The Baseball Cake

Jealous?

It was Rusty’s birthday, and that man is the biggest Toronto Blue Jays fan that has ever existed.  I received this ridiculous cake pan for Christmas, which would supposedly create a cake in a cupcake shape, so we figured we’d experiment with Rusty’s baseball-themed birthday cake.

Now I want you to be prepared for the absolute awesomeness that is about to follow, and hold back your tears of joy when you see our massively amazing cake decorating skills. Just try to contain yourself. We are that good. Yes, it’s true. And that pan aside, we had some awesome tools to work with, like this nifty new whisk/spatula designed specifically for making batter. What could go wrong?

Because the Blue Jays’ colours are red, white, and blue, the Pie and I decided to make Rusty a red velvet cake, and we went with Bakerella’s recipe for the same, because it seemed to produce a rich red crumb (we later figured out that this was at the sacrifice of the chocolatey goodness for which red velvet is famous but it was still good nonetheless).

So, first we preheated the oven to 350°F and then buttered and floured our cake pan.

In one bowl, we mixed together 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1 measly tablespoon cocoa. If you want a more chocolatey-tasting cake (because it is a chocolate cake after all), then feel free to add more cocoa, and maybe some melted chocolate. Mmmm ….). Anyway, whisk that up and set it aside.

In another bowl plop 2 eggs.  Without their shells would be good.  They never really specify that in recipes, but you should always crack eggs before you add them to cake batter.  Just a fun fact for your information.

Use a nifty whisk to beat ‘em up.

Add in as well 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil, 1 cup buttermilk, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 2oz red food colouring.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk until well-combined. Holy cow is that ever pink.

Pour your batter into your prepared pans, scraping the sides of the bowl, and tap the filled pans on the counter to release any air bubbles.

Bake the cakes for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Ours took a little longer due to the construction of the pan. Remove them from the oven and let them sit for about ten minutes before emptying onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While that’s cooling, you can whip up your cream cheese icing. In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat an 8oz package of room temperature cream cheese with 1 cup room temperature butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla until smooth. Slowly beat in 6 cups icing sugar. Then take half of that icing out and set it aside.

To the remaining half, add blue food colouring until you achieve your desired colour.

So now we have blue icing to frost the “cupcake liner” half, and white for the top, to resemble a baseball.

With the design of this cake, you need to “glue” the two halves of the cake together (but you’d have to do that with two layers anyway).

The bottom half was so heavy and dense it started to crack under its own weight, so I patched it a bit.

Then I iced up the bottom. I tried to make it resemble the corrugations of a cupcake liner. You can see that I succeeded in a masterful fashion.

Then I did the top. I tried to smooth out some of the natural swirls in the structure of the cake to make it more round, like a ball. As you can see, the results were epic.

Then I put the pie to work with a tube of red gel piping to make baseball seams in the cake. Oh man, admire that steady hand.

Smooth, even stitches.

Crowing in glee at his own mad skills.

And our final product, a majestic confection which tasted great, despite not being a chocolate cake, a baseball, or a cupcake.  Rusty loved it.

Fun with Science! Bouncy Balls!

Good morning!  Today we are introducing a new category to Ali Does It: MAD SCIENCE.

Cait and I did a lot of science together in high school, and we quite enjoyed ourselves.  So we decided, while I was home in Ottawa for a WHOLE MONTH, to do some more science to keep ourselves occupied and out of the Pie’s hair.

For our first attempt at science, we decided to create polymer bouncy balls.  Seemed simple enough.  We got all the necessary supplies at the dollar store, including these sparkly plastic Christmas balls that held chocolate.  We threw out the chocolate but kept the spheres to serve as moulds.

So what you need to do this is borax; corn starch; white, clear, or blue school glue; warm water;  measuring spoons; two small plastic containers for mixing, as well as a stick or spoon for stirring; and optional glitter or food colouring.

Pour 2 tablespoons warm water and 1/2 teaspoon borax into one of the containers and stir or shake it to dissolve the borax. If you want to add food colouring, now’s your chance.

In the other container, pour 1 tablespoon glue.

Add in 1 tablespoon of corn starch and 1 tablespoon of the borax solution that you just made. DO NOT STIR. Let this all mellow and mix together on its own for 15 seconds. I think maybe our container was too big because there wasn’t really any interaction going on.

After fifteen seconds, whip out your spoon and start stirring. Stir until the mixture becomes too stiff to pull the spoon through.

Then empty the contents of your container into your hands and start kneading. It will begin as super messy.

But then it will start to come together.

And eventually form a ball.

However, we couldn’t really get our ball to fully solidify, and it never bounced, so we thought we’d try again.

This time we used clear glitter glue.

This stuff ended up forming an odd sort of non-Newtonian fluid and never solidified at all. Not to mention it didn’t turn out translucent as promised.  I blame the weird dollar store glue.

And of course the amounts we used were way too small to fit in our clever little moulds.

Never mind. We’ll try again some time.

Root Beer Bundt Cake

Potluck insanity. Too many tall friends.

Every year during the winter holidays we get together with our Ottawa friends and have a potluck.  We started doing this when we were all students because it was the one day we could guarantee that we were all in town at the same time and we could spend some time together.  We even get fancy with the planning, starting with a Doodle scheduler to pick the right date (if you’ve never used their free software to make an appointment, check it out).  Then we set up a Google spreadsheet to figure out who is bringing what, to ensure that not everyone arrives with chips and dip and that the people who are bringing appetizers don’t show up just as we’re starting dessert.  Inevitably the spreadsheet gets hacked by someone (or everyone) and chaos ensues.  Graphs and pie charts and graffiti abound.  It’s madness.  But fun.  This year the Pie and I decided to host, and as each person brings a dish, this was the Pie’s contribution to the festivities: Baked’s Root Beer Bundt Cake.

He’s made it before, for my birthday, and it’s always a favourite.  Anything Baked does is a favourite with us.  The problem is that because I was busy doing my own thing and making a superb leek and leftover turkey pie (which I will save as a post until the next turkey-related holiday), I didn’t actually get a chance to photograph the finished product.  So you’ll just have to guess as to what it looked like.  Sorry.

Now, the recipe calls for 2 cups root beer to go into the batter.  Don’t you dare use diet root beer — you’ll regret it enormously.  Use a stronger-tasting brew like Dad’s or Stewart’s or even Barq’s to get the best flavour, and feel free to replace some of the liquid with a root beer schnapps or even a tablespoon or two of root beer extract.  Not having any of these things, however, the Pie decided to make himself a root beer concentrate.

He started by pouring two cans of root beer into a pot. Then he simmered it for about half an hour to boil off the water and reduce the liquid.

The resulting fluid is dark and opaque, and we hoped it would enhance the flavour of the cake when added to the regular root beer.

While you’re doing that, preheat your oven to 325°F.  Generously butter a large bundt cake pan.  Dust the inside with flour and knock out the excess.  If you don’t have a bundt pan you can make this in an angel food pan.  If you have to make it in a pan that doesn’t have a hole in the middle you will need to cook it a bit longer and keep an eye on it so the bottom doesn’t burn.

In a small saucepan, melt together 2 cups root beer, 1 cup cocoa, and 1/2 cup butter and stir until the mixture is smooth.

Add in 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar and whisk that until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is smooth.

Remove that from the heat and allow to cool a little bit. You want it to cool a bit (enough that you can poke your finger in it and it will be nice and warm but not hot) because you’re about to add in 2 lightly beaten eggs. And if you add the eggs in while it’s still hot they will cook on their own and that will be super gross.

Add the eggs in and whisk thoroughly.

In a big bowl, whisk together 2 cups flour with 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda.

Gently pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture and fold with a spatula until just combined.

You don’t want pockets of flour or anything but you want the batter to still be a mite lumpy.

Pour that into your prepared bundt pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until you can stick a skewer into it and it comes out clean.

Set that puppy on a rack to cool completely.

In the meantime, you can make your root beer fudge frosting. In another bowl, whisk together 2oz melted dark chocolate and 1/2 cup room temperature butter. Add in as well 1/4 cup root beer, 2/3 cup cocoa, and 2 1/2 cups confectioner’s (icing) sugar and beat until smooth.

When you cake is cooled, plaster on that icing in a haphazardly charming manner and eat it all up. Cover what’s left over in plastic wrap and keep up to a week at room temperature.  Sorry again that I have no pictures.  It disappeared! Instead you can have a picture of Gren in the Christmas hat that he hates.

Get Your Fix at Re-Up BBQ

You may recall a while back that I mentioned my cousin’s food cart being featured on the Food Network’s Eat Street.  

What started out as something to do on a lark by my cousin’s husband Michael and his friend Chester, both former professional chefs, has turned into a wildly successful enterprise, with two food carts operating in downtown Vancouver and, most recently, an indoor restaurant in New Westminster’s River Market (they own the crab shack next door, too!).

When we were out west, we were finally able to taste the southern barbecue goodness that Re-Up has to offer.  If you were wondering, the food carts got their name from the proprietor’s favourite show, HBO’s The Wire.  To “re-up” is to replenish your stash of drugs when dealing on the corner.  And, as Michael says, this pulled pork is addictive, and the carts are on the corner, so it made perfect sense.

We made a visit to the new restaurant and enjoyed a fantastic family lunch.

Even baby Ari made an appearance, and Ando held onto her while my cousin Lindz had her own lunch.

We also got a tour of the premises, which included a gaze into the magic smoker.

And a sojourn into the freezer. Lindz wanted to see if the whole family would fit.

Where we got to look at stacks and stacks of bacon.

And brought some home with us.

We also enjoyed the commissioned graffiti that only restaurant employees can see.

I went with the traditional pulled pork sandwich for my lunch, and was not disappointed.

The Pie had two.  He was mighty full.

The girls enjoyed biscuits with chili.

Tego especially enjoyed the fresh coleslaw.

And a pile of brisket on mashed potatoes.

Washed down with Re-Up’s own custom sodas.

At that point it wasn’t just Ari who needed a nap.

You can visit Re-Up’s website, “like” them on Facebook, and/or follow them on Twitter.  And if you’re in the Vancouver area, make sure to pay them a visit in person.  Enjoy!

Blue Egg Group

Happy Friday the 13th!

I do not suffer from triscadecaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th.  Normally it’s an extremely lucky day for me.

And true to form, what do I get but some fresh St. Phillips BLUE eggs, a gift from Miss Awesome?  It’s always my lucky day.

Aren’t these beautiful?

I don’t want to waste them on something banal, so stay tuned for the amazingness I plan to create with them.

I have a number of project ideas lined up for the next few weeks, but they all take a bit of time, so please be patient with me if the posts you’ve been seeing are a little simpler than you are used to.  As Blackadder would say, it’s all part of my cunning plan …

O Canada Cuisine Suggestions

One of my colleagues, the Multilinguist, is off in Vega doing research.  She has requested I whip up a feature month of Canadian food so she can impress her research participants, and it’s a challenge I have happily accepted.

And what a challenge it will be!  Canada is a country of vast natural resources, which include lots of fantastic things to eat.  It’s also a country of immigrants, which means that much of what we eat is flavoured by influences from other countries.

That said, I can’t do this without your help — what stands out in your mind as being distinctly Canadian cuisine?  I’d like to take a culinary journey across all Canada’s provinces and territories, but I just don’t know enough about all of them do it alone.  Not to mention that many dishes from many provinces (like the prairies, the territories, or the forever intertwined-and-annoyed-about-it Ontario/Quebec) tend to blend into each other in terms of available foodstuffs.  Your suggestions will be most helpful.

Is there a place you visited/lived/read about that had something tasty to offer?  What kinds of food do you think about when (if) you think about Canada?

I’m looking for main courses, desserts, beverages — anything you can come up with.

Here’s my opening salvo into this Canadian menu.  I’m really just spitballing here.  We’ll start out west, then zig-zag north and south as we work our way east, shall we?

CANADIANA — ON MY PLATE:

British Columbia

Smoked salmon on cedar planking.  Nanaimo bars for dessert.

BC has a large number of residents of Asian descent, so maybe smoked salmon sushi?

I also remember driving past a number of llama farms there as a child.  I wonder what llama tastes like?

Yukon Territory

All that comes to mind here is Robert W. Service’s The Cremation of Sam McGee, which is not particularly helpful, I know.  But what did the gold-diggers eat (aside from their sled dogs)?

From a little bit of research I see that the Yukon has a thriving wheat growers’ association.  Perhaps some hearty hearth bread?

Northwest Territories

Caribou stands out as a traditional food here.  In fact, you can see all the useful bits of a caribou and other local fauna here.  I’m pretty sure I can get caribou in St. John’s, if I do some looking around.

Bannock is also another possibility, or a wild berry tart.

Alberta

Alberta beef is a dear, dear thing to us.  It’s not something readily available to me in Newfoundland, but I can probably make some substitutions.  Alberta also produces a large number of elk and other large livestock.

Saskatchewan

Most of the recipes coming up here involve home-grown grains, like rice, barley, and lentils.  Lots of pilafs and stews.

They (and all the other prairie provinces) also grow a hardy little berry called the saskatoon.  I am pretty certain I can’t find that this far east.

Nunavut

Because Nunavut is Canada’s newest territory (c. 1999), it’s gotten a lot of press in the past decade and so it’s all over the internet.  Nunavut recipes involve caribou, arctic char, and seal.  Please don’t ask me to cook seal.  It is such a strong, oily meat.  I’ll try anything twice, and seal has already reached its limit in my tummy.

A quirky adaptation is the Nunavut bar, a modification of the Nanaimo bar with a snow-white centre.

Manitoba

I really know nothing at all about prairie cooking.  I’m pulling all this stuff off the internet.  Pork, poulty, and mushrooms seem popular here.  Please fill me in if you know anything different.

Ontario/Quebec

This massive conglomerate has the same sort of food availability as the prairies.  You can get good Ontario produce all throughout the summer and fantastic Quebec cheese from tiny hamlets all across the province.  Having lived on the Ontario/Quebec border for a long time, I’m a little muzzy on who “owns” what kinds of food, but I’m definitely thinking poutine, which originated in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, as well as the ubiquitous beavertail pastries you can pick up on the banks of the Rideau Canal.

New Brunswick

Like the other Atlantic provinces, New Brunswick cuisine features glorious amounts of seafood.  Man do I love seafood.  And New Brunswickers can do their seafood with an Acadian twist, which makes their dishes just a little bit different from the rest of the ocean provinces.

Nova Scotia

All that’s running through my head is lobster lobster lobster lobster apple crumble lobster lobster blueberry picking lobster lobster lobster.  Though I do remember cooking an egg on the sidewalk in Lunenburg when I was little.  And the fact that lemon meringue pie is considered a maritime staple, despite the fact that lemons don’t grow on the east coast.

Prince Edward Island

Despite being Canada’s smallest province, PEI is BIG on potatoes.  I can definitely work with that.

Newfoundland and Labrador

We’ll finish off our tour at home, which will be a little bit less of a challenge.  Starting a blog while living here has made me a bit more conscious of what’s going on, food-wise, than I had been about the other places I lived.  Aside from the usual seafood and the absolutely vile seal-flipper pie (as I said, don’t ask me to cook seal, I won’t do it), there’s a bunch of scoffs (that’s Newfoundland English for a meal) around here with local flavour.  Fish ‘n’ brewis, scrunchions, any form of salted meat, moose pizza, toutons, and not to mention famous Newfoundland berries such as partridgeberries, blueberries, and bakeapples.  I’m sure I can arrange something outta that.

In Sum,

basically what we have to work with here are a wide variety of grains, fish, shellfish, livestock, berries, and fruits.  How can we make them Canadian?

 

 

Next-Door Tomatoes

The last day of the summer months (and Alidoesit’s 300th post!).  What better way to celebrate it than with tomatoes fresh from our next-door neighbour’s garden?

There are these ones that look like brains.

And these chocolatey ones.

And the tiny yellow gumballs.

And the regular garden-variety ones.

So fresh and tasty!

Carrot Cake for Interviews

While the Pie and I were back in Ottawa, I took advantage of our time there to finish off a few more interviews for my work with the local hockey team.  For my very final interview, the person I was interviewing wasn’t a huge sweet fan, so I decided to go with a nice, fresh carrot cake that I pulled off the Canadian Living website.  Plus it was easy peasy and I didn’t have a lot of free time.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and then butter and flour a 13 x 9″ metal cake pan (or, as I did in this case, two 9″ square disposable aluminum pans).

In a large bowl, whisk together the following:

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

I didn’t take a picture of it because it was boring, so you can have a picture of my dog instead.

In another bowl, beat together the following until smooth:

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

3 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pour the wet mixture over the dry mixture and mix until just moistened.

Stir in 2 cups grated carrots, 1 cup drained crushed canned pineapple (basically one 340mL can), and 1/2 cup chopped pecans.

Spread into your prepared pan(s) and bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Set the cakes on a rack to cool completely.

For the glorious cream cheese icing, beat together the following:

1 8oz (250g) package plain cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup icing sugar

I needed a little extra icing and I wanted it to be a bit creamier, so I added in a further 1 cup icing sugar and 1/2 cup whipping cream.

So very smooth.

Spread the icing over your cooled cake.  Spread it with love.  You can tell that I love it.

Either inside the pan or without.

And then eat it all.  Because the one I made is totally gone now.

A Whopper of a Cake Topper

On Saturday, my cousin P-did married the lovely M and they asked me to make the topper for their cupcake tower.

After my adventures with fondant and ivy back in June, this was a real piece of cake.  I could even re-use the colours and fondant I had leftover!

I even had the recipe down pat, using a single batch of the vanilla cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting I used so many times before, and baking the excess into cupcakes for us to eat in anticipation of the big event.   The heat made the fondant crack a bit, but all in all it worked out.

Because I’ve already posted about this recipe (twice), I’m going to spare you with the details, and just titillate you with lots of nummy photos instead.

Enjoy!

Possibly Related articles

• Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake – Day Two (alidoesit.wordpress.com)
• Chocolate Moose Cake (alidoesit.wordpress.com)
• Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake (alidoesit.wordpress.com)

Walking on the Wild Side: Labrador Tea

One of the benefits of camping with a former Junior Forest Ranger supervisor is you tend to find things out.  Ranger P tells us that there is evidence in Columbus’ writings that the aboriginals fed Columbus and his crew Labrador tea, which is extremely high in vitamin C, and saved them all from scurvy.  The internet tells me that Labrador tea also provided a revolutionary alternative to regular tea after the Boston Tea Party. 

A member of the rhododendron family, “Lab tea” also contains ledol, a toxic substance which, in high quantities can cause paralysis and cramps.  Those who drink the tea on a regular basis (which is pretty much all of rural Canada, because this stuff grows freaking EVERYWHERE) say that’s a bunch of hooey.  The leaves and branches are also used to keep bugs out of clothing and rodents out of grain.

You can find Labrador tea pretty much all over the place.  Despite its name, it grows across the width of the country, and can be found in the deep woods, by rivers and waterfalls, and in peat bogs.

While the white umbrella-like flower heads are pretty, it’s the leaves that are important. 

Thick, waxy, and slightly resinous, the leaves are also furred on the underside with white or yellow or even reddish fuzz.

This is Ranger P desecrating a national wildlife reserve in order to make us tea.

It’s simple, really.  You put your kettle on to boil.

You put your leaves in the kettle.

You brew that for a few minutes.

You have your tea.  It’s very astringent and tastes a bit like a Christmas tree, but it’s palatable.  We might have brewed ours a bit overlong.

And it’s either really good for you, or it will kill you.  Either way, I think we’ve all learned something today.