Celebratory Scones

This week was filled with a variety of frustrations and didn't feature very much in the way of sleep.  However, it was also filled with a variety of triumphs and celebrations. Among these celebrations was one for the retirement of a colleague.  I wanted to bring something in to work on Friday to share, but I didn't have a ton of time on Thursday night that I could devote to baking and/or washing baking dishes afterward.  A quick look through my cabinet and I had the perfect solution: lemon-blueberry scones.  

Scones from scratch are pretty simple and I've made a variety of types/flavors over the years.  But the lemon-blueberry ones from this week happened to come from a mix from King Arthur Flour.  I've used their scone recipes before and would recommend them.  Especially to people who don't really like to bake from scratch (for whatever reason), but who have a lot of friends/family who claim that they *only* like things baked from scratch.  The mixes I've used from King Arthur usually require a few more ingredients than grocery store mixes, but they have always turned out really well for me.  Basically the scone mix includes everything except the salt, butter, egg, and milk.  It came together really fast and baked beautifully as drop-scones.  Hint: bake your scones on parchment paper.  They seem to bake more evenly and the bottoms are less likely to be overdone.  

I tasted the dough (pretty good stuff), but didn't get an actual finished scone.  Everyone seemed to really like them, though, so I'm counting it in the win column.  

Also, I'm thinking lemon-blueberry might be a good go-to for a summer flavor combo going forward.  Lemon tastes lighter and sunnier than many other flavors.  It isn't universally loved, but is still pretty popular.  And people who don't like lemon as much might be convinced to try something that also had blueberries in it.  I'm also thinking lemon-blueberry muffins would be a fancier, more novel, and more sophisticated take on traditional blueberry muffins.  

By the way, the blueberry muffin is the official state muffin of Minnesota.  Oh, yeah.  You read that right: we have an official state muffin.  Contemplate the awesomeness of that for a little while!

    

An Experiment in Container Gardening

I have a really nice porch that stretches across the entire back of my townhouse, and last summer I had a small table and a chair out there.  It was a great space to enjoy a cup of tea or a smoothie and read my Sunday newspaper.  This year, I decided to experiment with container gardening.  Partly because I have tons o' space on my porch, partly to see if I can grow something edible, and partly because I think flowers would make my summertime Sunday ritual even better.  

One of my co-worker's kids was selling plants from Gerten's greenhouses for a spring school fundraiser last month.  Perfect timing! I ordered two cherry tomato plants and three 6-packs of mixed-color snapdragons.  (I love, love, love snapdragons!  Pretty, amazing color, and such a cool shape.)  The plants arrived on the 16th and I got them on Monday the 19th.  They lived on the deck in their (sad) little containers until this past weekend, when I actually had some time to devote to them.  

This Sunday I went to the local Menards garden center and bought some gardening supplies, including some smallish pots, a few bamboo u-shaped stakes, a few flowers, and some potting soil.  And then I got planting. Well, OK.  You got me.  First, I finally took my Christmas lights down off my deck railing.  Immediately after that, though, I got planting!

The photo above is a panoramic shot of my brand new set o' pots.  The large tan pots are the tomatoes.  The small, square turquoise pots are pink and yellow rose moss.  The smaller tan pots are geraniums, alternating white and "star."  From what I could tell by not seeing a photo or a real version of the star geranium in full bloom, I think they will be a bright pink and white, but I'm not sure.  The round turquoise pots are the mixed snapdragons.  (In case you are wondering, the cushion for my deck chair is a turquoise-y color, which is why the pots are the color they are....)      

I'm really excited to see how everything grows and blooms, and plan to post photos as they grow.  How cool would it be to have a time lapse set of photos showing growth?  Maybe I'll start taking a photo every day or every other day when I get home from work.  And hopefully by the end of the summer I will be eating my tiny tomatoes and declaring container gardening a success that must be repeated year after year!

Chocolate Cake...Hazelnut Mocha Fudge Layer Cake, to be exact

The cake that I made for a Memorial Day weekend gathering consisted of 3 triple-fudge cake layers, separated by layers of both Nutella and hazelnut-mocha mousse, frosted with chocolate whipped cream frosting, and topped with shaved dark chocolate.  Decadent?  OK, yeah, maybe.  But actually, the mousse and whipped cream frosting are fairly airy.  Compared to a cake with regular frosting between layers and on top, this was definitely a more summer-y take on chocolate layers.

Notice that I said "airy" and "summer-y."  Those things are true, but I will not say that this cake is "light."  Calorie-wise, I'm pretty sure that this is sinful as all get-out. I will not be calculating the calorie count, because: duh.  This was called "Hazelnut Mocha Fudge Layer Cake"--and not "healthy dessert"--for a reason.

The original recipe for the cake, filling, and frosting were all from Betty Crocker's Ultimate Cake Mix Cookbook, © General Mills, Inc. (2002).  Cake and filling were together and they called it Mocha Mousse Cake (no hazelnut in their version).  The recipe below includes my paraphrasing/revisions, as well as my comments and additions.  

Cake:
1 package Betty Crocker SuperMoist chocolate fudge cake mix (I used triple fudge, instead.  Why use regular fudge, when you can use triple fudge?)
1 1 /3 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon coffee liqueur or prepared coffee (I used fairly strongly brewed hazelnut coffee)
4 eggs

1. Heat oven to 350°F.  Grease and flour bottoms and sides of 3 round cake pans. I only have 2 round cake pans, so I greased and floured those.
2. Beat cake mix, water, oil, coffee, and eggs in a large bowl on low speed for 1 minute.  I stirred mine with a spoon until moistened and then used a whisk to beat it by hand for about 2 minutes.  That worked great!  
3. Pour about 1 1/2 cups of batter into each pan.  If baking only 2 pans at a time, refrigerate remaining batter until ready to use.  
4. Bake about 20 minutes or until toothpick/cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean.  Cool at least 10 minutes before running knife around edges to loosen and removing cake from pans.  Then I cleaned one pan, greased/floured it, and baked the last layer using the batter in the fridge.  
5. Let layers cool COMPLETELY.

Mousse:
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream, divided (I actually used 1 cup and it turned out great--see below)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/3 coffee liqueur or prepared coffee (again, I used fairly strongly brewed hazelnut coffee)
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (6 oz is half a bag of chips, but I used slightly more.  Probably more like between 7 and 8 ounces)
2 teaspoons vanilla (I used double-strength Penzey's vanilla.  Thanks, Emily, for this delicious addition to my baking arsenal!)

1. Mix 1/4 cup cream, sugar, and coffee in a medium saucepan.  Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolved and mixture just starts to simmer.  
2. Remove from heat and add chocolate chips.  Stir until chips are melted.  
3. Add vanilla and stir.
4. Let cool to room temperature but do not refrigerate
5. Put a metal mixing bowl in the refrigerator or freezer to chill. I used the mixing bowl for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  
6. When chocolate mixture is cool, beat remaining cream (1/2 cup if you wanna follow Betty's instructions or 3/4 cup if you are me and screw up a bit) in the chilled bowl on high speed until soft peaks form.
7. Fold in chocolate mixture.  I then beat the mixture a bit more, until there soft to medium peaks formed.
8. Cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes. 

Frosting:

1 cup heavy whipping cream

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1/4 Dutch process baking cocoa (I actually used Hershey's unsweetened baking cocoa, so it probably turned out a little lighter)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla (again, I used double-strength Penzey's vanilla)

1. Chill metal mixing bowl.
2. Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form.  I used my stand mixer again, and again, went for soft-to-medium peaks.  Be sure to scrape the bowl fairly often, so that the cocoa gets nicely mixed in.  
3. Refrigerate until use.

Chocolate Shavings:

1. Find a chocolate bar.  Maybe you have one in your fridge, or on your counter, or--if you are desperate--you could always buy one at a store.  I used a Scharffen Berger semi-sweet (62%) chocolate bar, because, yeah, I had one in my fridge. 
2. If the chocolate is super-cold--like if it just came out of the fridge, for example--let it come to room temperature.  
3. Use a vegetable peeler to take shavings off.  (If you want actual chocolate curls, go for it.  The chocolate will probably have to be a bit warmer/softer and it'll be easier if using a bar o' chocolate that is thicker than a standard eating bar.)

Nutella:

1. Erm....Buy a container of Nutella?  I only used about 1/3 of a small jar, so if you are person who has Nutella around your house already, you should be fine.

Assembly:

1. Place one cake layer on plate/whatever is holding the cake.
2. Spread a thin layer of Nutella on the cake layer
3. Spread a bit less than half of the Mousse on top of the Nutella
4. Place 2nd cake layer
5. Spread Nutella and most of the remaining Mousse 
6. Place 3rd cake layer
7. Frost sides and top with Whipped Cream Frosting
8. Refrigerate cake for at least 2 hours before serving
9. Sprinkle chocolate shavings on top of the cake before cutting/serving (I also think toasted, chopped hazelnuts would be awesome on top, but I didn't have any of those.  They seem sort of winter-like, anyway, though.)    
10. Store cake in the fridge.  Probably covered, if you can manage it.

So, if you were doing the math in that assembly, you noticed that I had some mousse left when I did my layers. I didn't want the mousse layers to be so thick that the cake started sliding or shifting, so I used a bit less.  But, no worries, the left-over was amazing on strawberries!

So, that's it.  Nothing was terribly hard, but I will admit that a stand mixer makes whipping cream super-easy.  The main thing with this recipe/combo of recipes seems to be time management.  The key for me was making sure everything was done in the right order, at the right time, so that the components had a chance to completely cool when appropriate.   

Questions, comments, etc.?  Let me know! 

Oh, yes.  I almost forgot the rest of the photographic evidence.  It was just slightly the worse for wear after a car trip to Savage, but I think it still looked great before it was cut.  Afterwards, the layers pretty much spoke for themselves!
 

Blogging? Really?! Why??!!

I made a chocolate cake for a gathering this weekend and it was really pretty good, if I do say so myself.  So I put a photo of it up on facebook and a bunch of people liked the image...and someone asked for the recipe.  And I thought, "Facebook is not really conducive to sharing recipes.  Maybe I should actually do that blog I've been thinking about, huh?"

Basically, I've been thinking for a while that I should have a blog.  Just for me and to maybe to share a few things with a few people.  Like recipes that other people might want to try.  Or notes about what made something turn out better or worse than expected.  Or comments about cool places I visit, fun activities I try, etc.  (And maybe a way a post stuff so mom can add it to her Pinterest page. Hi, Mom! :)  )

Mostly I have a bunch of projects (around the house, DIY stuff, recipe experiments, etc.) and a bunch of life experiences that I would like to document.  'Cause that'd be sort of fun for me.  I'm *not* creating some kind of lifestyle-advice blog here. Martha Stewart I am not.  A professional blogger I am not.  Seriously.  The goal will not be to be super-witty, an expert, or anything else like that.  Ultimately, I just want to be able to look back and say, "So, yeah.  I did some stuff.  And it was pretty cool/fun/hard/fulfilling/irritating/whatever."  I'm hoping that this will also help me remember the successes and failures when I try to do something a second or third time.  Incremental improvement can be a wonderful thing!

Disclaimer: This is not a personal-journal type blog. I think personal journals should be personal.  Once you put them on the internet, that is sort of out-the-window.  Obvious, right?  If we're friends and you want to know about my personal stuff, please don't use this blog.  Facebook private messages, email, the phone, and traditional mail all work better for that sort of thing. Thanks!  :)

The title has to do with the fact that I always try to learn and do new things but that I do not expect any kind of perfection from myself.  That would, obviously, be an exercise in futility for me.  I'm used to the imperfect.  Plus, those imperfections in life are what makes things different and, sometimes, really awesome.

Anyway, I'll get that chocolate cake recipe up later today.  Promise!  In the meantime, here's a photo: