Sushi and Cookies....Mmmmmm.....

This has been the first week of the holidays for both of my older children and, like every other parent of school-aged children, I have been trying to keep the girls busy to keep myself sane until January 4th rolls around and they go back to school.  This week, we took a little sojourn to Japan, as my oldest daughter wanted to make sushi.  (These were really California rolls, as they both turned up their noses at raw fish.  No sashimi for me.  Boo.)  We filled nori wraps with sticky and seasoned sushi rice, slices of cucumber, avocado, carrot and the pressed fish product that my husband refers to as, "K-R-A-B".  My younger daughter did not really care for the Krab, so she resolutely picked it out of every roll she consumed.  The activity lasted for the better part of an hour and gave us a pretty good sized little tray of sushi for dinner, so I would call it a resounding success (especially because EVERYONE actually ate it).

Our second activity this week was baking and decorating sugar cookies, ostensibly for Santa to consume on Christmas Eve.  We don't do this every Christmas, but my oldest daughter has gotten it in her head that we do, in fact, so I decided to keep up the "tradition" again this year.  (Honestly, I think we have decorated cookies, specifically for the St. Nick purpose perhaps once in her eight years.)  Again, this was a good activity for them to do and was so successful at eating up such a large chunk of time that I am starting to wonder if I should begin a "New Year's Eve" cookie decorating tradition. Nah....that just makes my New Year's Resolution to stop eating so many freaking cookies that much harder.  Anyway.....we actually had a couple of play dates during the cookie making and decorating processes, occurring on two separate days, so I was able to pawn at least a dozen cookies off on other kids (and their extremely grateful parents, I am sure.  My sister just wrote me a message the other day, asking, "why has someone not invented a sarcasm font?"  I know, right?!?  I sure could use it in this little passage right here!).  Seriously, there is nothing like homemade sugar cookies and there is nothing like the sugar high induced by said cookies, covered in globs of powdered sugar glaze, and crusted with every kind of sprinkle imaginable.  You are welcome, Santa.  (My insulin levels are shuddering as I type.....in a "wink-wink" kind of code in case my daughters somehow happen upon this post.  Just go with it.) 

So, from our house to yours, Merry Christmas and, in case I don't get a chance to post something next week because I have lost my mind screaming at my kids to stop beating each other because they are bored out of their minds, Happy New Year!

My new favorite icing (and the cake that went with it)!

Since it has been more than a month since I last posted on here (and since I have less than 10 minutes to write this morning), I will jot down a few quick thoughts about the cake I made yesterday for my mom's birthday.  I have recently been inspired to experiment with making cakes from scratch and so, I decided to inflict my aspirations on my mother, my sister and of course, my husband and my children.  I whipped out my Professional Baking tome, one of the few textbooks that I felt compelled to save from my culinary school days, found a recipe for devil's food cake and Italian buttercream icing and went to town!  The cake was relatively easy to make, though I discovered that I need a digital scale to create from scratch confections on a more regular basis (and for my paying customers), as I just have a scale that measures to the ounce (not very accurate, if you are dealing with measurements below that increment).  It came out of the oven risen, but almost perfectly flat on the top (if you have ever baked a box cake, you know about the evils of "doming"), and when I torted it (I am not sure about the spelling there, but I am in a hurry, so I don't really care), I found it to be dense and with a rather nice, sturdy crumb texture.  Success achieved on the cake front.  The Italian buttercream was very interesting to make, to say the very least.  You start by whipping egg whites and drizzling in a hot simple syrup (to which I added orange zest, scenting the sugar syrup and candying the citrus peel), whip until it is cool and then begin whipping in massive amounts of softened butter.  (I think I used something like 14 tablespoons to make just enough icing to cover an 8 inch cake.)  Using all of that fat made me think that the icing would be heavy and oppressively rich, but it was really just the opposite: it was light and airy, sweet without being cloying and had just enough of the orange flavor to brighten it considerably.  I LOVED it!  I also loved cleaning it up - anyone who has ever made a shortening based icing (and I make A LOT of it) can tell you that it is a bear to clean anything that touches said icing.  Seriously.  Anyway, the buttercream went on like a dream, held its shape and texture (i.e. didn't melt at all - love the stabilizers of the egg whites and sugar syrup!) and melted on command (i.e. putting it in your mouth to eat and also by adding hot water to clean all of my tools).  I was dubious about it at first just because it didn't come together completely until I whipped the bejesus out of it (that is a technical culinary term, of course).  I became dubious again when I refrigerated it while the cake was cooling.  It completely solidified (as butter does, of course), so I decided to just whip it to bring it back to room temp.  What I ended up doing was breaking it completely, so I actually had big clods of fat attached to my whip which, when they hit the side of the mixer bowl, sent up sprays of what I assume was actually buttermilk.  After some thought, I put the bowl over a double boiler, heated it slightly and tried whipping it again.  Finally: success achieved with the icing!  The end result is shown above - the cake's flavor and texture left a little to be desired as it was quite dry, but my success certainly gave me the confidence to continue with my experiments.  I intend to find a chocolate cake recipe that is relatively easy to make and produces results with more chocolate flavor and less chemical flavor than the boxes.  Don't get me wrong - I like the box mixes and I can count on them every time, but I want to see if I can do it all by myself.  I believe I can!