at the thought of dinner, but it happened. The time came to be seated and we got to check out the menu and order a bottle of wine (it was quite warm in the restaurant, so we went with a bottle of Sancerre, which I recently read “really opens up the palate.” Maybe I know more than I think I do about drinking… Haha, not.)

I did not take any pictures of the food because lately, I’ve been working on enjoying experiences while I’m having them instead of documenting to reflect later. Sometimes, it’s better to have just memories instead of lots of pictures, you know? So I’ll tell you about our meal:

Course 1: Spinach veloute & shellfish mousse. A delightful start to the meal. A veloute is a stock+roux sauce or soup, and this one had spinach blended in, as well as spinach oil drizzled across the top. It then had a scoop of shellfish mousse plopped on top, which kind of melted into the warm soup as you ate it. It was creamy and smooth and had a very light but powerful flavor. Also, I want to steal their soup spoons.

Course 2: Charcuterie plate. Now, not everything that was on the plate was on the menu, so I’ll do my best to remember. Each of the following was in a little bite sized serving around the edge of the plate, almost like a clock. In the middle of the plate was a light salad of arugula, sliced radishes, and tete de cochon (kind of like a forcemeat made out of various pig’s head parts, then sliced very thin). Starting at 1 o’clock, we had a leaf lard cracker with chicken liver mousse and a pickled shallot slice. Next: a pickled carrot and green been; steak tartare with a quail egg yolk on a mini toast; duck rillettes; spicy pork crackling; a cornichon and mustard; pork & pistachio pate; and lastly, foie gras on a peanut cracker with some kind of (fruity) gelee. This was a pretty amazing course – all these delightful bites of unexpected rich flavors. It also was the first time that Jonah had ever had foie gras, so that was exciting.

Course 3: A cleanser course between the charcuterie plate and the main, not on the menu. A poached quince and lemon sorbet.

Course 4: Strip loin roast with duck-fat caramelized brussel sprouts (!!!), whipped potatoes, red wine-beef jus, and crispy celeriac (fried celery leaves). This was possibly the best meat dish I’ve had in my life, or at least a very long time. The roast was cooked perfectly. The brussel sprouts were amazing (I mean, duck fat, come on!). The potatoes were light and creamy, and the jus was lovely and rich in both taste and color. I could have eaten this dish and walked away from this meal happy. It was perfection. Sometimes I forget how important execution is, but this reminded me. Each element of this dish was cooked perfectly, seasoned perfectly, and went together so well. Also, at this point, I was starting to get full. Uh oh.

Course 5: After a little break, we were brought roasted beets and bacon pickled celery with house cured and smoked trout, horseradish-tarragon cream and trout roe. While this dish was good, it felt a little underwhelming compared to the meat dish we had just been served. Visually, it was beautiful and very colorful. I am a big fan of fish, but smoked is not my favorite preparation, and because the beets were not sauced a whole lot (the horseradish cream was on the other side of the plate, and there wasn’t a ton of it), it sometimes got a little bland. All that being said, it was still good, just not as “knock your socks off” as the other dishes.

Course 6: Cheese plate with 3 cheeses, quince paste, fried marcona almonds, bee pollen shortbread, and wildflower honey. This cheese was goooood, and it was really fun to try all the different combinations on the plate. One cheese with the quince paste, one with the honey, a bite of salty almond, etc. It was fun and playful to try pairing things on my own, so I enjoyed that. Also, if you have never had marcona almonds, do it now. They are a little pricey, but they’re so amazing. The shortbreads were wonderfully buttery too, a nice sweet end to the dish.

Course 7: The only other picture I took at the restaurant was of this chocolate-ginger stout cake with candied fresh young ginger, cinnamon ice cream, all on a puddle of caramel.

Often at nice restaurants like these, the dessert can be a little lackluster. So, while I had high hopes, I was trying not to let them get too high. The waiter lit a little candle on my plate, and there was a small applause from the people sitting with us (Beast has communal tables – and happy birthday had already been sung at the other table, so I didn’t want them to sing again). There was no reason not to get my hopes up. This cake was perfectly moist and chocolatey. The ice cream was so cinnamon-y without being overpowering, and the caramel had a hint of this fruity-flowery taste, which was probably my favorite part of the dessert.

After 3 hours of eating the most carefully prepared, beautifully plated, cared for food, it was time to go. We lingered, finishing our wine, and ended up being the last folks to leave the restaurant. But I’ll admit, I never wanted to leave, I wanted that meal and that night to last forever. Now I’ve to to figure out what to get Jonah for his birthday that could ever compare.