Monday, May 24, 2010

I just found The Best Thing Ever.

So, I have been contemplating baking my own wedding cake. I feel like, in the end, it will be much cheaper, and much more delicious than one baked by, well, someone who is not me. Professional wedding cake bakers don't do a lousy job of baking, necessarily, but I find that, since they may do several cakes in a week, they make their cakes somewhat ahead-of-time, so by wedding day, they may look pretty, but be rather dry. And a lot of them use shortening in their frostings rather than butter! *gasp* While shortening, a solid at room temperature with its high melting point, has its advantages in, say, hot weather (where butter would just melt, causing your cake to, well, melt and droop), buttercream with butter just tastes a whole lot better. If your wedding is indoors (in a banquet hall, in a hotel, an air-conditioned venue, etc.), your cake should be fine.

Anyway, I just found The Best Thing Ever on the Wilton website, while I was just browsing for the heck of it, because the internet in my apartment just started sucking really hard, and won't let me watch videos.



I feel like this is every chocolate-obsessed bride's dream, who wants to send her wedding reception guests into a chocolate coma. Not to mention, it's chocolate, covered in chocolate, with more chocolate on top. How can you go wrong?

I feel like I could totally pull this off, too. I may alter the amount of cake, but the design is pretty, requires minimal effort, and is flexible enough to incorporate any new ideas, like, oh, chocolate-covered strawberries, perhaps? I'm seeing this as chocolate layer cake filled with raspberry jam and chocolate ganache, stacked with the solid chocolate discs, and decorated with the truffles, and perhaps some fresh raspberries or chocolate-covered strawberries? The possibilities are really there.

The other great thing about this cake is that a lot of it can be done ahead of time. The chocolate discs and the truffles can all be made days (or weeks?) in advance and stored in the freezer. And, since the truffles are the main decorations, with just an icing comb used to decorate the sides of each cake/tier, there's no piping detail to worry about. It seems that the main time investment is making the truffles, (which are also the main decorations) which, as I said, can be done well ahead of time. Just get to the reception site, and frost, stack, decorate, and, you have the most chocolatey chocolate wedding cake ever.

Also, some people might say that a chocolate cake is not appropriate for a wedding. While even I at first thought that there wasn't going to make a chocolate cake as elegant as a white cake, this idea is a perfect example of how chocolate covered in chocolate with more chocolate on top can look absolutely elegant, and still be, well, chocolate.

Not to mention, it's your wedding, and you can do what you want to.

Mira

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

First Blog Post (And a Recipe for Stir-Fried Ramen)

Hi! My name is Mira, and this is my cooking/baking/recipe blog. I have written a couple of blogs in the past (none of them notable, so don't worry about them), and since my main hobbies are cooking, baking and cake decorating, I thought I would dedicate a blog to just that.


It's summer, so I'm home right now. Meaning, I'm not allowed to cook because my mother does not like me "making a mess of her kitchen." But that's okay, because this meant I could just sit around and be lazy for the couple of weeks I spent here. I'm going back to school on the 20th to do research in the chemistry department for the summer. So, until then, I'm just chilling at home, not really doing much of anything.


Future posts will likely include pictures, recipes and overall cooking and baking suggestions. For now, I'm just sitting around at home, blogging out of boredom.


When I lived at home (basically, before college) I would occasionally help my mom cook, but for the most part, she found it more efficient to just work by herself. I theoretically knew how to make a number of dishes, but I would mostly just do my homework at the kitchen counter, and watch. Occasionally I would make a pot of spaghetti, or my mother would ask me to put a pot of rice on the stove (no rice cooker here! In fact, I am still not skilled at using a rice cooker), but I rarely did much "real" cooking.


I first started really cooking my sophomore year of college. I had a small apartment with a kitchenette-type thing (really tiny, but included an oven and stove and sink and basic kitcheny stuff for cooking). This was also the year I decided, "eh, meal plan. Dining hall food. I know! I can totally cook my own food, and forgo a meal plan altogether! It would save money, and my food would totally be better anyway!"

My parents were a little skeptical, but in the end, they (for once) let me do what I wanted. So, they sent me off to school the next fall with a few pots and pans, as well as boxes of spaghetti and a bag of Basmati rice, confident that I knew at least how to cook that much. My roommate, Emily, also had a decent amount of cooking skill (more than me and my spaghetti), and the two of us managed to survive the year without starving to death.



Some of our staples included: stir-fried ramen noodles, boxed macaroni and cheese with canned corn, and pasta (our staple) with either red Ragu sauce-from-a-jar or Emily's alfredo sauce. Oh, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Grilled cheese is your friend.


I actually learned most of my cooking and baking basics from Emily that year. She taught me how to crack an egg (no, seriously! I went from not knowing how to crack an egg to practically having my own bakery in my kitchenette in a mere semester!), how to make alfredo sauce, how to use an electric mixer (the one she ended up losing by taking it home for break, then not being able to find it when coming back to school) without making a colossal mess and covering the kitchenette in chocolate cake batter, and several other basics.


So, now that I have rambled quite a lot about my cooking history, I may as well share a recipe.


Mira and Emily's Stir-Fried Ramen Noodles


Makes 2 servings


2 "bricks" (packs) ramen noodles
Oil (Olive, Canola, Vegetable... whatever your general preference is)
1/2 cup frozen peas and carrots (maybe a little more or less, depending on how much you like your vegetables)
1/4 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 eggs
Salt
Black pepper
Soy sauce
Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (optional - and use very carefully in moderation! This stuff is spicy.)


Boil the ramen with included seasoning packet in a pot for a few minutes, until almost done, but not quite done. (If it's too well-cooked, it will just turn into mush when you attempt to stir-fry it.) Alternatively, cook in microwave for 2-3 minutes, until not quite done. Strain out liquid. Set aside.

Scramble eggs in pan with a little oil. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Peel, crush and mince the garlic. Mince the onion. Sauté garlic and onion with some oil in pan on stove.

Add frozen peas and carrots, and cook until they are not frozen.

Add cooked ramen noodles and stir, adding a little more oil to the pan if necessary. Add scrambled eggs. Add some pepper. Take off heat and add soy sauce and hot sauce to taste.



Other seasonings you can use if you happen to have them in your pantry and like them: poultry seasoning (chicken powder), seasoning salt, garlic powder (if you are too lazy to use actual garlic cloves), crushed red pepper, ginger, stir-fry sauce. If you are really ambitious, you can even add other vegetables.

Eat noodles (
and vegetables, no matter how much you dislike them). Attempt to eat with chopsticks to make yourself feel Asian. Eventually give up and settle for fork, since that means you are more likely to actually get the food into your mouth.

Enjoy!



Mira




P.S. If you click on the title to this blog entry, you will be taken to the page where I originally posted the Stir-Fried Ramen recipe (essentially, my other blog).