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| The lovely couple |
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to a friend's beautiful wedding. Here are some photos of the wedding, and a recipe for a 'celebratory cake' (this cake should definitely only be used in celebration, as it is armed with dangerous amounts of butter . . . I could have eaten the whole thing in one sitting).
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| Not my hand |
I mildly adjusted Ina Garten's chocolate cake recipe and came up with the following:
Sift 1 3/4 cup flour with 2 cups sugar, 3/4 cup good cocoa powder, 2 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp each of salt and baking powder. In a separate bowl combine 1 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 2 eggs and 1 tbsp of vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stir to combine and to finish the batter add in 1 cup room temp coffee. Butter and flour two cake pans. Pour the batter in and bake at 350 degrees for just over 1/2 hour (do the toothpick trick to make sure they are done).
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| Heirloom Tomato Salad with Burrata from Paula LeDuc Fine Catering |
For the pièce de résistance - the chocolate buttercream - you really need to block out all health consciousness or thoughts of moderation and forge ahead. I will say that, for the butter cream, you need to have soft butter (especially when doing this by hand). Of course, I forgot to take the butter out. Not to worry, I knew I could just slyly microwave it for a few seconds . . . a few seconds later I found that I had a microwave full of melted butter. After scooping up what I could I attempted to let the melty butter cool and re-solidify – fabulous idea. Long story short I got out two new sticks of butter and let them sit out and warm up, au naturale.
To make the butter cream, melt 6-8 ounces good chocolate (I used bittersweet). While the chocolate is melting beat the two sticks of butter until they are "light yellow and fluffy" – I did it until my hand gave out and it looked a smidgen fluffy. Add in 1 egg yolk and 2 tsp vanilla extract and continue to beat for a few more minutes. Slowly add 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar. To finish add in the melted chocolate and put in a few tablespoons of coffee. Your butter cream is complete. To finish I frosted the cake and then sprinkled the frosting with some nice sea salt which gave the cake a really nice savory end and the tiniest crunch.
