Food porn is back, kittens!

I know it's been a shamefully long time since I last posted food porn. Please, hold your produce.

Seriously? Who threw that?

Anywho, you all have my lovely momma to thank for my bringing you this food porn. Because I'm terrible daughter and I'm about three holidays in baking debt, she demanded nothing short of excellence for her birthday this year. I could tell there was no fucking way I was getting off the hook...

She asked me for entremet. Not that particular one, but it's basically a multi-layered dessert with contrasting flavors and textures. My only response to her was, 'why do you hate me?'

She replied with some blah blah blah about challenging my skills and demanding excellence and I wasn't really listening.

So I look up recipes for entremet. Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, all these damn recipes are in metric form. I'm too lazy to convert them. Eff that ess. I'll do what I do well. I'll make something up.

Her primary request was that it be chocolate. Easy enough. Without further ado, here is my version of entremet (I apologize to your bandwidth):

I decided my stable layers would consist of Ghirardelli devil's food cake. Four layers, to be precise.

Oh yes, bitches. I went there. I made an ICE CREAM ENTREMET. My mom loves coffee, so I figured this should have an interesting texture, and you can't go wrong with Ben and Jerry!

One layer of devil's food cake sprinkled with coffee, then Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. It looks fabulous already!

For my middle filling layer, I chose to go with chocolate mousse. Something light to contrast the heaviness of the ice cream. Forgot to take a photo of the spread layer though. I fail.

What contrasts coffee? Peanut fucking butter, kittens! And I thought the pretzel would be pretty cool to add some extra crunch.

Yes, this was as time consuming as it looks. But pretty, so worth it. :)

I used a springform pan to hold it together while it set in the freezer. I used one that was too big. Oops. Whatever, it worked.

It's the leaning tower of Cheeza! (Bad Goofy Movie reference)

Was I done? Oh, no, kittens. I wasn't done. My mom loves dark chocolate, so I made Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate ganache to cover the whole thing! It ended up being too bitter with the devils food cake, so next time I'll use milk. Still, MOAR CHOKLIT!

So pretty and shiny...

Very impressive looking, no?

My dad's verdict: "It's like 1,000 pornographic orgasms". My mom loved it.

I'm fucking screwed for her birthday next year...

Food porn and a new template!

So many exciting things to see and salivate over!

I needed a change, kittens, so here it is! A fresh, new and sassy template for you to feast your eyes on.

And speaking of things to feast your eyes on, have I got some food porn to catch up on. Holy schneikes. Chocolate ruffle cake, brownies, and other assorted delicious confections that will make you wish you lived in my kitchen. :)

For now, we'll start with the most beautiful (not to mention challenging) dessert I've made to date. Chocolate Ruffle Cake!

It was sent to me by a gentleman who won a contest at my mom's workplace for a free cake. He wanted to try it, but didn't want to make it himself. So he asked me to make it. It's a chocolate genoise cake filled with chocolate and vanilla creme fraiche and raspberries, brushed with framboise syrup, topped with chocolate ruffles and wrapped in chocolate.

I'll pause for a moment while you go get yourself a towel.

It all starts with the chocolate genoise, of course. It's an easy cake to make, requiring only butter, vanilla extract, flour, cocoa powder, eggs and sugar. The recipe tells you to combine the eggs and sugar in a large, heat safe glass bowl and heat over DIRECT HEAT. Being the dipshit blonde I can be sometimes, I put the glass bowl directly on the burner. Did you know that Pyrex sounds like a gunshot when it explodes? Not to mention how much fun it is to clean sugar/egg mixture from underneath your stovetop. Off to WalMart to buy a new bowl. Aaaaand, take two. This time I put the bowl over a pot of boiling water, and heated the mix to the instructed temperature. Much better. After following the rest of the instructions for the genoise, I pull this pretty, dense and beautifully crumbed cake from the oven:

The most interesting part, in my opinion, was the creme fraiche. It's apparently some sort of delicacy, because you can't find it in a normal grocery store. And rumor has it that if you CAN find it, it's hella expensive. So I searched the intarwebz for a recipe and made my own creme fraiche. (Note to you all; creme fraiche needs to sit at room temperature for about three days before it's ready.) It was a delightful new experience to the tastebuds; thick, creamy, with a sour nutty flavor. Add some sugar and vanilla extract, and it's absolutely delicious once it's whipped:

Once you're ready to fill the cake (seriously, this cake took me four days from start to finish), you torte the genoise into three layers. Then you make the framboise syrup, which consists of water, sugar, and white rum. I KNOW, RIGHT?!

You take an 8" springform pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and gently put in the bottom layer. Brush it with framboise syrup, then fill it with chocolate creme fraiche. Brush the bottom of the next layer with syrup, and ease it on top of the filling. Then, brush the top and layer with fresh raspberries. Cover the raspberries with vanilla creme fraiche, then brush the bottom of the top layer with syrup. Ease it over the filling, then brush the top with syrup. Refrigerate overnight, loosen the sides of the pan, and this is what you get:

Doesn't look like much yet, but it's gonna be gorgeous! Next, you make the wrap. All you do is spread melted chocolate over parchment paper and carefully press it into the sides. Refrigerate for a few hours until the paper peels away easily. Then top with the remaining creme fraiche and prepared chocolate ruffles, with a single pretty raspberry:

No, I wasn't naked, just in short shorts. :)

Here's what the finished project looks like:

Have you drooled all over your keyboards? I know it was tough for me not to keep a slice for myself. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try any... But they said it was amazing. :) I'm waiting for a special enough occasion to try making this for myself. Or at least to make it for someone who will save me a piece to try. :)

Sex on your screen...

No, I'm not talking about skanky-Barbie-humping-ugly-guy porn. You dirty hussies.

(Shh, I look at porn too. It's okay - healthy, even!)

I'm referring to Food Porn. Yes, it deserves capitalization. You haven't had Food Porn in, well, just way too damn long, kittens!

Because I'm a dumbass and forgot to take any other photos of it, here's a pic of my very first attempt at cheesecake. Orange Delight Cheesecake. It's a delicious lightly flavored orange filling, chocolate crust, and topped with a chocolate drizzle.

It was as delicious as it looks. ;) The photo above was of my mom's second piece.

My determination for making this cheesecake is unmatched; I saw Tiramisu Cheesecake, and I just had to make it. So here we see my chocolate crust (made of crushed chocolate Teddy Grahams, because you can't fucking find chocolate graham crackers anymore).

Now, the recipe touts that marscapone cheese is supposed to make this cheesecake extra-rich. Well, it called for 8 oz marscapone, and 16 oz regular cream cheese. I like things very, very rich. So 24 oz of marscapone it was. The recipe also called for ladyfingers, but I forgot to make them and couldn't find them at the grocery store. So I used vanilla pound cake instead. It worked out, meh, so/so.

I will be the first to tell you this - MARSCAPONE TAKES FOREVER TO BAKE. Don't be stupid and use all marscapone. It doesn't work that well. But, being the diligent baker I am, I just lowered the temp to 200 degrees and let it bake. It did come out with a lovely golden brown crust on top of the filling, though. Silver linings and unicorn farts, people.

Et voila! Tiramisu cheesecake. Filling comprised of marscapone, sugar, egg, vanilla, and coffee-laced rum. Then you top it with sour cream while it's hot (it adds to the flavor, I swear). It called for a dusting of unsweetened cocoa powder, but I said fuck that and grated semi-sweet chocolate over it all. Much prettier. :)

Springform pans are WIN. I cannot imagine making cheesecake sans springform. The crust was a bit overdone, but next time I'll be smart enough to down it back to the called-for amount of marscapone and I'll make homemade ladyfingers.

It was still orgasmically delicious. ;)

Dream about that tonight, kittens. I'm off to help Erf figure out his FaceSpace... lmao.

No I'm not dead!

I'm sorry, my kittens, that I haven't written in quite some time. You see, on Wednesday my computer's network connection crashed. Thursday a guy came in to look at it, and got me reconnected. Then my computer kept crashing, and then I lost my connection again. It was a mess... However, if you're good kittens and you follow me on Twitter, you already knew all this.

Now because all of you are such good little kittens and you love my food porn, I thought that it was time to let you in on some of my super-secret baking tips... :)

I have some photos to accompany tips, but not all the tips have photos. (Ha, dirty!)

First up, tips on my favorite pie to bake; Apple Pie!

AP tip #1: Invest in an apple corer similar to this one:

It cut my apple filling prep time in 1/2, seriously.

AP tip #2: If you take my sage advice and invest in an apple corer, the easiest way to get the core out seems to be to cut it off as close as possible to the slicer and use the handle of the knife to push it out of the bottom. Using your fingers can = owies. I've sliced my thumb trying to push it through with my fingers.

AP tip #3: Invest in some disposable plastic food prep gloves. I used to spend at least 10 minutes trying to get all the sugar/cinnamon grit out from underneath my fingernails... Until I made my decision to go into 'business' and bought the gloves for sanitary reasons. And then a whole new world of grit-less fingernails opened up to me. Put on the gloves before tossing the apples and while you're adjusting the apples in the crust.

Random tip regarding limes/lemons/oranges/juice-able fruits: Invest in a microplaner similar to this one, and a juicer like the one above. I can get up to 3/4 of a cup of juice from a single lemon with one of those bad boys... And in the background, you can see how nicely the microplaner works for harvesting citrus peel for miscellaneous recipes. **Related non-baking tip** If your kids are picky and don't like eating onions in their food, use the microplaner to grate in the onion; it makes it mushy, but you get all the onion flavor without the chunks. I'm a picky eater, and we tried this last night for a new dish; it worked nicely, but it does take quite a bit of elbow grease to get a substantial amount of onion to grate.

Some cookie tips!

Balled cookie tip: For cookies like sugar cookies and peanut-butter cookies, refrigerate at least two hours before shaping and use a smaller ice-cream scoop like this one, and then shape into a ball with your hand.

Now, on to the main event! Pastry crust!

#1: Measure your ingredients accurately. Too much of any specific ingredient can cause a multitude of mishaps. Stir the flour before measuring, it helps.

#2: Cut in your shortening until it looks like this:

#3: Use ICE COLD water, and toss with a fork until it looks like this:

#4: If your dough isn't rolling right, try wrapping it tightly with Saran Wrap and refrigerating it for an hour or so.

#5: Once you have your dough rolled (be sure to keep that board floured to prevent sticking!), put the rolling pin at the top of the dough and roll back, wrapping the dough around the pin. Ease it over the pie pan to prevent tears.

#6: Pie pans... Glass and dull metal are the best. Shiny metal pie pans can cause the bottom of your crust to come out soggy. Aluminum are smaller than standard, so if you use them buy the deep dish. Ceramics, same thing. They're not always the proper size. I like Pyrex glass pie pans, they're like $4 at Walmart and work beautifully.

#7: When making a baked pie shell, line the pan with a double-layer of aluminum foil, and remove before putting in the pastry. That way you're not puncturing holes in the crust with the foil. :)

You lucky, lucky kittens.

Yes, more food porn. Strawberry Chocolate cookies (I'm pretty sure I perfected my recipe, by the way) (Yes, I know you all don't really give a shit about the recipe that I invented unless you're eating it), Peanut butter chip peanut butter cookies (I love Reeses for making both peanut butter and peanut butter chips), and miniature apple pies!

I also made Wanchai Ferry Spicy Garlic chicken for dinner. Look at me, all domestic-y. Shut up, enough with the June Cleaver cracks. Or I'll stuff a cleaver in your beaver crack. It's a meal in a box, sans chicken. And, because I'm so domestic-y, I made jasmine rice instead of the tiny packet of plain rice they include in the box. Cause jasmine rice is the SHIT.

I think it's really funny that you can find the directions online. Cause if I threw out the box, I'd totally go online to print off the directions instead of DIGGING THE BOX OUT OF THE GARBAGE.

Oh shut up, like you've never had to do the Dig of Shame.

Now the only digging you'll be doing is digging into your screen, hoping that it's Wonka-vision and you can reach up and grab my baked goodies.

Ooh, that sounded kinky!

So, the problem I've been having with my various strawberry cookie recipes is that the strawberries weep during baking, and inevitably soak the cookie in strawberry juices.

Haha, juices.

So, 78 paper towels later, I successfully squished the juices out of the strawberries. Not only were my cookies less liquidy, but the strawberry flavor was better incorporated throughout the batter.

See? I made milk chocolate strawberry cookies with Ghirardelli chips - Nestle can't touch Ghirardelli. When you pop these kittens in the microwave (ha, kittens in a microwave)(Just kidding, PETA, I'd never REALLY put a kitten in a microwave... At least, I'd never turn it on.) the chocolate melts and it tastes like a chocolate-dipped strawberry. Mmm, mmm!

While I was perfecting my strawberry cookies, this was chilling in my fridge. Because chilling formed cookie dough (like peanut butter or sugar cookie) helps it form better and with less mess. Peanut butter cookies made with Reeses peanut butter and Reeses peanut butter chips.

My kitchen smelled like a friggin peanut butter cup. It ruled.

Pretty peanut butter balls (ha, balls) coated in sugar, awaiting desecration by fork tine.

FYI - the chips made the flattening a wee bit more difficult than I thought...

But it worked out just fine. No worries! I wish my camera phone would've captured the sparkly sugar. They were prettyful!

Ah, chopped Granny Smith apples. Are you enjoying your coating of sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg? You bet your bitch asses you're enjoying it. Especially with the secret ingredient I added!

Miniature apple pies!

Seriously, these things are just too darling!

I'm slowly turning into a baking blog, aren't I? I mean, obvi, I won't hold a candle to Bakerella for quite some time. But I'm okay with that.

Because I blog about other things besides baking. Like New Problem Monsters and wanting to beat the hell out of my husband.

Ooh! "Out Tonight" just came on Pandora! "I wanna put on a tight skirt, and flirt with a stranger."

Erf took Erflet up to his dad's again yesterday to do laundry. They both came home acting like dicks and smelling of stale cigarette smoke. Erflet was good until his cousin got home from school. He didn't listen for SHIT last night, and Erf was acting like a patience-devoid asshat. I wanted to slap them both and go to the bar. I was afraid that I'd come home to bloodshed, however.

Even Erf has finally realized that Erflet gets a bad attitude when he hangs around his cousins. It might help if the boys were a wee bit better disciplined, but I'm not their mom and it's not my responsibility to interfere with her parenting. Or lack thereof.

Don't get me wrong, I love my sister in law, she just has the family half Russian (where ya Russian to? Haha!)- half German temper. Erf has it too, and I've been slowly training him to calm down and be a wee bit more patient. Not an easy task, believe you me.

And I'm the one who has to take him to daycare the next day and explain to them why he has a bad Thursday almost EVERY WEEK.

Speaking of daycare, Erflet's daycare is being closed by the church. Stupid asshats. Luckily the other center is still open and two of the four teachers are going to move to center 1 and Caden is ready to begin there on November 9th. I'm incredibly sad because this means 1) No more living across the street from the daycare and 2) I'll have to get up half an hour earlier now every day he has daycare. Pissmonkeys. I already get little enough sleep. Fucking night-owl personality...

However, tonight is Grey's and Private Practice - and I was up baking until 1 am. No lie, check my Twitter. I foresee headpillow at 10:05 pm tonight.

And Erf has a job interview, um... Right now. I'll update if there's any news!

**Update - Erf said that they liked him and he's going to meet with some other people next week! Excellent!**

It's Food Porn once more!

So a month or so ago, my friend Meghan had the brilliant idea to have a chocolate party. She had tried something chocolate that I had made, and realized that it would be fun to get a bunch of ladies together for a chocolate sample party!

Then she decided to go simply crazy! She had a Mary Kay party co-mingled with the chocolate. Cause chocolate? Great selling tactic. Even if you're not going to buy anything, you're getting free chocolate!

So she placed her order: a French Silk pie, an 8th Deadly Sin pie, a Double Chocolate Orange Torte, and Strawberry Shortcake Cookies. The 8th Deadly and Strawberry Shortcake recipes are ones that I created myself; the cookies I made especially for Ooh Law Law. :)

We met at a local Mexican restaurant and planned; and I remembered the cute mini tart pans I bought a few months ago. The idea for the mini-pie was hatched. Cookies are self-serve no matter what, and the torte would just be cut up prior to serving.

I'll have to split this into two posts, as I'm sure 16 photos are a bit much for one post. :)

Chocolate crust for the 8th Deadly Sin - too cute!

They're just sitting there, waiting for the cinnamon french silk, ganache and whipped cream...

Ah, there we go! Being a smart cookie (some would just call me a smartass, but whatevs), I piped different designs on each kind of pie so we could tell them apart. Stars seemed to work well for my 8th Deadly pies...

But I went with a shell/swirl combination for my French Silk.

Here are all my pretty ladies. Wouldn't they be perfect for something like a baby shower?!

Next up on my list; Double Chocolate Orange torte. A chocolate orange cake (made with fresh-squeezed orange juice and orange zest), filled with orange marmalade, drenched in a luscious chocolate ganache frosting, and garnished with hand-piped chocolate and a fanned strawberry.

Because Meghan was calling it a Chocolate Decadence party, I piped that out for the garnish.

(This is the side that says, 'Chocolate', by the way...)

And 'Decadence'.

Tomorrow, Strawberry Shortcake Cookies and the pretty place cards Meghan's mom created for the goodies...