Another Solar Return

It was my 34th birthday on Friday! I had a lovely day; spent some quiet time with Littletree, enjoyed my delicious Indonesian breakfast, and then went to lie on the beach and watch the storms rolling over Lombok in the distance while sipping iced drinks.

One of the best things about Gili Air is that while the volcano on Lombok draws in lots of clouds and storms – we can often hear the thunder and see the lightning from here, but right where we are, it’s sunny and gorgeous, and we get the cool breezes pushed out by the storms. Makes for very pretty sunsets too!

In the afternoon I sat with my friends and had birthday cake – it was a delicious rich chocolate brownie with ice cream and whipped cream. Yum! and not at all like the “cake” I had last year.

Then we all ambled over to a beachside bar for dinner and cocktails, and lots of laughs…

And, of course, I was treated to a gorgeous birthday sunset

Red Velvet Cake

As promised, here is the post with recipe for the Red Velvet cake I made for Littletree’s birthday.

Of course, being me, I refuse to use red food dye, so I figured I could do it with beetroot. Really longtime readers might remember that I used to make candy for Littletree from beetroots (and later blueberries) and unrefined sugar (recipe HERE), but I didn’t want to go for my usual ‘ah, I’ll just make it up as I go along and she’ll be right’ random recipe, so I asked the internet to find me someone with experience who’d done an all-natural red velvet cake with beetroot before.

My awesome friend Rose T came up with this brilliant recipe on Sophistimom blog, so that seemed like a good start.

It looked pretty simple, and was almost all ingredients I already had to hand, so off we went…

I roasted beetroots the night before and let them cool.

I blended said roasted beetroots in my trusty food processor with the 1/4 cup of lemon juice and a spoonful of vinegar. But my measurements aren’t too accurate, since we moved and I can’t find my measuring cups, so I’m just eyeballing it.

Then away with the food processer and out to a mixing bowl and my trusty, vintage SwiftWhip beater to cream a 250 gram block of butter (because I can’t get my head around American recipes that call for a “stick” of butter), and a whole tub of cream cheese. Again, I don’t know ounces, so I just put in the whole tub. I think it was 200g. The little bit less cream cheese cancels out the little bit extra butter. At least, it does in my book.

Also, creaming cream cheese and butter is hard work with an old-fashioned hand beater. But worth it. Once it was sort of soft enough, got into creaming in 2 1/3 cups sugar. Again with the using a juice cup and kind of guessing, but it turned out that I used the precise amount of sugar that was left in the jar. Then I cried because there was no sugar left for my coffee.

Once the sugar is creamed in, slowly add in four eggs. This is to make the batter easier to beat, and we nurse our blisters and wonder why we struggled through the creaming of butter and sugar. Also add in a sploosh of vanilla extract (I make my own, soaking organic vanilla beans in alcohol).

Then comes the silly part: where you need to use a second mixing bowl. I usually cheat on this bit and just bodge it all into the one bowl, because I loathe and detest washing up. But I have an indentured person now to do the dishes, and it was to be a special cake for Littletree’s birthday.

So I sifted 2 cups unbleached flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (there was some debate on the internet as to how much cocoa to use, so I made something up), and 1 1/2 teaspoons himalayan salt into a mixing bowl, and slowly added it in to the wet batter. Then I stirred in the beetroot puree, and we were good to go!

Nice and red!

Grease and line three 8” cake pans… um, I don’t know how big 8” is, and I only have two round springform pans of indeterminate size, so I greased and lined those and called it good. Now, given that the recipe was for a three layer cake, and I only had two pans, I just kind of guessed at dividing the batter into thirds, put the first two in the oven, and then did the third one in a re-used pan.

Turned out on a rack to cool while I whipped up cream cheese frosting (two tubs of cream cheese, all the icing sugar I had (which turned out to be somewhat less than the recommended four cups), another whole packet of raw, organic, local butter (yay! I found a dairy just up the road selling unprocessed butter and cream!), 3 dollops of cream and a splash each of vanilla and almond extracts. Blend well.

The fun part was schmearing frosting between all the layers and covering the cake… you know, because I had to keep testing to make sure the frosting tasted good.

Once I’d done the cake, I suddenly remembered that Littletree had requested chocolate-dipped strawberries to go on top, but I’d totally forgotten. Standard fall-back plan: grate some chocolate on top of the frosting, and call it art.

The cake was a huge success of epic proportions; it looked awesome – sufficiently red; tasted great – rich and tangy; and the kids gobbled it up!

So much nom!

Party!

We held the party for Littletree’s birthday yesterday, so we had about a dozen tween kids running amok around the place (about half of whom ended up sleeping over)! I survived, and all I got was this t-shirt pile of dishes.

The kids all had an awesome time

Making a mess, playing on the trampoline

Swimming and kayaking in the creek

I made (at Littletree’s request) a very elaborate Red Velvet Cake (all natural, organic, coloured with beetroots, and iced with raw-butter cream-cheese frosting – I’ll make a post about the cake separately, with a recipe)

The cake was a huge success

Littletree got lots of lovely presents

And got to spend time with lots of her best friends (actually, half of the home school group came!)

Of course, the five girls who slept over stayed up till midnight giggling, but thankfully, the kids’ room is at the other end of the house from mine, so I wasn’t disturbed in the slightest :-P

Epic Christmas Baking

Getting ready for our epic Christmas feast, Littletree and I spent the day baking. See – I knew it would be a bad idea to introduce her to baking; now she’s hooked. And the worst part is she can read the recipes herself now. Oh, what have I done!?

First things first – making gingerbread dough… because that is the first step in the creation of a gingerbread house.

The dough turned out nicely, and left to sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Meanwhile… we made tiramisu

I love tiramisu, but it’s quite a process to make it all from scratch – lots of different mixing bowls and layers to prepare, but it’s always worth it.

Once that was in the fridge to set, we got out the gingerbread dough and started rolling it out. We discovered a great tip – roll the dough between sheets of baking paper.

I found a nice stencil online for the house shapes, but it was so ridiculously not to scale… that turned into a nice geometry lesson; Littletree had to get out a ruler and calculate the measurements and angles.

Then we discovered that the best way to cut the shapes and transfer them onto the baking tray was to actually leave the dough sandwiched between the sheets of baking paper and cut it out with scissors. Works a treat, and easy to put right onto the baking tray as-is!

After the shapes were baked and cooled, we had the epic mission of making up royal icing (epic because in the humidity, my icing sugar had solidified into a solid rock and I had to grind it by hand with a mortar and pestle back into powder form.

And then came the assembly!

After a quick lesson on how to properly handle an icing bag and nozzle, I stepped aside and let Littetree have at it.

Despite a few sticky accidents learning experiences, she got the hang of it, and the gingerbread house was made beautifully, complete with a cat on the roof.

For some reason, I never took a photo of the finished product… but none of it would have been possible if not for AquaCat coming round to do all the dishes

All set for an epic feast!

Tiramisu Divine

Littletree and I decided to make a surprise for Aquacat’s 44 1/4 birthday – Tiramisu with fresh organic whipped raw cream and my home made coffee and orange liqueurs.

First squeeze 1/2 cup of orange juice... well, squeeze all the oranges, and take out 1/2 cup for the tiramisu, and serve the rest to Aquacat while she’s having a lie-in.

 

Then brew 2 cups of strong coffee and mix with the OJ, set aside to cool.

Slightly whip 300ml cream (well, slightly less than 300ml cream, because the container wasn't completely full).

Separate 3 eggs, beat the yolks together with 1/3 cup caster sugar till it's pale and thick, then whip in the cream and 250g Mascarpone cheese. (Yes, I use an original 1967 SwiftWhip hand beater for this, because I'm just that cool)

Whisk the egg whites till they are forming soft peaks, and then gently fold into the cream mixture.

Now take out the coffee and OJ - pour in a healthy shot of coffee liqueur and orange liqueur (about 1/4 cup of each). Quality control is important here, make sure the liqueurs are good all the way to the bottom of the bottle (adult supervision is vital for this step; kidlets aren’t allowed).

Then soak in Savoiardi sponge biscuits - let them soak up loads of the liquid and then line the base of a serving bowl or deep tray with them.

Then you layer - a layer of soaked savoiardi; a layer of cream mixture. rinse repeat. Well, don't actually rinse. You should get three layers, finishing off with cream mixture.

I grate chocolate slivers onto the top, but you could top with anything - a dusting of cocoa, chocolate-coated coffee beans... or just dunk your face right into it.

Cover and leave to set in the fridge for a couple of hours, and then...

NOM!

Aquacat was ecstatic

And the taste… mmmmmmmmmm

Faerie Mischief

I’m sorry to admit that Littletree has picked up some terrible habits from me. I know, I know! I should have known better than to give her such bad examples; I should have known that she would see me and want to copy.

But I was weak, and I let her see me… baking. Oh the shame! And it wasn’t just once or twice… I made cakes and muffins and cookies and puddings and pies; but I didn’t stop there! Oh no! The horror of it is that I even let Littletree help me some times.

Imagine my dismay to come into the kitchen to find her standing at the oven with a measuring cup and whisk in her hands! I rushed in to stop her, but it was too late… chocolate and butter were already melting on the stove, eggs were cracked, flour sifted.

What could I do? I figured, if she’s going to start experimenting with baking, she should at least do it with me, here in the home, where I can supervise her and answer her questions. Far better that way than to have her out in the streets, trying cakes from unknown bakeries – those places are nefarious with their free samples of sugar-coated pastries that get you hooked.

So I helped her make brownies. Don’t judge! I know there’s a lot of evidence to show brownies are a gateway cake that just leads to gateaux and tortes, but I think we can keep this under control.

And she seems so happy in the kitchen. MMMMM brownies!

Since we’ve been having trouble with pesky pixies lately hiding things about the house, and inspired by The Spiderwick Chronicles, Lady Demelza suggested we make a tea party for the faeries and give them sweet offerings of brownies and other delectable treats.

Littletree loved the idea and set about making a beautiful table setting out in the faerie garden

We made cute little offerings around the garden of brownies for the brownies and honey on crackers for the pixies

And then enjoyed a most luscious afternoon tea – brownies, fairy juice (elderflower cordial), fruit tea, ginger beer, cheese and crackers

Hopefully that will restore some order to the house, so we can get back to baking!

Three-Three

Happy Birthday to Me! I’m thirty three :)

Littletree plotted behind my back to organise, with the help of AquaCat, a surprise party for me at the local beach bar where we hang out. They somehow managed to conspire that I would be kept busy at home for the morning, and then got a massage in the afternoon, so when I finally arrived at the beach, our sala was all decorated and beautiful. Everyone jumped out and yelled Surprise!

I’ve never had a surprise party before! Littletree was so excited

AquaCat played music for us all

And people bought me fancy cocktails

As the sun set I played some guitar and talked with friends while the kids played on the beach

We had an awesome feast – barbecued barracuda and all manner of delectable treats

And then the big surprise – they had organised a birthday cake!

I was somewhat dubious, given my experience with birthday cakes in South East Asia, but it was the perfect touch to a wonderful party

And of course, the kids loved it, frothy, sickly icing and all!

Yay! So now it’s only 364 days till my birthday!