getting there...

Yikes, Mel. What happened?

First tomatoes from my garden. At least 7 varieties:

Bill/SFNM wrote:First tomatoes from my garden. At least 7 varieties:

Oh wow, these are beautiful.

Testing out some flavors for a wedding cake order for October. Almond cake, soaked in pear liqueur, filled with raspberries, with Swiss white chocolate buttercream and Callebaut white chocolate shavings. (Plated with light raspberry syrup.)

tgoddess wrote:Lunanoir,

Your pink/yellow "roses" are GORGEOUS. What flavor was the cake?

Thanks

The cake is chocolate (a super simple recipe from a chocolate raspberry layer cake from bon appetit) with whipped ganache mixed with fresh and freeze dried raspberries in between the two layers (it's actually freeze dried raspberry powder; it's my secret ingredient with raspberry truffles or other applications that don't take fresh berries well).

If you don't mind my asking, how did you get the coloring on the roses?
It's a beautiful cake!

zoid wrote:If you don't mind my asking, how did you get the coloring on the roses?
It's a beautiful cake!

I used yellow gel color for the icing. Once they were set up, I used wilton food coloring spray. It wsa tricky and I'm not very experienced with it (I had a few sputtery looking spots). Practice first for sure!

DANM, if that's your first try I can't wait to see what you do with practice!

lunanoir,

I used freeze-dried fruits quite often for flavoring macarons (since adding any kind of extra moisture results in disaster). Your cake sounds lovely.

Not even close to the artistic brilliance of tgoddess, but here is my humble cake-of-the-week: hazelnut/nutella cake. I really should work on my decorating skills, but ....

My son and I made the CI carrot cake for wife / mother's birthday
He came up with the nuts on the outside idea.... Must be all the Cake Boss he has watched!

Bill/SFNM wrote:Not even close to the artistic brilliance of tgoddess, but here is my humble cake-of-the-week: hazelnut/nutella cake. I really should work on my decorating skills, but ....

Mmmmmmm....Nutellaaaahhhhhhhh.... Looks GREAT, Bill! Feel free to FedEx me a slice.

Either due to "dedication" or just run-of-the-mill "crazy", I decided I need to use some of the 6 quarts of sour cherries I pitted and froze last week to make some frangipane tartlettes. It was WAY too warm today to put the oven on...but these will be nice with some almond ice cream later, I think.

should have bought more Shishito peppers

Man those peppers look good - where'd you get 'em?

zoid wrote:Man those peppers look good - where'd you get 'em?

Schaumburg farmer's market from Nichols Farm & orchard.

now all i need is some bacon!

Slow roasted pork belly (with a gravy made from the veggies it was roasted over + white wine), with pan-roasted brussels sprouts. My first time making pork belly, simple and really tasty.

making bread today.


updated it to include the baked version

We've come long way from the cave drawings at Lascaux! Here is a little 3D movie I made from 17 photos of a pizza taken at different angles. No, you don't need dorky glasses; sizzling pieces of pepperoni won't come flying out at you. But this amazing free piece of software from Autodesk could be a great new way for presenting food photos.



It needs a little cleaning up, but this little test took very little time to create using the software's default settings. Seeing food from many angles is great for documenting our efforts, but the artistic potential for this boggles the mind. I'm having a blast with this!

Bill/SFNM wrote:First tomatoes from my garden. At least 7 varieties:

Those are gorgeous! My friend brought some of her garden tomatoes over and she ruined me, nothing compares...

today's harvest and lunch!

Labor Day breakfast/carbo load. Made about 3 pounds of puff pastry dough yesterday, while the weather was being cool and co-operative, but couldn't wait to use a bit this morning, even though I'd already baked up a big loaf o' banana bread (with chocolate chips and walnuts, to make it EXTRA-not healthy).

lunch

Coconut vanilla marshmallows.

Thanks indeed!

Chinese braised pork belly. Not my pictures, a friend sent them to me and I thought it was droolworthy:

Blown Z wrote:Chinese braised pork belly. Not my pictures, a friend sent them to me and I thought it was droolworthy:

"Droolworthy" is an understatement! Any chance of getting the recipe from your friend. I've got a perfect piece of pork belly in the freezer calling out for some kind of Asian treatment. Thanks!