Daring Bakers – 6th Challenge: The Perfect Party Cake

This month’s Daring Bakers Challenge, hosted by Morven (Food Art and Random Thoughts), was the “Perfect Party Cake”, taken from  Dorie Greenspan‘s book Baking from my Home to Yours. This recipe called for plenty of lemons for the cake part, and enough butter all around to make Paula Dean proud. My mouth was watering just reading the instructions.

On a quiet Friday morning, I printed the recipe and jumped right in. My KitchenAid made the whole process pretty painless. Like pretty much every DB recipe, this one seemed more daunting than the actual process turned out to be. My cakes came out moist and light, despite not rising much (a step involving whisking the egg whites and the buttermilk had been left out inadvertedly in the instructions) and the buttercream was just divine. Give me a recipe I can just beat the living daylights out of, any day. The preserve used between the layers was left to us. I decided to make the Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar, found on the Food Network site. Turned out lovely and balanced well with the lemon flavour of the cake. Big success all around. Bonus: 8 egg yolks to make ice cream (chocolate and vanilla).

Can’t wait to see the April challenge!

Canstruction Vancouver 2008

I checked up on the 2008 Edition of Canstruction Vancouver last Sunday at the Cruise Terminal. Now in its sixth year, this event raises much needed funds for the Greater Vancouver Foodbank. Designs were ingenious and colourful. Who knew so much could be done with a single can as a building block? Well worth the price of admission/donation.

Picture: I’m a Little Tea Pot (Team: Brooks and Associates Inc, Walter Frand Architects, Studio Elemental Design
5,400 cans)

Slideshow here

Cutlery 2.0

Came across this article on Washingtonpost.com today. A Knork in the Road looks into the radical new designs coming down the road, or at least appearing at the upcoming International Home and Housewares Show next week in Chicago.

Featured will be the Knork, a knife-fork designed by Mike Miller of Kansas. Also, Zeug Tools, based on neanderthal designs (I love that oyster shape spoon), the ergonomically-designed Curvware and the ramen spoon (I want one of those). Jane Black , author of the article, puts these new designs to the test in this video, here.

Photo: Ramen Spoon. Museum of Modern Art Collection