A Blog Beginning started with a seed....

ahh, my seedling.

With such busy schedules with my family and career life I was pleased to join Amiee Whites Monthly Miette at Food Je t'Aimee. Pleased that I could take some time and focus on something other than; 12 hour work shifts, recipe and menu development, morgage approvals, property viewings, potty training and family life. At the same time spending some quality time with my wife Laura working together on another common goal besides life, 'Cake' At the beggining of Aimee's unveiling of her new idea, I suggested joining together with Laura and eventually after showing her the book online and the video from the author and looking into her San Fransisco bakery, the seed was planted. Then, with much time passing and the deadline looming, I still had yet to purchase the book. Finally one busy errand day, while the 2 girls were sleeping in the van, we each took turns running into the bookstore to look at the Miette book. I was tasked to find and locate the book and put it closer to the door so that it would be easier for Laura to locate and say 'yes'. This leant to my natural insticts of hunting and gathering and was quite happy that my wife would possibly fall in love with the book that I liked already. And with much delight she came back to the van with the book in hand. I asked her what sold her on the Miette book and she replied, " the proffesional photos, different ideas of recipes with easy to follow directions not only for cake but other bakery delights and the overall presentation and publishing." I quickly thumbed to the Tomboy recipe and made some shopping notes of ingredients we would need to find and purchase. Success! An errand trip complete, with Miette book and ingredients to full fill a Masterpiece.
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Some Ingredients lined up for a photo shoot.

Looking over the month with my schedule I could see 3 days off in a row to complete this endeavour to start a blog and bake a cake. If my wife and I cant complete a recipe of a cake with icing in 3 days then we have to re think our priorities. And in actual fact, the cake 'trumped' other things to do on my list, with much satisfaction. While studying the recipes between breakfast and potty training, my wife was thumbing pages of the book from the chocolate cake recipe at the beginning to the buttercream recipe towards the back and I heard alot of 'gasps', 'oh my's' and "oh we gotta try these", and "awsome they have macaroons!". Which solidified my seedling into a nice garden full of pastry baking delights to come. At this time, we are house sitting for a family member while on vacation. So not to sound like complaints, but yet challenges, we had no cake pans, no electric mixer, no candy thermometer and no large bowl to combine the actual cake batter. But with our resourcefullness an oversized crockpot was our vessel of mixing, and did the job well. Along with our forgetfullness we needed back and forth trips from our house to my wifes parents house for ingredients and equipment. While purchasing cocoa, I was quite excited to see that Presidents Choice has unveiled a new 'Black label' product line and chose that cocoa they offerred instead of the no name or other yellow label variety. It can be deceiveing inside that black canester is literally enough for the cake recipe, 2.5 cups with some to spare to 'flour' the inside of the pans. I couldnt find raspberries so I chose blackberries and was excited to make the juice to flavour the buttercream with Chambord, a french black raspberry liquor and secret weapon I like to keep in my pocket for my Creative Gourmet. This liquor replaced the juice ingredient along with the vanilla extract, which i think lent to the flavour of the buttercream. Laura noticed that there was pieces of black berry inside the buttercream and thought that it would make a better filling for a wedding cake instead of icing for decorating the outside of a cake.

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Blackberry Chambord Juice, was more like a puree, so good!

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Crockpot resourcefullness mixing vessel

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hmm, gum drop, thank you very much

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Laura Icing the Masterpiece. Looks so Lovely!

From reading other blogs some authors had said that this recipe is over complicated with directions and steps. I found the directions to be clear, precise and leant descriptions of how it should look or be combined. Like mixing the buttercream and reasuring the baker that the mixture will become deflated and look curdled. This was good to know, and forge through and keep adding butter and mixing on high, helped to achieve the thick and smooth buttercream the recipe described. It was nice to work together with Laura in a goal or priority that was other than 'life' but instead cake. Finally we could sit down and taste our masterpiece with a sense of completion of another priority from our daily scheduled lives. After the first bite, sighs of delightment and a comments of 'damn thats good chocolate cake' came from my wifes mouth, which followed by, 'wow' and my reply "incredibly decadent", all the extra effort created such a love for this cake, and tasted awfully good. She then critized that the layer of icing between the cake layers was too thin, but I quickly added that because the cake was so rich and moist that you didnt actually need alot more icing. I thought that the icing and the ridiculously moist rich chocolate flavoured cake left your mouth and palette clean, and after chipping away faster and faster until our very oversized piece, as the photo will show, was consumed left me wanting more. But I suppose sleeping/waiting for this cake for breakfast will do. 
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Magazine Shot!

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Our Satisfying sharing portion

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Oh ya!

I reminded Laura that we had to have a piece of cake for breakfast the next morning and she had replied, with the answer 'no' which quite surprised me. My wife is definately a cake for breakfast kinda woman. Going to bed after our slice of cake and getting our 10 month old Kayla back to sleep after midnight we were a little groggy waking up at 630am the next morning. However, the first comments out of Lauras mouth was "Lets have cake for breakfast" Once the cake was pulled out we were overcome with how magnificent our masterpiece turned out. Once pulling it from the fridge the icing has become quite firm along with the incredibly dense chocolate cake. We then brainstormed how well the cake would be for our business, with regards to building it and transporting it, how well it would be to sit out for some time to 'warm up' during a wedding reception during the dinner and photos opportunities. We displayed the cake for our almost 3 year old Lyra and she was quite impressed. She tried to scrape the icing with her finger and was un successfull but however the blackberries were gobbled up quite rapidly. We asked her the question of cake for breakfast and she replied " cake for breakfast?, cake is for dessert. Ok. Me lika cake for breakfast mommy." we quickly went with her suggestion of breakfast first, so we started up some oatmeal while the cake warmed up along with a freshly brewed pot of coffee.
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You can see which cake is for Lyra

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Caught red handed!

Now that this March Monthly Miette is completed Laura and I look forward to working together in the kitchen at some point in the the Month of April to create "Tarts" that Aimee has given as our new Masterpiece. I would say after planting this seedling, and from anxious watering and tender loving care, that along with this blog and baking confectionaries with my wife Laura, that these Monthly Miettes will be anticipated by us and our children until the book is completed.