Mad, Mad Kitchen

I like to cook.  No, I love to cook.  Fresh and scratch, if you please.  Making the rounds recently with my parents for their Dr. visits, I picked up a few cooking magazines.  One was sooo good I took it home.  Tomorrow at the Rancho Santa Fe market we are having an after-party for 40, and I’m doing the cakes.  So this evening, after the morning market, Dad’s haircut and Dad’s mani/pedi and the courier run, I made a trio of cake fillings: espresso, Kahlua and white chocolate, here with a little gelatin to give hold.

I will put these up on my printable recipes; it’s a cream and chocolate based filling with a base of egg yolks and sugar, made in my favorite copper bowl from Guy, of course, whipped by hand and not by machine~

Milk chocolate with whole hazelnuts and dark chocolate went into two fillings; these have to chill for 4+ hours so I started with those~

And Mom got into the act too….as she loves her sweets….my camera is not fast enough to catch her in action~

The last filling to be made was white chocolate, and it was so pretty with the contrast of the copper~

The cake itself is what the French call Genoise…..the light cake from Genoa.  I made it in chocolate…

with a little help from parchment paper/wax paper~

The second cake is a burnt butter cake.  And so I burnt the butter~

I love a good boxed cake, but the texture of a scratch cake is my favorite….I will show you pics of this one tomorrow, I know it will be great~

The kitchen is a mess of dishes right now, but the cakes look fantastic. It’s almost 9pm and I have a load of dishes to do.  I was doing the Parents’ laundry at 2am last night and fell over a basket and have nice tomato-sized strawberry on my shin and forehead.  Guess that will teach me….once the last cake comes out of the oven I am going to bed; the cakes can be assembled in the early morning.  I’ll show you pics tomorrow…..