Christmas Cake I

Aight, I'm constructing a Christmas cake for the fam and today I started out baking the cake bases and mixing the filling/icing. The first type of cake I put together was a slight variation on a recipe that appeared on the Obama Foodorama blog. I got really excited about this honey cake recipe because I had all the ingredients for it on-hand (that never happens) and also it was created by Chef Bill Yosses, the Executive Pastry Chef of the White House and MY FORMER BOSS!!! That's right, I interned under that guy at the Citarella restaurant (now closed) in high school, and he was awesome! He wrote me a killer letter of recommendation that I used to get into Wesleyan early admission. Hopefully if/when I get into a graduate program and start doing food stuff I can get in touch with him to thank him for his letter and see if I can finagle my way into the White House for a tour of the kitchens or something. I know, wishful thinking, but... I really want to meet Michelle Obama. Really bad.

Okay, so here's the honey cake:


The changes I made were to replace half a cup of the flour with almond meal and add some peanut butter. It smelled like toasted pb and h sandwiches when it came out of the oven. Win!

I realized that this wasn't going to be enough cake for the epic structure I had in mind, so I decided to make a banana-pecan cake as well. I got the recipe out of Susan Purdy's The Perfect Cake and made only minor changes to it (ran low on butter and replaced half of it with yogurt, ran low on sugar and replaced most of it with brown sugar.... ehh, it'll taste fine). It came out like this:

For the filling and frosting I decided to go with a light chocolate buttercream. I thought it would be perfect to tie together my banana-honey-nut cake flavors (yeah, it's looking like this cake might be a little weird/busy, but I won't knock it til I've tried it). I didn't think to take the butter out last night to come to room temperature and we don't have a microwave for some reason, so I stuck the two cold sticks over the hot oven and let them warm up in a little melty puddle of their own buttery effluvia. Mmmm, I have a way with words.

I sort of made up the buttercream recipe, as I am fond of doing. It's a hodgepodge of random things I had around, and it went like this:

4 egg whites
1/2 loosely packed cup light brown sugar
1 Cup (two sort of melty sticks) unsalted butter
9 oz bittersweet chocolate
7 oz white chocolate

Melt the bittersweet chocolate over simmering water. Remove from heat and mix in the white chocolate until melted into the bittersweet. Set aside to come to room temp.

Place the egg whites and brown sugar over the simmering water and stir until the sugar dissolves and the egg mixture is almost hot to the touch (I know some people use thermometers and such, but I can't get the stupid temperature reading part fully immersed in shallow liquids so I find them useless when dealing with such a small amount of egg white. I know there are special lasery kinds that wouldn't give me such troubles, but we ain't real fancy round these parts–hence the not having a microwave thing).

Whip the egg white/sugar mixture until it makes stiff peaks, and gradually beat in the butter spoonful by spoonful, letting it incorporate fully each time before adding more.
*If it looks like the buttercream is separating, that's totally normal, just keep beating it until it smooths out.*

Finally, beat in the cooled chocolate.

It looks like this:



and it tastes like this:

Yeah, BIG happy

Okay, more will be posted as it becomes available!

Happy Hollandaise! Oh no, I'm turning into my dad!!!!