Genkinaonna

Well I emailed my aunt to see if she still has the Mahogany chocolate cake recipe, none of the ones on the internet seem quite right...hopefully she'll get back to me and I can post it.

My grandma had a recipe for Mahogany Chocolate Cake with Fudge frosting that was amazing. It was made with cocoa and chocolate, and had sour cream in it. It made a huge cake, 9" with three thick layers, six if you split the layers. It was so tender and delicate you had to cut it with a piece of floss, so it didn't just crumble. My dad credits that cake with getting through the ecoli epidemic in Wisconsin in the early 90s, it's so calorie dense he basically lived on it for the two weeks he was sick! I lost my grandma's recipe box (the cause of much consternation in the family) and have been meaning to track down that recipe specifically, to see if it's as good as I remember it, now that I bake chocolate cakes from various recipes at least once a week...

My Kitchenaid stand mixer, with my Henkel's 6 inch Santoku as a close second. And then my food processor, since it saves me lots of time shredding, making biscuits and pie dough, etc...

Just bought Ready for Dessert. And Cake Pops. No more amazon for me!

Well no macarons, but I made this cake and these cupcakes for a birthday party for one of my daughter's friends this weekend. The cake is chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate sour cream frosting, and the cupcakes are yellow cake with oreos mixed into the batter and oreo cream cheese frosting. She'd requested "green" and "with a doggie" Not a lot to go on, but that's what you get when the client is three!

Abooja, those are lovely! The only macarons I've ever had turn out even halfway successfully were the Pierre Herme recipe. Every other ones were unmitigated failures. One of the bakeries in town (Portland, OR) does a macaron class about once every three months. I'm thinking I might jump in on the next one.

I think there was a egullet course on cooking with children a couple of years ago...

Just ordered Tartine Bread. Should have it in two more days. Damn you Amazon and your "if you only spend $10 more dollars you get free shipping..."

Yeah, I'd still rather watch her than Sandra Lee. At least it has the train wreck appeal...Semi Homemade just makes me angry and my children wonder why mommy is yelling at the tv...

The other books I look at all the time but haven't baked anything from are "A Modernest View of Plated Desserts" and "A Neoclassical View of Plated Desserts." Everything is sooo pretty, but lots and lots of little fiddly steps...I have used some of the flavor combinations and plating ideas though...

Beautiful cookies! I made the World Peace Cookies to go in my cookie trays for my staff, but I decided they were too good and ate them myself. What can I say, I just didn't take seriously how good a recipe it was until I tried it for myself! I did end up making a second batch and bringing them into work a week later...but not too many of them actually made them into the building, as they are fabulous with coffee as a breakfast on the go!

I keep waiting for that "very special episode" where he keels over dead from a massive heart attack or ruptured stomach. It's for that reason alone I keep watching. Morbid, I know...but true...

I love Kalonji (nigella) seeds. Invaluable in the turkish cheese pastries I've been fooling around with lately.

I made the potato chip tortilla for part of my New Year's morning brunch, I think I snagged the last bottle of pimente d'espelette in the whole city of Portland. It was a big hit, and my kids appreciated the extra potato chips left in the bag, since they're something I don't usually keep around the house.

I have a baking and patisserie degree from a cordon bleu school. I would say that it was definitely NOT worth the money. One of my instructors (we had her for 9 of the 18 weeks) was completely incompetent. She went into the bread unit (which was 4 weeks of the class, mind you) saying bread was "not her thing" and we should go check in with some of the other professors if we had any questions. I didn't learn anything I hadn't already known, and it was $18,000. The other professor I had was great, but he left right after I graduated, and went to a community college to teach. This was just the baking part of the program though, I can't speak to the full culinary program or the hotel and restaurant management part. Of the 12 people in my class, I think maybe 2 of them are actually working in the field as of right now as their main income.

I must get this sichuan pepper oil you speak of. Immediately. I'm on my way to the store as we speak!

I find that giving them random things to taste and smell while I'm cooking gets my kids involved. I have a three year old and a four year old and they both can rattle off the basic ingredients in a cake, crack and scramble an egg, and can tell you how to make strawberry jam and pesto. They are naturally inquisitive, so I think just the fact that they know they can fire 50 questions in a row at me without me declaring "quiet time" as long as they're about cooking stuff, really reinforces them learning about cooking. We have people over for dinner relatively often, usually people with children as well, and I always make it a point to compliment my kids on their contributions to the dinner in front of the guests, which they seem to really like. My mom was an awful cook, so I learned to cook in self defense, and I really want to give my girls a grounding in the basics that I had to learn on my own.

Pimente d'espelette. Stupid expensive, but it smells amazing. I used it in the potato chip tortilla recipe from Around My French Table, it turned out really well. I can't wait to play around with it a little more.

The French Laundry Cookbook, since I am sadly lacking a vacuum sealer, immersion circulator, and army of knife wielding sous chefs.

Magic Shell...hands down. And Kraft Buttermilk Ranch. On anything fried. God help me and my arteries!

Tazo Refresh is really good when you're congested or nauseated...the mint is helpful for both conditions. I also drink the Silver Rain white tea from Republic of Tea when I just feel overall crummy, since it's mild and soothing to sip without too much caffeine. I don't know if it's the placebo effect, but I always feel better afterwards.

I share the same conundrum every morning, which I thought to address by buying a KitchenAid toaster oven, with the logic being, every other piece of KitchenAid gear I own is great. But I was mistaken. Not only is the toaster oven poorly designed with a rack that slides out and dumps your breakfast on the floor, but it's two settings are non-toasted and burnt. It actually takes less time for my regular oven to get up to temp, and I frequently opt to have plain bread and butter instead of dealing with it! Okay, rant over...if I find a toaster that doesn't suck I'll certainly let you know.

I have 119, I actually had a bunch more but I traded them in to a used book store for credit, since I hadn't used them in quite a while.

Hi Nick, Can't wait to follow along with you! I also am proficient at the "blob" option for decorating the tops of espressos, much to the chagrin of my husband. We usually just cheat and have regular coffee. Can I ask why you freeze your olive oil? Looking forward to seeing what else you have to share this week from somewhere warm and sunny, that last bit being said with a not-incosiderable amount of envy...

Thanks so much for sharing "a week in the life" with us, Shelby! It was great to follow along!