February 15th, 2011

Filling the coconut cupcakes

These are my half-complete coconut cupcakes. It's a basic yellow vanilla cake mix. Instead of water, I used coconut water. I added pudding mix for moisture. I added coconut extract for amazing flavor.

I then made a coconut frosting from scratch - which was a little runnier than I wanted, but still fluffy, sweet and most important coconutty. It was infused with coconut extract also, along with coconut milk.

I filled up a pastry bag with the frosting, buried the end into each cupcake and squeezed until the tops bulged and threatened to split.

That was Part 1.

February 14th, 2011

Breakfast and lunch: Protein shake, roasted veggies and a blood orange

I was scraping the bottom of the barrel with this photo, I'll admit. I just was documenting what I was taking to eat that day and was never meant to be an impressive photo. I love blood oranges. I'm obsessed with protein shakes, specifically Biochem 100% Whey Vanilla. Roasted veggies are better than steamed.

I have little else to say about this.

February 12th, 2011

Downtown Boston from the pier in East Boston, MA

It's taken my 9 months to take this very simple photos. It's the view from East Boston across the harbor to downtown. It's stunning. The most beautiful view in all of Boston.

I run past this daily (or would be daily if the weather were better) as I jog around the harbor.

This is why East Boston rocks.

February 9th, 2011

Nail Rescue

At the beginning of January I became really obsessed with fake nails. I was buying and applying those Broadway Nails Petites in peach. They're much shorter than your classic fake nails, almost coming across as natural. I had always imagined that I'd immediately break them off - rather like the cheap fake nails you get with Halloween costumes at CVS. These are much nicer. I was blown away by the strength of the nails. Sturdier than my own naturally grown nails. And they stayed in place - which they should since you're using superglue to apply them.

The major drawback that I learned after the fact was that no matter how gentle you are when removing the nails, they will have destroyed your natural nail below. Over a month later, my nails are still, peeling, weak and torn up. There is no going back from this! So I turned to Sally Hansen nail rescue to try to rub some gel-based strength back into them. I don't have high hopes, but I'm willing to try anything at this point.

February 7th, 2011

Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake

The second birthday of the week inspired a new level of cake-making. My very first mousse cake. Mango mousse at that. I've been in love with the mango mousse from the Whole Foods bakery for several years now. It's technically made off-site at a local bakery, but I forget the precise name.

In any case, I went looking for a simple mango cake recipe. Then I realized that I didn't have the beautiful acetate wraps to hole it in place. I did some shopping over the weekend, but couldn't find anything locally. I considered using a clear cellophane used to wrap books or gift baskets, but decided against it in the end. Instead, I went in search of a recipe that was a little sturdier - and fell upon this Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake at the blog Desserts For Breakfasts. The sturdy bottom layer made from a rich mocha topped by a fluffy mango mousse and finished with a sweet espresso jelly, all wrapped and held together in a thin bark of bittersweet chocolate.

The original recipe is designed for 6 small cakes, but I made a 9 inch single cake instead. I was able to bake the cake part in a single pan as a result rather than deal with a baking tray. This made the thin chocolate wrap harder to handle in the end (an extra set of hands would be a lot easier), but I got it on and it turned out brilliantly.

The only bad part of the cake, was the cake-part itself - the chocolate cake was really dense. Again, a density issue with these from-scratch cakes. I was told that it was texturally appealing when eaten in combination with the mango mousse and espresso jelly, however. In the future, I will cut out the cake part altogether though and just make a solid mousse-and-jelly cake. Or do a layered mousse cake with maybe passion fruit, mango and vanilla cream. Yum.

February 6th, 2011

Espresso syrup

I spent the day making more cake. Another multilayered, multi-step baked good that took hours to complete.

This particular shot is the espresso syrup that I used to between the chocolate cake layer and the mango mousse. It was probably the easier part to make out of the entire cake.

February 4th, 2011

Coconut Cream Layer Cake

I have been on a baking binge this winter and the birthdays of coworkers has finally given me a safe outlet. I was chatting with one of the technicians about the project manager who only wears Hawaiian shirts (he's from Hawaii), and mentioned that he was wearing a new shirt today. Last year we came up with this awesome plan to have everyone wear Hawaiian shirts for the day in honor of his birthday. So when the PM walked into the lab, the technician naturally remembered to ask when his birthday was. "Tomorrow."

Woah. We had no time! So we immediately send out an e-mail to everyone to get them in on the last-minute Hawaiian shirt-wearing theme. Then began to plan our Hawaiian-themed party. Really this just involved someone maybe picking up some leis and me agreeing to make a cake. So I went with coconut, since I love coconut.

I chose Alton Brown's Coconut Cake by way of this really delicious baking blog. It would be one of my first traditional cakes from scratch. What I mean by traditional is that I really love cake mix with added pudding. I will jazz up the mix, go to down on shapes and frosting - but the base cake is never my own creation when it comes to fluffy, cakey cake. This is kind of a daunting recipe. Four layers, filling, 7-minute frosting, and 5 different types of coconut products.

I managed to get the four layers baked, filling, frosted and topped, following instructions to the t, but mine really wasn't quite as lovely looking as the recipe blog photos. I used pre-separated egg whites for the batter, which immediately fell after I reached stiff peaks. So they weren't as fluffy as they were supposed to be. this resulted in a more dense, drier cake. However, the coconut water-soak saved the day to make it ultra moist. The 7-minute frosting was also less fluffy than it was supposed to be, which I'm sure was a temperature thing that I didn't notice. You can tell that its sort of glassy.

Overall everyone loved the cake - its richly sweet with every kind of coconut you can think of - coconut cream, coconut water, coconut milk, coconut extract, coconut shavings. I ended up cracking a coconut on my front stoop in like 20 degree weather with a hammer because I having issues cracking indoors. A man was walking by with his Pomeranian who really, really wanted some coconut. It was an odd scene between us.

This image was captured last minute on the travel tray right before we cut into it. Poor lighting. I would like a prettier cake holder with a 9-inch base rather than 8 inch, but this old Tupperware one that my mom gave me has the most secure handle/locking mechanism on the market. The new ones are all really sketch.