Birthday Cake Week

It’s Birthday Week for the Little Chef and me, and it should surprise nobody that I have spent a lot of this birthday week baking decadent cakes. But lest you think that everything that comes out of this fiddler’s kitchen is a starry-eyed triumph, I must disabuse you of that notion. I do try to share my most successful dishes with you on this blog, presenting them at their most photogenic whenever possible, but sometimes my best efforts are a total flop. While my baking efforts haven’t been exactly unmitigated disasters this week, I do know that my kitchen rhythm is just OFF. I’ve been making stupid mistakes in my baking, such as forgetting to add key ingredients to the batter, only to realize the omission after the pans are in the oven. The perfectionist in me is smacking her head against the wall, but the chocolate/whipped cream/caramel-loving side of me is still pretty happy.

The Little Chef’s birthday was first, and we got very excited looking through some of the hilarious posts on Cake Wrecks, the website devoted to professionally decorated cakes gone horribly wrong. We were inspired to try our hand at decorating, and with two little Wilton cake decorating tips and some disposable icing bags, we were ready for action. I made a basic buttercream and we practiced on a piece of waxed paper while the cake was in the oven.

Writing with icing is harder than I thought it would be, but we both started to get the hang of it. I was impressed with Mac’s icing-printing, and I found that my icing-cursive resembles my good little 5th grade schoolgirl handwriting.

We both enjoyed making icing dots. I created a small lattice, and then we played tic-tac-toe. (The Little Chef won.)

Apricot Sorbet For Kids Of All Ages

I think of apricots as the blushing baby sisters to peaches and nectarines, all of them stone fruits that reach their peak at various points throughout the summer. Peaches become more glorious as summer progresses, growing impossibly succulent by the time August rolls around, and nectarines follow a similar curve. But in the same way that little ones have an earlier bedtime while their older siblings are still out on the town, rosy apricots bow out by late June or early July. Since apricot season is rapidly coming to an end, I am especially happy that I had a chance to make Apricot Sorbet with my Little Chef this week.

I had a movie date to see “Toy Story 3” with my nephew Mac (aka The Little Chef), an event we both had been looking forward to with great anticipation, and we hit Whole Foods together to get snacks before the movie. En route to the chips aisle, I was stopped in my tracks by a lavish display of golden apricots. When I casually mentioned that we could buy some apricots to make sorbet, my suggestion was greeted with a very enthusiastic “YES!!!” from the Little Chef.

So that is why we took two pounds of dewy apricots—as well as two pints of fresh raspberries and a large bag of Pirate’s Booty—to the Ziegfeld Theater in midtown Manhattan on Friday afternoon. In this day and age of cookie cutter multiplexes, it is always a thrill to see a film at the historic Ziegfeld, New York City’s last single-screen movie house with a monster sound system. Mac actually gasped with delight when we walked into this majestic theater with its plush black-and-red velvet décor, out of his mind with excitement that we were seeing this eagerly awaited movie on such a mammoth screen.

Chocolate Chunk Cookies With The Little Chef

A Recipe For A Very Happy Afternoon With A Little Chef

Step One: When your 8-year-old nephew Mac (aka The Little Chef) is staying with you all week and keeps begging you to bake something together, it helps if you have a great recipe to start with. The chocolate chip cookie recipe in David Lebovitz’s mouth-watering new book, Ready For Dessert, became our new BFF this week.

Step Two: Make sure you have all the ingredients on hand and at the correct temperature. The butter will be pliable once it softens to room temperature, though you can quickly get the eggs to room temp by placing them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. Your brown sugar should also be the soft consistency of warm sand so that you can easily pack it into the measuring cup.

However, our brown sugar was spectacularly rock-hard and might have done serious damage had we thrown it at something. If I were a microwave-owner, I could have easily softened the block of sugar by nuking it for a few seconds. But since I am not, the Little Chef and I employed a series of questionable techniques to get that sugar to the right consistency and packed into the measuring cup. We grated the sugar-rock on a box grater (not very efficient), and we placed it in a Ziploc bag and swung it against the edge of the counter (fun, but also not so efficient). We also smashed it into larger bits with a hammer (getting better) and finally resorted to pulverizing those rocky bits in a food processor. By the time we finally ended up with a packed cup of light brown sugar, we might as well have run out to the corner deli for a fresh box, but Mac and I laughed a lot more by doing it this way. (We also avoided having to take twelve flights of stairs on a day the elevator was being repaired in my building!)

Step Three: Give your Little Chef a chance to show off his measuring and whisking skills. Bribe him with extra chocolate pieces if he can keep most of the dry ingredients in the bowl and off the counter, especially if he tends to whisk dry ingredients together quite vigorously as a rule.

A Week of Birthday Cakes, Part 1

It is officially Birthday Week!

As I mentioned last week, I am always in a festive mood during the entire month August, not just on my actual birthday itself. While my birthday is on the 17th, my nephew Mac’s birthday is on August 10th. For several years now we have made a tradition of celebrating the week in between our two birthdays. 

Our Birthday Week schedule usually includes an outing at the movies on one day, breakfast at our favorite diner on another day, and a taxi ride just for the fun of it. We also make the pilgrimage to 18th Street, one of the best blocks in Manhattan, where we spend some time at the marvelous children’s store, Books Of Wonder. Eventually our sweet tooth trumps our love of reading stories together, and we wander across the street to City Bakery for an enormous chocolate chunk cookie or an outrageous passion fruit tart.

I’ve always felt a particular kinship with my nephew, and not just because we were both born on Fridays and our birthdays are exactly a week apart. If you have read previous Kitchen Fiddler posts, you will know that Mac (a.k.a. Little Chef) has been my very enthusiastic little buddy in the kitchen for several years now, ever since he insisted on helping me make the cake for his 4th birthday. He is an excellent helper and hilarious company as well.

Baked Alaska Amidst Mountains

My family’s Great Alaska Adventure continues, and we are all drinking in the outrageous natural beauty with real joy. My camera’s lens is completely inadequate to capture the enormity of these sights, for the mountain ranges are too majestic to be confined in a small frame. Neither can the true glory of a late-night ocean sunset by captured with my little digital camera, but that hasn't stopped me from photographing my way through this trip with abandon.

I am still floating on the memory of our train ride up the White Mountain Pass yesterday. After docking in Skagway, we ascended the old Yukon mining trail in a wooden railway car and were treated to one jaw-dropping view after another. Our enormous ship became a white speck on the horizon as the train carried us higher and higher still. We saw an enormous black bear lurking amidst magnificent trees as we made our way to the summit, and there we encountered the most pure white snow I've ever had the pleasure of seeing . Once again, my photos don’t do justice but I know that I will certainly daydream about these visuals when I am back home in the concrete jungle of Manhattan.

The fourteen of us occupy three tables at dinner each night, and I am very proud of my 7-year-old nephew, Mac, who has been a delightful addition to the dinner table. He has also been very adventurous in the culinary department this week, which is an excellent quality to have when your nickname is Little Chef. Mac is cultivating his seafood appreciation on this trip and I’ve watched him devour a different salmon preparation nightly. On the day that we docked in Sitka, my parents took him to a place that served reindeer hot dogs, a local delicacy that Mac decided was the most delicious hot dog he’d ever tasted. Because of this positive experience, he didn’t hesitate to order the Vegetable Soup With Reindeer Sausage at dinner that night, and he drained the bowl to the last drop. I was very impressed.

Baking As A Pre-Concert Ritual

Many of my non-musician friends have recently asked me, "What do you do to prepare for a concert on the day of the performance?" This has prompted me to think about pre-concert rituals. Some of my musician friends are superstitious, in that they have to eat a certain meal beforehand or wear the same special pair of lucky cranberry-colored socks on stage, for instance. Generally speaking, most musicians I know try to take it easy on a concert day. Of course that's not always possible, but on the day of a big performance, one would ideally have time for a leisurely walk and a good catnap, after having done just enough light practicing of one's instrument to feel warmed up and ready for action. I have one friend who invariably relies on a minor caffeine transfusion and a substantial hit of nicotine before he performs, yet even with all of that coursing through his system, he still manages to walk out on stage and play like an absolute god. (As someone who is very caffeine-sensitive, the merest thought of drinking coffee on the day of a performance is enough to give me a serious attack of the jitters on the spot!) Another friend of mine calms her pre-concert nerves by giving shoulder rubs to whomever is fortunate enough to be nearby. That's lucky for all of us, but she swears that the act of massaging other people's shoulders limbers up her own hands so that she then feels warmed up enough to play. I don't do anything out of the ordinary immediately before walking on stage, but I've just come to realize that my afternoon pre-concert ritual is perhaps not so typical, for I usually get in the kitchen and bake.

It's always baking, not cooking. Any substantial knifework tires my hands easily, something I can't afford to do before performing, and let's not even talk about what disasters could occur if a knife slipped. So as long as I have good oven mitts, baking is safer, and it's also particularly easy when you have a stand mixer to help. (How I love my KitchenAid!) Baking is also comforting. I don't know anyone who would not be moved to happiness by the warm toasty aroma of a freshly baked cake filling the house. I am forever improvising in my savory recipes, but baking is more of an exact science and I am much more inclined to follow a recipe more carefully, especially when I am guaranteed success. (Kitchen failures always make me especially sad, something I don't want to run the risk of before a big concert!)

I realize I have a history of pre-concert baking, starting from when I was in college. I usually threw a party after my recitals, a tradition that still exists today. In thinking back over of my various recitals over the past fifteen years, there is frequently a dessert attached to the memory of that day. It's one of those strange ratios, in that the more important the evening's concert is, the stronger my compulsion is to get in the kitchen in the afternoon. But I don't think my musical performances have suffered too much from this diversion of energy, and if anything, my kitchen endeavors have possibly even helped me. A brief case history, if you will:

Tiger Cake And The Little Chef

The Little Chef is back in town for the weekend, much to our mutual great delight. In many ways, my 7-year-old nephew Mac and I are kindred spirits, sharing a similar focus and enthusiasm for whatever projects we throw ourselves into. As much as I love cooking for my friends and family, Mac takes great pride in his position as my "Little Chef". One of the first things he asked me upon arriving at my apartment was, "Louise, what are we going to make while I'm here?" There was no question in his mind that we'd be spending some quality time in the kitchen together, and he launched into a whole recital of chocolate treats that he was eager to create with me. But when I told him that I had a special recipe called Tiger Cake that I'd been saving to make with him, he quickly abandoned his previous ideas about cupcakes or peanut butter truffles, totally hopping on board with my plan.

Mac, a.k.a. the Little Chef, and I have had a blast in the kitchen together ever since he was three years old when he insisted on helping me make his chocolate birthday cake. I still crack up when I imagine that tiny boy standing on a chair next to me at the kitchen counter with a little flour sack towel tied around his waist as an apron, so eager to help. He always wanted to measure the dry ingredients by himself, especially when cocoa powder was involved, even though he would usually end up wearing a lot of that cocoa himself as he determinedly scooped it out of the box! 

This weekend I realized that my Little Chef is now tall enough to help me without the aid of standing on a chair. (Gulp.) He buttered the Bundt pan quite vigorously and we laughed hard when we both ended up with flour all over our shirts as he attempted to 'gently' coat the buttered pan with flour!

 

"Why is it called Tiger Cake?" my Little Chef asked, as he helped me measure and sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, being a little more careful with this step. I explained that we were going to divide our cake batter and add chocolate to only half of it. The way we layered the two batters in the pan was going to create a "tiger stripe" effect.

Fiddling Around In The Kitchen With Mac

I have had a hilarious week taking care of my seven-year-old nephew Mac while his parents are away, and the days have been just packed. Mac lost both of his front teeth this past week, so we went to Ben&Jerry’s to celebrate the new big gap in his mouth. There was an incident in which poor Mac accidentally took a trip to the district school bus yard, but it all turned out fine in the end and we have gotten a TON of mileage out of this misadventure. It has been a fabulous week of story-telling, and he has practiced reading aloud in different accents, which cracks me up. We have watched our favorite movie “What’s Up Doc?” twice (the wacky 1972 screwball comedy with Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, and Madeline Kahn), providing our own spirited commentary which makes me laugh just as much as the movie itself! And we have definitely been fiddling around in the kitchen together.

Mac and I have a history of being in the kitchen together. He insisted on helping me make his birthday cake the year he turned four, and from that time he has been my little helper on many an occasion. He loves the movie “Ratatouille” and proudly refers to himself as my “Little Chef”. Here are a few cooking tips from Mac:

A garlic press is an effective and fun way to grate cheese. This works well for a semi-hard cheese such as cheddar, making it ready to add to hot cooked noodles for a quick and yummy macaroni&cheese.

It’s really fun scrambling an egg with an old fashioned springy whisk. This whisk doubles as an excellent radio antenna when balanced carefully on top of a tower of Legos.

Celery with peanut butter tastes even yummier when you add peanut butter chips on top.

And making chocolate cupcakes together can be a real riot. They’re even better when you use great cocoa powder. (We found my favorite Valrhona cocoa on sale at Whole Foods, oh happy day!)

Mac likes to measure and then level off the dry ingredients with a knife.

It’s important to keep your hands far away from the beaters when the mixer is on, no matter how badly you want to taste the batter. But a measuring cup with a long handle makes a good hat.

One of the perks of being the Little Chef is that you get to lick the beaters.

And the bowl.

It was really difficult waiting for the cupcakes to bake, and THEN there was the indignity of having to wait even longer for them to cool. But it was worth it, because the cupcakes were absolutely delicious!

MAC&LOUISE’S EASY CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH VERY VANILLA FROSTING

Makes about 12 cupcakes (or more if you can keep your fingers out of the batter)

Louise’s Excellent-Yet-Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

Beat the butter with an electric mixer until soft. Add the sugar and continue to beat for 3 minutes until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and unsweetened cocoa powder till they are well combined. Add a third of the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture, beating just till combined. Scrape down the sides and beat in half the milk. Continue alternating the dry and wet ingredients, scraping down the sides after each addition, and ending with the last third of the dry ingredients.

Fill the muffin tins two-thirds of the way full and bake for 20 to 22 minutes. The cupcakes are done when the top springs back when lightly pressed in the center. Transfer the cupcakes onto a rack to cool. When they are completely cool, frost with Mac’s Very Vanilla Frosting.

Mac’s Very Vanilla Frosting

½ cup (1 stick) softened butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

3 to 4 tablespoons milk

Beat the butter and 1 cup of the sugar with an electric mixer till well-combined and very fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually add the remaining cup of sugar, mixing at first on low and then increasing speed. Beat in the vanilla and add 3 to 4 tablespoons milk until the frosting is of a spreadable consistency.

Frost the cupcakes using a small knife or offset spatula. To pipe the frosting, you can make a quick piping bag by filling a small Ziploc bag 2/3 of the way with frosting, twisting it closed, and snipping off one corner of the bag with scissors to create a little hole for the frosting to come out.

Mac recommends topping these cupcakes with vanilla frosting and decorating them with peanut butter chips and/or chocolate eyeballs, available at Jacques Torres Chocolate Haven. Serve with a tall glass of milk.