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.

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!

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.

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.