Ever since I started baking this chocolate cake from The Barefoot Contessa at Home, it has been a frequently requested item. It is a moist, dark brown chocolate cake with a hint of coffee to enhance the chocolate flavor. I prefer Valhorna and Sharffen Berger cocoa powders for this recipe.I made a couple of mistakes this time around, neither of which altered the flavor, however the look of the finished cake suffered. First, I was being lazy and didn’t sift the powder sugar in the chocolate frosting, which lead to little white specks of powder sugar lumps in the frosting. In an attempt to rid the frosting of the little lumps of powder sugar, I made my second mistake and whipped the frosting, which caused it to thicken to a stiff consistency. The stiff frosting made it difficult to spread on the cake and then if formed a kind of shell on the cake. Lesson learned, laziness didn't pay off in this cake. I need to work on my presentation of the cake. Fortunately, the room was dark and the audience raved about the cake, the mistakes will be my little secret.
The second cake was inspired by Kat and her love for ginger and also by my need to experiment. In perusing the various recipe resources, I found this recipe for an Orange Ginger Carrot Cake with and Orange Cream Cheese frosting on the Cooks Illustrated website. I am not always a huge fan of ginger, however I enjoyed it in this cake. The diced crystallized ginger added a nice testure to the cake and the ginger flavor really complimented the orange and the spices of the carrot cake. I also liked it because the spice were moderate and didn't overpower the cake. The orange accented cream cheese frosting really brought the flavors together nicely.
For dinner, Kat and Laurel prepared an awesome pork rib roast. They coated it in lemon olive oil, lemon juice, a seasoning rub that they really like and lemon pepper (?) and roasted on a bed of sliced lemons. It was juicy, tender and so flavorful. And Chelle prepared her sinful scalloped potatoes made with a béchamel and gruyere cheese. We garnished this fabulous meal with some steamed asparagus with an aoli.
Of course we had some nice wine over the course of the evening. We started with the 2005 Novy Syrah, Judge Family Vineyard. It had some very nice dark fruit notes, which came out nicely after we let it breathe a little. From there we had a 2006 Robert Young Red Winery Road Cabernet Franc blend. It has a really nice bright fruit and floral nose. It has a softer finish, which makes it enjoyable now. This was one of the bottles from my first wine club shipment from Robert Young Estate Winery. After that we had a Leal Lavanda. The nose on this is so full of fruit and it is such a well rounded wine.
One of my favorite things to do on a weekend morning is to sleep in with the kitties and then get up and enjoy a nice breakfast with my Peet’s Coffee. This weekend I made myself sourdough waffles with my sourdough starter. The King Arthur Flour website had an excellent suggestion of what to do with the cup of starter you throw away before feeding the remainder of your starter. I have made these before and really enjoy them. While I think they taste best immediately out of the waffle iron, heated up in the toaster oven works too.
Lots of good food and wine this weekend. I think I'll have to go back to eating lighter this week. Hopefully next weekend I will be able to find some time to continue my experimentation on bread baking.
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