dstroy's blog

I just got back from a visit overseas to visit my grandmother. I didn't have a lot of time there, but on one of the days I had the pleasure of being served a lovely tea and cake which got me hankering to make a cake after I got back.

German Marble Cake
1 c. butter
1 1/2 c. sugar (I think I may have accidentally put in 1 1/4 c. My cake could have used a little more sweetness but the kids didn't mind)
4 eggs
1 c. whole milk
1 tsp. almond extract
3 1/4 c. flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
tiny pinch of salt (I skipped it since I used normal salted butter)
1/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
3 Tbsp. dark rum

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit and grease the tube or bundt pan well.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, then beat in the eggs, and then the milk and almond extract.

In a separate bow, mix up the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt) and then add that to the wet ingredients, beating into a creamy texture.

Take out about half the batter and add rum and cocoa to the remaining half.

Layer and swirl the batters into the pan, then bake for just over an hour or until the toothpick test comes out clean. Then let it cool before flipping, and add the powdered sugar on top.

I put the white batter in first, then the dark batter on top. I swirled it with a knife a little bit, but I think the chocolate wasn't as heavy as I expected so it didn't sink into the white as much as I hoped. Next time I will poke it into the white batter more to make the pretty pictures inside each slice.

All baked - The trick with these old bundt pans is to really not skimp on the butter when you grease the pan. Otherwise the cake will stick to the pan and you end up with a big mess.

German cakes dont usually have frosting. This is a dense cake, almost like a rum poundcake, and it's best with something simple like powdered sugar on top.

This is a recipe that I think having the really good dutch cocoa truly makes a difference. Its way more expensive than the regular cocoa, but with the rum and almond extract, the really good cocoa packs a chocolate punch that is worth the expense. I'd used a middle-range cocoa but next time I will make sure to get the really yummy Droste powder. 

It's a heavier dryer cake that is perfectly suited to an afternoon tea.

A Sesame Street clip from the 90s about making homemade bread:

Our littlest one had a birthday party today - she's turning 4 on Tuesday.

She's had something of an obsession with Chinese Lion Dances ever since seeing celebrations at a Lunar New Year festivities at the dowtown gardens a couple of years ago, and this year, she requested that her cake be done in this theme.

Here is what I came up with:

His tail and ears were made of cookies. His horn was an ice cream cone cut in half.

There were candies at Winco called "Burnt Peanuts that were red and prickly and served quite well as pom poms!

This served as inspiration for the cake:

I started with a rather blocky stack of Funfetti bricks.

curly candles completed the festive disposition!

I saw this on today's failblog:

Actually, that looks full of "Win" to me.

Because I never post anything, but I do sometimes take pictures....

Cream Cheese Snail Madness! (as per recipe here.)

Here are some action shots of Floyd making cream cheese snails for our afternoon tea yesterday:

snails in progress...

rolling out a snake shape...

Adding delicious filling...

mmm

Baked, out of the oven....add some sugar glaze...

Enjoy!

oh my gosh, you guys!

This morning I awoke from a dream where Floyd had taken the family to a Thanksgiving Bread themed Amusement Park.

We even went riding on a roller coaster called "The Buttermilk Clusterbomb".

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

We're back from San Francisco!

I took some pictures at Boudin's Sourdough market when we were playing tourist at Fisherman's Wharf.

These guys had headphones and an outside speaker so they could banter with the general public while they shaped breads into funny characters.

This year, the boy requested a Shaolin Monk on his birthday cake (he's obsessed with all things Chinese).

And a robot saying "beep".

Time for my, what...bi-yearly post, right? (We let Floyd do the bread baking around here.)

Today our daughter turned three and for her birthday she requested a blue pony on her cake.

Here is the cake she got, prior to the three candles being added to the floating clouds.

Lots of fun! And we had a great dinner tonight too - but I bet Floyd will blog about that.

My son is a huge Legend of Zelda fan. He has been for years actually.

When he was 3, he wanted to dress as the hero "Link" (Green Boy, as he called him) for Halloween.

Here was his costume:

So when he asked for a Zelda cake for his birthday, I had to think about how I was going to do this. I'm not exactly a professional cake decorator!

I finally took some classic imagery from the game - the sword in the stone, the hero, and the Tri-force symbol that appears throughout the game, as my inspiration for the cake.

I started with cookies, which I cut and painted with food coloring ink.

I made a couple of Link cookies to choose from, and a partial sword cookie too.

Then I made a chocolate cake, which I froze and cut and rearranged:

And finally some cream cheese chocolate frosting, purple sparkle sugar sprinkled (his favorite color) and some strategically placed non-chocolate frosting with yellow sugar sprinkles and voila!

He liked his cake!