Day Three Hundred Sixty Five: Longest Cake Ever

It's finally here.  The very last day.  I can hardly believe it's been a year.  Happy anniversary to me! I should definitely buy myself a gift.

For my grand finale I decided to choose a special cake recipe, a photo of which graces the cover of one of Martha's books: Martha Stewart Living's 2002 Annual Recipes. The Cover Girl Recipe in this case is Alma Etheridge Wilson's Roanoke Sixteen-Layer Chocolate Fudge Cake. (p. 134).

Yes, that really is the name of the cake.  You can't make this stuff up, people.  This cake has the distinction of being the cake with the longest name ever.*  The only thing longer than its name is the length of time it takes to put this cake together.  I started making this cake at noon on Wednesday and finally cut into it about 9 p.m.  That's a lot of work for a measly eight-inch cake.

* As determined by me, just now, for the purposes of this blog.

Martha doesn't have this recipe online, but it is very similar to her Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake, which also looks delicious but lacks the lengthy moniker.

You may be wondering why this cake took so long to make.  You start by preparing an eight-inch cake pan by coating it with cooking spray and lining the bottom with a parchment circle (that you've cut out beforehand, natch).  Then coat the parchment with cooking spray and dust with flour, shaking out the excess.  Add a half-cup of batter to the pan and spread the batter evenly. Cook for ten minutes, turning halfway through the baking.  This results in layers that are approximately 1/4 inch thick.

Martha suggests you cook two cakes at one time, repeating the process described above a mere eight times.  Since I only had one eight-inch cake pan, I repeated the process sixteen times.

Alma Etheridge Wilson's Roanoke Sixteen-Layer Chocolate Fudge Cake, remember?

So basically every five minutes I was either turning a pan, removing a pan, removing a cake layer,  cutting a parchment circle or cleaning the stupid solitary eight-inch cake pan I own.

It was a long, long afternoon.

Truthfully I only ended with fourteen layers because I lost two layers in the baking process:  one layer could not bear to be parted from the cake pan and broke apart as I was trying to remove it;  conversely, the other layer flung itself to the floor in a rather dramatic fashion.

And that's truly how it happened.

One of the 1/4 inch thick layers below. Apparently layer number fourteen.  I began to number the layers around hour three in an effort of self-encouragement.

After several hours of baking, I'm was ready to build the cake.  You make the glaze by melting chocolate in hot evaporated milk, mixed with sugar and light corn syrup. Layer one:

 Covered with a couple tablespoons of fudge glaze:

Each layer is sandwiched with chocolate (or is it the other way around?) This is about layer four:

 Halfway through:

When the cake is finished, drizzle the remaining glaze over the top of the cake.

 Unfortunately, the top layer of the cake began to break under the stress of all that delectable chocolate....

 ....If I had a video, you'd see the top layer of the cake riding a wave of fudge glaze, making a run for it and actually sliding right off the top of the cake...and onto the counter.

Could this cake look uglier?  I think not.  I'm always optimistic, however, and still had high hopes.

It's not half bad-looking when cut, right?

In comparison with the cover photo:

Okay, so maybe it is pretty bad. 

As I said, it was late before I cut into this cake and served a piece to my official taste-tester, who is known in certain circles as my husband. When I revealed how long I'd spent baking, he nearly fell off his chair laughing.  His verdict:  had I wanted to make a mushy cake, I could have done so in a lot less time.  

I couldn't be mad because it's the truth. I was hoping to end with something knock-your-socks-off fabulous, but the truth is so much more interesting.

And so my little experiment is at an end.  It's been fun.  It's been frustrating.  I've learned that Martha and her minions are some talented people.  I learned how to make some amazing things, and I've suffered through some embarrassing experiments.  I hope you've learned something, too.  If not, I hope you at least had a chuckle or two at my expense.

I'm sure I will continue to post projects and disasters, but with much less regularity.  Maybe One Martha a Month? ...Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.
xoxo
MRS

Day Three Hundred Fifty Two: Gettin' My Jam On (Everything)

As I mentioned when I made the Personalized Gift Tags, my birthday was Friday.  My husband planned a dinner with a few friends, and I wanted to make little boxes of late-night snacks for them to take home.  As part of the boxes, I thought to include a little something for breakfast the next morning.  I decided on Martha's Jam-Filled Coffee Cake Muffins because they look seriously decadent and I thought the crumbly, brown-sugar top would keep them moist until they were ready to eat.  (I don't know this to be the case, I was just guessing.)

Martha's recipe calls for the muffins to be made in 2 3/4-inch by 2-inch panettone papers, which are basically fancy, slightly sturdier, cupcake liners.  Despite heroic efforts, I was unable to find panettone papers that size.  I decided to try these adorable, slightly smaller paper muffin cups.  Since these cups are smaller than the suggested cups, I divided the batter between fifteen muffins cups instead of twelve.

Divided batter in ridiculously adorable muffin cups:

A teaspoon of strawberry jam on top:

Covered with a brown-sugar crumble:

I can smell success...or is that just the brown sugar?



About twenty minutes later I checked the oven to find this:

Hmmm.  Looks like I should have used a few more cups.  Nary a single muffin was presentable for my guests.  If you ignored the dripping dough on the outside, however, and actually ate one... They. Are. Delicious.  A herd of elephants or Justin Beiber fans could not keep me from trying this again.

Day Three Hundred Fifty: Beefy Rolls

Only fifteen days remaining...I'm currently in a state of shock that I'm nearly finished.

Tuesday I made Martha's Beef and Scallion Rolls for my husband.  He loves beef and Asian food, so I was positive this recipe would be a hit.

It's a pretty simple recipe, although it is rather involved.  First, cook thinly-sliced red bell peppers over medium-high heat and set aside.  After cutting the tenderloin into thin slices, pound each slice between two pieces of plastic wrap until each are 1/8 inch thick.  (If you've had a rough day, take this opportunity to relieve some stress.) Divide the bell peppers and scallions among the newly-flattened slices of beef, roll tightly and secure each with a toothpick.

After browning these little beef rollups, remove the toothpicks.  Make a sauce with soy sauce, rice-wine vinegar and sugar; cook until thickened.  Drizzle the sauce over the rolls.  I served mine with store-bought sushi and spring rolls.

My hubby and I agreed that more salt would not have gone amiss in this recipe.  Other than that, this was a delicious recipe that is fancy enough for company.

I love being right.

Day Three Hundred Twenty Three: Animal House Sugar Cookies

My three-year old daughter's class studied hibernation last week.  On Friday, they had a Hibernation Party and all the kids wore their pajamas and brought a stuffed animal to hibernate in a "Hibernation Station".  To add to the fun, I brought bear-shaped cookies for the kids.  I used Martha's Flower Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing recipes.  I needed 40 cookies for the party.  This recipe claims it makes 24 cookies.  (This is my nice way of questioning the counting abilities of the person who wrote this recipe.)  I only got about a 10 cookies out of this batch. Maybe it was because the bear-shaped cookie cutter was so large. :shrug:

 If you recall, sugar cookies are not my strong suit.  I am capable of rolling out the dough and cutting the cookies, but I have a major handicap when it comes to transferring said cookies intact onto a baking sheet.  They always end up slightly deformed. So needless to say, finishing ten cookies that still looked like bears took me quite some time.  That was a lot of work for only ten stupid cookies.

Undecorated cookie:

Confession: It is at this point that I went to my local supermarket and bought a box of sugar cookie mix.  I was being lazy, and was pressed for time.  It would be a cold day in hell before I would reproduce Martha's fabulous recipe three more times. I was ready to curse the day I bought that bear-shaped cookie cutter. After making about ten more cookies, I had to enlist my husband into buying more mix for these dang cookies.

It was this point that my husband's mother, the consummate baker, called our house.  And, of course, my husband tells her that we are making cookies from a box.  I was mortified.  Were she dead, I'm sure this sort of information would cause her to roll face down.  As it is, I could almost hear her mental scoff through the phone.

Box cookies, indeed.

I hope all of you, (and she) will forgive the transgression.  It is not one I hope to repeat.

At any rate, with the cookies finally (finally!) cooked, I was able to decorate them. Martha's icing recipe is fabulous.  It's runny enough that it smooths beautifully on a cookie.  (You have to use a thicker version for the outline.)  The meringue powder gives the icing a little sheen like you see on professionally-baked cookies.  These are my bears:

Bear Cookie outlined in black icing:

This one sort of looks like a horse:

An aardvark perhaps?  Not sure if aardvarks hibernate.

Completed cookies:

Those are little chocolate sprinkles on his bum.  (For a three-dimensional I'm-pretending-I-know-what-I'm-doing look.)

 The aardvark:

The cookies looked great and (since I'm the only one who tasted both) no one noticed that some of the cookies were from a box.  (Shhh.  It's our secret.)  Except for the mutant versions, I was excessively pleased with myself.

Maybe a little too pleased. :dancing around the living room:

Day Three Hundred Fifteen: After-Christmas Gingerbread

Before Christmas I made Gingerbread cookies for my kids.  They loved them.  In fact, they loved them so much, they have been asking for a repeat performance for weeks.  Instead of cookies, Tuesday I made Martha's Gingerbread Snacking Cake for them.

Gingerbread has a ridiculous amount of spices in it. This one has something called unsulfured molasses in it.  The grocery clerk was flummoxed on that one.  (I took some masochistic pleasure in it.)  This one is delicious and not too sweet.  Martha calls it a cake but it could be eaten for breakfast.  Think of it like banana or pumpkin bread.  It's sprinkled with a little powdered sugar.

Delicious.

My kids loved this.  Especially my one-year old who devoured more than her fair share after dinner on Tuesday.  If I'd caught it on camera, this is where I'd insert a photo of a child with food smeared all over her adorable little face.

Day Three Hundred Two: What's Your Sign?

I have a kumquat tree that I've trained to grow flat on a fence.  The fancy term is espalier.  It means "I have a very small yard".  

Just kidding.  

At any rate, my little kumquat tree usually produces a cornucopia of kumquats.  This year it produced precisely four.  Four fruit the size of your your thumbnail.  

I was determined to make a dessert or possibly a garnish with my four kumquats. After finding them on the tree, I ran inside to grab my camera. When I returned, there were only two left.  My husband and son had each eaten one straight from the tree, completely destroying my grand kumquat plans.  

Two kumquats.  This one was saved from the clutches of my family:

Thankfully I found a recipe that uses only two kumquats:  Martha's Capricorn.  It's a rose Champagne cocktail. (I swear I don't have an obsession with Champagne cocktails).  You can make it for your favorite Capricorn.  Mine is my sister, Tracy.  She lives hundreds of miles away, but I know she'll be happy to know I had a drink in her honor.

It's a Champagne glass dipped in kumquat-laced sugar, filled with Rose Champagne and served with a slice of kumquat.

Delicious.

And it needed precisely two kumquats.

Day Two Hundred Ninety: Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps

Christmas is my favorite time of the year.  I love all the decorations and goodwill;  but, most of all, I love the parties.  I love that everyone takes time to celebrate.  We attended several parties leading up to Christmas and I brought sweets to them all.  Friday I made Martha's Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps.  These goodies are a chocolate cookie rolled into a ball and dropped in powdered sugar.  As the cookie bakes, the sugar-covered balls crack and show their chocolate interiors.   

These were delicious and made a gorgeous hostess gift.  In fact, they were so good they landed a Facebook mention from the hostess.

And if that's not a measure of cookie-goodness, then what is?

Day Two Hundred Seventy-Eight: Blackberry Crumb Bars for Breakfast

As a hostess gift, I tried Martha's Blackberry Crumb Bars.  It's sort of like a blackberry crumble cake, that you can cut into little bars.   The cake is sweet and tender and the blackberries are tart.  It's all topped off with a crunchy, brown-sugar topping.  

Since it's filled with fruit, it seems almost healthy.  Wholesome.  Some people might even eat these for breakfast.

After a very late party.

:looking at you Ginnie:

Day Two Hundred Sixty-Two: Hot Buttered Rum

What do you make when you've spent the last two days eating?

A cocktail.

Since it was cold and snowy outside, I decided to make Martha's Hot Buttered Rum.  If you are unfamiliar with this concoction, it's a sweet cocktail, served warm.  I've had it before, but never actually made one from scratch.  If I had given it any thought, I would have assumed that the "hot butter" portion of the drink was only a buttery flavoring or similar.  Possibly a colorful nickname for a more sober (no pun intended) drink.

It's not.

The recipe is basically brown sugar mixed with a bunch of spices and a stick of butter.  Yes, a stick of butter.  Pour rum and hot water over the butter mixture and it's done.  "Hot Buttered Rum" is pretty much just that: hot, buttered, rum.

It's also hot, buttery deliciousness.  I would have drank about a dozen of them, but since I had made the first recipe, I knew each one was the equivalent of eating a couple tablespoons of butter.  One look at my hips made me re-think making more than one batch.

Oh, but I wanted to.


p.s. this is Martha's photo above.  For some reason, my computer did not like the photos I took of my own Hot Buttered Rum. :sigh:

Day Two Hundred Forty-Four: Jelly Roll Up

My youngest daughter turned one-year old on Monday.  For her birthday I made Martha's Hazelnut-Raspberry Jelly Roll.  A jelly roll is basically a thin cake, topped with jelly and cream, and rolled into a tube.

Yes, rolled into a tube.  How do they do that?

Start by baking a very thin cake.  After it's cooked, but before it cools, roll the cake in a clean kitchen towel:

There's a cake in that towel. :promise:

After the cake cools, unroll, spread some jelly and cream, and roll it up (without the towel this time.) Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

This cake looks so fancy.  People think I worked so hard.  (Hah! Fooled those suckers!)  Best part: it was a good cake....although I think it would be hard to screw up a cake rolled in jelly, cream and powdered sugar. 

Day Two Hundred Forty-One: Ready-For-The-Weekend Blackberry-Mint Juleps

T.G.I.F., people.  It's been a busy two weeks and I'm so ready for the weekend.  Beyond ready.  Like, need-a-drink-pronto ready.  Since it still feels like summer at my house, I decided to make Martha's Blackberry-Mint Julep.

You may remember that I have a fondness for mint juleps.  Flavored ones are beyond delicious.  I've decided you really can't go wrong mixing bourbon and mint. Throw in some fruit and a pinch of sugar and you're golden. 

Hello, weekend. I've missed you.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-Eight: Candy-Corn Cookies

Today is Halloween and my kids have a Carnival at school.  (They are always doing such fun stuff. When do they go to class?)  I signed up to make a treat for the kids, so yesterday I made Martha's Candy-Corn Sugar Cookies.  I'm not a big fan of candy corn, but the recipe is simple and the cookies look really colorful and cute.

The recipe is simple: take a basic sugar cookie.  Bake it.  Immediately upon taking it out of the oven, smack a candy corn right in the middle.  Let cool and serve to all your goblins and goblin-ettes.

I sent these to school in a little box, just big enough to fit into a backpack...and be hand-delivered by a three-year old.

Day Two Hundred Nineteen: Everything's Coming Up Roses Tart

Sometimes good things are born from necessity.

Yesterday, as I was performing my daily search of Something-Martha-To-Do, Martha's website was down. :curses:  It forced me to try the old-fashioned method and look in one of her books.  I found her recipe for a gorgeous Nectarine Tart (MS Baking Handbook, p. 256) and couldn't resist the potential train wreck.  I wish I could post her photo as it looks amazing....and amazingly hard.

To begin, make the tart dough, chill, then roll and shape into a tart tin.  Blind bake using beans or handy pie weights like so:

After the crust has baked to a golden brown, let it cool.  While you are waiting, cut a million eight nectarines into thin slices.  Overlapping the pieces, shape each into a rose.   Like so:

No really, those are sliced nectarines.  Amazed yet?  :you are looking at a goddess:

Continue to fill the inside of the tart with roses....

...Until the tart is full:

 It's gorgeous isn't it?  I'm not ashamed to say I was pretty proud of myself at this point.

Fill the tart with a sugar-brandy-egg mixture and cook for about forty minutes.  In the end, you have this:  

This is such a gorgeous tart....and super-good.  I've been passing this tart up for years, thinking I could never get the roses to look like Martha's.   Truthfully, it wasn't hard. I made it after dinner and didn't have to stay up all night to finish.  All it took was a little patience...and a sweet husband who is handy with a knife.  (Love you, honey.)

Day Two Hundred Fifteen: Easiest-Cookies-In-The-World: Palmiers

I had some leftover puff pastry from Martha's Chicken Pot Pies the other day, so I decided to use it to make Martha's Palmiers.  I had never made Palmiers before, but they are basically just puff pastry, sprinkled with sugar, then rolled into a cute little shape. They have only two ingredients:  sugar and pastry.

It's true.  These are probably the easiest cookies in the world.

These are Martha's:

These are mine: 

I had to show you Martha's photo, because my photo was a little anti-climatic.  :sad:

These Palmiers were fun to make.  (It's also fun to say.  Use your best French accent:  Palmiers!)  My kids went a little crazy sprinkling the sugar over the pastry, and I had to intervene and roll the pasty into a neat roll.  They were good to eat....I wouldn't buy or make puff pastry expressly for this purpose, but how often can you use dinner leftovers to make cookies?  That makes it a winner in my book.

Day Two Hundred Ten: Spaghetti Squash Con

Like most young children, my kids love pasta.  Especially plain pasta with butter.  :yawn:  They would eat pasta for every meal if I let them. When I saw Martha's recipe for Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Herbs, my Brilliant Evil-Genius Mind thought,

"I can make them think vegetables are pasta!" Hahahahahahahahahah!!!!  :evil genius laugh:

Did it work?!?!?  No.

But it should have.  I think my Brilliant Evil-Genius Plan went awry somewhere.  This is what happened:

I started with a spaghetti squash, cut in half, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and BROWN SUGAR.  (Seriously, this recipe had something going for it.)

Cooked spaghetti squash:

I even let my son scrape the squash to make the "spaghetti" so he would believe me.

I had to use all my tom-foolery to make my daughter eat even two bites of this....and that was after I pulled out the coveted Pink-Princess spoon.  There is still a lot left:

Outcome:  Evil Genius Plan backfired.  But isn't that how all those Evil Genius Plans go?

:sigh:

Day Two Hundred Four: Sugar Pie Honey Buns

My mother-in-law makes the best cinnamon rolls in the world.  She does.  Trust me.  Forget those things you buy in the mall.  If an international award for cinnamon rolls existed, she would win it.  She has perfected her recipe over the course of many years, starting before she gave birth to my husband.  She probably practiced kneading dough as a toddler.

My husband and I have tried to make cinnamon rolls many times.  They usually turn out pretty good but hardly comparable to "The Cinnamon Rolls" as they are known in my house.  I've given up.  

Since I can't possibly compare with The Cinnamon Rolls, I decided to try Martha's Honey Buns.  They look sort of like cinnamon rolls, but with honey.  And, since I've nothing to compare them with, I'm thinking I'll be pretty satisfied with the results. (Low expectations are important here.)

First you make the dough, which is key to a tasty bun.  This dough was kneaded mostly by my mixer's dough hook, which you can borrow if you want to go as Captain Hook for Halloween:

This is my dough fully kneaded, ready for rising:

I have to say I was pretty happy with this dough.  It looked fabulous.  It had great potential.  It was a thing of beauty.  

Give the dough an hour to rise and it should double in size.  Mine performed beautifully.  I was so proud of my dough I almost took a photo and sent it to Martha herself.

Martha calls for the dough to be divided into three balls.  Seriously, my dough is so awesome.  I'm pretty confident even my Mother-in-law would agree.  Look at that:

This is probably the first time I've ever made dough that part of it didn't stick to the counter.  I did a little dance around my kitchen when I was able to roll it out with ease:

 Brush with honey and top with filling, then roll it up:

Pour the honey mixture into the pan, then put the sliced rolls, face down into the pan.  My slices look like I cut them with a butter knife, but hey: 

But after the dough rose again, they looked better:

And then it happened:  the school called.  My youngest daughter wasn't feeling well and I had to take her to the doctor.  Also, it was nearly time to pick up my two oldest children from school.  My plan was this:  throw the honey buns in the oven, pick up sick kid, run to pick up the older kids from school, and then run home to take the buns out of the oven before heading to the doctor with all three. 

It was a solid plan.

After picking up all three kids, I ran home.  (No traffic!  No train!  Hurrah!!)  When I opened the back door, however, smoke poured out of the house. The honey topping had bubbled over and had smoked up the whole house.  My buns and glorious dough:

This is a really sad photo with the topping having frozen mid-drip:

The good thing is that the honey buns were still edible.  The bad thing is that they were terrible.  

Now:  I really like sweets.  There are few things that I have ever found too sweet for my tastes.  That being admitted, these honey buns are too sweet.  Once they cooled, the caramel/honey topping hardens into a taffy-like consistency that your dentist will have a hard time removing.  It was sort of like chewing on sticky honeycomb, which later hardens into rubber cement.

It was all very sad. But at least my daughter is feeling better.  

I still have two rolls of (beautiful!) dough that I will use for something else. Maybe I'll throw down some cinnamon and sugar and give my mother-in-law a run for her money.  In fact, I'm going to call her and throw down the cinnamon-roll gauntlet....after about fifty or sixty years of practice.  

I may have a very good chance of winning by then, given that she'd be about one hundred and twenty years old.