A Morsel of St. Patty's Day

First off, Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Or...as Paul says..Happy St. Paddy's Day.  I tried to tell him it is Patty like Patrick - but he assured me it is Paddy as is Pádraig.  Touché!

I don't remember if we wrote about it on here or not, but last year we tried to go authentic Irish with soda bread and brisket.  The soda bread (recipe compliments of Mary Vaca!) was great.  The brisket was pretty good - but probably still the most expensive piece of meat we've ever bought.

So this year we are taking a slightly different angle.  We're saving the soda bread for the weekend when we'll be home.  And we're skipping the brisket, hoping that the Irish pub we're going to tonight has good Irish food.  If not, we'll go to a different butcher and have brisket with our soda bread this weekend.

Instead - I made a few Irish-esque treats for work.  First, to be culturally sensitive to our Muslim colleagues who don't drink, I made shamrock sugar cookies with green frosting.  They were delicious!  Although, like other attempts to be culturally sensitive, I found that many (not all) of the Muslim colleagues preferred the second treat:  mini-chocolate Guinness (stout) cupcakes with Bailey's Irish cream frosting.  Delicious little bite-size treats! 

Finally - the best of all...a Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcake (full-sized) with Bailey's Irish Cream Frosting and....drum roll.....a Chocolate Whiskey Ganache filling!  Hmm!  I think there are enough calories in this to count for a weekend's worth of treats!  The top picture was sent from my phone to let my friend know to come grab one.  And then I forgot to take a picture until I was half-way done with mine.  Oops.

I used to wonder why my roommate made treats to give away at work and now I know....first, if you keep them at home (which we've done with 2 cakes now) you start to notice that your stomach doesn't feel so flat in the morning.  :(  But more importantly - you should see the looks on people's faces when they try them!  The big surprise in these treats (to me) was the reaction to the cookies.  Three or four colleagues said they were only going to break off a small piece...and then came back for the rest of their cookie.  Another three colleagues asked for the recipe!  Another said I should be selling these cookies!  Another said it was the best cookie they'd had..."when is the next holiday!?!" 

Maybe 25% of what they said is just them trying to make me feel good...but I can tell when you are just trying to make me feel good and when you really do like my food. 

If I may pat myself on the back for a moment - I made the cookie cutter from scratch!  And I didn't even slice open any fingers in the process.  Also - the cookies really did taste like those ones you buy at the store that have the powder on the bottom and are super super soft and thick.  And...do you see the swirls in the frosting on the cupcakes?  Finally got that right!  But...so you know that I don't think I'm all that and a box chocolates...it took me three tries to get the right shape for the cookie cutter...and one batch of frosting just slithered its way off the cupcake...and the cookies probably should have been thicker.  (Ha!  No one even touched the box of thin mints on my desk - do you think that means I can have them all!?)

The answer to when the next holiday is?  Tomorrow!  It's Purim!

Soliel - the Perfect Orange Cake

Today is a great morning because I got to bring this cake to work that I've been research, buying things for and making for the past 4 days.  Paul says it has consumed me.  This may be slightly true.  But enough about that...on to THE CAKE! (I feel that it needs a name...not a name like Jen's Perfect Masterpiece but something more like Soliel (a French name for "sun" - fitting as most of the recipes are from Julia Child!). But I'm not that obsessed, so we'll skip the name and stick with "the cake.")

The cake has two layers of orange sponge cake, one layer of yellow butter cake, two layers of orange curd filling, and Cointreau butter cream frosting - garnished with fresh orange slices (and curled orange rind).  So you see - "the cake" is just not a sufficient name.  And since you can't see it in person or taste it, I'll tell you all about it.  After all, I have to record my 4 days of research/planning/baking somewhere!

Like I said, the cake has three layers, two are orange sponge cake which i think is fabulous because it is light (in weight, in flavor, in consistency) and delicious!  The orange kind of makes it taste healthy and the cake part makes it like a sweet indulgence!  It is more substantial than angel-food cake, but much lighter than and fluffier than normal cake. (The technical explanation is that I beat and whisked lots of air into the batter and then delicately folded it all together and quickly popped it in the oven.)

The third layer is a yellow butter cake - it is only there because I wanted to try the recipe.  I watched the Cake Love video on making that cake like 3 times. Before you think eh, butter cake? let me tell you that it only has that name because of its appearance (not its ingredients) and it is only yellow because of the egg yolks.  It tastes good but it is much heavier (weight and density, slightly like a pound cake.) and it has a shiny buttery look.  (But it doesn't taste like butter...it has a hint of vanilla and the bourbon I put in it! Haha).

The filling between the three layers of cake is an orange curd. (You are so from Wisconsin, putting curds in your cake!) This sounds gross, but it is a lot like lemon curd - which isn't really curd at all.  It is somewhere between a jelly and a frosting - like the jelly filling in a great doughnut.  Then the cake is topped with an orange butter cream frosting, flavored with some Cointreau.  The last few times I made the frosting (which involves boiling sugar, stirring over simmering water, over ice, and then quickly mixing...in short: it is a very complex frosting.) So the last few times I made it I cooked the sugar too long and ended up with a darker more caramelized frosting (which is delicious but more difficult to make).  This time I aced the recipe - but the frosting is very yellow from the butter and tasted pretty buttery...until I threw in an extra tablespoon of Cointreau :)  The butter color and flavor are not bad - I buy my butter fresh from a particular guy in the market and I've done my share of reading up on butter (inspired by a 2008 New York Times article).  I'm going to say it was the good butter and the fresh Orange that gave it the color.

As you can see, I have put a lot into this cake and have learned a ton.  The payout of all of this is a delicious cake that I am so proud of.  (As a sophomore in college I would have been very offended if you told me I would one day be proud of a cake that I made.)  Technically there are 20 servings but I think you would be hard pressed to get 20 pieces (they will be small) - which brings me to today:  I brought the cake to work and hid it in a small refrigerator on a floor where only 4 people work (one of them being my best friend here).  People are already asking how the cake turned out, telling me they saw me come in with it this morning, and asking what time the cake is coming out.  Do you see where this is going?  There are more than 20 people who literally want a share in the cake.  An honor - but it also means that I may only get 2 bites (half of Paul's small piece...he takes big bites). But do you really think I've been researching and planning for 4 days to only have two bites?  No!  That is why I shaved off a little from the middle and tasted it last night!  In addition to giving my friend a cake for his birthday it was lots of fun, a learning opportunity, friends will like me more, lots positive attention, and by the time you split the cake into all those pieces:  only 40 calories.  :)

*Three side-notes which I couldn't fit in:  1.  The butter article also inspired my orange Christmas cookies which are prominently featured...not my cookies, but the original recipe; 2.  This is a much improved version of the cake from the last posting which was only 2 layers, back in the day before I aced the recipe; 3. Greg saw the cake on Skype last night and said it looked like it belongs in a magazine!  He is my favorite for being the first to inflate my fluffy butter cream ego :)  I really hope no one sets their lunch on top of the cake before we bring it out!

Epilogue:  Of course everyone loved the cake!  Our friend cut really thin pieces (which was okay because it was so tall) and about 20 people had some (including the big boss!).  The biggest compliments were a.) asking for the recipes, b.) a few people sneaking in a second piece, c.) 3 people wiping up the frosting and filling from the tray (with their fingers!) and d.) two colleagues saying I should sell my cakes!  :)  Maybe I'll practice a few more times before I do that.

Turkey Day!!

Sorry we didn't post about this sooner.  I know many of you heard our woes of trying to find cranberries in Isreal or buying the organic, free range, kosher, home-delivery bird killed only hours before going on the grill. In the end...HUGE Success!!!

The star of Thanksgiving was the turkey and the cranberry sauce (ehh..both made by the most attravtive chef in I've ever seen!).  We'll save them for the end.

Lets start with us bringing our big plastic picnic table inside and borrowing a full set of dishes from our friends, moving the bookshelf and the couches to make room for an ambitious 16 guests! 

Then, only a few days before, the pot luck thing seemed to be going down the drain when 2 guests replied that they would bring cake.  So we bought massive amounts of mushrooms, potatoes and onions, and pre-made buscuits.  In the end, they all brought more food than we thought and we had TONS!

While I would have loved to have sent my friends home with armloads of turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing - I couldn't.  The stuffing was pretty much gone (and it is one of my favorites). And the turkey and cranberries...well that was my food budget for a month.  So today, like yesterday and almost every day since then, we've had potatoes and turkey for dinner. (Sweet and sour turkey, turkey pot pie, turkey sandwhiches - I'm not complaining, they are delicious).

We ordered 11 kilos of turkey (a safe bet according to the turkey experts online)(we ended up with a 25lb bird!).  Well, they don't really eat turkeys here so the market (demand and supply) is pretty small.  We couldn't really be picky.  Then on the cranberries.  You know those oceanspray commercials where they are standing in a pond with berries floating around them.  Well this is the desert and we're in a dry spell.  We bought frozen cranberries from Russia by the ounce! 

Paul cut the legs off of the turkey and pushed him down to make him fit on the grill.  After seven hours we had a delicious and juicy bird with a slight grilled flavor!  The cranberries...what can I say...it was almost like being at Aunt Patsy's! 

The whole event was a huge success and everyone very much appreciated us hosting.  Lessons learned:  1. Order less turkey.  2.  Confirm that guests are bringing sides. 3.  The pilgrims and indians ate those foods because they were local - so maybe next year we'll do a "local Thanksgiving" keeping with the spirit of the holiday.  4. Invite lots of friends and eat turkey for a month - it is worth it!

Birthday Party in a Box!!!

In case the world didn't know - let me tell them again: I love my family! From the closest to the most distant. Today I got a wonderful package in the mail: a birthday party in a box!

I'm not sure if Aunt Sandy and Uncle Phil tacked that name onto their clever idea before they shipped the package - but that is surely what it is. What was inside? All the makings of a birthday party! A cake, frosting, sprinkles, candles, birthday themed plates and napkins AND BALLOONS!! (Plus some of our favorite coffee and some delicious smelling candles!)  Aunt Sandy and Uncle Phil - Thank you so so much!

The birthday in a box couldn't have come at a better time. Summer is when most of the new people move here and start work - so that means lots of new friends! And friends means a party for me :)  We've invited all of our friends...well acquaintances..okay - everyone we talk to sociall, to our house on Friday for my birthday. And with the Fourth of July celebrations we really don't have time to plan out a party - so this box is perfect! Now I have all of the decorations I need - just add water! 

Because Israel is the size of New Jersey, our friends/colleagues are from all over the country. Some of them travel 10 minutes to work each day while others may travel 4 hours each way! Can you imagine! They literally cross borders every morning and every evening just to get to work. Talk about dedication! I'm not sure they can all make it to my party, but it should be fun either way.