Taking Notes as I Go

Yesterday I made a cake for a bake-off at my husband's workplace. It's a fundraiser, with proceeds going to fight malaria. I'm used it as an opportunity to test out a recipe combination I wanted to try. After my success making a Smith Island cake, I thought it would be fun to make a Brazilian carrot cake version to enter in next year's fair. This is my first chance to try out my concept.

First I made the batter for the cake:

Carrots (3 large or 5 medium or 7 small)

1 cup oil

4 eggs

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

dash of salt

1 heaping tsp. baking powder

Blend the carrots, oil and eggs in a blender and then mix in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Weighing this out (the cake layers each need 200g) yielded only 6 layers. For future reference, make 1.5 batches to get 8-9 layers of cake. Other things to note: bake at 350 for 13 minutes per 2 layers. I had a few technical difficulties here, with my oven mitt gouging one of the layers (I'm using it anyway, I plan to fill up the hole with chocolate) and another layer getting stuck on one side because I didn't have enough baking spray.

Next, the fudge frosting: 

12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

1-1/4 cups heavy cream

1-1/4 cups sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla

10 T. butter at room temperature

Heat the cream, sugar and vanilla and pour over the chocolate. Whisk until melted and smooth. Add the butter and whisk until smooth. Chill for about an hour and then use to frost the cake.

The cake chilled overnight and was taken in today for the fundraiser. I suspect I won't win the bake-off but my cake did seem to get a fair number of votes at least! Here's a photo of it being served:

Gift Basket

It's almost at the last minute, but I've made the gift basket I'm taking to the stables' Open House for a raffle or silent auction or whatever they're doing with it.  It has:  Dilled Carrots, Pepper Relish, Seedless Raspberry Jam, Maple Pear Jam, Violet Jelly, and Spicy Cranberry Rhubarb Compote.  Plus a voucher for a canning lesson - like I did last year for the PTO.  I tried to avoid foraged ingredients and was a little disappointed I couldn't go strawberry picking soon enough to add some strawberry but this will have to do.  Hopefully it will be well received.

Lessons

Remember how I learned how to make sausages a few years back?  I'd purchased the lesson in an auction to benefit our school system.  Well, it was time for me to return the favor.  For our PTO silent auction, I volunteered a canning lesson.  It was purchased by another parent in town and, today, we got together to make a batch of jam.

She'd requested low sugar jam so today was my first experience with the low sugar Sure-Jell.  Let me just say it worked terrifically!  The plan had been strawberry jam (I picked some yesterday up at the pick your own place in preparation) but we ran out so topped off the required 6 cups of fruit with some apricots.  While this was all being prepared (and it went off without a hitch) we discussed boiling water vs. pressure canning, pickles, tomatoes, various recipes, and being creative within the basic rules.

After my student left with her flat of very tasty and wonderfully fragrant strawberry apricot jam, I made a creative batch of my own.  I'd noticed that the mulberry tree around the corner was getting ripe, so I went out at 5:30 am (yes, you read that right) to pick some.  In the rain.  Why, yes, I am crazy.  I got about a pint.  I found that there are fewer cars then, therefore, fewer gawkers.  I found more hanging over my car at the grocery store, an they were larger and sweeter, and I got about a half-pint of those.  These (crushed), plus 5 apricots, and 2 T. minced fresh ginger went into a pot, with 1/3 c. lemon juice, 5.75 cups sugar, and 2 packages of Certo.  I'm not messing around with the Certo anymore.  I'm going to continue to double up until it's gone.

I now have 7.5 cups of Ginger Apricot Mulberry Jam.

Sausages!

Finally! I've been looking forward to this for a month - our highly anticipated sausage lesson! I brought my husband since we were warned ahead of time that this was really a two person job, if at all possible. So now we both know how to make sausages. We had a really fun time, and Michelle, our instructor, is a great hostess and teacher.

She even had the cooking show flair going - she had precut a bowl of meat and spiced it and put it in the fridge, so that when were done cutting up the meat and spicing it, we wouldn't have to wait. She put one bowl in the fridge and, voila, produced a well chilled bowl of seasoned pork ready to be ground.

It's a fairly simple process as long as you have the space, the grinder, and the casings. We learned how to prepare the casings (not as bad as I had anticipated), grind up the meat:
bind the meat with the spices and cream (we made bratwurst, which calls for egg and cream):and then stuff the casing. There were more technical difficulties at this step; we had casings split on us (not the end of the world) and there is a distinct lack of uniformity to the length of the links. Not bad for a first try, though!
We made a total of 42 sausages, with an additional 3 small patties since we ran out of casings. They were chilled for a day then I froze them in units of 4 to 9 sausages each, depending on their sizes. Tonight we had our very own grilled sausages, with homemade pickles, homemade ketchup, and marinated farm share fava beans. How satisfying is that?

Second Chance

This morning I received an email saying that I had a second chance at the sausage making class. It turns out that the seller decided to do exactly what "Looking Forward" had suggested in the comment yesterday. There are now going to be 2 separate one-on-one sessions since there was such high interest. After a little deliberation with my husband, we signed me up.

What sort of sausage should I make?

I Lost on eBay

Our town has been running a huge fundraiser recently, trying to deal with a $4 million deficit in the school budget. It's meant to be a one-year attempt to hold off some of the pain and buy the school district some time to come up with a better solution. Appropriately, it's called "Bridge the Gap" and, from what I hear, we're not the only town doing this sort of thing lately. The goal is $1 million by tonight. As of yesterday, they were at $418,410. Long way to go.

One of the fundraising efforts has been an on line auction, which closes tonight. The only thing I really wanted to bid on was a 3-hour sausage making course, basically a one-on-one tutorial from someone who knows what they're doing. Who knew I would end up in a bidding war? I mean, it's sausages. I'm kinda weird and was looking forward to learning that skill. I didn't think anyone else was! Well, I lost. What was listed as having a $75 value is going for $405, and not to me. Ultimately, though, the schools will win; not only is that other person paying $405, I decided to just donate additional cash to the fund which will get matched by my husband's company.

What I didn't think about until after the auction had already started was that I should have put up a canning lesson to be auctioned off. I'll remember that for future fundraisers; I am sure there will be many.