Apples to apples

I suffered one of life's disappointments this past week.  One of those that makes you question your confidence and competence.  So what did I do?  Turned to the pots, pans, and a stick of butter for solace (after assuring my mother that I find no comfort at the bottom of a bottle...)

The harvest season is most definitely upon us.  The weather let up by giving us some nice temperatures this weekend, but there's no turning the leaves back to green.  Speaking of, my coworker's apple tree seems to have produced a bumper crop of tiny, tart little apples that she brought to work to share.

So cute and little!!  Maybe 5 cm in diameter, at best.

I had tempted poor Hubs with the idea of an apple pancake yesterday, but wound up feeling too tired and out of sorts to pull it off (instead, we grabbed stuff from 7-Eleven on our walk back from my dentist appointment, and he had his first Winnipeg Slurpee!  A milestone!!)  I felt it would be cruel to not deliver the promised pancake today.  I decided to get a little fancier than usual, though.  Typically I just chop up apples and mix the pieces into typical pancake batter.  Today, I decided to recreate a tasty treat I tried at the famous Pancake House chain... the German apple pancake.

Apples cooking in caramelized spiced sugar and butter.

One big pancake for two, comin' up!  It's an 11" pan, to give you a frame of reference.

Close up goodness- crispy-but-fluffy batter, soft apples, and lots of sugar, spice and all things nice.  I know, I'm terrible.

It's basically a pancake started by cooking apples in butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg on the stovetop (how can you go wrong?!), adding a rather eggy, runny batter, and baking in a hot oven.  A bit more prep time than what my usual apple pancakes require, but SO worth it in the end.  Allrecipes.com has become one of my new best friends for inspiration, and they didn't let me down here!  Plus, it gave me an excuse to test-drive my new ovenproof skillet.  And I didn't burn my hands once!  Hurray!

Yes, I use President's Choice 15% real maple syrup table syrup.  Sorry for all you out there who think Canadians drink maple syrup by the litre... but I find the commercial varieties, while delicious, to be too runny (and too expensive) for my liking.  This is the best of both worlds for me.  Don't judge.

The next order of business was to use up some apples that have languished in my crisper for too long to be eaten out of hand.  They were Royal Galas, which my chem teacher once referred to as, "The dessert apple".  How could I interfere with that destiny??  Plus, I had yet to use my fluted tart pan for an actual tart (I've used it for something else, but I'll post that another time).

My other new friend in the online recipe world is joyofbaking.com.  Now, I don't consider myself a beginner when it comes to baking, but there's something reassuring about seeing a recipe with an accompanying how-to video.  Sort of makes the whole process seem idiot-proof.  That was the case for this cream cheese apple tart with a shortbread crust base.  I wanted something to accompany the pumpkin pie ice cream I whipped up at Hubs' behest (recipe pending!)  How often does that happen?  Requesting an ice cream, then making the dessert to match it?

Please excuse my messy stovetop.  It's clean now, I promise!

Overall, I'd say both of these were a success.  I thought Hubs might enjoy the cheesecake-like filling for the tart; turns out I was right.  It was a great dessert to finish of a meal with our dear friend Deb while watching Netflix and drinking more wine than is probably recommended on a "work night".  Oops.

Planning to extend the harvest baking theme to a pumpkin-fest for next weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving, yay!),
-Honeybee

My Manitoba bucket list, and some Shmoo Torte

...let me guess.  You've never heard of shmoo torte.  Trust me, neither had I before moving here!

I've been reflecting back on my past year in Manitoba, and have sort of played around with making a "Winnipeg Bucket List".  It's not ALL food-related, but it's a list of things I haven't yet done here that I would want to experience before leaving.  It would go something like this:

1. Skate on the Red River
2. Try bannock and/or pemmican
3. Eat at Fusion Grill, a "prairie fusion" fine dining restaurant
4. Have a meal at the fanciest steakhouse, 525 Wellington
5. Enjoy a delicious prix fixé menu at Inferno, a French restaurant in St. Boniface
6. Ride the water taxi... if they ever open the dock behind my building!
7. Have brunch at The Black Sheep
8. Giggle at the retro theme while enjoying fries at Ray & Jerry's steakhouse on Portage
9. Take a drive out to Lockport and go to that little roadside restaurant that Shannon keeps telling me about
10. Trek out to Gimli and get some delicious fish

I've talked about some prairie-related deliciousness before.  These would be things that I've never heard of, but are super-popular here.  If I had a loonie for every time I heard, "It must be a Manitoba thing..."  I'd long ago checked red velvet cake, honey dill dipping sauce, and puffed wheat squares off of my bucket list.  I ticked off shmoo torte only recently, though.

In Osborne Village (just a few blocks east of my apartment), there is a FANTASTIC restaurant called Baked Expectations.  I've mentioned it before.  It's easily one of my favourite little places to go.  I'd heard some of my Manitoba born-and-bred coworkers talk about shmoo torte in the past, so I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about.

From what I've been able to gather, shmoo torte is made of pecan angel food cake, layered and frosted with whipped cream, caramel sauce, and more pecans.  I'd had it on very good authority that Baked's offering was one of the best in the city.  A little Googling (and an article from The Globe and Mail) tells me that "schmoo" can mean "gooey" in Yiddish... no surprise then that this is apparently a Bar Mitzvah staple among Winnipeg's large and wonderful Jewish community.

(As a side note, my search for the origins of this cake brought me to the blog "Winnipeg o' my Heart", written by a fellow foodie with a similar Manitoba transplant past.  There's one I'll be adding to my Blogger reading list!)

So after all that, you might ask, "What did the shmoo do for you??" (terrible pun, I know.  It's Father's day... I think I'm channeling my dad's sense of humour even more today).  To be perfectly honest: I don't think shmoo and I will become the best of friends.  I mean, if you put a slice in front of me, I'd eat it... but that goes for just about anything.  I'm not the hugest fan of the texture of angel food cake, and pecans certainly aren't my favourite nut.  Add to that the relatively plain whipped cream layers, and I was just kind of 'meh' about the whole thing.  Now, the caramel shmoo sauce WAS delicious... but anything dipped in that would be good.  Overall, I don't think I'll be crawling back for more.  Which, I must admit, is a good thing... I don't need any more difficulty selecting a dessert from Baked's extensive menu!

Looking forward to checking off more Manitoba to-dos,
-Honeybee

B-day Cake Crazy

I love cake.  There's no getting around it.  There are only very few cakes I've met that I haven't liked, and it takes a very messed-up cake to garner my scorn (think: dry, tough, tasteless).

This cake was not scorn-worthy.

Given that I love baking cake almost as much as eating it, I offered to make a custom creation for my coworker Sherri's twentysomething birthday (I got your back, Sher... I won't spill the beans here!)  Sherri, like me, loves pretty much any cake, which gave me carte blanche for creation.  I sent her a little quiz, however, to see what flavours she prefers and what I could play around with.  I believe the quiz was as follows:

1. What's your favourite citrus flavour?  Answer: lemon
2. What's your favourite berry? Answer: raspberry
3. What's your favourite non-berry-or-citrus fruit?  Answer: peaches and mangoes (I think... I can't quite recall all answers now)
4. Favourite nut? Answer: not really a huge nut fan overall
5. Favourite chocolate type (i.e. dark, milk, white, etc)?  Answer: any!!
6. Favourite type of icing (i.e. buttercream, fondant, fluffy)?  Answer: cream cheese
7. Favourite cake flavour overall (i.e. red velvet, chocolate, white, spice)? Answer: carrot cake

Sherri had fun with the quiz, which I'm thinking I'll use for other upcoming 'Pegger birthday girls and boys.  Now, obviously, I wasn't about to make a cake that incorporated ALL of these flavours... that might be tricky (and gross).  Instead, I picked up on lemon and raspberry, partly because I'd been craving the combo myself, and partly because something light and fruity like that was a nice change from the cold wintry weather.

Recipe book, along with citrus inspiration!

As with most of my baking endeavors, my coworkers are my guinea pigs (or lab rats?  Whichever).  Having never attempted it before, I decided to make Anna Olson's Lemon Mousse Cake, modified with some raspberry jam in the middle layer.  The end product?  Gorgeous and delicious.  The journey to get there?  Perilous, at best.  I shall let the pictures do the talking.

There's a significant amount of lemon zest in this cake.  Couldn't help but take a shot of my  citrus, elevated to the level of art by my new zester (courtesy of my cousin Adam at Christmas).  I love the long, criss-crossed pattern it makes!  It also makes great long strips for garnishing... more on that later.

The genoise sponge cake, made to specs per Anna's recipe.  I've made genoise before- light and spongy without being dry.  This did not disappoint.  The idea was to trim about an inch all the way around the perimeter of the cake (which made tasty tidbits for snacking), then slice the cake into two layers.  Then, using a ring mould (or the ring from a springform pan, which you see here), pour a homemade lemon mousse over the whole shebang, surrounding the layers in light but firmly set airy "frosting" with a perfect clean edge.

Uhhhhhm... oops.  The best laid plans oft go awry.  I didn't thoroughly clean the beaters on my electric mixer between whipping up the cream and the eggs, which resulted in less-than-inflated eggs and a runny mousse.  Add to that the ability of the mouse to leak under the ring mould that I'd set on top of the serving platter.  Crap.  What a mess....

Aaaand the floor.  I was so frantic (wanting to ensure I had enough time to make a second batch of mousse and let the whole thing set up), that I actually left this splatter in place for a good couple of hours.  Figgy did not object at all... though I'm sure my veterinarian sister Ni would faint over my kitties licking up heavy cream and raw egg.  Ah well, it's not like I'm going to REPEAT this performance.

Second (and successful) batch of mousse in place.  I made swirly patterns with dollops of PC blue menu raspberry jam, and a chopstick.  I was shocked at how nice the raspberries looked mid-January!

Part of the second-time-around solution: instead of just resting the springform ring around the cake on the serving platter, as Anna suggests, I actually put the cake back in the fully assembled pan.  The paper towels are there because of a known leak in one spot of this particular pan.  Luckily it stemmed the flow of mouse appropriately, and no further massive mousse messes were made that day.  Huzzah!

And now, Honeybee's destroyed kitchen!! No real worries, though... this was tidied up pretty quickly.  It just LOOKS bad.

AND IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH THE EFFORT.  Behold, the gorgeous, garnished finished product.

Look at those lovely lemon peel curls!  Plus a few mint leaves, for good measure.

At the fête, with the lovely Scarlett, Sher, Lindsay, and Honeybee.  Sher was quite pleased with the end product!!

Cross-section.  See the nice layer of raspberry jam in there?  Added a very nice touch, if I do say so myself.  My criticism of the overall end product?  I would've liked the recipe to make more mousse, to ensure a sufficient "top layer" at least equal to the thickness of the "side layer".  The next time I make this sucker, I'll be making 1.5 times the mousse.  Leftovers are better than not enough!!

Before I go, since I'm already on the topic of birthday cakes, I want to share MY 26th birthday cake with you.  I know I've written before about my Aunt Lisa's tradition of making me my very own cake, in spite of all the other goodies/dainties that are served on Christmas Eve.  I never know what I'm getting any given year, however it's a VERY safe bet to assume it'll be chocolatey as sin.  Drumroll please, for the 2010 cake:

Behold!  A chocolate caramel sea salt masterpiece!  And yes, the jig is up.  My name is Melissa.  Greek for Honeybee.  I couldn't bear the thought of blurring out that awesome icing job for the sake of anonymity.  And I love the little snowflake sprinkles... they match the beautiful pendant that Hubs got me for Christmas!

Not the most flattering of action shots, but that's life in motion for ya!  Blowing out the candles in my Nonna's dining room, surrounded by Ellie, Johnny Cash (I mean, my brother-in-law), Ni, Daniel, Sar, and Adam (the zester cousin!)  The taste of this cake was so worth all that effort to blow out those candles!  Plus check out all those other goodies... this is why I gained ten pounds over the holidays!  Ah well, you only live once.

I'm most definitely looking forward to future birthday cake requests.  I've already got three in mind:

• Irene has requested something with caramel (perhaps I'll ask Aunt Lisa for my cake's recipe? Or I'll play around with dulce de leche, we'll see).  Irene, if you happen to stumble across this, tell me again what your birthdate is so I can schedule my scheming!
• Shannon requested something super-chocolatey (I'm thinking my aptly-named Super Chocolatey Cake, but perhaps with a ganache frosting instead of Betty Crocker.  There's a reason my London girlfriends call this one "sex on a plate")
• Hubs was very intrigued by the Tia Maria torte I enjoyed last night at Baked Expectations with my new buddy Deb... and I'm just as intrigued about recreating it.  Challenge accepted!

As much as I love baking, I'll only put on more weight if I hoard the results to myself (no matter how tasty they are!)  I'm so looking forward to honing my skills and having the result be enjoyed by friends and family.  I'm also looking forward to spending more time in Bulk Barn... I've never fully appreciated what a haven that place is for cake decorators!

Thinking I need to look into a formal cake decoration class, perhaps in the fall after boards and wedding are safely behind me,
-Honeybee