Hummingbird Tongues

Last Sunday I was baking the cake for Monday
with a speed not normally seen in my house.

I usually bake the cake on Sunday
then make the frosting and decorate on Monday night.

(I’ve also been known to procrastinate
and do everything on Monday.)

That places me at Lil’ Ol’ Bar at around 8:45 – 9:00p
despite my best intentions of getting there at 8:30p.

Oh
there’s always a missing coupler
fallen cake layer
or not enough frosting
and before you know it
I’m running behind.

(We all know the procrastination part
would never play a role in getting to the bar late.)

Since Monday is a school night for many people in Houston
bringing cake to a bar at 9:00p keeps the party small.

Not wanting people to feel left out all the time
I was determined to let the Tuesday early birds eat some cake
instead of worms.

I decided last Monday’s cake would arrive at the bar
promptly at 5:00pm.

Since I work for The Man
the cake would have to be ready the day before
so I could just bring it straight to Lil’ Ol’ Bar
right after I was released.

I had grand plans of starting on Saturday
or even Friday night!
but Sunday afternoon found me driving from one side of Houston
to the other
searching for hazelnuts.

H-E-B didn’t have them
all types of nuts except hazelnuts at Costco
Central Market (an upscale HEB) was out of them until Thursday
no dice at Rice Epicurean (like an even more expensive Randall’s
[if you can imagine])
but I finally found them at Whole Foods.

I pretty much wanted to make out with the bulk dispenser
but they have rules about organic/non-organic cross contamination.

I’m the organic one
in case you’re wondering.

Hazelnuts in hand
I returned home at 3:00p to start the cake.

Mise en place for the cake

So much butter

It took me years to figure out that if I sliced up all the butter
it would soften a lot faster.

I wish I had known that when I was a kid
because I’m sure I wouldnt have melted
so many sticks of butter in the microwave
just trying to make it soft for cookies.

Liquids mixed together

Adding vanilla to milk
usually ends up with me hunched over the bowl
going all googley-eyed over it.

The magic is gone once you stir it up, though.

Dry ingredients mixed together

Added some eggs and all of the butter

Once I beat in the rest of the liquids
I weighed the batter so I could distribute it evenly into the prepared pans.

An empty 5 quart KitchenAid bowl weighs 1 pound and 11 7/8 ounces (ish).

Knowing the weight of the batter allows you to put the same amount in each pan
thus giving you (a better chance of) even layers.

Owning a scale will change the way you work in the kitchen
and I highly recommend getting one.

I smoothed these out and put them away to bake.

Cooling after 25 or so minutes in the oven
(beside my woodland creatures)

Once the layers were out
I started on the frosting.

I decided to triple the batch since I was making a big cake
confident my mixer could handle it.

Mise en place for buttercream base

And I thought there was a lot of butter in the cake

The kicker is that in this photo
there is still one pound of butter missing from the grand Jenga Butter tower.

Squeezing out that whole bottle of corn syrup
must have been as satisfying as squeezing out a whole tube of toothpaste.

I wouldn’t know
because I would have been promptly grounded for that as a kid.

I guess I could try it now
but my husband might look at me strangely
and ask if I was feeling ok.

“YES, I AM FINE! CAN’T I JUST HAVE SOME CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES AS AN ADULT?!”

Probably not.

I will stick to squeezing out whole bottles of corn syrup.

I made a syrup with the sugar and corn syrup
then added it to the KitchenAid bowl with all those egg yolks.

After a little bit of beating
I started to get concerned.

As it turns out
my mixer can not handle three batches of buttercream.

I ended up having to beat it in batches
and it added a lot of time onto the cake making process as a whole.

I don’t mind learning lessons
I just wish they didn’t take so long
or make so many extra dirty bowls.

I don’t have any photos of the thousand batches of frosting
because I was pretty pissed off
and covered in egg and sugar.

It was not the time to be taking pictures.

Once I got the buttercream under control
it was about 6:00p
and I finally arrived at the last part of the cake making.

Hazelnuts for the praline

Another syrup
this time with only sugar and water

The shadow is from the candy thermometer
something I would be lost without.

You can go ahead and think you don’t need one
however, I do not recommend checking sugar syrup temperature with your fingers.
It will not end well.

The syrup just started turning brown on the edges here
and the kitchen smelled delicious.

The finished caramel over hazelnuts

I got a little aggressive with putting a hazelnut in its place
and ended up with BLAZING HOT CARAMEL on my finger.

I instantly got a blister
and still have one
four days later.

It is right on the tip of my index finger
and using the little scrolley thing on my mouse was not pleasant on Monday.

Injuries notwithstanding
the caramel cooled in about 20 minutes

The praline broken up and about to be ground

Grinding that was loud
let me tell you.

After processing

I added the ground praline to the buttercream to make a ‘praline crunch buttercream.’

Since it was late
(the sun set long ago
taking all of the pretty natural light with it)
I decided to simply fill the cake with the frosting
instead of making something else to fill it with.

I did not anticipate that
once applied
the frosting would look like it was filled with cake crumbs.

The ground praline added a pleasant crunch
but I did not like that my cake looked a little sloppy.

So I compensated
and worked on piping

You can see the praline bits in the cake here
and also my strangely blue phone.

If you look really hard
you can also see a goofy looking shell piped on the cake there.

I wanted to add something fun to the top of the cake
so I got out some snowflake cookie cutters
with the idea of filling the shape in with the praline powder.

I should have just practiced my writing skills instead.
At least one of the snowflakes turned out, though.

A better idea would have been to make another batch of caramel
make snowflake shapes out of it
and then stand the shapes on the top of the cake.

There’s that learning thing again.

Monday evening made it worth it, however.
I was thrilled to see that more than just the Tuesday early birds turned out at Lil’ Ol’ Bar the next day.

I was even happier that I had almost no cake left to bring home.
Husband was very happy that I did have cake to bring home
since he returned from another residency interview later that evening
and missed the early cake night.

I’ve not yet picked out a cake for the next Monday
although I’ve been toying with the idea of a Yule Log.

This weekend will be packed
seeing as I’ve done zero Christmas shopping
so I am unsure if this is the weekend to undertake a challenging cake.

Something easy may win out
and I’m sure that will mean I am hustling around the kitchen on Monday evening
bursting through the doors at the bar fifteen minutes after I said I’d be there.

The hustle is why I do it, though
the push to create
to keep getting better
to make someone happy with something I made
and dammit
to not have leftovers after I get creative
even if it does mean learning lessons the hard way
and having 50 bowls to wash.