One Cake - Three Ways

Ok, so a little late to the party, but I'm back!
I have some big news to break - but that's another post for another day.

The first birthday cake of the year snuck up on me and I only had a few days to pull it together. I have always wanted to make a confetti cake, which is basically a plain white cake flecked with sprinkles! How delightful! I've seen them in boxed cake form and I thought I would take a stab at it. Why not ring in the first 2012 birthday cake with a festive confetti cake?

I cobbled together a cake (no recipe, ma!) and dumped in a jar of sprinkles.

Here's the thing. I think there is a trick to confetti cake because the sprinkles essentially melted and instead of flecks of colour in the cake...I got blobs. It was pretty... "festive" looking. Delicious, but certainly not what I had expected. I poured the batter into a tube pan (ring-shaped pan) and after it was done I carved out a tunnel from the underside. I then filled the 'cake trench' with whipped cream that had been flavoured with some homemade strawberry jam. I took a thin layer of cake that I had carved out and patched up the trench, so essentially there was a tunnel of strawberry cream inside the cake. I then made a ganache and poured it on top and let it dribble down the sides.

That was the 'first' permutation of the cake.

Using the scraps of the cake, I built a small cup-sized trifle. I had a date coming over a few days later and wanted to serve this as a dessert. I layered the cream, cake, toasted hazelnuts, and ganache in a whiskey tumbler and added some slivered almonds as a garnish.

That was the 'second' permutation of the cake.

And for the third?

The rest of the scraps (plus some ganache added later) that I devoured after cleaning up!

Goes to show that one cake, can certainly go a long way.

Hello 2012!

Okay, okay, I know. Very bad blogger, Spoon!

The end of 2011 was a lot hairier than I expected. I wrapped up some big projects at work, had a typically busy  end-of-year social life, did a whack of home renos and...to top it all of - a raging sinus infection that had me at my couch's mercy for the last two weeks of the year. So you'll have to excuse me for being extremely negligent in blogging.

I did manage to push out another cookbook - not the same concept I had started with, but I'm proud to show off some of the great work I did last year.

So what about 2012?

I set five resolutions for the year and two of them are food related. The first one was to blog at least every two weeks and discuss whatever it is that has caught my food interest. So this could be to document something I have made, but I'm hoping I will write more about food observations and memories. The second is to eat vegetarian for an entire month. I think I may make small allowances for seafood, especially if I am eating out but it will be pretty limited. My target is for April or May, as I do like to reserve my meat eating for BBQ season!

I'm thinking both of these goals can be accomplished. For the writing, it's about making time and really committing to it. For the vegetarian month, I was a veggie for a few years so I'm thinking it won't be that difficult. My goal there is to be as creative as I can with vegetarian eating, and I'll definitely be documenting it all here!