Sometimes I still bake

In other news, I still bake. I've had to cut down since college, since I no longer have our roommate Brian to count on eating everything I make. Recently I made a plum upside down cake in order to use up a bunch of plums we got in our produce box. Joe ate it within 48 hours so pretty successful, I'd say.

Plum upside down cake, adapted from Real Simple

Ingredients

• 1/2  cup  (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus extra for the pan, at room temperature
• 4  firm, ripe plums, each cut into 8 wedges (This looked measly and I cut them into 16)
• 1/4  cup  plus 2/3 cup granulated sugar (I cut this down to 1/3 cup and thought it was fine)
• 1  cup  all-purpose flour
• 3/4  teaspoon  baking powder
• 1/4  teaspoon  baking soda
• 1/4  teaspoon  kosher salt
• 1  large egg
• 2/3  cup  sour cream (I used plain nonfat greek yogurt)
• 1  teaspoon  pure vanilla extract

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350° F. Butter an 8-inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
2. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the plums and 1/4 cup of the sugar and cook, tossing, until the sugar dissolves and the juices from the plums become syrupy, 3 to 4 minutes. Arrange the plums in the cake pan in slightly overlapping concentric circles, starting from the outside. Spoon any pan juices over the top.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. With an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup of the butter and 2/3 cup of the sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, sour cream, and vanilla. Gradually add the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated.
5. Pour the batter over the plums and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 1 hour. Place a large plate over the cake pan and invert the cake onto the plate. ______________________________________________________________________________

In conclusion, here's a terrifying fact about Martha Stewart:

Thanks Martha Stewart! Now I know just how to welcome my bambino into the world. 

Sticky toffee pudding. I mean cake. I mean pudding.

So umm, wanna talk about Christmas? Good. Because that is when I last took pictures of baked goods. I am the world's greatest blogger! Good thing I'm not a parent, the kids would be all, "Hey mom, can I have breakfast?" and I'd be like yeah sure! ... and then I would get distracted and forget about it for two months.

My family had its big ol' Christmas dinner on Christmas eve and I was recruited to make dessert. I wanted to make something new but couldn't decide what to make. Joe suggested sticky toffee pudding which sounded perfect and sorta festive.

I've been to England a couple time now and was pretty familiar with sticky toffee pudding. My dad took my brother and I on a trip to England and Germany when I was 14 and I quickly learned that British cooking is... how do you say... atrocious. After several meals I settled on living on baked potatoes as that was the one thing even the English couldn't manipulate to taste like shoes.



British desserts fared a lot better, though maybe only because I was blinded by sugar. But British desserts were puzzling. I was very confused the first time I ordered a sticky toffee pudding and was served a gooey cake, not pudding. Were the English so deranged that they did not know that pudding was supposed to be, well, pudding? They had obviously ruined this pudding as it was quite solid. And so I learned that pudding basically indicates a dessert, not necessarily an actual pudding of the jelloid variety.

Apparently other Americans are not familiar with this phenomenon either, as I encountered while looking for a recipe for sticky toffee pudding. One confused American wrote, "Should this be refrigerated since its a pudding?" If it looks like a cake, tastes like a cake and walks like a cake (in that it does not walk at all) its a cake, lady. No refrigeration necessary.

Another popular British pudding I tried was spotted dick, a dessert I delighted in ordering because it mortified my little brother. Piers was around 10 at the time and the uttering of 'spotted dick' sent him into a blind panic. He would wail, "Stop SAYING that!" and my dad and I would say, "What, Piers? You don't want us to say SPOTTED DICK? Whats wrong with SPOTTED DICK, eh? Don't you want to eat some SPOTTED DICK?" And then we would laugh and laugh and Piers would say something about wanting to go home. I'm not sure, I wasn't really listening.

Sticky Toffee Pudding from foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

• 12 ounces dates, pitted and roughly chopped
• 2 1/2 cups water
  
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) softened, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
  
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Butterscotch sauce, recipe follows:

• 2 1/4 cups light brown sugar
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1 teaspoon brandy
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cold heavy cream, optional

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13 by 9-inch baking pan with parchment or waxed paper.

Combine the dates and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and gradually stir in the baking soda (it will foam up), and set aside.

In a bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. In the bowl of a mixer, cream the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar to the butter, and cream until fluffy. Without stopping the mixer, add 2 of the eggs and mix until combined. Add the remaining 2 eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the dates and mix until combined. Repeat until all the flour mixture and the dates are incorporated into the batter. Pour into the baking pan and bake about 40 minutes, until firm and set in the center. Let cool in the pan. When cool, turn out of the pan onto a baking sheet and peel off the parchment paper. The recipe can be made through this step up to 2 days in advance.

Butterscotch Sauce: Combine the brown sugar, butter, half-and-half, and brandy in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil 3 minutes, until combined. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

When ready to serve pudding, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the sauce evenly over the top of the cake. Bake until the sauce is bubbly and cake is heated through, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, whip the heavy cream into soft peaks with the mixer. Cut the cake into squares and serve with whipped cream.

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So. About the cake. Or pudding. Or whatever. I was disappointed with how it turned out but I think that's mostly my fault. I overcooked the cake and the toffee sauce and it would've been a lot better if I hadn't screwed it up, oops. Never the less, it was still pretty good, especially with whipped cream. And my little cousin ate enough of it to satiate him for days so at least its elementary school approved.



And note: the last time I went to England a couple years ago, the food had vastly improved and my diet consisted of more than potatoes. In fact, when we were stranded in the farmland in the middle of nowhere, I spent the majority of my time eating and trying not to die of allergies. But that's another story!

Tiramisu trifle... sorta

My latest means of choosing recipe includes turning to Joe and asking, "What should I bake next?" This time he answered tiramisu.

Joe had invited Brian over for dinner so I had a good excuse to make the tiramisu that day, since I knew BJ cannot resist my baked goods. Sam and Monica, who went with us to the Medieval fair, also ended up coming over later so I got to force feed numerous people. I love feeding people. I think I may have been a Jewish grandmother in a past life.

So I hadn't made tiramisu before because it's not my favorite thing in the world. Sponge cake soaked in coffee and liqueur layered with pudding-like marscrapone also spiked with coffee and booze. Maybe it's the coffee (after my brief obsession with skinny caramel lattes, I'm back to feeling fairly 'meh' about coffee) or the booze (I'll spare you the truly epic history of alcoholism in the family) but it's never something I reach for. But hey, better to have baked goods laying around that I don't want to eat, right?



Because I was bored that day, I decided to make the sponge cake from scratch. I also forgot that you can buy lady fingers like a normal person who doesn't want to spend two hours in the kitchen. I also decided that I would use a glass bowl for presentation and make a kind of tiramisu trifle instead of assembling it in a pan. This was a good idea in theory but looked really crappy when I tried to take pictures of it. Shoot. So ignore that this looks like something a cat might throw up because it was really pretty delicious.

I used Giada's recipe for tiramisu because I trust her. She's just so good looking, how can anything she say be lies? If you want to make your own sponge cake, I used this recipe.

Ingredients

• *6 egg yolks
• 3 tablespoons sugar
  
• 1 pound mascarpone cheese
• 1 1/2 cups strong espresso, cooled
• 2 teaspoons dark rum
• 24 packaged ladyfingers
• 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate shavings, for garnish

Directions

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer with whisk attachment, beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. Add mascarpone cheese and beat until smooth. Add 1 tablespoon of espresso and mix until thoroughly combined.

In a small shallow dish, add remaining espresso and rum. Dip each ladyfinger into espresso for only 5 seconds. Letting the ladyfingers soak too long will cause them to fall apart. Place the soaked ladyfinger on the bottom of a 13 by 9 inch baking dish, breaking them in half if necessary in order to fit the bottom.

Spread evenly 1/2 of the mascarpone mixture over the ladyfingers. Arrange another layer of soaked ladyfingers and top with remaining mascarpone mixture.

Cover tiramisu with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, up to 8 hours.

Before serving, sprinkle with chocolate shavings.

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Brian ate about five portions and then had trouble moving so I considered the tiramisu a success.


Then Monica had to leave and the boys realized they have never subjected me to the horrors that is playing Worms with a bunch of boys. In Worms, each player has a team of worms that tries to kill the other teams of worms with a variety of bizarre weapons that are impossible to operate. In my modest opinion, anyway. I don't play video games like, ever so it was a sight to see.

It went a little like this:

Joe: GO LEFT! NO, LEFT!
Sam: DON'T KILL ME! KILL BRIAN!
Joe: LEEEEEEEEFT!
Me: AUUUUUGH! AUUUUUGH!
Brian: YOU HAVE TO GO NOW! YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS!
Me: AUUUUUGH!!

And then I collapse into the couch face down and stab random buttons without looking. And I have so much natural skill at video games that I still won.

Beginners luck apparently, Joe forced me to play later and it was a catastrophe.

Daring Baker's August Challenge: Cake! Cake! Cake!

Look at me, I actually did the Daring Baker's Challenge on time this month!

Blurb-o-the-month: The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonfulof Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

What is a dobos torte? It's a fancy chocolate cake, basically. It has a trillion layers of cake stacked and smothered in buttercream and covered with crushed nuts. Caramel is also worked in but I chose not to do that, as you'll see.

So because Brian doesn't live with us anymore and I can no longer trick him into eating 90% of my baked goods, I decided I would halve the recipe. And then I invited my bestie over to watch Top Chef and force fed her cake.

Still figuring out the lighting in my new apartment!

Except the halving the recipe thing didn't go as plan because I am physically unable to read a recipe all the way through. This is what happened: recipe said to mix egg yolks and sugar together. No problem. La la la, sugar and egg yolks beat together. Next step says: add the rest of the sugar... and I go, "What do you mean the REST of the sugar?! I just added all of the sugar to the egg yolks!" and so to even things out I had to make the full recipe. Thank god I tried to halve the recipe otherwise I would've had to make nine dozen cakes to even things out.

Rebel that I am, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. This torta things calls for you to make caramel and drench wedges cake in caramel for decoration. But this thing already looked so rich that I couldn't bring myself to do it. Oh, plus I'm lazy. I also didn't make the buttercream recipe because I saw a lot of Daring Bakers were having trouble with it. Plus, I have a long standing love affair with French buttercream, which just beats the pants off of all other frostings. So obviously I had to make French buttercream (I based my chocolate version off of this version). I also threw in some raspberries in between the layers of cake for extra deliciousness. You can see from the photos that I ran out of raspberries about half way through but its the thought that counts. Or something.

This recipe is about 800 pages long so I won't post it. I'm really sleepy.

This cake wasn't too hard, just time consuming. It probably wouldn't has taken so long if I had common sense. I decided to decorate the top of the cake with melted chocolate. The chocolate didn't temper right so it wasn't drizzling very well. So I thought I would be clever and just pour the chocolate over the top of the cake. And I did. And then all my beautiful chilled frosting immediatly melted under the chocolate. Commence panicked noises while my brain shut down and Joe frantically told me to put it in the freezer and I was able to salvage it after the frosting and chocolate set up again.

Anyways, this isn't something I would make too often because it takes awhile and as a college student, I don't have many reasons to bake a 900 layer cake. It would be good as a special occasion cake though, I liked it quite a bit more than I thought I would so I'm glad I tried it.

Stay tuned for a few more recipes I've yet to post!

Easter disaster cake

I had a lot of trouble deciding what dessert to bring to Easter dinner. On Saturday I still hadn't decided and I went to the local market to see if anything looked particularly inspiring. I wasn't inspired (though I did pick up some supplies for the next Daring Bakers challenge, which will be DELICIOUS) so I just went to my fall back plan: carrot cake. I've made carrot cake before. It's good, easy, and carrots = rabbits = spring = Easter. Or something.

And then things started to go horribly wrong. I didn't get the required vegetable oil until 10 pm so I had a late start. I looked at the recipe, one I had never used before, and thought it looked weird but decided to go with it. The recipe calls to mix the shredded carrots in with the dry ingredients, and then add the wet ingredient just until mix in. Okay, fine. But my batter appeared very thin and I had way more than would fill one cake pan. And while pouring it into the pans, I realized that the carrot/flour mixture had clumped, leaving delightful carrot/flour clumps throughout the batter. Excellent. I tried to smoosh them out but it still looked suspect. But it was nearing midnight and I was panicked so I put them into the oven.



These baked SO strangely, they were like the pod people of the cake world. They baked, but had a strangle bubbly layer on top that refused to much except for becoming weirdly gelatinous. I had no idea when to take this out because while my sticks were coming out clean, the very top remained slightly underbaked. Which doesn't make any sense, what cake bakes from the bottom up without ever solidifying completely on top? But after the cake had been in the oven much longer than called for, I pulled it out.

I ended up with about one and a half cakes: a full cake pan and a spring form pan that was like 1/2 inch thick since I didn't want to throw out the rest of the batter. I let them cool and unmolded them. Baby cake unmolded okay. Big cake was stubborn coming out of the pan. Eventually half came out while half stayed stubbornly in my generously greased pan. I was horrified. And tired, seeing as though it was now close to 1 am. I freaked out for awhile and eventually scraped the rest of the cake out the pan, kind of puzzle piecing the bits together. Than I topped the deformed mess with the baby cake, so it now bared some sort of resemblance to a cake and not the hideous beast I had created.



I used the orange-ginger cream cheese frosting that I made for my carrot cake cupcakes (which turned out lovely, of course) and it turned out fine, which is probably why I didn't have a nervous breakdown. I smothered the monster cake with frosting and than haphazardly decorated it with pastel sprinkles and Easter colored M&Ms. And then I fretted to Joe about how much my carrot cake sucked and he reassured me until I felt okay about it.

The next day I had the traditional Easter of church, Easter lunch and then played a festive game of Life. I should've took pictures of lunch because it was all very delicious and fattening: veggie pot pie for the vegetarians, ham for the omnis and cheesy potatoes and spinach squares for everybody. The carrot cake tasted fine-- I think cream cheese frosting fixes everything-- so I was satisfied with it, though I'll shun the recipe for the rest of my days. I have no idea what I did wrong or if it was the recipe, the recipe did have good reviews but I followed the directions exactly and measured all the ingredients on a scale so I have no idea what happened. I blame you, Alton Brown!

Anyways. Now I have tons of left over cream cheese frosting left over that I'm not sure what to do with, any ideas? Brian has been eating it in the middle of the night with a spoon but there's still plenty left. No Easter M&Ms were spared though, Brian swiftly ate them all. And almost died in the process. He threw one up in the air to catch in his mouth but it landed in his throat instead and he immediately doubled over and started hacking. Joe and I were totally prepared to do the Heimlich maneuver. If we had managed to stop laughing. He was fine though, he just ended up swallowing a whole M&M. Which is good, because Brian would've been really pissed off if a pastel colored M&M caused his death and not something more bad ass, such as a brain hemorrhage while playing Call of Duty 4.

Obviously I'm not going to post the recipe I used, but if you're morbidly curious, here it is. I did like the rest of Easter dessert ideas people threw out there and I plan to make them eventually. Next up: tapioca pudding.

Flourless Chocolate Cake and Coconut Sorbet

When you think Valentine's day, you think chocolate. So it is only appropriate that for February's Daring Bakers Challenge, a chocolate cake and ice cream was in order. The challenge was pretty straight forward: to make a flourless chocolate cake and homemade ice cream.

Blurb'o-the-month: The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

I'm not going to lie, I was not too excited about this challenge. I'm not wild about flourless chocolate cake in most forms, I usually find it too intense but kind of boring. And ice cream? I've never liked ice cream. Which didn't stop me from considering buying an ice cream machine for the challenge. I nearly rationalized by hey sometimes, like every five years or so, I like a couple bites of sorbet. Or gelato. Which would make it TOTALLY WORTH $50, right?

I managed to talk myself out of it and will probably spend the money on an absurdly expensive strightening iron instead.

I'll admit, I used a different recipe for the flourless chocolate cake. There was a chocolate bête noire recipe in The Sweet Life that I've been eying for awhile and it appealed to me more than the one given. And I'm glad I did because it was AWESOME. I loved it. It's a bit like a chocolate pudding cake. You can see the recipe I used here. I apologize to your thighs in advance. But it had to be done.



Most of the Daring Bakers did like the posted recipe though and I feel guilty not posting the recipe I was supposed to use so here it is:


Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

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I like sorbets far more than ice creams so that's what I decided to go with. I settled on either espresso or coconut and ultimately decided on coconut so my dish wouldn't be all brown. Plus, I just made espresso shortbread.

I'm usually too lazy to type up recipes I get from cookbooks but this one is so easy that I remember everything. Here's the basic recipe I used:

Coconut Sorbet, Adapted from the Millennium cookbook

1 can light coconut milk
6 tablespoons fructose
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
Dash vanilla
Dash salt

Combine the above ingredients. I used a hand blender so that the coconut flakes would be better incorporated. If you don't have one, I would either blend it in a food processor or finely chop the coconut before hand. To make by hand, pour the liquid into a large glass pan and freeze. Take out of the freezer every 30 minutes or so and blend with a whisk or large wooden spoon before returning to the freezer. Repeat until desired consistency is reached.

----

Can you use regular sugar instead of fructose? Dunno. Joe happened to get me some fructose from the local health food store, otherwise I would've used regular sugar. But it was soooo easy, the recipe doesn't make a whole lot so it freezes really fast. Tasted lovely, though I prefered the unfrozen coconut liquid. Because I am a heathen and I DON'T LIKE ICE CREAM. It balanced really well with the cake though, especially when it was piping hot. The cake, not the ice cream.

Glad I did this month's challenge, I'm not sure I would've tried making ice cream by hand otherwise. I'm not sure I would make it again for myself but I would serve it to company.

Hahahhaa. Like I have fancy dinner parties and don't spend my Friday nights baking and watching Pokemon with Joe. Hahahahah. Company. More like force feed it to Brian immediately after he comes back from working out.

Looking forward to March's challenge!

Gingerbread Pear Upside Down Mini Cakes

If Chronicle Books could just give me a stipend to write up about how awesome the recipes from their dessert cookbooks are, that would be great. I would even just take donations of said cookbooks. My sister (who works at Chronicle) gave me the recipe for a upside down pear gingerbread cake ages ago and I only just got around to trying it. It's from this cookbook:


And really, can anything from a cookbook with a title like that be bad? Doubtful. I'm kind of in love with Chronicle Book, besides making some awesome cookbooks (and, you know, employing my sister), there's a designer at the company that makes a bunch of awesome cupcake themed prints and I think I own all of the collection, including this stationary:

You may recognize it because I use her wrapping paper set under almost all the photographs in this blog, like these recent guys with the cute peppermint candy print:

You can see the bon-bon print under the caramel cake I posted the other day. Using the wrapping paper under the baked goods is a good compromise because I love the designs so much that it hurts me to see it ripped off of presents. My sister forwarded the designer a fan-girl-esque e-mail of mine to the designer in which I was rambling about hyperventilating upon seeing the new products and it was embarrassing.

Anyway. What I'm getting at is that I'm too lazy to type up the recipe for the cakes I made (and am also scared about accidentally violating some copyright law and being banished from Chronicle Books for eternity) but you should probably just buy the cookbook because the recipe is delicious and everything else you make from said cookbook will be delicious. And because I said so. While you're at it, pick up a copy for me as well.

The official name of the recipe is sticky pear and walnut upside-down gingerbread, which is quite the mouthful. BJ suggested I rename it but um, to what? SPWUDG isn't very catchy either.

The recipe makes one large cake but since I prefer mini sized things, I made 16 cupcakes. Cupcakes? Muffins? Small cakes. I followed the recipe as written but just used muffin tins instead one cake pan. The unmoldings was a bit tricky since I didn't really think that step through-- in a normal upside down cake you flip the cake pan onto a plate to unmold it and I realized I couldn't do that with a tray full of mini-cakes. But running a knife around each tin and then unmolding onto a cookie sheet worked beautifully, I was quite pleased.

The taste? These. Are. So. Good. It's really no surprise that I love them, since I have a long standing passionate love affair with pears. The gingerbread does overwhelm the pears a bit but pears have such a delicate flavor, its to be expected really. But at the same time, I don't turn up my nose at a gooey, brown sugar encrusted piece of gingerbread. I think these are actually better the next day, they managed to get even more moist, sticky and hggghlkfhg. I love them.

I did find a recipe online that is similar to the one I used, so I'll post it. Again, I didn't actually use this recipe so I can't vouch for it but the idea is there!

Not-The-Recipe-I-Used Pear Gingerbread Cake

INGREDIENTS:

For topping:

• 2 1/2 firm pears (preferably Bosc)
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

For cake:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup molasses (preferably mild)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions:

Peel and core pears and cut each into 8 wedges.

Melt butter in skillet over moderate heat until foam subsides. Reduce heat to low, then sprinkle brown sugar over bottom of skillet and cook, undisturbed, 3 minutes (not all sugar will be melted). Arrange pears decoratively over sugar and cook, undisturbed, 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together molasses and boiling water in a small bowl. Beat together butter, brown sugar, and egg in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes, then alternately mix in flour mixture and molasses in 3 batches at low speed until smooth.

Pour batter over topping in skillet, spreading evenly and being careful not to disturb pears, and bake in middle of oven until a tester comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes.

Cool cake in skillet on a rack 5 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of skillet, then invert a large plate with a lip over skillet and, using pot holders to hold skillet and plate tightly together, invert cake onto plate. Replace any pears that stick to skillet. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Why are you still reading this when you could be doing productive things such as buying me Christmas presents or teaching me the material that's going to be on my final tomorrow? Geez, some people...

It's the Most Wonderful Time for a Sugar Coma

Here is the dramatic unveiling of my first Daring Bakers Challenge: Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting. Ta da!



I did not want this cake in the house, as the amount of butter in it is obscene and I really like caramel. I originally was going to cut the recipe in half and make cupcakes but I decided to take the cake to Thanksgiving dinner instead. It seemed like a good compromise, since that way I could bring a nice hostess gift and pawn off- I mean share- the near cup and half of buttery goodness with others. Cake travels better than cupcakes and since Joe and I were commuting about an hour to his family's house, cake it was. I apologize, no cupcakes after all this month. I'll have to make two cupcake recipes in December to make up for it. Twist my arm, I'll do it.

There are three components to the cake: the frosting, the cake, and the caramel syrup. Let's talk about the caramel syrup first since you'll have to make that first to use in the cake and the frosting. I started making this cake the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, mostly because I was going in to shadow a nurse anesthetist Wednesday morning and I was super excited about it. I love surgery and was giddy at the prospect at spending a whole day in the OR, I was like a kid on Christmas eve. So I made brown butter and caramel syrup to calm my nerves. What, you don't do that when you're stressed?

The caramel syrup recipe is very basic: you heat sugar and water in a pan and let it bubble away til it turns a dark amber, and then you stop the caramelization process by dumping in water. Then the mixture will spatter, covering everything within a 10 mile radius with caramel and if you're lucky, that 5 miles won't include any vital body parts.

No, it's not that scary. My oven is always filthy so while it did splatter, it wasn't awful and was an easy clean up. And I only burned my wrist a little! A big improvement from the pear-caramel incident.

A lot of the Daring Bakers were having trouble with the caramel but I've made caramel enough times to be pretty confident in making it. The trick is: don't mess with it. Stir the water and sugar together and after that don't touch it, you'll just mess it up and it will become a big crystallized mess. Check it constantly for color though, you need to watch caramel. Here's what mine looked like:


See this? Your caramel will hang out in that stage for seems like forever. Patience, friend. Leave it alone.













The second picture shows when the caramel begins to color around the edges: here's when you want to start watching it really closely. Stages 2-4 happen in a matter of minutes and if you're not careful, you'll scorch the caramel.









This is getting pretty dark: almost there, get your water ready!














This is what I judged 'dark amber' to look like. Here's where you dump in the water and hope that you survive.












If you do survive, here's what your caramel syrup will look like:


Pretty! Here's the official recipe:

CARAMEL SYRUP

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cup water (for "stopping" the caramelization process)

DIRECTIONS:

In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush. Turn on heat to highest flame. Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.

When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and be prepared to step back.

Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

Note: For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.
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See? I warned you. Caramel is serious stuff. I have scars on my toes to prove it from the pear incident. Joe made me wear shoes this time around. Apparently he should of had me wear mittens too since I burned my wrist. C'est la vie, I should just wear a full body suit when baking.

Now you can move onto the cake and frosting. Here's the cake recipe:

CARAMEL CAKE WITH CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING

INGREDIENTS:

10 Tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/4 Cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 Cup Caramel Syrup (see recipe below)
2 each eggs, at room temperature
splash vanilla extract
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk, at room temperature

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350F

Butter one tall (2 – 2.5 inch deep) 9-inch cake pan.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and salt & cream until light and fluffy.

Slowly pour room temperature caramel syrup into bowl. Scrape down bowl and increase speed. Add eggs/vanilla extract a little at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down bowl again, beat mixture until light and uniform.

Sift flour and baking powder.

Turn mixer to lowest speed, and add one third of the dry ingredients. When incorporated, add half of the milk, a little at a time. Add another third of the dry ingredients, then the other half of the milk and finish with the dry ingredients. {This is called the dry, wet, dry, wet, dry method in cake making. It is often employed when there is a high proportion of liquid in the batter.}

Take off mixer and by hand, use a spatula to do a few last folds, making sure batter is uniform. Turn batter into prepared cake pan.

Place cake pan on cookie sheet or 1/2 sheet pan. Set first timer for 30 minutes, rotate pan and set timer for another 15-20 minutes. Your own oven will set the pace. Bake until sides pull away from the pan and skewer inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool cake completely before icing it.

Cake will keep for three days outside of the refrigerator.

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I took issue with this recipe. It's vague, for one. And the proportions just aren't right. There's way too much sugar, the granulated sugar and the caramel syrup, and 1/2 tsp of leavener in an entire cake is a ludicrously small amount. You put more leavener in pancakes, for goodness sake. Technically I'm not supposed to deviate from the assigned recipe but um, hypothetically I would cut down on the sugar by at least a 1/4 cup and would add 2 tsp baking powder instead of a measly 1/2 tsp.

I also browned the butter the night before and chilled it to add that delightful toffee taste to the cake. Just brown the amount of butter called for, chill until set and then use as directed.

Next up: frosting!

CARAMELIZED BUTTER FROSTING

INGREDIENTS:

12 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound confectioner’s sugar, sifted
4-6 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-4 tablespoons caramel syrup
Kosher or sea salt to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Cook butter until brown. Pour through a fine meshed sieve into a heatproof bowl, set aside to cool.

Pour cooled brown butter into mixer bowl.

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, add confectioner's sugar a little at a time. When mixture looks too chunky to take any more, add a bit of cream and or caramel syrup. Repeat until mixture looks smooth and all confectioner's sugar has been incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Note: Caramelized butter frosting will keep in fridge for up to a month.
To smooth out from cold, microwave a bit, then mix with paddle attachment until smooth and light
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I cheated on this one as well. I had leftover buttercream frozen from the casatta cake and since it had all the components of the frosting ingredients, I dumped a bunch of it into a pan, browned it, and then whipped it with some powdered sugar and caramel syrup. Since I don't like American buttercream, mine was more of a caramel glaze than buttercream: I didn't add very much powdered sugar. But that suited me just fine.


To assemble, I cut the cake in half, drizzled caramel syrup over each layer, poured the glaze on top and then drizzled with more caramel syrup.I had left over maple cookie dough frozen so I made the rest of those for garnish (and snacking!). I was going to use royal icing to decorate the cookies but my powdered sugar supply was ravaged by this point. So I just glazed them with yet more caramel syrup to make them shiny and pretty and then stuck them on top.

Sugar coma much? I actually craved vegetables by the time I was finished making this.

The cake went over pretty well at Thanksgiving dinner. It was good but a small piece went a long way: this stuff is sweet. I would maybe make it for a caramel lovers birthday or something but other than that, it's too labor intensive and sweet to make very often. I did enjoy the first challenge though, bring on December's!

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Here's the standard blurb I have to post about who 'hosted' this months event: Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater, who came up with the recipe (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/), Dolores (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/) , Alex (Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo: http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/), and Jenny of Foray into Food (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/). Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/) for gluten free tips.


RECIPE SOURCE
Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/), as published on Bay Area Bites (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/). Shuna Fish Lydon’s recipe (http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006 … he-recipe/)

Halloween Glutony

Prepare yourself, for in this entry I actually prepare real food! As in, not dessert! Well, there's dessert as well but also savory food! I do actually cook dinner quite a lot. Really. Don't look at me like that.

Before we get to that, however... I had a semi-traumatic, Halloween appropriate experience at the doctor's office the other day, Halloween actually, that I need to vent about.

The appointment itself was fine, I really like my doctor and she's always really helpful and nice. She ordered a bunch of blood work to be done for my weird medical problems (my hands have been going numb, basically). No prob. I'm an easy stick and have no issues with needles or blood, I actually like both of them. I seriously considered a profession in piercing before I realized I could go into nursing and stab people for much better pay and get praised for my kind spirit, etc. I love giving shots, doing IVs and I want to be in anesthesia eventually so I can hang out in surgery all day. So to be clear: I'm not freaked out by blood and needles.

The nurse comes in to draw my blood, has me sit up on the examination table in case I pass out and what not. Stabs me, no biggie. And then blood starts gushing out of my arm all over everything, which, you know, is generally not supposed to happen. The nurse was kind of freaking out, as I would be too if my patient started bleeding copiously, and I'm trying to be helpful and hand her the tubes she needs so she can finish up before I lose all my blood supply. I don't know if it was something wrong with me, the tools or her technique but I certainly didn't want her to try again so I figured the best plan of action was to get it over as quickly as possible.

After taking out the needle and putting pressure on my wound, I stopped bleeding and washed off my bloody arm so everything was honky dory, although the table I was on looked like somebody had just been murdered. Appropriately decorated for Halloween, I guess.

But seriously, what if I did have issues with blood? The nurse was lucky it was me and not, say, Joe’s brother who would’ve passed out even if he had taken sedating drugs before hand and there was no extra blood. I rewarded myself afterward with an overpriced caramel latte. I actually 'reward' myself with those quite a lot lately with different justifications. Calcium! Right? I need to keep my bones strong, etc etc.

After fulfilling my blood and gore requirements for Halloween, I fulfilled the costume requirement by dressing up as Alice in Wonderland and going to work. Then it was home to prep for Joe's Halloween Birthday Extravaganza Dinner, which included:
- pepitas, two ways
- pumpkin soup served in mini roasted pumpkin
- pomegranate pear salad in balsamic vinaigrette
- rosemary bread
- trifle (layered mix of whipped brown butter vanilla birthday cake, chocolate raspberry pudding and berries)

I did some of the prep last night, defrosting the berries (no fresh to be found, unfortunately), making the birthday cake for the trifle and washing preparing the pumpkins. I decided to make pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds) for snacking and topping the soup with so I wrestled with the stringy guts of the pumpkins and then boiled the pepitas in salted water. That way, the salt penetrates the seeds evenly and you don’t need to oil and salt them to death. The next day I tossed the pepitas in an egg white and seasoned them: half with garlic powder and the rest with garam masala. Then I baked them at 350 for about 20 minutes. Since I soaked them in salt before, they didn't need any extra salt at all, really. Neat trick.


Next I worked on the pudding for the trifle, which was basically chocolate pudding that I added left over berry juice and chambord, raspberry liquor, to make a chocolate-berry pudding. It has a LOT of cornstarch in it, so it's very thick. I wanted this for the trifle but if you're just making it for everyday, you may way to cut back on the cornstarch some.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 3 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1/4 cup cornstarch
* 1/8 teaspoon salt
* 2 3/4 cups milk (I used soy milk)
* 1/4 cup berry juice
* 1 or 2 Tbsp Chambord
* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1 egg yolk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a saucepan, stir together sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir in milk, chambord and berry juice, if using. Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla. Add some of the warm pudding to the egg yolk and and the pudding-yolk mixture to the pudding and stir for 1 minute. Let cool briefly, and serve warm, or chill in refrigerator until serving.

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The whipped brown butter birthday cake recipe I got from The Sweet Life, my favorite dessert cookbook ever. I can't find the recipe online and since I'm too lazy too type it at the moment, you'll have to wait on that. Delicious though, I love brown butter in desserts, it makes anything taste like english toffee, which is totally okay in my book. I think may have over done my cake a bit, as it was a bit dry, but it was fine in the trifle, I just drizzled some more chambord and berry juice over it.

After I had most of the trifle stuff done, I worked on the bread. The bread recipe threw me off, I had to add at least a cup and a half more flour than it called for to make the dough the right texture. I haven't made much bread myself but I've seen my dad make about a billion loaves and I know that after beating the flour and liquids together, the dough shouldn't be the consistency of soup. After I added more flour it came out fine but I only had enough rosemary for the original recipe, it could've used more rosemary flavor. But oh well! Considering I've only a few loaves of bread, I was pretty happy with how this came out.



Recipe from Martha Stewart

Makes 2 loaves

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
* 1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees)
* 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for bowl
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary, plus 1 tablespoon whole leaves
* 1 1/2 cups plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
* 1 cup whole wheat flour

DIRECTIONS:

1. Stir together yeast and the warm water in the bowl of an electric mixer. Let stand until foamy, about 7 minutes.
2. Add 3/4 cup water, the olive oil, sugar, salt, chopped rosemary, 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, and the whole-wheat flour to bowl. Fit mixer with the dough hook; mix on low speed until dough comes together, about 1 minute. Raise speed to medium-high; mix until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes.
3. Lightly oil a large bowl. Shape dough into a ball, and transfer to oiled bowl. Loosely cover with plastic wrap. Let dough rise in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
4. Punch down the dough; let rest, covered, 15 minutes. Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface, and divide in half.
5. Roll one piece into an 11-inch-long loaf. Gently twist dough to create contours, then tuck ends underneath. Transfer to a baking sheet. Press half the rosemary leaves into loaf. Repeat with remaining piece of dough.
6. Loosely cover baking sheet with plastic wrap, and let loaves rise slightly in a warm, draft-free spot 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees.
7. Dust loaves with remaining teaspoon all-purpose flour. Bake until golden, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

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While the bread was doing its thing, I worked on the salad. I planned on a spinach pomegranate salad but the spinach at the store looked pretty pitiful and possibly full of exotic diseases. So I just used a bag of mixed lettuce. Dark greens would've worked much better but c'est la vie. I added some thinly sliced red onion and some pears I saw at the store and couldn't resist because of my love affair with pears. They weren't quite ripe so I roasted them in the oven, which I'm totally doing to every pear I buy from now on. Roasting them hides any imperfections they have and made my slightly unripe pears soft and sweet. Drool.

Salad isn't very photogenic

I used a balsamic vinaigrette based on this recipe from the food network:

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
* 2 teaspoons dark brown sugar, optional
* 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 3/4 cup olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Beat the vinegar in a bowl with the optional sugar, garlic, salt and pepper until sugar and salt dissolves. Then beat in the oil by droplets, whisking constantly. (Or place all the ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine.) Taste and adjust the seasonings.

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I did cut back a lot on the olive oil and used only about 1/4 cup but that's my preference, really.

Is that it? Oh, the soup! I roasted a few mini pumpkins, which I had gutted the night before, for about an hour and while they roasted I made the soup. No recipe, since soup is one thing I feel comfortable improvising. Here's what I know I did: tossed tons of garlic, onion, leek, a little red pepper in some olive oil til everything was nice and soft. Threw some rosemary, thyme and sage at the end. Added a few cups water and two small cans of pureed pumpkin. Added a bunch of vegetable bouillon. Chopped up one huge sweet potato and two small potatoes and added to soup to soften. Finished with some balsamic vinegar, garam masala, brown sugar, a touch of cream and butter. Salt and pepper and more herbs to taste. Something like that.



I originally planned on using the pumpkins as individual serving dishes but the small suckers fit tons of soup in them. Still looked cool though, which was the main function of the pumpkin vessel. I washed them out after dinner was done and may puree them. Or something.


I served the trifles in random glassware we have acquired, layering chunks of cake with pudding and berries. They looked neat.



Oh, what was that? You want a closer look because they look so delicious? If you insist.



Mmm. Overall, I made way too much food but was pleased with how everything turned out. So much so that I ate approximately 12 tons of everything and have ordered Brian to eat the remaining cake. My blood sugar, it cries. But it's Halloween so... okay, there is no excuse really, the treadmill beckons me. But it was worth it.

Nothing for a few days until I successfully beg people to eat all this food. But my mom's birthday is coming up and I promised her I would do a blog entry for her since I can't be there to bake for her in person. It's a surprise though, you'll have to check back!

Three cookies to everybody who read all that.

An Apology Cake. Or: The Cake That Nearly Gave Me a Stroke

So on Thursday morning I accidentally deleted Brian's half-finished philosophy paper. I felt horrible and told him I would make him a cake. It's kind of a long story.

Innards!

Our apartment has electrical issues. I don't really get the details but I do know that a Russian electrician was at our apartment for hours, saying things like, "So if you touch zees? And you also touch zees at zee same time? You will, how do you say... die?" And then we had to change our electrical outlets to two pronged ones for some reason. I also know that on one side of the apartment (the kitchen, the guest room, the dining room and the bathroom) you can't use more than one electrical appliance at a time without the power shutting off. Want to microwave breakfast and have the coffee maker on at the same time? Too bad.

On Thursday morning, I discovered that the outlet next to the bathroom must be on the same breaker as well because the power shut off when I tried to turn on the electrical kettle and use the hair dryer at the same time. So I moseyed over to the circuit breaker, which is a good two feet above my head. I squinted to look for the kitchen switch and then blindly reached up to reset it. But I wasn't wearing my contacts yet so I hit the one next to it, which powers my room, BJ's room and the living room. And consequently turned off BJ's computer that had his unsaved philosophy paper on it.

I felt horrible, even though he should've saved it or finished it before the morning it was due. So I apologized and told him I would make him a casatta cake to make up for it, which he's been asking me to do anyway. And in return, BJ agreed not to punch me in the face. A fair trade.

It took me a few days to get around to making, mostly because I'd never had cassata cake before. Cassata cake is just an Italian wedding cake, so there are tons of variations, mostly centering around sponge cake, fruit and ricotta-cream filling, like they put in cannolas (which, apparently, is the plural of cannoli). None of this information was really useful to me though, as I've never made sponge cake and couldn't remember what cannoli filling tastes like. I don't like cannolis/cannolas, crunchy cookies don't do it for me. Just accept it and move on.

Luckily, we live right by Little Italy, a little Italian neighborhood that happens to house Corbo's, an Italian bakery that specializes in the kind of cassata cake BJ likes. So Joe picked me up a slice of their cake, you know, purely for research purposes.

The sponge cake was light but more substantial than angel food cake. The whipped cream was, well, whipped cream. My favorite part was the ricotta cream and strawberries sandwiched between layers, I could eat just that with a spoon.

So I after I knew what each component was supposed to taste like, I set out to make the entire cake. Here's how a normal person bakes cassata cake: make sponge make. Make ricotta cream. Make whipped cream. Cut some strawberries up and toss them in sugar. Cut cake in half, fill with ricotta cream and strawberries. Plop the over layer on top. Frost with whipped cream. Top with more strawberries. Voila.

Pretty straight forward. But I was already pretty stressed so here's how I made it: Make sponge cake. Do probability equations that make your head explode for 45 minutes. Take out sponge cake 20 minutes early because it's pretty brown and a knife comes out clean. Curse when it deflates a little. Make ricotta cream. Make whipped cream. Cut strawberries. Realize that you need more whipped cream. Overbeat the rest of whipped cream, rendering it useless. Curse some more. Throw some butter in the Kitchen Aid to make an impromptu butter cream. Curse as all the butter flies out of Kitchen Aid when turned on. Collect the butter and pretend it's still sanitary. Throw in some powdered sugar, covering the rest of the kitchen in a fine mist. Scrape the whipped cream off the cake because the new frosting won't stick to whipped cream. Try to disguise the fact that the cake is a lopsided mess with lots of frosting and almonds. Try not to cry when the refrigerator door crushes a section of the cake. Clean up the battle ground that is the kitchen. Go do more statistics problems whilst trying not have a panic attack.

See? Easy.

How does it taste? Beats me, I haven't tried it. I don't even want to look at it anymore.

The I'm-Sorry-I-Deleted-Your-Philosophy-Paper Stroke Inducing Cake

At least it didn't turn out too hideous, I think I would've had to kill myself. But I was determined.

Here are the components I used (or tried to use):

Sponge Cake, adapted from allrecipes.com.

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 1 cup cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Separate the eggs. In a large mixing bowl, beat egg yolks until very thick and lemon colored. Beat in sugar gradually. Add water, almond and vanilla extracts. Beat in flour.
2. In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Then add cream of tartar and salt. Beat mixture until whites are stiff, but not until they are dry. Fold this whipped mixture into yolk mixture.
3. Pour batter into an ungreased 9 inch tube pan. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for one hour, or until done.(Don't you love the baking directions? Bake one hour, or until done. Um, great, thanks for that helpful hint. And the whole ungreased pan thing? Can't see where that would work. I had a feeling it would stick so I sprayed the pan down and it still stuck like crazy.)
   

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Ricotta Cream

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese
1/4 cup powdered sugar (can add more or less depending on desired sweetness level)
2 Tbsp amaretto
1 tsp almond extract

DIRECTIONS:

Beat all ingredient until smooth, set aside.

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Whipped Cream Icing

INGREDIENTS

• 1 pint heavy cream
• 1 1/2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
• 2 Tbsp amaretto
• 1 tsp almond extract
  
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin

DIRECTIONS

1. Whip cream with confectioners' sugar until soft peaks form. Add amaretto and almond extract. Dissolve gelatin in water over low heat. Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly, then whip into cream until stiff peaks form.

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Sugared Strawberries:

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cut strawberries (I used about 3 lbs) into slices, sprinkle about 1 Tbsp sugar over them and toss to coat. Let sit at least 5 minutes.
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To assemble:

Cool sponge cake, unmold out of pan. Cut cake in half and spread on a layer of the ricotta cream. Layer half the strawberries over the cream, cover with other half of cake. Frost with whipped cream icing and cover with the remaining strawberries. If you wish, cover the sides of the cake with crushed almonds.
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Wish me luck on midterms, I may or may not kill myself by the time the week is up. Argh. Here's proof that I'm going insane:
It's a hair mustache!! Hahaha... ha?