The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Tuesdays With Dorie (and Sunday With Julia - no, not THAT Julia, MY Julia): Perfection Pound Cake as Birthday Cake

Long enough post title for you?

 

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie challenge was to make the Traditional Madeleines found on pages 166-168 of "Baking, From My Home to Yours," and was chosen by Tara of Smells Like Home.   We were also given the option of choosing one of the past TWD recipes if we didn't have the correct pan to make the madeleines. 

And so for two reasons, I didn't make the madeleines.  First off, I don't have the right pan, and though I could pretty easily get one, there was reason number two - my daughter's birthday party and the requisite cake for that.  So, in my merry two-birds-with-one-stone killer way, I picked the Perfection Pound Cake, which was chosen back in January, long before I was a member.

Pound Cake, as Dorie mentions in the "Playing Around" section of the recipe, "lends itself to variations minor and major."  And that's exactly what happened with mine.  I had asked the soon-to-be Birthday Girl what kind of cake she wanted.  Asked her several times, in fact, because I know how often her mind can change.  Ultimately it boiled down to these three requests:  Strawberry cake, Purple on the outside, with Pink flowers on it.

Purple on the outside was simple enough - just color some fondant and that would be that.

Pink flowers - nothing I couldn't accomplish with some pink royal icing.

And the strawberry cake?

I used Dorie's Perfection Pound Cake recipe - tripled, because there would be at least 14 people, if not more, and I generally make about twice what I realistically need because I'm insecure that way.

To the cake, I added some orange zest, because, well, I've been using lemon (and lime) a lot lately, and I needed a change in citrus. 

And I sliced about 3 pounds of strawberries or so and macerated them briefly in some sugar.

And so here's how it all went down....

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour or 2  1/4 cups cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Getting Ready:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Butter a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan or an 8  1/2 x 4  1/2 inch loaf pan.  Put the pan on an insulated baking sheet or on two regular baking sheets stacked one on top of the other. 

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar on high speed until pale and fluffy, a full 5 minutes.   

(Add in the orange zest.)  Scrape down the bowl and beater and reduce the mixer speed to medium.  Add the eggs one at a time,

beating for 1 to 2 minutes after each egg goes in.  As you're working, scrape down the bowl and beater often.  Mix in the vanilla extract.  Reduce the mixer speeed to low and add the flour, mixing only until it is incorporated--don't overmix.  In fact, you might want to fold in the last of the flour, or even all fo it, by hand with a rubber spatula. 

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top.

(And scatter the strawberries on top and press lightly into the batter

Put the cake into the oven to bake, and check on it after about 45 minutes.  If it's browning too quickly, cover it loosely with a foil tent.  If you're using a 9x5 pan, you'll need to bake the cake for 70-75 minutes; the smaller pan needs about 90 minutes.  The cake is properly baked when a thin knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean. 

(The heart-shaped pans ranged in bake time from about an hour to an hour and a half.)

Remove the cake from the oven, transfer the pan to a rack and let rest for 30 minutes.

Run a blunt knjife betwene the cake and the sides of the pan and turn the cake out, then turn it right side up on the rack and cool to room temperature.

So those are my Perfection Pound Cakes - with strawberries pressed into the tops.  They smelled phenomenal, and I had to fight my family off in order to keep the cakes safe for Julia's party.

Once the cakes were cool, it was time for the construction.  I couldn't exactly level the surfaces of the cakes, because I'd end up slicing away a lot of the all-important strawberries.  And I could have put the strawberries in the bottom of the pan...and I had thought about it...but I forgot until I'd filled the first pan, so I just pressed them on top.

I also didn't want to cover the whole thing with fondant because - again - the strawberries.  They looked so yummy...I couldn't hide them.

First, I sliced each cake in half, so I'd have two layers per cake...and I slathered seedless strawberry jam in between the layers.

I also wanted to enhance the appearance of the strawberries, so I melted down some apricot preserves and glazed them with that.  Nice and moist and shiny.

Then I wrapped ribbons of fondant I'd colored with "aster mauve" and "delphinium blue" around the edges of each layer.

And to all that, I added some fondant ribbons and royal icing leaves and flowers, and this was how it looked:

Later on, after we'd sung "Happy Birthday" and Julia had blown out the candles, I started to cut the cake.

And in that momentary silence, my little Birthday Princess said,

"I don't want any cake.  I just want ice cream...I don't really like cake."

~~~~~

Everyone else seemed to like it.  And of course I'd made way too much, but I gave everyone a chunk of it to bring home, and this was all that was left:

So Happy 4th Birthday, Julia! 

Next year you get pie.

Typing in my Tiara

We had Julia's birthday party yesterday.  Family and some friends, food, cake and ice cream, and - best of all - nice weather, so people could spend some of their time outside.

Today...the cleanup.  I didn't do much more than pack up the leftover food and stick it in the fridge (not that there was much of it) last night. 

And that tiara I mentioned?  Yes, I've been sitting here checking email and other peoples' blogs this morning wearing one of the tiaras I'd bought as favors for the other little princesses that were invited to the party.  Julia told me to.  So I did.  Not much fight in me this morning.  Thing is, none of the invitees from her daycare came, so I'm left with a lovely selection of sequined tiaras in assorted colors.  And bags of assorted necklaces and rings and bracelets, too. 

Right at this very moment, Julia is traipsing through the house in her underwear, adorned with a necklace, three rings, and a bejewelled barrette in her hair.  She is stunning.

The party was fun - really, a nice number of people.  I'm actually glad the daycare chicks didn't come, though it would have been nice if their parents had RSVP'd so I wouldn't have planned for their attendance, just in case they showed.

But anyway...Julia had fun, and that was the main thing.

The birthday cake I made is going to be the focus of my Tuesdays With Dorie post tomorrow, so I'm afraid I won't be sharing pictures of it today.  I can share this with you, however:  I had asked Julia several times (just to make sure she didn't change her mind) what she wanted for a cake.  She wanted a "strawberry cake" with purple on the outside and pink flowers.  So that's what she got, with a bit of artistic license on my part.

(Update:  Julia now has 4 necklaces, 2 barrettes, one hair clip, and no rings.  I think the rings were a bit cumbersome.  She can only handle so much bling.

Sigh.

I'm just looking around.  You know, I had the house looking so nice...but whatever.  The debris is proof of a good party, I guess.

Gotta go get Alex moving along for school...and then it's time to tackle the kitchen.

Talk to you later...

Happy Birthday, Beth!

My daughter was born close to but not on the same date as Beth's birthday.

Beth and my sister, Meredith, have been friends since the first grade, and Beth has also become my friend, too.

Of course, the fact that Julia was NOT born on Beth's birthday had caused a bit of friction between us, but I think Julia's antics over the years have softened that somewhat.

That, and the fact that in personality, Julia is very much a mini-Beth. 

Not 100% though - there is that whole eyeball eating thing....

Anyway, in honor of Beth, here are a few Julia anecdotes.

~~~~~

Last week, when we had Bill's guitar students over after their juries, and we served them lots of food, part of the spread included cheese, and one of the cheeses was brie.

Julia loves brie.  She doesn't always remember the name, but when she refers to "The Squishy Cheese,"  brie is what she means.

Well, we had some brie left over.  As well as the three other cheeses served that night.

Alex doesn't like brie.  He likes cheddar.  So one afternoon Alex was hungry and wanted some cheese and crackers.  Cheddar and crackers.  I cut up some slices of cheddar and put them on crackers, and he was happy. 

Julia wanted cheese and crackers, too, but not cheddar.  She wanted the squishy cheese.  So I got that out, sliced some up, put it on some crackers, and gave it to her.  And she was happy.

I went upstairs to put laundry away or something...and a bit later, I heard some sort of scraping noise coming from below.  I went downstairs, because, having known my daughter for a while now, I had a feeling I knew what she was doing.

And sure enough, when I got downstairs and rounded the corner on the way to the kitchen, there she was:  standing on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, surveying the counters.  She was looking for the brie.  The scraping sound I'd heard was Julia bringing that chair from the dining room to the kitchen. 

Unfortunately for her, I'd put the cheeses back in the fridge.  But she probably would have figured that out, given enough time.

~~~~~

Another brie story...

(And yes, in case you were wondering, we DO live on brie.  It goes so well with the caviar and champagne.)

Anyway, this may have been the same wedge of brie...we only had a little of it left, and I'd put it out on the counter one evening, before dinner, for us to pick at while the meal was cooking.

At some point, Julia and Alex had gone downstairs, Bill was in the music/computer room practicing, and I had gone in to look up something on the computer.  I had a great view of the hall, and the doorway to the basement, and part of the kitchen.

Julia came upstairs and wanted another piece of brie, so I cut her a little bit and off she went.

That sentence I just wrote?  Repeat it.

Then she decided she didn't need me, so she managed, probably on tippy-toes, to cut herself a little more cheese.  Fine.  I'm all for self-sufficiency.

And she did that once or twice more. 

And then I saw her edging from the kitchen toward the stairs...hands behind her back, smiley "nothing to see here" face shining at me.

"Julia, did you take the rest of the cheese?"

Still smiling, she nodded...and held out her left hand, which was clutching the last hunk of brie.

~~~~~

Last week, before the dinner for Bill's students, (well, his and the other guitar teacher's students, really), Bill had been fighting off a case of bronchitis.  He stayed home from work a couple of days, and his only comfort came from watching the original three Star Wars movies.  Julia would join him sometimes, but Alex didn't like the movies at all.  He is my Ferdinand the Bull, preferring peace and beauty to light sabres and blasters.

Anyway, Julia loved the movies.  I don't know if it was because she got to hang out with Daddy all by herself and that made it special, or if it's just her nature.  I think a bit of both.

She's seen bits and pieces of the movies a few times now, especially Empire Strikes Back.  I think that's her favorite.  (She's also her mother's daughter.) 

Got all that background stuff?  Good.

Last night at dinner, out of the blue, Julia said "I love Star Wars."

Alex, who doesn't, asked "Which is your favorite part?"

And Julia didn't even have to think.  "When the tauntaun dies."  She ate some more spaghetti.

Alex asked "What's a tauntaun?"

Julia, laughing:  "It's a big animal with FUNNY HORNS!"  And she made twirly motions with her hands at the sides of her head.  She could also have been referring to Leia's coif in the first movie.

We ate in silence for a moment, and then Julia got a dreamy look on her face.  She was still thinking about Empire Strikes Back.

"I love Yoga," she sighed.

~~~~~

And so,

A very Happy Birthday to you, Beth!

Love,

Jayne, Bill, Alex...

and especially,

Julia

Tasting Menu

A few weeks ago my husband and some of his buddies brewed up a batch of beer (about 20 gallons) to be divided among the four of them.

One of the guys brought his daughter along - a little girl right around Julia's age.  This is the second time she's been over, so she and Julia were already well acquainted.

Long before that first play date, the little girl's father and Bill and I had been sharing stories about our respective daughters and their rather strong little personalities.  We all figured the two of them would either hit it off or become mortal enemies.  Fortunately for all, they hit it off.  More or less.

This most recent time, Julia and "Jakey" as Julia constantly refers to the other little girl (her name is not Jakey, but it will be for this story) played together a lot, but their friendship was occasionally interrupted, as are many little girl friendships, by period of time when, as Julia told me "I'm not gonna be her best friend any more."  So there were moments of silence.  Times when one little girl played outside and the other one played inside.

But for the most part, they played together...dragged out all of Julia's toys and dolls together...colored with chalk in the driveway (and Jakey colored on her dad's truck with chalk, too).  So it was a pretty good day.  Jakey's dad also brought along Jakey's brother, who is about Alex's age, and the two of them were instant buddies.  So alike.  It was fun to watch them.

But anyway.  Over time, part of brew day's routine has come to include muffins from Whole Foods, that one of the guys picks up on his way here...Bill and I make lunch (which, this day, was spicy fish tacos - yum) and Jakey's dad brought a 12-pack assortment from Dunkin Donuts.  Alex had a glazed chocolate donut - he ate part of it and I saved the rest for later.  I think Julia had a glazed one...I forget who else had what. 

Anyway, the guys were outside tracking the beer's progress and playing whiffle ball (an important part of brew day, apparently)...the two little boys were watching a movie about dinosaurs downstairs...I was zesting lemons and other citrus for the beer, or doing dishes, or making guacamole for lunch - I don't remember where I was...and the girls were in the dining room. 

And they were relatively quiet, and getting along nicely, and I wasn't really paying attention.

Which is probably why this happened:

That's Julia (she chose her own clothes that day.  She has her father's sense of style.)...and that's her co-conspirator, "Jakey."  And those are what's left of the donuts.

They were tasting them.  Perhaps discussing the subtle nuances of flavor...the quality of the chocolate...texture and crumb.  Not really sure.

But they both were pretty amused by the whole thing...and their faces were pretty well smeared with chocolate, too.

And here's what was left:

I especially like how they licked away most of the choclate frosting. 

Blinks

Bill put a few large crickets in the lizard tank and Julia stood nearby - not too close - to watch the lizard stalk his prey.

He finally scurried down from his leafy perch and got one, then scrambled back up to gulp the thing down.  It was a big cricket, so it took a little work.

Julia came rushing over (to where I was sitting, six feet away) to tell me all about it.

"The lizard caught a...a girl cricket!

"A girl cricket?  How do you know it's a girl cricket?" 

She thought a moment.  "Because she's got...blinks." 

"Blinks?"

"Yeah, just like I got blinks," she put her fingers near her eyes, "and you've got..." she peered closer, looking in through my glasses, "...wait a minute...you only got little blinks," she said, with pity, and went back to watch the lizard devour his meal.

Bill looked at me.  "Blinks?"

"Eyelashes."

"Oh."

Camera-Happy X 3

Okay, I've set up a couple of flickr badges over on the left so I can share my kids' photos.

The first sets (and, like their mother, these children are not hesitant picture-takers, so the sets are rather large) are from this past weekend - Saturday, when they first got their cameras, and Bill and Joe caught some awesome fish, and then Sunday when we took the kids fishing in the morning and to Southwick's Zoo in the afternoon.

I still haven't posted my own pictures from the zoo or the fishing trips - yeah, I'm a slacker.

But - I have to share this - the coolest creature we saw at the zoo on Sunday?  An albino peacock.  Tail feathers on full display.  Stunning.  Just stunning.  Just wandering around outside the zoo.  With an albino hen and a couple of guinnea hens. 

And so now we have three sets of shots of the same bird.

Here's one of Alex's:

And one of Julia's:

And one of mine:

Okay, make that two of mine.  It's my blog.

Amazing, isn't he?

Twirling Dervish

Julia wore her Easter ensemble to daycare today.

It's nice and twirly.

She likes to pretend she's a ballerina...

And just look at her foot - and the way her head is facing.  There's some flexibility right there.

If her clothes were more flowing, she'd have a Stevie Nicks kind of thing going on...

 

And she's not even dizzy.

Gone With the Wind

(This post is for my sister.  She will know why.)

It rained yesterday morning, and drizzled on and off into the afternoon.  Not a great day to play outside after school/daycare.  But Julia wanted to go outside anyway.  She doesn't let silly things like rain or cold get in the way of playing.

Besides, the Easter Bunny brought each of my children their VERY OWN umbrella, and what better time to go outside and play than on a rainy day when Julia could bring her VERY OWN "Ariel" (the Little Mermaid) umbrella out there with her.

So out she went, pink boots, red coat, and Ariel umbrella.  I watched her on and off as she ran around the back yard, or skipped, or ambled...sometimes with the umbrella, sometimes not.  Sometimes it looked like she was talking, or singing.  All in all, a good bit of play time.

But though it wasn't raining much any more, it was windy, and that made it feel colder than the 50+ degrees the thermometer promised.  Soon enough I heard a faint tapping on the storm door and saw the top of Julia's head and her umbrella through the window on the kitchen door.

I opened the inner door, and then carefully held the storm door so she could sidle past it on the top step and come in.

But then a great gust of wind swooped down, grabbed the Arial umbrella and pulled.  Hard.  Julia, still holding to the molded figure of Ariel on the handle, was yanked around with the umbrella and pulled off the top step.  She let go, fortunately, or she'd probably have ended up a few streets away, but she sprawled head and hands first down the (cement) steps and onto the (asphalt) driveway.

It was the funniest thing I've seen in a while - and I've never seen a wind-grabbed umbrella pull a human being anywhere except in "Mary Poppins."

But I swallowed the laughter before it bubbled out because Julia was wailing.  Physically she was fine - no scrapes on her hands or (thank God) on her face.  I think mainly she was just very surprised and scared by the whole experience.

I brought her in the house, hugged her a while, wiped the tears, and listened to her - in a sort of 3-going-on-4-year-old version of Mary Tyler Moore wailing "Oh Rob!" in her Laura Petrie years - recount what had happened.

"aaaaand...the wwwwind just...BLEW me...downthestairs and I FALLED DOWN!"

The Thunderous Threes

I don't remember if the twos were this hard.  I don't think they were. 

Yesterday while I was making dinner, the kids were playing upstairs, as I mentioned in last night's post (below). 

One of the fun things they did was bring a whole bunch of stuffed animals into my bedroom and pile them on the bed.  On the cat.  They thought this was hysterically funny.  The cat was tolerant, but not thrilled.

Well, later on, after dinner, I told them they needed to get all their stuff off the bed and put it back in their rooms.  They had also added other, non-stuffed-animal things like the two ukeleles we have...a box of crayons...and a couple of baseball hats from where they usually hang in the kitchen.

Julia said she would do it "all by mySELF!" so I left her to it.

A bit later, when nothing had been brought back downstairs, I asked Julia if she was done.  I thought maybe she'd just put everything in her bedroom.

She said no...hadn't done it yet.  And I told her to get to it.  NOW.  So she went upstairs again and stayed there for a while.

A bit later, she came back down to the kitchen.  I asked if she was done, and she said no.  So I escorted her back upstairs and started to point out (like she didn't already know) what I wanted her to put away.

And then I saw what she had been doing earlier. 

She had brought magic markers upstairs along with the crayons.

There's a big blue blob - around the size of a quarter on the sheet...and this on one of my pillows:

And how did I know Julia did it?  That Alex hadn't done it earlier?

Because she signed her work:

Princess of the Damned

Earlier this afternoon.

I'm in the kitchen prepping a chicken for dinner.

Julia and Alex have been playing upstairs - wonderful child-play - with lots of shrieking and gurgly laughter.

Julia comes into the kitchen.  The way her heels hit the floor is very businesslike, no-nonsense, and could be intimidating if she wasn't so short.

"Mom."  She stated.  "I gotta tell you something."  Something that cannot wait, by the tone.

"What is it, Julia?"  I ask, still busy with the chicken.

"Mom, look, I got blood."

When she speaks the word, blood has about three syllables.

I look down to see what's bleeding.  She's not crying, so it can't be too bad.

She holds up one tiny finger; her other hand squeezes the finger tightly so that a tiny line of blood appears just beneath the nail.

"How did that happen?"  I ask, turning back to my chicken.

"I don't know" she says, unconcerned now.  Her shoulders shrug in this new tone of voice.

She pauses a bit.

"But it's good to lick!"