Romantic Robots and Brown Sugar Cake

I apologize both for my lack of posting and for the poor qualityof this post. I've been busy beyond belief, and I feel like my brain has gone stale. I have been baking, but since it's mostly at night or on rainy days (which is about every day right now), the few pictures I've taken have been miserable.
I don't normally watch the Academy Awards since we don't have TV and don't go to the movies often. Makes it a little hard to care who wins when you have no idea who the nominees are. But this year was different, Ben Burtt was nominated! What, you don't know who he is? Gasp!
Just kidding. He is famous in his field, but his field doesn't get a lot of attention generally. He is a sound designer (among many other things) and is most noted for creating the sounds of the Star Wars movies. He was nominated this year for his work on Wall-E, but sadly he lost. He did win an award at the Motion Picture Sound Editors award banquet the night before though.
His expression here is classic "Ben enjoying describing something". On top of all those achievements, he is somewhat of a surrogate father to me. During college I rented a room in his house and since they had children my age I was assimilated into the clan, so to speak. They are wonderful people who made a huge impact on my college years, and I love them dearly.
"Foreign contaminate" M-O cleaning off a brown sugar cupcake. Note the Wall-E themed cupcake liners, so cute! I have Cars ones as well, but I haven't had a good excuse to use them yet.
Gum paste Oscar like things. They look a bit like mummy's too, but you know I was making these at about 2:30 in the morning, so really they could have been worse.

The Buy and Large logo in fondant and gum paste.
Oh, and the brown sugar cakes were fantastic! I think I added some maple syrup to these, but now I can't remember for sure. Sigh. My head is a sieve.

Brown Sugar Poundcake
from Martha Stewart Living 2/09
makes approximatly 29, I halved the recipe with no problems

3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lb room temp butter
2 1/4 c packed brown sugar
4 room temp eggs
3/4 c buttermilk (I used soured milk)

Sift dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs slowly and mix until light and smooth. Make sure to scrape the bowl down well. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and mix on slow just until combined. Add half of the liquid. Repeat. Scrap bowl and beaters well and add remaining flour. Once combined scrape the bowl down again and mix for just a few seconds more on medium speed. These rose up slightly more then my average cupcakes, so fill the cups a little less than you normally would (unless of course you like the muffin top look).
Bake at 325 for 25 minutes or until the spring back when lightly touched.

Brown Sugar Buttercream
my own concoction

4 whole eggs
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 sticks butter or so(I just add butter to my frostings until they look and taste right)
1/4 cup honey
Dash of vanilla
Dash of salt

Heat eggs and sugar over a water bath until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is almost too warm to keep your hand in. Make sure to stir it occasionally so the eggs don't cook. Whip on high until very light and fluffy. Since their is fat at this point the eggs won't get stiff peaks like a normal meringue. Add very soft butter a little at a time, mixing on low until the frosting starts to take shape. Add vanilla, honey, and salt to round out the flavors. Test the consistency and flavor regularly.

My Baby

I had initially intended to keep all aspects of my non-baking life out of this blog for fear I would just ramble on about myself in a yawn inducing way. And while I still don't want to habitually post about my daily nonsense, I have finally caved into the urge to share some photos of my baby with you guys. Cause really, he's just too cute not to share!
So world, I would like you to meet Maxfield. He joined our little family just a few months ago, acting somewhat as an early Christmas present to ourselves. We had been talking about getting a dog for quite some time but were of course worried about the extra work and responsibility. This little boy however has been completely worth it. He is currently draped across my lap sleeping, but not snoring as he is prone to do. He snores like an old man!
This is him in his dapper coat. He doesn't much care for walking in the rain, or for being cold. The poor boy gets his chest wet walking through puddles, so this keeps him just a little bit happier on wet days.
However he started to get a little annoyed with me here it seems. He knows putting the coat on means it's time to go outside, not time to take pictures. "Hurry up!" He seems to be saying, "I've business to attend to!"
"But first I'll warm up with a little down dog action"
I'm so grateful for the little bugger. My cat isn't, but she's a cranky hag who doesn't like much outside of food and me, so we weren't surprised. She's adapting, and has even consented to let him sleep on the bed at the same time as her. She's getting better :)

Mother Hubbard's Cupboard

Well I went to make some treats for my husband and his friend, but it was a few days before payday and with the crazy schedule I have been keeping I had no time or money for shopping. Thankfully the friend had brought over a bag of baking supplies, because I didn't even have any sugar in the house! No white, brown, or powdered sweetness if you can believe it. Thankfully that need was filled, but I was still out of eggs. I did a little internet rummaging and found an egg free brownie recipe (since the boys love gooey chocolate), and the results were pleasantly delicious! So next time you need some rich chocolate, and have neither eggs or chocolate on hand, this little recipe can save the day. And since it can all be mixed by hand it's a fairly quick and quiet process.
I meant to take pictures the other day, but just never got around to it. So this little chunk was all that was left to photograph. Poor lonely little bit of brownie. But boy did he taste good!

Original recipe called for 2 cups white sugar, but I thought brown sugar would help make these fudgier.

Egg Free Cocoa Brownies

1/3 cup flour
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
dash vanilla
2 cup flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
chocolate chips or nuts, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a 9x13 pan (I used an oval casserole dish that was a bit smaller so the brownies would be nice and thick).
In a heavy bottomed sauce pan combine 1/3 cup flour and water, cook over medium heat while stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened. Transfer to a mixing bowl and allow to cool.
Melt the butter, add in cocoa powder and mix until smooth.
Beat sugar and vanilla into cooled flour mixture. Add the cocoa mixture and beat until combined and smooth. Add sifted dry ingredient and mix just until combined. Fold in chocolate chips or nuts if desired. Bake 20-25 minutes (my thinker brownies took 30 minutes). I found they tasted better after fully setting up in the fridge for a few hours.

Lem Lem

As promised, here are the cake and lemon curd recipes for the previous post. I've been on a mission to use less processed foods, and I've started by trying to get away from using only refined white sugar. I recently bought a bag of turbinado sugar at Trader Joe's and I've been slipping that into my recipes. Since I wasn't sure how the larger light brown crystals would do in a white fluffy cake, I used half regular sugar and half turbinado. The cake was light and delicious, so I guess that was a successful experiment.


This is my new favorite cake. Simple, moist, and all around delicious. This is another recipe from the wonderful Brass Sisters, via their book Heirloom Baking.

White Cake
1 c room temperature buttermilk (or 1 c milk and 1 Tbs lemon juice)
2 1/4 c flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 c butter-room temperature
1 1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well. Add vanilla. Alternately add sifted dry ingredients and milk. Mix until smooth, but be careful not to over mix. Pour in one 10" or two 7" cake pans that have been greased. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.

Honey Lemon Curd

5 yolks
1 egg
2/3 c lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest (I used the whole lemon worth of zest, I like my curd tart!)
1/4 plus 2 Tbs honey
4 Tbs butter

Combine all ingredients except for butter. Place in heat proof bowl over a pot of boiling water, lower heat. Stir constantly until thick, about seven minutes. If you want a fluffy filling for a tart, vigorously whisk the mixture while it is cooking. Remove from heat and add butter. You can strain out the zest if you desire, but I always leave mine as is.

The cake was for my husband's birthday, and the little beehives were in honor of A.A. Milne's birthday in January. Both were frosted with some over whipped meringue that didn't look very pretty, but that still tasted delicious and marshmallow-y. It is just one part egg white to one part sugar, heated over a water bath until the sugar is all dissolved, and whipped to stiff peaks. The decorated cake can be put into a very hot oven to brown the meringue, or if you are lazy and you don't want your house to get hot again you can just torch it like I did.