What a stressful and draining week. Saturday morning rolled around and I woke up relatively early with thoughts of cake baking on the brain. The ice cream was done for babcia's birthday, but I still had the daunting 4 layer Dorie cake to make. First things first though: Saturday morning breakfast! As previously mentioned, we have a mini-tradition here of doing pancakes or at least a larger breakfast together on Saturday morning that includes at least 3 components and a fresh pot of coffee. There is something very comforting and happy about knowing that at very least, for an hour in the morning (provided workers aren't coming over to drag mud through the house), I get to spend some quiet time with my husband, sometimes in our fuzzy robes even, enjoying a hearty hot and fresh breakfast together in a quiet house. Deep relaxed sigh. Just writing this makes me long for this Saturday morning to be here. Typically, as it goes, one of us is more tired and needs more rest that the other. It seems to alternate. Today, C really seemed to need sleep and I was more awake. So, I crept out of bed, cleaned the kitchen, and started preparing what I had already been thinking about for a few weeks: A B C pancakes. These pancakes are a warm and fuzzy memory from childhood. On Sunday mornings, my dad would always make a big breakfast for my brother and I, and one of his specialties, was ABC Pancakes. The batter is thinner than normal so that you can "write" with it on the griddle. Once the batter is mixed and rested, you just pour it into a food-grade squeeze bottle (I think mine is from Russell Foods) and go wild! I remember that one time, my dad attempted each my name and my brother's name, in cursive, and it was the most wonderful special pancake ever. EVER, I tell you! So, with this in mind, after the tough week, I knew the only breakfast to start the day out on a high note would be ABC Pancakes. They had the strength and power of nostalgia, whimsy, and tastiness backing them up.
We bought this griddle off Kijiji for $5 and it's not perfect (you can tell where the element runs and the middle doesn't cook as evenly as the outsides of the surface) but it works fine for what we're doing. I sprayed the first batch with PAM just to be sure and started out with C's first name. Easy!
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ABC Pancakes go personal |
The griddle was quite hot and the pancakes cooked fast! The batter turned out perfectly. I tasted one and the pancakes were delicate, soft, and just a bit sweet.
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Golden brown deliciousness |
Really, once you get the hang of using the bottle to squeeze out batter like paint, you can make any shape or design that you want. Just account for some slight spreading as the batter is thick so you'll need to use thin restrained lines if you are going with a lot of intricate detail. Some hearts were next, for my sleeping beauty (although, unshaven, grovelling morning voice and half shut eyes, maybe it should be beast, heehee)!
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A little bit of breakfast love |
Well, by golly, I was on a roll. So, with my dad's experience on my side, I attempted the grand finale, cursive names! They turned out beautifully and since these were my piece de resistance, I added some sausage and eggs to the griddle (for over easy), and went and woke up my hubby for some breakfast. The dripping of the coffee was done and the warm, rich aroma had filled the kitchen, along with the sweet smell of pancakes and saltiness of turkey sausage. If I could bottle this smell, I would wear it every day! I would call it "Lazy Saturday Breakfast", or maybe something more original.
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The piece-de-resistance, almost ready to eat! |
Although I was having a grand ol' time with my shapes and spirals and letters, C yelled to me from the couch to come sit down, so I finished off the batter with some quick squeezes. Silver dollar pancakes (I believe this recipe originate from the United States when there once was a silver dollar coin and these pancakes would have been the same size as those). It's my guess that this is what the recipe was originally for. I guess this shape is tasty too, but somehow my M's and hearts were the yummiest.
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Silver dollar pancakes |
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Ok, breakfast dishes were put away, the robe was traded for some shorts and a tank top, and it was time to get down to some serious business. We needed to leave by 2:15pm to get to my uncle's in Oakbank (a town not far outside of Winnipeg) in time for the scheduled time of 3pm for my grandma's 80th birthday BBQ. Deep breathes. This recipe was long. Many steps. Many bowls. Lots of mixing. I had just over 4 hours, so that seemed like just enough time. I was going to do this recipe by the book too. None of my normal shortcuts or ignoring of steps that I found to be tedious and likely unnecessary. So, I bought cake flour, as that's what it called for. The flour, leavening agent and salt also called to be sifted. Fine. I had a sifter. From my grandma even. So, I sifted away.
So. Time. Consuming.
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Sifting the flour and dry ingredients |
Now, you know a recipe is special (or "special", depending on how you look at it) when the lemon zest is not merely added to the batter, but massaged into the sugar. Yes, I had to massage the lemon zest into the sugar until the sugar was fragrant. Well, that's some spoiled sugar if you asked me!
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Lemon zest about to be rubbed into the sugar until fragrant |
Now, here's a step I recognized. Butter gets creamed into the sugar. Not margarine though. I went out and bought about 3 sticks of real butter. My grandma LOVES butter. If there was a word that meant more than love, I would use it. She cuts little pieces of the stick and eats them like that. She gets upset with us when we are over making a sandwich and we don't spread butter on the bread first. She uses it to cook with. She makes the most amazing brown butter bread crumbs for cooked cauliflower with it. She is from the old country as well, Poland. Back then, food was different. Chemicals weren't added to flavour foods. Meat wasn't injected with hormones. Pesticides, herbicides, and genetically engineered food wasn't rampant. Most importantly, people cooked with whole foods. These whole foods were also very pure. We just don't have that luxury today. Babcia swears that all the food now is tasteless. That all meat has the same flavour. I am inclined to believe her. So, knowing all of this, I wanted to bake her a cake and make her ice cream with the purest ingredients that I could.
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Real butter, softened to room temperature, in the sugar mixture |
True to my word of "following orders", I used the hand mixer while slowly adding in 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then half of the egg mixture, then 1/3 of the dry, rest of the eggs, and last of the dry mix. So much blending now. Phew!
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Final batter, being blended for the required time of too long! |
After all of my careful diligence to follow the instructions exactly as they are printed in the cookbook, my confidence was wavering. Hmm. I have cooked and baked a lot and typically if something is off, I can tell. The batter looked off. It almost looked like it was curdled. Now I was getting a little concerned. Was this normal? I checked back in the book to see if in any of the 3 pages of this recipe there was a warning that this might or would happen and not to panic. Nothing. Activate panic mode. Wait, think, think, there is always a logical explanation. Well, there was buttermilk in this recipe, and lemon zest. maybe the acidity from the small amount of lemon juice in the zest was enough to curdle the buttermilk a little, in which case, this wouldn't affect the baked product. There was nothing I could do now but dump the batter into pan number 1 and hope for the best.
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Cake batter for 2, 9" round cake pans |
Something else I should explain about how lengthy this cake making process became. The 9" round pans needed to be greased, with a round wax paper cut-out placed on the bottom of the pan, then greased as well. I got C to look after that for me. However, he brought to my attention that the sides of my one really good 9" round pan were straight, and the other pans edges were ever so slightly fluted, so if I used one of each, the cake layering would look less than perfect. Fine. So that meant that each cake layer needed to be baked separately, due to lack of pans, for 30 minutes each. What made this much worse though, was after the first cake came out of the oven and went onto the cooling rack, it was obvious that the 2 layers of cake which Dorie says will be cut in half and frosted in between would never produce a cake as tall and monumental as the one she showed in her pictures of "The Perfect party Cake". I was in panic and upset mode now. There was such limited time and this cake was turning out to be a disaster! The time lost wasn't even the point. If this cake wasn't up to or exceeding my grandma's standards, then I would consider this a hugely sad failure to disappoint her on such an important birthday. C grabbed the reins of my quickly falling confidence and said that he would go to the store and buy all the ingredients that I would need to make another 2 cakes. I argued with him that I needed more butter, lemon and cream and did he know how long it took to make the first batch of batter, and let's not forget that each cake baked SEPARATELY for 30 minutes. Quickly calculating my timeline, it seemed impossible. He stood his ground and firmly reminded me that I would not be satisfied with a less than perfect cake for this event, told me I was being "difficult" (a word he uses a little too often, I think) and basically told me to suck it up and just do it. So, he went to the store, and I reminded myself that tears would not help my egg whites turn into meringue.
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Egg whites being whipped into submission |
Deep breathe and back to the never ending whisking and mixing. Egg whites get whipped into glossy smooth meringue for the frosting, then, the secret ingredient gets added to make it perfect buttercream. Butter. Did I mention how much my grandma loves butter and how much of it is in this recipe? That fact alone should produce a tasty dessert. Once again though, disaster began to arise. The buttercream wasn't looking so smooth and white anymore. It seemed clumpy, oily and thick. This can't be right?! I swear this cake was going to give me a heart attack with all of the panic-inducing moments! I decided that the only thing to do was to keep mixing it with the beater and hope for the best again. It came together a bit better, but I wasn't convinced. I tasted it and felt disappointment running over my tongue. I asked C to taste the lemon buttercream because I am not the best judged mixing. Egg whites get whipped into glossy smooth meringue for the frosting, then, the secret ingredient gets added to make it perfect buttercream. Butter. Did I mention how much my grandma loves butter and how much of it is in this recipe? That fact alone should produce a tasty dessert. Once again though, disaster began to arise. The buttercream wasn't looking so smooth and white anymore. It seemed clumpy, oily and thick. This can't be right?! I swear this cake was going to give me a heart attack with all of the panic-inducing moments! I decided that the only thing to do was to keep mixing it with the beater and hope for the best again. It came together a bit better, but I wasn't convinced. I tasted it and felt disappointment running over my tongue. I asked C to taste the lemon buttercream because I am not the best judge of taste for all full-fat foods, especially when I am rilled up. C's eyes rolled back and he declared that it was amazing. I assumed that he was lying to make me feel better, but it worked.
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The secret ingredient in buttercream. Shhh! |
I warmed the seedless raspberry jam so it was spreadable and began assembling the cake layers. Four layers, 2 batter recipes, and each one was secured together with a thick layer of lemon vanilla buttercream and jam. Some wooden BBQ kabob sticks went through the layers to hold them all together. I packed up the leftover buttercream that would be used to do the sides and the top, the sweetened shredded coconut, the hand mixer, candles, serving utensils and wrapped up the cake. It had a 45 minute car ride now to my uncle's place, and it was 30 C outside and sunny. Had I more time, I would have stuck the cake in the freezer for a bit to ensure that nothing slid around but there just wasn't time. We turned the A/C on full blast, I held the cake on its stand on my lap, and off we went!
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Layering vanilla cake with lemon butter cream and seedless raspberry jam |
Miracle of miracles and without following any trends from the cake making, the cake arrived unscathed at the party. My grandparents weren't there yet so before saying hello to anyone, I got down to the last bit of business. I spread the butter cream around the sides and top of the cake. Just enough to do it. Then, making a huge mess on my uncle's counter and floor (which I cleaned up afterwards, thankyouverymuch), pressed handfuls of sweetened shredded coconut to the sticky butter cream to finish the effect of a fluffy, white, perfect party cake. I must admit that for those that didn't have the pleasure of witnessing the labour that went into the creation of this special dessert, the final product was definitely something to behold. Tall, elegant, and majestic, this did indeed look like The Perfect Party Cake. When it was time for dessert, we would all find out.
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Dorie's Perfect Party Cake, completed |