I took a week off from work and so I'm going to spend the whole time cooking. So I've decided to detail my successes and failures here. I got the idea to talk about my own cooking on here from a friend online and I have to admit it makes sense. Food is my passion; if I could afford it, I'd go to culinary school and start my own restaurant.
Anyway, I started yesterday, which was my birthday. I didn't make dinner, but I did make my birthday cake. It was kind of an experiment, as I've never made a layer cake before. My problem was I picked a very labor intensive cake to be the first one; I made a coconut cake, and used fresh coconuts.
So after roasting, cracking, peeling and grating 3 coconuts, I kinda wanted to kick my own ass for doing this to myself. But I sallied forth and made the coconut cream and milk. I used store-bought extract because I don't habitually keep vodka around.
The cake turned out good. Light, tender, fluffy, all the adjectives they like to bandy about when talking about cake. The problem was that because I used a darker colored pan, the bottom and sides got a little crispy and it was kind of hard to cut through. Also, when I split them, they split unevenly because of the technique I used, so i got 2 semi normal layers and 2 that are just domes of cake. After frosting the cake with a 7 minute coconut frosting, it looked great. It tastes awesome, if a little sweet...Ok, a lot sweet. I could only eat one piece before I thought I may go into a sugar coma; coffee would have helped.
Other than the pan being uncooperative and the fact that I don't have a round cake stand, I call this one a success, but hey, it's cake right? Even a fucked up cake is almost edible. Tonight will be different, as I'm making ravioli. I've made cheese stuffed ravioli before, but tonight I'm going to experiment with a meat filling. When it's done, I'll make sure to post the results and my thoughts on how I could have done better.
