beware cake recipes that list nutritional info

I wanted to make a peach upside down cake and I wanted it to be easy and not involve a springform pan because all the good gooey stuff leaks out of those pans, and even if you have wrapped the pan in foil, you still have lost a good portion of gooey stuff. So I found a recipe in Epicurious and it included "carmelized" and "cake" in the title, so without further investigation, ahead I plunged. A closer reading would have revealed the utter lack of any fat in the recipe, no butter, no oil, just some eggs, some flour, a little sugar and some pureed peaches. And that tell tale nutritional info!
So Not Good! I served it with lots of sweetened whipped cream, which helped, but a real failure and disappointment all the way around.
Moral of the day: If there's no butter in your cake recipe, you may as well opt for ice cream.

yearning for coconut cake

It was my step daughter's birthday and she very graciously agreed to let me bake the cake for her party. She doesn't like chocolate and when I suggested coconut she said she loves coconut. Back to the vanilla bean coconut cupcake recipe. Most cake recipes that make 2 9" layers call for 2 C of flour and this recipe calls for 2 C of flour so I thought I was in the ball park. I asked my sister how many layers, 2 or 3 and what size. She said definitely 10 inches and therefore 3 layers so it looks proportional. I doubled the recipe. I did everything the same as for the cupcakes. Reducing the coconut milk takes nearly an hour and you have to watch it or it will really boil over and make a mess and also you'll lose valuable coconut milk. This time I used vanilla extract and vanilla bean. Then I baked the 3 layers for about 35 minutes which was perfect.
I used half butter and half cream cheese in the frosting, way more confectioners sugar than called for and then also both vanilla extract and vanilla bean. This was also perfect. The cream cheese adds a bit of tartness to the frosting, that just makes it balanced. I finished it by pressing toasted coconut to the outsides. It was outstanding.
The guests said, "It's so big!" "It's delicious!" and "No one bakes from scratch any more, the boxes are so easy." The host asked me how I got started baking growing up in NY? I told him I had grown up in CT, and he said, "That's even worse."
My only regret is that I didn't get to bring any home with me bc I would like to have some right now!

apps, not passed

Had a cocktail party. In an effort to reciprocate 2 years worth of invitations, I had a cocktail party for my neighbors.
3 weeks out- what a grand idea, I wonder what I'll make? Maybe pigs in a blanket, maybe sliders, maybe Rumaki, maybe congealed salad. I'm sensing a theme.
2 weeks out- I wonder if I should make mojitos? I wonder where I can buy organic, humanely raised mini cocktail franks? I didn't realize Rumaki had chicken livers in it!
1 week out- It's too hot for pigs in a blanket. Everyone likes lemonade and vodka. My hummus is usually popular and I've wanted to make that greek salad salsa for years.
After some consultation with Elise, who instructed that I not mix up regions, (no hummus and guacamole at the same party!) I ended up with Hummus, Greek salad salsa and little balls of mozzerella and cherry tomatoes on a tooth pick. The hummus is from Cooks Illustrated and having made it a number of times now, I would say- easy on the cayenne, easy on the garlic, bold with the cumin and the lemon.
The Greek salad salsa is from San Francisco flavors and was just OK. Basically, feta and olives are very strongly flavored and there wasn't much there to balance them.
I put a little basil leaf on the tooth pick with the cherry tomat and the mozz and everyone left them behind as if they were just a garnish!
The home made lemonade is amazing. 1 C lemon juice, 1 C sugar, 5-6 C water. Mix up another cup of lemon juice and cup of sugar and have them ready to go when you run out of the first batch. With vodka, can me great.
One guest told me that he always carries a picture of his wife in his pocket and periodically takes it out to look at it. "When she starts to look good, it's time to go home!" There are a few ways to take that.

God Bless America

I made a FLAG CAKE! I followed Barefoot Contessa pretty closely but used a vanilla bean for the frosting rather than vanilla extract and also added way more confectioners sugar than called for bc I felt recipe, as is, resulted in greasy frosting.
When I was buying the ingredients, which include several pints of berries, the man behind me in line asked if I was making smoothies. I said, No, a flag cake. The woman checking me out then told me that she had intended to make a flag cake but ended up just chunking up the angel food cake (!) and putting it in a bowl, layering on some berries and cool whip and then repeating with more cake, more berries and more cool whip. All her guests raved.
After I made the flag cake and was busy bragging to all my friends about it, one friend asked me if I made the recipe with the cool whip icing or the colored stuff in tubes.
I guess its a very American recipe.

White Trash Cookin'

We actually made roast chicken with a can of beer up its butt. Too hot to use the oven, wanted roast chicken, seemed like a good solution.

1 12 oz can of PBR
1 roasting chicken
pile of herbs
butter
garlic

Chop the herbs and garlic and mash with the butter. Smear this under the bird's skin. Salt and pepper liberally. Cut the top of the can of beer and leave it about 3/4 full. Set the bird down on the can while limiting the number of crude jokes about the bird's anatomy.

Put it in a gas grill big enough so it can stand tall and roast at 400 or so until done. Took about an hour.

And you know what? It was really good.

Yuck

Made Tuna Noodle Casserole from the cookbook of a famous chef who in the interest of charity will remain nameless and it was extremely mediocre. If such a thing is possible. Do you think I shouldn't have used unsalted tunafish?

Sifting

"Mrs. Bentley never sifts." This has been mantra in our house since my sister and I were old enough to read Mrs. Bentley's cookbooks. Virginia Bentley was a childhood friend of our grandmother's and her books were treated like the oracle of Delphi in our kitchen.

Well, Mrs. Bentley would have sifted if she had encountered the box of cocoa that I tried to make into brownies. The recipe is for Supremely Fudgy Brownies from Chocolate Chocolate by Lisa Yockelson. As an aside, this book rocks your chocolate world. Ask Margaret about the OMG Brownies.

All went well until the part where you add the dry ingredients. All the dry ingredients but the cocoa went in smoothly. The cocoa stayed in lumps, unwilling to associate with those lesser dry ingredients, the flour and baking powder, let alone with the eggs, butter and sugar. I had to taste the batter many times to ensure that this was not going to cause a problem, and eventually dtermined that it would be all right.

After I baked them up the lumps still showed on the surface. After I ate them up - no more lumps. Maybe that's how Mrs. B. dealt with them.