Baking : 1 Tara : 0

I should have known that lately things were going waaaay too well for me in the kitchen.....
Today was a disaster.
Well, to start off with it was the first sunny day we have had in a while and I would have liked to spend it outside.  But tomorrow is one of Dano's co-workers birthdays and I already said I would make the cake.  I decided to make the dark chocolate cake I have mentioned before, which is usually a pretty basic recipe for me!  But our oven and I have a power struggle for it to stay on the right temperature and the cake came out looking a little strange.... then I tried to move one of the layers and it broke into multiple pieces.  I felt like I couldn't start over because I had used all ingredients I had left out for hours to get to room temperature.  So, I made some chocolate buttercream and re-assembled the cake and filled between the layers.  However, during the melting of the chocolate I remembered I need to check the mail for a package I was expecting (this was such a blonde moment....) and just walked out the door to the mailbox!  What was I thinking?!  Walked back in to smoke, burned cream all over the stove.... a huge mess.
I should have stopped here and called it a day, bought some canned frosting, and no one would have known.  But being myself... I decided to try to make a frosting recipe for the outside of the cake that I have been studying for weeks!  When I went to print off the directions it was going to be NINE pages (I deleted the pictures and it was still a full two pages).  Its for Italian Meringue Buttercream from the Whisk-Kid blog (which is absolutely amazing)!  You can check out the link for pictures and the recipe.  Overall I think it went okay... (minus some stray sugar that indefinitely hardened to the stove, the bowl, and my saucepan). 
While all this was going on I also tried to make vegetable stock at the same time!  I've made stock one other time, but today I wanted to try making it in my crock pot.  I sort of used a recipe from Allrecipes but didn't exactly measure everything because a gallon of water won't even fit in my crockpot.

Doesn't that just look amazing!

The veggies roasted and ready to simmer!

I also added just whatever was left of my parsley plant from last summer (mostly stems), sage I found in the back of the produce drawer (ooops!), and a few pieces of the rosemary (also from the patio garden).  I read on other websites that people normally cook their stock for about 2 hours in the crockpot but.... I wasn't really happy with it until it had cooked for like 6!  But that is the joy of the crockpot--you can kind of just forget about it (I went for a hike in the sunshine, finally)!  After roasting your vegetables make sure to really scrape the pan and get all the burned bits into the pot.... I lick the spatula afterward because that caramelized vegetable juice is SO good. Julia Child got me into making my own stock because, well, she says "whats the point of making your own soup if you are using stock out of a can?!"  Which is kind of true... and I would never argue with Julia :)  It's also really healthy because you can control the amount of salt you add and it needs much less because it is so flavorful! 

This was one end result I was happy with today!

St Pattys Day

I love all holidays.... so naturally, St Patrick's day is no exception.

This year I decided to try a new recipe--the chocolate stout cake.  I saw it on Epicurious when I was looking up cakes a couple weeks ago and the awesome reviews sold me on it.

Chocolate Stout Cake
It started out cooking up some Guinness and butter....

 

 I made only half the recipe because I only have two 8 inch pans and it made just the right amount!  

Final product!

The reviews on the website weren't too positive about the icing in the recipe so I went my own direction entirely.  I made a buttercream frosting and added Baileys Irish Cream to it instead of water for the filling.  Then for the outside coat, I melted chopped dark chocolate with some shortening and a little milk and poured it over the cake creating a semi-hard shell.  Then piped buttercream borders and a shamrock ;)

Overall I would say it was a hit!  We headed out to the brewery and gave the cake out to our friends and a couple strangers.  A piece made its way to one of the bartenders and I got hooked up with free beer and lots of compliments throughout the night.

I've been trying to convince myself for a while not to try brand new recipes on "the day of" but this one definitely worked out even with my crazy substitutions! 

We actually had our Irish dinner tonight since last night we ...errrr.... didn't get around to it and I made vegetable pot pie (my recipe is fill the pan I want to use with raw veggies, then cook them up, and add a pie crust) and the Twice Baked Potatoes I made last year which are really super good.  I meant to take a picture of them but I ate them before I remembered--whoops!

Hope everyone had a great night!

Flower power!

So last night we actually had a somewhat exciting dinner... we added mashed sweet potato seasoned with chili powder to our tacos which we haven't done before and I must say it was pretty good!  I was inspired by this recipe, although we really didn't follow the rest at all.  It added a creamy texture so I didn't need to add quite so much sour cream.... (substituting a vegetable for dairy!?)

Tonight I had my Wilton fondant class and we made some fun flowers: 

Carnation

 Yet another rose...

And a Calla Lily!

One thing I find really entertaining about the Wilton class is that we take the time to make all the parts of the flower (even if they really can't be seen) and in our book they are properly scientifically named!  For the Calla Lily, the yellow part is labeled as "the spadix".... I have a Bachelors degree in biology and I did not know that is what it was called!