Crab cakes, mac and cheese, and fried plantains

lemon curd layer cake

I hope my description of the lemon curd/whipped cream frosting made your mouth water. It was so good on the cake as was the lemon curd in between the layers - however, the cake came out quite dry. I divided up the batter among three 9" round pans which was an absolute mistake. Next time I will double the batter and divide it among three pans OR I will bake off two cakes and do a double layered cake (instead of triple layer) or slice the thicker 9" rounds. they were too thin and too dry, though they had a good lemony flavor.

the menu for the night was

• Red pepper crab cakes w/ spicy aioli
• Gouda, Parmesan and Cheddar macaroni and cheese
• Fried plantains w/ curry ketchup
• Green beans
• lemon cake

when I asked Andrew two weeks ago what direction I should take the meal in, he said he wanted Southern, homey, some fried, and he said catfish would be nice. Well, fried catfish is yummy but crab cakes are his absolute favorite thing to order when we are at a place that will do them well. So I attempted to rival the best crab cakes he has eaten and, though I cannot say mine were the best, I do think they are better than many that I have had. fried plantains ("patacones") are a staple in his half-Panamanian household and have been among my favorite foods to try since a trip to the Dominican Republic a few years ago. Luckily my boyfriend's mom has been making them for her entire life and showed me how to really do them. all guessing aside, now I really know how to make patacones. the idea for the curry ketchup came from a great restaurant in Little Rock called The House. they served sweet potato fries with a curry ketchup - so tasty. finally, my goal for the Mac n cheese was to make a Gouda mac, but unfortunately Gouda is quite costly so I opted for a 3-cheese mac to cut costs (and can you ever have too much cheese?). it turned out well based on the silent first five minutes of the meal when he was too intent on eating to have conversation.

the set-up

Crab cakes:
1 lb. lump crab meat
minced shallot
minced garlic
minced red bell pepper
course ground dijonmayonnaise
1 egg
dash or so of cayenne pepper
fresh squeezed lemon juice
s & p
panko bread crumbs

whisk wet ingredients in a small bowl and pour into mixture of crab meat, shallot, garlic, red pepper. delicately mix with rubber spatula so as not to break up the crab meat - let sit overnight or for a few hours before making cakes. I think the smaller, plumper crab cakes stay together better (make sure your mixture is fairly dry - but not TOO dry). Roll cakes in panko bread crumbs, sear in olive oil and butter on both sides until caramelized on the exterior, then bake at 350 for ~12 minutes.

spicy aioli:
mayonnaise
crushed red pepper
paprika
lemon juice

whisk together until uniform and creamy. keep adding pepper and paprika to suit your color and taste preferences!

fried plantains:
2-4 plantains, cut into 3/4 inch slices

fry plantains in hot oil until just darker on either side. remove from oil and using a bowl, cup or plate base, smoosh plantain until flatter and mushed. re-fry until golden brown and crispy on either side. mix some curry powder into your ketchup and voi la! you have the tastiest and most unhealthy side dish.

three cheese macaroni:
1 lb. corkscrew noodles
8 oz. gouda cheese
8 oz. cheddar
8 oz. parmesan
panko bread crumbs
1 stick of butter
some milk
2 eggs

cook noodles al dente. in a large mixing bowl, toss noodles, cheeses, bread crumbs, melted butter, eggs and milk. transfer to a well-greased casserole dish, top with more cheese and cover. bake on 350 for about an hour. it probably does not need seasoning due to the salt in the cheeses.

the happy birthday (and nearly graduated!) boy

subtlety.

we all know by now how much I love bacon, eggs, and butter, which by definition are the opposite of subtle (the only possible argument I could make for subtlety would be butter. but even if light in flavor, never in calories or richness). so I guess you could say I love bold flavors, rich mouthfeels and rich tastes, the foods you can eat a small plate of and afterwards feel completely satisfied. and on top of that I'm not quite sure anyone would ever describe my personality as such.

well, my first installment of Andrew's Birthday Dinner posts is going to be on subtlety, and how it is wooing me by its place in baking. my first experiment with subtlety was the Swan Wedding Cake when they asked for "white cake with a hint of lemon. so barely a hint that people will have to sit there thinking about it and finally identify the taste of lemon zest ten minutes later." Okay, subtlety. my next big experiment was the hint of lavender I baked into the Bedenbaugh Wedding Cake. you taste it in cookies, or in cake when you have to ask yourself, is that coconut? and you never really know anything substantial beyond that it makes for the tastiest bite of anything ever.

So today I am playing with that little fleck of flavor in a Lemon Curd Layer Cake from Epicurious.com. I have never been a huge fan of lemon because I have always felt it was the flavor that rivaled Chocolate the most (and don't mess with chocolate). I really enjoyed the combination of vanilla cake with lemon zest mixed with raspberry preserves back at the Swan wedding, and on our anniversary Andrew got a Spanish Lemon Cake at Last Resort Grill & Bar and it was TO DIE FOR. I had an amazing tiramisu cake that night, but I found myself getting jealous of someone else's dessert for the first time ever. So at this point, I do love the flavor of lemon in baked goods. Andrew's favorite, I had to make his birthday cake a lemon cake, and it is proving to be yet another lesson in subtlety.

I am just going to talk about the frosting today, because it absolutely deserves its own chapter in my accidentally thematic self-cooking lessons. Last night I prepared a homemade lemon curd (fresh lemon juice, corn starch, sugar, butter; whisk on medium heat until thickened and boiling; cool and keep up to 1 week) and today mixed some of the curd with confectioners sugar which I then mixed into the whipping cream to make a frosting for icing and layering. oh. my. gosh. I have never tasted something so sweet yet so light, so refreshing, and I have never enjoyed the aromatic hint of flavor on the back of your throat that lingers with the taste of cream. please someone make this recipe, even if just the curd and the whipping cream to get that amazing whipped cream. It is going to be such a perfect addition to a denser cake and the richness of the curd layered twice.

Swan family wedding cake

Congratulations to my dear friends Wes and Linda Swan on their sweet, new marriage, and a sincere thank you for trusting me to make my very FIRST wedding cake for their wedding! Hopefully this blog will help anyone with tips on making cakes- what to do, what NOT to do!



They wanted a 3-tiered, square wedding cake and we needed about 80-100 servings. Their original ideas came from Zilly Cakes out of Buffalo, NY and we just adapted colors to their particular wedding. The result: light lavendar buttercream icing (Zilly's design was for the entire cake to be in fondant), with a mustard yellow fondant for cutting out the damask pattern, and a plum ribbon around the bottom of each tier with fresh irises laid around the cake. I decided on a 12", 9" and 6" square for each tier- the bottom tier being only 3 layers and the top 2 being 4 layers.

Flavors: a lightly-flavored lemon cake with raspberry filling. After experimenting with some great lemon cakes (my personal favorite was from this awesome recipe, and yes, I did make the entire recipe with ganache even though I just needed to try the cake!). The ultimate cake for what they wanted, though, was using Wilton's Classic White Cake recipe and simply adding in the zest of 3-6 lemons per batch. It yielded such a light tasting, aromatic lemony hint to the cake (and the cake is not too sweet- and beating the eggs and folding them in after made the cake amazingly light and fluffy).

The Swan household's favorite raspberry preserve is Whole Foods' 365 Raspberry Fruit Spread- It took 5 jars to fill the cakes. The combination of the all-natural, not-too-sweet raspberry spread and seeds with the light lemon cake was incredible!

I started baking off the layers on Monday afternoon- immediately freezing them to preserve their freshness until Friday and Saturday when I would build and decorate the cakes. Friday morning I picked up 9 lbs. of Publix buttercream icing (I don't have the capacity to make 9 lbs of icing, YET). I used Wilton's violet icing dye- so concentrated, so great! I began building by chiseling out a little pit in the inside of each layer- to keep the raspberry filling from seeping out, and piped a smal bit of icing around the outer interior of each layer before stacking.



All 3 tiers were built and trimmed by Friday night- I began icing each tier individually (well, first I iced to seal in crumbs. Thinly ice each tier, refrigerate to harden or crust, then continue icing for aesthetics) which took a painful amount of time, way longer than I expected. My tendency when icing is to keep scraping until virtually no icing is left- I kept having to go back over with tons of icing to keep a thick layer to prevent cake from showing through, or too thin icing, etc.

Saturday morning I finished icing each tier to satisfaction.

For the fondant I used Wilton's Ready-to-Use Fondant, the $20.00 bag- and used Brown and Golden Yellow dyes to work in the color. Rolled it out and cut the designs out. The design on Zilly's cake was drawn to scale by my incredible friend Katie, then re-drawn into a simpler design more appropriate for our downsized cake, and we cut each part of the design out of the fondant. The fondant lays so nicely on the buttercream icing.

We delivered the cake in 3 tiers, and stacked when we got there



At the wedding site, we finished up with a Plum (lots and lots and LOTS of Violet icing dye) "ribbon" around the bottom of each tier- because of my uneven dowel rods (so careless on my part. I hated myself) we ended up using TWO plum ribbons to hide the uneven stacking.

We finished up with the fresh irises.

In a subsequent blog I will list my tools and ingredients and credit the great stores and shops from which I found what I needed.