doughgirl

An almond cake called Balois from the cookbook Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgeri. It turned out very delicious! It was a dense yellow cake made with lots of eggs and lots of almond paste and I brushed it a healthy coating of coffee syrup and then covered it with a thin chocolate ganache and decorated it with a heavier ganache. As you can see, hubby got to it before I could get a photograph of the entire cake.

Have you tried Lava soap for your hands?

Any and all seafood....can't stand the smell or the way it looks. To me, fish just plain stink....shrimp are extremely creepy looking with their veins and beady eyes and oysters look like a hawk of spit floating in dirty dishwater (sorry, I know that was gross).

thank you so much percy!

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? Mexican/Spanish/Southern American. My mother is 1/2 Mexican and 1/2 Spanish and my father hails from a long line of farmers in West Virginia with Scandinavian ancestry Was meal time important? Absolutely, we always had pretty regular mealtimes until my older brothers started high school and then we all sort of went our separate ways during the week. But we always, always has Sunday dinner together, it was mandatory and dressing for dinner was mandatory! No jeans allowed at my mother's Sunday table. Was cooking important? Definitely, my mother made it a point to start including us in the kitchen as soon as she deemed us old enough. Dad was in charge of the grill but Mom was in charge of everything else food related. She baked bread and pastry every Monday with our housekepper and made a huge Sunday dinner every single week...still does as a matter of fact! She always told us girls that we couldn't get married until we could cook tamales, mole and feather light sopaipillas. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? I think we all probably only ever had to be told once, table manners were a pretty big thing at my house. Who cooked in the family? When we were young it was my mom or our housekeeper (she came in and cooked breakfast and dinner once or twice a week), as we got older we all had our chores and it was expected that we would pitch in with peeling potatoes or making assembly-line tamales, or shucking corn, pitting cherries, snapping beans, sorting pintos...that sort of thing. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? Pretty common. My dad was the one that always took us to showbiz (now called chucky cheese) and McDonald's, Dairy Queen and A&W and he always got in trouble for it with my mom, but we had some pretty good times during those "dad-meals". We all went out to restaurants together during the middle of the week to give everyone a break from cooking. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Yes, but only because there were five of us kids and we couldn't all fit at the table with guests (our table seated 10). When did you get that first sip of wine? I think it was at Church during Communion. Was there a pre-meal prayer? Bless us O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen. (we are Catholic) Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? Not really, there was always at least one really Southern meal per week: chicken fried steak or fried chicken, white pepper gravy, mashed potatoes, greens and "pot likker", yeast rolls and cornbread. And there was always a traditional mexican dinner: green chile stew or posole or enchiladas or tamales, sopaipillas, homemade tortillas, beans, biscochitos, natillas, prune pies or sweet potato empanadas. And our housekeeper was German so there was always a German meal thrown in once a week too. We ate pretty lightly for breakfast and lunch, but dinner was always something of an affair. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? I like to think I am keeping the traditions alive. I'm a stay at home mom with two little girls, ages 5 and 18 months. I make it a point to have home-cooked breakfasts and dinners at least 3-4 times a week. We usually eat breakfast and dinner out on the weekends. My family eats a lot more fruits and veggies than my brothers and sisters did. I keep at least a half dozen Tupperware containers of fresh cut up fruit and veggies for us to snack on and there is NO soda in the house which was definitely not the case when I was growing up.

ooohhh...I'm a very picky eater. mayonnaise/miracle whip any kind of pork (bad experience dissecting a fetal pig in high school...haven't eaten pork since and it's been about 11 years!) ANY KIND of fish or seafood (total visual thing---seafood grosses me out and I can't stand the smell) lamb liver veal any kind of game-y type meat, duck or venison. mushrooms goat's milk/cheese or sheep's milk/cheese blue cheese basil--- absolutely HATE the taste of basil olives I know that sounds awful, but I have tried all of these things at some point in my life and there is that rule-"you can't say you don't like it until you have tried it". Well, I've tried them and I don't like them!

thanks! I think I'll try them right now!

oohh, that's a tip I have never heard before! I'll try that tomorrow when I bake some for breakfast! thanks!

Oh goodness, I could just dive right into the bowl of mashed potatoes! Those look so good!

Oh my.....any chance you could share you recipe or point me to the cookbook you used....those look heavenly and exactly the kind of brownie I'd like to eat! Everything you made looks just wonderful!

The very first time my husband cooked me dinner, about 8 years ago when we first met, he grilled kebabs with chicken, steak, peppers and other veggies. He wanted a grilled theme so he also grilled corn on the cob, texas toast and for dessert he grilled poundcake, pineapple slices and served it with vanilla ice cream and caramel syrup. I don't think I've ever eaten a better meal! The first thing I cooked him was my specialty (mexican), everything homemade: enchiladas, sopaipillas, posole and natillas.

thanks so much! I tried half of them with an egg/water and half with melted butter on top and the egg ones came out nice and shiny! Unfortunately, I have no pictures as the ravaging hordes attacked them soon after they came out of the oven.

We met up with some friends and their families last night at Golden Corral (i know, i know....but it's the only place we could take our combined 8 small children and not feel bad about the ensuing ruckus) for dinner and it was my very first time to taste their wonderful yeast rolls (the only thing worth eating in the entire restaurant, in my opinion). I've found a copycat recipe online for the rolls, but I was wondering how to get that beautiful shiny top on the rolls? Is it just melted butter? I've tried that before and the butter just sank into the tops of the rolls and they weren't shiny at all. Any ideas? Thanks for the help!

My oldest, Isobel, is 5 and loves to help mommy bake and cook. We mastered scrambled eggs today, she learned how to gently push them towards the middle and tilt the pan so they cooked evenly. She likes to help measure, stir, break the eggs, pour the milk... and she loves to whisk anything, that whisk is a permanent fixture in her hand. She'll go through any of my cookbooks with pictures and tell me that "we just HAVE to make this or that tomorrow mommy!" The other day my mother-in-law was asking her about how much she liked to cook and she said, "I made the most splendid chocolate moocha (mocha) cake with mommy". I almost fell off my chair when I heard her say "splendid"....she's such a little nut. She's not a picky eater, she's equally happy with tater tots or truffles. Last night she cleaned her plate when hubby made spinach fettuccine with chicken, asparagus, sun dried tomatoes and shitakes. My youngest, Teagan, is 18 months and is still too little to be interested in anything but toy food and her toy kitchen. Alas, she is my picky eater...she's in a crunchy phase now, practically living on goldfish crackers.

Cherry Cream Cheese Braid (it turned out kind of flat....rose outwards instead of upwards) The braid before icing The iced braid Innards!

Mmmm...beef with beer! That sounds delicious!

Thank you so much, it was very good! It was my second time making any sort of sponge cake and now my mind is just racing at all the possibilities....I have no idea why I thought it would be so hard! I think we would have been happy eating the almond sponge plain, without further adornment.

I had a one-year old, a five year old, 2 dogs and a hubby all trying to claim my attention at once, so it's definitely messy and not very pretty to look at, but tonight we had my interpretation of opera cake (I think that is the right name, almond sponge cake, coffee syrup, coffee buttercream and ganache).

homemade butterscotch pie with meringue (mmm!!) a shaker lemon pie with meyer lemons shoo-fly pie walnut-raisin pie a dark chocolate cream pie with meringue

I did it!! Or at least, I think I did. I decided to give Ruth Well's IMBC one more try and I think it worked! http://www.flickr.com/photos/28694216@N00/423334398/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/28694216@N00/423334401/ Does this look right? It tastes very buttery with just a hint of vanilla. (I used about 1.5 tsp of vanilla) Now about storage, I can stick this in the fridge for a awhile right? I don't have anything planned, I just wanted to see if I could actually make it, so I think I might need a few hours to come up with a cake or something. I saw on a foodblog someone stored their IMBC in ziploc bags...how hard do you think it would be to get it all out of one of those again? Too messy? Thanks again for all you help!

Thank you so much, I think I will go ahead and give this one a try today!

I have made a buttercream with caramelized sugar syrup, so I doubt the high temperature is what caused the "hard thready bits." Are you slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) pouring the syrup down the side of the mixing bowl as the paddle spins on medium speed? The syrup should hit the side of the mixing bowl first, not the egg whites, which helps cool it slightly before mixing. It is important that the syrup contact the side of the bowl as you slowly pour it in. With higher temperature syrups, you'll end up with more of it stuck to the side/top of the bowl, but it still works out in the end. Sean ← you know what, that might have been the problem.....the syrup seemed to be thickening up so fast that I panicked a little and kind of just dumped it all in as fast as I could. I'm going to give it another go today and I'll take that into account. Practice makes perfect, right? Thank you so much for your help!

I just tried to make Ruth Wells Mousseline Buttercream, for the first time....twice. I am so disappointed that I couldn't make it work. I know it was probably foolish to try it without a candy thermometer, but I was so sure I could eyeball the syrup and know when it was ready, that I thought it would be easy. The first time I cooked the syrup too long and ended up with hard thready bits in the meringue and so I started over and the next time I ended up with italian meringue soup. I have no idea what went wrong the second time. Is there a buttercream I can make without a candy thermometer? One that will hold up well to piping? Or should I just drag myself to the store to replace my broken thermometer and try the Mousseline Buttercream again?

What a beautiful cake! And it is decorated so beautifully! May I ask how you made your cream cheese whipped cream? That sounds like a wonderful topping for the cake! How long will the topping last on the cake in the fridge?

Thanks for all the suggestions, I ran out of time and didn't even get around to the cake last night, but I covered and filled it with some ganache and served it for dinner tonight and I shouldn't have even bothered, the cake cake was dry and tasteless. The recipe was a dud and a complete waste of expensive chocolate. I hate when that happens! I think I'll try again with my "tried and true" midnight chocolate cake recipe that has never let me down!