ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ!

Pascha is here again.  We celebrated as we always do - with lots of church during Holy Week, the baking of kulich, dyeing of eggs, taking the kids to church at midnight, Easter baskets and our annual Pascha party.  I did not do a great job of getting photos of most of these events this year, but here is what I have.

Cooling kulich in "vintage" coffee cans and new Moscow-purchased specialty pans.

Bleary-eyed kiddos getting ready to head to church at midnight.

Breaking the fast with kulich, paskha, prosciutto and cheese after church.

Morning Easter baskets.

My baby is 1

Gabriel turned 1 today.  I know everyone says this, but man, this year went sofreakingfast. 

I cannot believe we've had him for a year.  (I also can't believe he still does not sleep through the night, but that is a topic for another time, or never).

I made him a "smash cake" and he distinguished himself among our children by being the only one who did not cry upon being presented with a 1st birthday cake.

He ate most of the frosting and a few bites of actual cake.  Yesterday I gave him some of the cake scraps while I was assembling it - he loved them.  But I guess when you have cake AND frosting, frosting wins.  He takes after his mama.  I made snickerdoodle cake with brown sugar buttercream - it is amazing and you should make some.

My little boy is growing up.

Holiday happenings

After months and months of sticking around the house on the weekends due to massive and cumulative sleep deprivation (Gabriel will be a year old in just six weeks ... at some point he has to figure out how to sleep through the night, right?), well, we finally decided that enough was enough and we needed to get out.

So on New Year's night we drove downtown to see the lights ... of which I somehow neglected to get any good photos.  But we did capture the girls' first cotton candy experience.  It was great until they dropped it.  Ah well, never too young to learn to hold on tight, right?

Then on Thursday we headed up to Gudauri, the ski resort about two hours north of Tbilisi.  There wasn't enough snow on the bunny slope to teach the kids to ski, but we did a little sledding and then rode the gondola up where there was more snow and a few skiers - and a killer view of thick cloud cover floating slightly below the peaks.  Natasha worked on her snow-angel technique.

Yesterday we went to a New Year's kids' performance of Zolushka (Cinderella) at a theater downtown.  The girls were enraptured.  We will try to hit some more performances like this before we leave town.  They are just at the age to start enjoying them.

Then today we made a gingerbread house.  I had actually baked the pieces a couple weeks ago, but today we assembled it.  It is not structurally sound and I fully expect that it will have collapsed by tomorrow morning, but the girls had fun. 

Dye for your cake, the natural way

I'm over at Hardship Homemaking today with a tutorial on making naturally dyed marshmallow fondant.  Hardship Homemaking is an expat-run blog with tips and tricks on how to move a family around the world and make do when you can't find the things you need at your post.  There's a wealth of information over there, so check it out!

Cabbage juice cupcakes

Today I made a small batch of white cupcake batter to experiment with natural food coloring.  I was particularly interested to try making blue and pink cupcakes with the "dye" I made from purple cabbage.  When I boiled the cabbage, the water turned blue.  But when I added a glug of vinegar, it instantly turned fuschia.  I was a little worried at what the cabbage water would do to the flavor of the cupcakes, especially because I had to mix quite a lot of the blue water into the dye to get the color.

So here is what they looked like out of the oven.  Don't mind the stab wound in the (yes, blue!) cupcake; I couldn't find a toothpick:

The two on top were dyed with the fuschia cabbage water.  The one next to the blue one was dyed with pomegranate juice, which just turned it an unappealing shade of taupe.

Then I cut into them:

Well, would you look at that!  And they didn't taste cabbagey at all.  Who knew?

(The ones on the bottom are carrot, lemon and lime cupcakes.  I don't know why I thought they would take on any color.  Clearly they did not.)

Doing it myself

I think about blogging most days - I was doing so well - but lately I have no time for anything.  Part of this is because my oldest seems to be on her way to dropping her only nap.  Lately we get 20-40 minutes out of her per day.  I'm trying to transition her to quiet reading time in her room, but so far, she will only do it if I am sitting in plain sight in the hallway, reading myself.

The other reason I have no time is that I am cooking a lot more than I used to.  We've been on the Feingold diet for about three weeks now, and I can cautiously say that it seems to be helping N's eczema.  It seems, however, to have doubled the time I spend in the kitchen.  We can't eat anything with artificial colors or flavors, or most preservatives.

Example: We don't eat storebought bread anymore.  I don't have a bread machine.  And the recipes I use - a soaked grain bread recipe that is linked in pdf form on the bottom left of this page - and this sourdough bread recipe are pretty time consuming.  You do the math.

But there's more.  Jeremy and I spent several hours this weekend making graham crackers from scratch since Natasha's beloved Honeymaids have artificial vanilla flavor in them (seriously, just charge us the extra buck and use the real stuff!).  And when I made "Oreo" truffles for Christmas (using the Trader Joe's knock off which doesn't have as much garbage in it), I had to find an alternative to chock-full-of-crap candy melts for the coating.  Having used regular chocolate chips before, I knew that untempered chocolate doesn't set up as nicely as the melts do.  And I wanted the coating to be crisp.  And I am a glutton for punishment.  So I decided to temper the chocolate first.  It wasn't hard, but added 40 minutes or so to the process.

Below, some of my homemade sauerkraut (really tasty) and a slice of my homemade sandwich bread.  Below that, a really bad picture of a few of the truffles scattered around Jeremy's beloved fudge mint cookies.

When I get some time maybe I will figure out how to take good photos at night without natural light. 

OK, I give in

I've spent the last couple weeks moping about the weather and the fact that I'm not at the beach (thus the blogging hiatus; I'm boring when I sulk).  But there's no getting around it any longer: It's truly fall.  It has been raining all weekend, and yesterday morning I curled up under a fleece blanket with a pot of hot tea while Jeremy took Natasha out to stomp in the puddles and Zoia napped.  Today when we went out, we wore fleece and raingear.

And despite myself, I kind of enjoyed it.  Summer shortchanges Moscow, to be sure, but fall goes by even quicker here, so I guess I'd better welcome it while it lasts.

This evening, in addition to this pot of tea, Jeremy and I will finish off these almond cupcakes with blackberry buttercream.  They were a solid effort - the frosting in particular is kind of amazing - but I will do a little tweaking before I enter them in the Hail and Farewell bake-off this Friday.  And I'll be sure to take photos this time.

Happy Father's Day!

This morning I let Jeremy sleep in, and when he made his way downstairs (after a leisurely shower), there was cinnamon French toast with sliced peaches and a Magic Bullet frappe waiting for him.  We had planned to go out to eat after church, but Natasha has been sick and was getting kind of cranky.  So instead, we made burgers and fries after the kids went down for a nap.  That way we could eat all the ketchup we wanted (N is allergic to tomatoes - boo).  For dessert, we had devil's food cupcakes (recipe in Rose's Heavenly Cakes) with peanut butter frosting.  This is not really my cup of tea, but Jeremy loves peanut butter and chocolate together.

I was trying to take one of those mouth-watering photos you see on baking blogs, but I'm pretty sure I failed.  Do these look tasty to you?  I am not sure they do.  I don't have much in the way of fancy photography skills. 

Also, I know a lot of people like to pipe frosting onto their cupcakes, but I prefer to just pile it on.  It's supposed to look decadent, not frilly.  I am not stingy with the frosting, either.  I like my cupcakes to be about half cake and half frosting.  Though this frosting recipe was not my favorite, it's a good one for those who don't like overpoweringly sweet icings.  The peanut butter gives it more body than your standard butter/shortening frosting, so you don't need as much powdered sugar.

Happy Father's Day!

Prize-winning cake

I can't believe that I didn't take a picture of the cake I made today.  I always take pictures of my cakes.  Today I didn't.

And today, my cake won 1st prize in the Embassy bake-off.

For real.

I can't believe I didn't take a picture.

However, I will give you the recipe.  It is Lemon Yogurt Cake with Lemon-Mint Syrup, adapted from several different recipes.

You need:

Cake

1 stick of butter
3 eggs
1 c plain yogurt
2 tbs lemon juice
zest of one lemon
100g of sugar (I weigh most of my dry ingredients; this is equivalent to about 1 cup)
250g flour (2.5c)
2 tsp baking powder

Syrup

3/4 c water
juice of two large lemons
1 c sugar
1 c mint leaves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour an 8-inch springform pan (a regular cake pan will do, too).

Cream butter and sugar together until light in color.  Add beaten eggs, yogurt, lemon juice and zest. Combine flour and baking powder in a bowl, then add to the mixture in batches, beating until smooth.  Pour into the pan.  Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until tester comes out clean.  Do not overbake!

While cake is baking, make the syrup.  Combine water, lemon juice and sugar in a pot.  Stir to dissolve sugar.  Then add mint leaves; crush down with the back of a spoon to release the oils.  Bring to a boil, then simmer until it thickens enough to coat a spoon.  Remove and discard mint leaves.

Once both cake and syrup have cooled a bit, pour 1/3 of the syrup over the cake while still in the pan.  Let sit 10 minutes.  Then invert cake into a large plate or bowl and pour 1/3 of the syrup over it.  Wait 10 minutes, then pour the remaining syrup and let it soak for a few hours.  Most of the syrup should be absorbed.  Reinvert the cake onto your serving plate.  Garnish with mint sprigs or pieces of lemon if desired.  Eat and enjoy!

Lovely

Yesterday was lovely. The weather was sunny and beautiful, and we spent most of our time outside.

And bonus, Jeremy's birthday cake did not fall apart. I have much work to do on making cakes look appetizing, however, I have the taste part down pat! The bottom tier was vanilla bean white cake (my favorite) with raspberry filling made from berries I froze last summer. The top layer was devil's food with raspberry filling. And the frosting was a whipped milk chocolate ganache. Absolutely delicious, but I learned that I can't be so pokey about frosting the cake when working with ganache, or it will harden before you've smoothed it out and end up looking like this:



The spread. We had two hams - a Russian-bought one that was pretty tasty, and a country ham from Virginia. I wish I'd gotten a picture of them in the roasters!  Also - sliced sausage, four types of cheese, and a plate of greens, baguette rounds, rye bread, Armenian lavash, a savory smoked salmon cheesecake, a summery salad, roasted summer squash, roasted eggplant, cheesy potatoes (recipe here), kulich, pascha, and of course, birthday cake.


Dessert ... yum. You can see the cake in the foreground.

Times like this I wish we had a hose out back ...

Uh oh

So, you might have heard about this 5-minute chocolate-cake-in-a-mug. There are a lot of recipes floating around out there for it. I tried one last year, and it was just aight. Last night, we tried this recipe. I used more milk in place of the brandy since we didn't have any on hand (well, except for the bottle of 15-year Armenian cognac that was a wedding gift from my voice teacher; but I didn't think cake in a mug warranted opening the bottle). I also added a few pieces of Hershey bar and a dollop of peanut butter to Jeremy's cake.

The cake rose pleasingly in the microwave:


Didn't look like much on a plate, but it was SO good.


I ate about 2/3 of mine before my stomach cried uncle (and this doesn't happen often, particularly in reference to cake). Jeremy scarfed his down and ate the rest of mine. Then he lay back on the couch groaning about how much his stomach hurt. Today, though, as he was heading off to basketball, he said "Honey, can you make me that chocolate in a mug again?" This time he only ate one, but proclaimed his stomach "kinda full."

Try it. You won't regret it.

In the kitchen

So, I've been hit with the nesting bug big time, but as most of our stuff is still somewhere on the ocean, I can't sew, or knit anything other than lace (since that's the only yarn I brought on the plane).  Although what I would really like to be doing is sewing baby wipes and burp cloths, I have thrown my domestic energy into culinary endeavors.  Strawberries are really tasty and not too expensive this time of year, so Natasha and I have been riding the metro one stop to the Dorogomilovsky Rinok (rinok=market in Russian) and buying large quantities of them.  The fruit goes bad if you look at it funny, which means that after I've lugged four or five kilos of fruit home, I have to process it immediately.  I wish I had the know-how or equipment for canning (something to think about next summer).  Since I don't, I just freeze all the fruit that isn't bruised or rotting, and make something with the rest.  So far, we've had strawberry turnovers (which I think I've finally figured out) and this disastrous strawberry pie:

This was my entry in the Embassy bake-off yesterday.  I took a few liberties with the recipe - I didn't want to add gelatin, and I didn't have cornstarch, so I figured I'd just toss some flour in and call it good.  I was so excited to make it pretty - I even cut out little leaves from scrap dough and pasted them on the top crust.  I was devastated when it came out of the oven looking like this:

Little did I know that this was only the start of pie-related problems.

The bake-off was held on the green on the upper portion of the compound.  We live on the lower portion.  So I put Natasha into the stroller and loaded the pie into the stroller basket (yes, I should have known that this was a bad idea).  By the time we made it up the ramp and onto the green, strawberry juice had sloshed out of the pie and all over the stroller basket.  It was such a large spill that I had to hose the stroller down at the community garden.

And then it was time for the judging.  After they'd cut into the pies (I should note here that mine was one of only two entered in this category), I was dismayed to see that the cut-out where pie had formerly been, had filled up with strawberry juice.  Needless to say, I was awarded an "honorable mention," while my competitor's non-sloshy apple pie took the blue ribbon.  I guess the pie tasted ok, though, because there was only a tiny piece left when I went back later to retrieve the pie plate.

I've learned my lesson, though, and this morning when I went to the grocery store, I looked for corn starch.  They only had potato starch.  Which I'm going to use in today's cherry pie instead.  Hope it works ...

In other, more successful news, I've also been making pasta sauce out of fresh tomatoes for freezing.  I usually don't have an issue using canned tomatoes, but we go through a LOT, and I haven't been able to find reasonably priced canned tomatoes in the stores yet.   So every week or so, I turn this:

into this:

Cheesecake!

I had today off for Veteran's Day, so I decided it was time to bake another cake. Johnny has been requesting cheesecake, so I tried my very first one. I overcooked it a bit, but the inside is very creamy. Mmmm.

Double decker

The baking continues. Last weekend I made a flourless chocolate cake, which really was more like fudge than cake. It tasted good, but wasn't so interesting from a photographic point of view.

This weekend, I attempted my first tiered cake.



It was also my first attempt at Italian buttercream (made with egg whites instead of yolks). The bottom tier was yellow cake with coffee buttercream filling, and the top was chocolate with bittersweet chocolate buttercream filling. The frosting was mocha buttercream. We took it to church for a birthday, and it was all gone by the end of the social hour. My decorating skills need some work, but this is not so bad for a first try, eh?

Cake

So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I was going to become a great cake baker. I ordered a comprehensive cake cook book and a couple of 6-inch round pans so that I could experiment without having to make enormous cakes. I started last week with a simple pound cake. It was all gone before I had a chance to take a photo, so I guess it was a success.

Yesterday, I decided to make a white velvet butter cake with maple buttercream frosting.

I assembled my mise en place (a fancy French term for "put all the stuff on the counter"), feeling very Food-Network-chef.



Apparently, though, it's not enough to just have your ingredients looking pretty on the counter. I was making the buttercream in a noisy stand mixer while the cake was baking, and did not hear the timer go off. By the time I realized what had happened, the cake was a tad overbaked. So when I tried to take the layers out, this is what happened:



The icing came out pretty, though.



And I used half of it to ice the layer that did not come apart. I guess it could have been worse.