K's Wedding Cake Extravaganza

K has a great idea for her wedding cake.  We are going to make five different retro cakes each with a bit of a twist.  Her aunt has located a variety of antique cakestands on which to display the cakes.  This is gonna be fun.

The Wedding Cake--3"/6"/9" layers, coconut cake with passion fruit curd, coconut Swiss buttercream, topped with coconut


2-8" round carrot cakes with pineapple preserves, cream cheese icing, finished with toasted walnuts

2-8" square Guinness chocolate cakes, raspberry filling, chocolate icing, fresh raspberriess

2-8"ish hearts almond daquoise; prailine and chocolate Swiss buttercream; toasted, natural sliced almonds

2-8" round lemon cakes with rosemary infused lemon curd, lemon Swiss buttercream, rosemary deco

2-8" round caramel cakes with white cake layers, Bailey's Irish Cream pastry cream, caramel icing

My turn has come.

If the one thing in the world you do not eat is tapioca, why did you order the coconut TAPIOCA brulee?

Learning

A well-floured couche. Tee hee.

Mini epis. A couple of baguettes. A lonely batard.

Playing with baguette dough. I am no baker. But it doesn't mean I don't wanna be.

Mater Pies

I still don't like tomatoes. I envy all you who do. There is just something about the taste that flips my stomach. Yet I find them beautiful, gorgeous.

Heirlooms are everywhere in the kitchen. I even grew some myself this year. This led to my interest in tomato pie. I asked The Exec a couple weeks back if I could provide him some pies for a side or an app or a salad. He said--and I paraphrase--"Sure, make it with bleu cheese and sofrito, and I will find a use for it ."

I made my usual cornmeal galette dough, but I subbed out a good portion of the butter for our house rendered lard and Greek yogurt for the sour cream. 86'd 2 of the 3 ounces of sugar in the dough. The next day I prepped my tomatoes, pulled out the sofrito, chopped up some basil, beat together 1 part bleu and 1 part Duke's, and rolled out my dough. I was going for a galette instead of the traditional pie. Lots of crust and lots of mater.

The Exec puts a slab of pie with a pork chop. I even tried a bite of the pie. How could I recommend you come in and sample it otherwise?

Mater Pies In Progress

Mater slices drying a little.

Pre baked.

Baked

Look at those layers. Thank you, Lard!

A slice.

Figs in Syrup

One of our servers has a huge fig tree. He picks them and bring them in to us. I preserved about 6 qts of them in a 2 parts sugar: 1 part water syrup with some thinly sliced lemons. Beautiful.

I also made a fig mostarda. This is a recipe I would definitely utilize with other fruit in the future. A nice accompaniment to a certain someone's charcuterie.