77. Doberge Cake

I've never made one before.

It's Mardi Gras, at least for a little while longer, and I lived in Houston, which is close enough to East Texas and Louisiana to have some spillover. I took French in high school, for instance, but it was Cajun French, taught by this old Cajun woman with dentures that clicked when she talked. The French was the same stuff you all learned in your fancy-dancy Parisian French classes, but you know, it's the little differences.

I know how to make a decent gumbo, having learned from Monique Ricard's dad on a Food Day at school. And the guy I dated most seriously in high school was not Cajun, but Czech (another sizable minority in Texas), but the other guy, well, there was some Cajun involved there.

I've eaten boudin (white only), I've had bowls full of strange things I wasn't sure about but ate anyway. Crawdads and other scummy little creatures and rice and beans and all that.

One Mardi Gras Mme. Mallet brought in a Kings Cake, which I wasn't the biggest fan of. I wanted to do something sweet and over the top for Mardi Gras this year, but I knew I didn't want to go that direction. And I didn't want to make one of my standards. So I googled for a doberge cake recipe, and found one that included the ganache for the top. And I made the damned thing.




Mine was only a six layer--and one of those layers was in pretty bad shape--but it was still filled with the chocolate custard and topped with chocolate buttercream icing. I cooked up the ganache and poured it over the whole thing--it took me several hours of standing up in my kitchen to create this, and by the time I was done, I wasn't waiting for it to chill further. So we ate it. The girls moaned from the living room: "Too much chocolate!"

I couldn't finish my piece. I started to feel dizzy.

It was perfect. Awesomely perfect. Just what Mardi Gras is supposed to be.

The thing is so tall, my aluminum cake saver was too short. So was my tupperware one, which has fit every other cake I've ever made (most fit into the aluminum). This thing was ridiculous. So we upturned my stock pot. The one I make tomato sauce and salsa verde in--the big one. Cleared off the milk and juice shelf in the fridge.

It looked like something exploded--something tasty, but still--in my kitchen. I started to clean up but then thought, no, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. I can do this penance tomorrow.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


Edited, for Jules, to add link to the recipe I used for said cake. It takes a lot of time. But it is very very good (and lasts forever--we got probably 18 pieces out of this thing).

76. Kwyltz So Far

The first is one I owe Daisy. Her sister has its fraternal twin. Once upon a time, when I was pregnant with Daisy, I was in a block swap of purple and blue batik patchwork blocks. Later on, I divided the resulting hodgepodge of blocks into two sets, one tat was mostly blue and one that was mostly purple. The blue ones were partnered with a blue batik and backed in pink--that one was finished about 3 or 4 years ago. And I got distracted.

These were partnered with a purple and orange batik and backed in orange. It is now done. Daisy asks me why it's so much "crunchier" than Fiona's. I told her to let me wash it a few times and it'll soften up.A bit of quilting closer up.

This next one was a top I finished when, again, Fiona was little and still enamored with Strawberry Shortcake. Back then there were two girls, no boy, and I envisioned the two of them sharing the attic. I also thought my full-sized iron bed was going up there, too. It's now in the guest room and the two of them have separate spaces in the attic and Billy's headed up there ASAP. So this quilt, flannel, backed in flannel, minimally quilted just to hold it together in the, most likely, frequent washing it will endure, is going to be one of our "curl up on the couch blankets." Jake asked, "so...why do we have a Strawberry Shortcake quilt?" and I told him to feel it and then he'd know why. He's a fan of the flannel sheets and all that.

"Well, we'll use it a while, and then it'll get put away and somebody will take it to college as kitsch," he says with a shrug.

This last one is mine. I haven't quilted it yet--it's next in the queue. It's a one-block wonder, all 60 degree triangles, called "Walking Shoes." That's really just for my own entertainment. I haven't made myself a quilt in a long time...