Pound Cake And Bull Neck

Right now I've got a pound cake baking in the oven, and instead of following the Smitten Kitchen recipe, or perhaps Jacques Pepin's, I went with the Pioneer Woman. Obviously, I'm sure Pepin and SK's recipes turn out beautiful, delicious cakes. But I'm clearly on some sort of Midwestern comfort food kick, and she's yet to steer me wrong, even if her recipe does include something called "Butter Flavoring."

Yup, Butter Flavoring, and Sprite. I thought I had lemon extract and I didn't, so I did fancy things up with some fresh lemon juice and zest, but otherwise I stuck to her plan. The batter tasted good, I can tell you that... Though, Cam pointed out that I maybe shouldn't be eating raw eggs with an impaired spleen. Touche.

In other news, mono blows. I should go ahead and give it its own tag, because I can tell you, it stinks. I'm tired, yes, and every day I have a slightly different version of yuck, with some symptoms in common. Every morning - literally every morning - when I wake up the first thing I do is touch the side of my neck, to see if the swelling my lymph node has eased at all. News flash, it hasn't. I was just reading that website I linked to above, and it said one of the symptoms is "bull neck" because of the swelling. I'm less symmetrical than my mental picture of "bull neck," but ever bit as unattractive.

Next up? The section on "Marriage and mono." Time to read about Marlene and Bob Parker* of Clearwater, Florida. I have so much to look forward to!

*Names changed to protect the germy.

Cake Is Real Food

Ok! So as promised, some good food I made myself. I'm still a little embarrassed about my Lean Cuisine revelation, but hey, no one's perfect. Anyway!

So after making a three-layer 9" round strawberry cake for my sister, and 3 6" round 3-layer cakes for the lovely psmee's bridal shower*, I asked Cam what kind of cake he wanted. He wanted the chocolate whiskey and beer cupcakes (aka "Irish Car Bomb" cupcakes) I made once before, in cake form.

I've certainly been learning from all the Smitten Kitchen reading I do, because I knew the batter for a standard batch of cupcakes should nicely fill 2 9" rounds. So I whipped it up as written, then poured it into the round pans, docked the temperature to 325 to ensure flat tops, and baked them till the toothpick came out clean. Then I cooled them, wrapped them in foil and plastic wrap, and froze them. When your man's on the road constantly and unpredictably, cakes in the freezer make it easy to pounce on a window when he's home.

The day after his actual birthday (which he spent outside Columbus, Ohio. Magical, he'll tell you) I got my opportunity to finish the cake. I used the cupcake ganache recipe too, but either I did something wrong, or it was just too runny to go in the middle layer of the cake. So I added in some more melted chocolate, froze and stirred, froze and stirred, and finally got something that would stay in the center without squishing out the sides.

Finally, the Bailey's icing. I remembered that the original recipe made a small amount, which was ideal because it was incredibly sweet. I'm so infatuated with Swiss buttercream after making it for psmee that I decided to hack SK's recipe by replacing the vanilla with Bailey's. It's the craziest icing - for what feels like forever, the KitchenAid swirls away at this gloppy lumpy white mess, and then suddenly, it takes. Worth the wait, and there is no other frosting, to my experience, that's more delicious, easier to work with, or more durable. Success!

As you can see, Cam's cake came out pretty great. He loved it. The only thing he worried about was the leftovers, significant for a household of 2. But! I threw him a tiny surprise party the following night, and the 8 of us managed to make short work of it.

*Banana cake with cream cheese icing, chocolate with chocolate ganache, and vanilla cake with Swiss buttercream and layers of strawberries. And yes, I'm asking for Sky High for my birthday!