valentine's day almond cake

if all has gone as planned, we have landed in vienna and i have already eaten 12 slices of cake. sacher torte! of course i can't be totally positive because molly of last week is writing this, not molly with (hopefully) 12 sacher tortes and a schnitzel in her belly.

luckily, molly of last week just made this cake, the annual valentine's day cake! because in my family, it's just not valentine's day without this fluffy almond cake. 

out of all of the holidays and all of the recipes, this valentine's cake is the one recipe in my life that gets made once a year, every single year, at the exact same time. i love it so! it's so light and almondy and sometimes i think that i could eat an entire one all by myself but that wouldn't be very romantic, would it? take a look at last year's, 2013's, 2012's, 2011's, and 2010's. 

this year's cake is entirely inspired by melissa's painted heart cookies. those cookies are the classiest valentine's day cookies i ever did see. i love a good paint set, especially when it's vodka filled and edible.

for my next painted cake, i intend to gather some inspiration around all of these viennese museums, but for now, stripes! hi there, stripes.

here is the thing: using this painting technique on this whipped cream frosting is actually quite fussy. it will work if you have some time and you keep putting it back in the freezer throughout the painting process for a few minutes to firm up as needed, but the nature of this whipped cream so gosh darn fluffy that eventually you keep disrupting the surface with your brush and that can get frustrating. so if you're wanting to bake this tasty almond cake and frost it as you wish, continue on to the recipe below. if you're wanting to decorate a cake using the water color technique, i recommend frosting a cake with buttercream or royal icing and letting it firm up real well before using melissa's technique for the painting. 

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valentine's day almond cake 

makes 10-12 servings

ingredients

cake:

1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

8 oz almond paste

6 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

pinch of salt

1/2 c sugar

frosting:

1 1/2 c whipping cream

1/2 c powdered sugar

1 tsp almond extract 

clues

preheat oven to 350ºf. prepare two 8- or 9-inch or three 6-inch cake pans and set aside.

combine flour and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.

beat almond paste and egg yolks until well blended, mix in vanilla and almond extract, and set aside.

in a separate large bowl, beat the egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. beat in sugar one tablespoon at a time and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

gently fold the whites into the yolk mixture and then gradually fold in the flour mixture. pour batter into prepared pans and bake until a tooth pick comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 20 minutes (for a 6-inch cake) or 25 minutes (for an 8 or 9-inch cake).

let cool.

for the topping, whip up the whipping cream to soft peaks, gradually beat in the powdered sugar and almond extract, and continue whipping to stiff peaks.

decorate as desired! (see headnote for some words about the watercolor technique.)

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-yeh!

p.s. i am totally gaga over that new little cake stand, which is hand made by the magical and wonderful anna wallace!! (look she has even made ceramic choux pastries!!)

shakshuka pizza

we've been vaguely cheating on friday pizza night with nachos. ever since we adventured into the secret menu world of the local pizza parlor, in which every pizza can be ordered as nachos, we've been changed humans. there's one pizza called the happy pig that we particularly love as nachos: mozzarella, pulled pork, pineapple, some vegetables, and barbecue sauce. (i know, i was horrified about barbecue sauce as a pizza ingredient when i moved here, but i've since embraced it even though i'm slightly embarrassed to say it out loud.) last time i really wanted to get the tater tot pizza as nachos basically just so that i could tell people that i ate tater tots on nachos, but eggboy protested.

i love our nacho nights and the small-town pizza parlor vibe with the crayons on the tables and the quirky pizza nacho names, but lately i've felt guilty about letting nachos invade our pizza time. like i was forgetting my roots. so last week i renaissanced pizza night with a pizza that would certainly not be shut down by you-know-who despite the fact that it was not covered in sausage and pepperoni and more meat.

eggboy loves shakshuka. more than he loves peanut butter, maybe even more than he loves taylor swift. and i love it too, even more so if there is a big fluffy pita to soak it all up with. this pizza basically replaces the pita with a chewy pizza crust that soaks up the sauce and creates one big delicious mess that's best eaten as a folded slice so it almost becomes a doughy shakshuka sandwich. i'm going to consider this my valentine to eggboy and tomorrow, for our last pizza night before we fly off to vienna (!!!!), i might even make one heart-shaped. 

ok: eggs on pizza. it's kind of fussy. the whites can spill out and they take time to cook... so work carefully and make sure your tomato sauce well walls are as high as you can make them before cracking in your eggs. if you're having a particularly difficult time, you can crack the eggs onto a hot pan for a couple of seconds so that the whites firm up just slightly, and then immediately transfer them to the pizza to bake. 

the baking part can be tricky since eggs take longer to bake than pizza dough when you have your oven cranked up to a zillion degrees or whatever it is they tell you to bake your pizza at. alex gave me the simple tip of decreasing the oven temp and baking it for longer, which makes a lighter doughier center, but i really love it that way and i think it does wonders for soaking up the shakshuka!

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shakshuka pizza

makes 2 personal pizzas

ingredients

1 batch of the pizza dough here or any other pizza dough you'd like

2 tb olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp harissa powder (optional, but you really should)

a pinch of sugar

salt + pepper

1 tb tomato paste

1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

4 eggs

4 oz crumbled feta

a handful of chopped parsley

clues

preheat oven to 475 (ideally, with a pizza stone).

heat the oil in a pot over medium and add the onion. cook until soft and translucent, 5-7 minutes. add the garlic, cumin, harissa powder, sugar, a good pinch of salt, and a few turns of black pepper, and cook for 1 minute. add the tomato paste and diced tomatoes and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.

flatten your pizza dough out either on a floured pizza peel or, if you're clumsy with a pizza peel like me, on a piece of parchment. top the pizzas with the tomato sauce, create two wells on top of each pizza, and then crack the eggs into them. sprinkle each with feta, and then carefully slide the pizza onto your pizza stone. bake for 7-10 minutes, until the egg whites have set but the yolks are runny and the crust is lightly browned.

drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with parsley, and enjoy!

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-yeh!

chinese hotdish

a few months ago, i was flipping through a few of eggmum's old church cookbooks when i found my stripper name in the casserole chapter of the 1984 our savior's lutheran book: chinese hotdish. it was nestled between beef pie and oriental hotdish, and i took it as a sign for my true calling. not to be a stripper, but to finally become a true woman of the north by making a hotdish. 

ok, what is a hotdish.

if you're not from the northern midwest, you probably know it as a casserole. from what i understand, all hotdishes can be considered casseroles, but not all casseroles are hotdishes because a true hotdish has three main components--meat, vegetables, and creamed soup--which are dumped into a casserole dish, and then, in the words of sam sifton, you cover the bitch in tater tots and bake it. some hotdishes use wild rice or mashed potatoes or another type of grain or starch instead of tater tots, although covering the bitch in tater tots is really fun to say.

so, like, technically you can make a mac and cheese casserole, but without meat and a vegetable, it wouldn't totally be a hotdish. 

all of this is obviously up for debate and i am in no way an authority, i'm just going by church cookbook research, wikipedia, and the delicious hotdishes that eggmama makes. (and whether it's hot dish or hotdish is still something i do not know.)

hotdishes are as comforting as a new fleece blanket on a cold winter day and they make excellent leftovers. here are some examples of things that you can put into a casserole dish in order to make a hotdish:

hamburger meat + peas + cream of mushroom soup + tater tots

pulled chicken + wild rice + celery + cream of chicken soup

chopped spam + macaroni noodles + cream of mushroom soup + velveeta cheese + onions

i have never tried that spam one, but if you were to place the other ones on an x/y chart where x = how much it looks like barf, and y = how delicious it is, they would be maxed out on both accounts. that's the charm of a hotdish. 

for my first hotdish, i've made a variation on the chinese hotdish in the our savior's lutheran book. as much as i loved the sort of imaginary camaraderie of standing in the creamed soup section, piling cans upon cans into my basket, and then coming home and placing them on the shelf marked with a handwritten label for "cream of mush" that egggrandma must have made decades ago, i couldn't actually bring myself to use it without first trying some less processed options.

i know, coconut milk isn't technically a creamed soup, but it is creamy, and slightly sweet, and the results even got the eggboy seal of approval. i used brown rice to up the healthy ante, and scallions to add flavor and greenery. a little ginger here and some ground pork or chicken there, and this guy might even be ready for the annual hotdish competition.

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chinese hotdish

makes 3-4 servings

ingredients

1 pound ground chicken or pork

2 tb soy sauce

1 tsp chopped fresh ginger or 1/4 tsp ground ginger

black pepper

3/4 c brown rice (short or medium grain)

1 c chicken broth

1 13.5 oz. can coconut milk (regular or light)

4 stalks scallions, minced

crispy noodles or crispy fried shallots, for topping

clues

preheat oven to 375.

in a small* dutch oven or other stove-safe/oven-safe dish, brown your meat with the soy sauce, ginger, and a few turns of black pepper.

*the dutch oven that's pictured has a 2 quart capacity. also, if you don't have a stove-safe/oven-safe dish, you can certainly brown the meat separately and then add it to a casserole dish.

add the brown rice, chicken broth, coconut milk, and scallions, and give it a little swirl.

bake for about 1 1/2 hours, until the rice is tender. it will still be slightly liquidy. let it cool for about 10 minutes, top with noodles or shallots, and enjoy!

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-yeh!

pictured: dutch oven // knife // measuring cups

smoked gouda fondue + a fondue party!

for the past few weeks, on evenings when we don't have volleyball games or music things or figure skating to watch, we've been plopping ourselves in front of the office with a stack of guidebooks for our honeymoon. eggboy hasn't totally figured out trip advisor yet, so we're going with guidebooks for now :) we'll be spending some time in vienna with a day trip to budapest before tinkering around the alps because to be totally honest we have just not gotten enough snow up here in winterfell and i need moarrrrr. 

my ideal vacation consists of staying in a mountainy lodge/castle, eating hotel breakfast until i get kicked out, looking at mountains, maybe doing a somersault in the snow or going in a sauna, basking in areas of no cell phone reception, and then eating schnitzel or fondue, depending on what side of the swiss/austrian border we're on. eggboy's ideal vacation consists of walking around a city and seeing historic things, especially as they pertain to alban berg, hence the vienna part. i hear they have good cake there though, so i am v excited.

perhaps the most amount of excitement for our honeymoon that i've had thus far was when we had our little fondue party last week. i was swirling the melty cheese and eggboy was playing a mahler 9 record and our friends came wearing the cutest sweaters and it occurred to me that next month we're going to be eating fondue in the alps and hearing the cowbells that mahler heard when he wrote his 6th symphony and maybe even skiing!!!!! i can't contain my excitement. this fondue party was like a little amuse bouche to our trip, it was so fun.

here was our menu:

smoked gouda fondue // with pretzel rolls, salami, grapes, broccoli, and apples for dipping

matcha white chocolate fondue and dark chocolate fondue // with strawberries, cake, marshmallows, and pretzel rods for dipping

kendall-jackson grand reserve pinot noir 

-yeh!

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thanks so much to kendall-jackson for sponsoring this post!!!! all opinions are my own!!

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goodies pictured in this post: fondue pot // wood board // tiered plate