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Maw!
May 2, 2015 19:12:18 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 2, 2015 19:12:18 GMT -5
That is what I heard yelled from my front door while I was innocently making coffee in the kitchen. Six feet of scrawny comes striding in and I tell him, "Coffee radar is a little off the mark, it's not done yet". He tells me he will wait as he needs to talk to me. So while we are waiting for the water of life to finish dripping into the pot, he tells me his woes. Apparently his mom was going to make a cake for one of his kids who won some thing or other at school, but she is a home health care worker and one of her clients is in crisis so of course she had to go. "So what kind of cake do you need?" I ask. Something with fruit in it that is blue, is the answer.
Easily done I say, come back between 4:00 and 5:00.
So I make some Lady Baltimore layers with some mixed berry kool-aid mix(1) thrown in with the sugar. I drag out and rehydrate some freeze dried blueberries and make a blueberry curd to fill it with. I then frost the whole darn thing with Italian buttercream.
Word is in, it was a major hit. And grandma wants me to show her how to make something that tastes like a buttercream but obviously does not have two cows worth of butter in it.
(1) It's very very blue so the cake came out somewhere between azure and robin's egg blue. Plus the flavour goes well with the blueberries, while the blueberries and the buttercream take some of the cheap kool-aid taste off.
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Maw!
May 3, 2015 13:14:37 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 3, 2015 13:14:37 GMT -5
From now on we will all call you when we have a cake emergency.
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Maw!
May 3, 2015 20:12:47 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 3, 2015 20:12:47 GMT -5
From now on we will all call you when we have a cake emergency. In truth a kool-aid cake is easier with a mix. Kids tend to like them a lot, and they are a dirt cheap way to get fruit flavored cakes. Any old full size white cake mix will do, just stir some kool-aid into the dry mix before you start. I don't generally see the point to mixes, except these days they are sometimes cheaper than a scratch cake, so I didn't have one handy. When you do do one from scratch you usually have to add some sweetener to the recipe as most white cake recipes do not have near so much sugar as the mixes do. The cake will come out rather tart if it does not call for more than a cup of sugar. As Lady Baltimore calls for half that I chucked 2/3 of a cup of sucralose into my flour for this go. I think the one I did some time ago for one of DD3's birthdays was the biggest hit, angel food mix + strawberry kool-aid, topped with whipped cream + fresh strawberries. She has always been a fiend for anything strawberry.
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Maw!
May 6, 2015 0:46:31 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 6, 2015 0:46:31 GMT -5
I was really just complimenting you for being able to just come up with a cake recipe out of the blue like that and have it be successful. I have to follow a recipe - I don't have the experience or "feel" for ingredients to just wing it and end up with a successful cake like that. But I won't be making any kool-aid cakes, since my kids are sensitive to artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners. I do fondly remember kool-aid from my childhood, though. It is very tart straight out of the packet! I definitely understand why you'd need plenty of sugar or sweetener in a kool-aid cake.
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Maw!
May 6, 2015 9:23:23 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 6, 2015 9:23:23 GMT -5
I was really just complimenting you for being able to just come up with a cake recipe out of the blue like that and have it be successful. I have to follow a recipe - I don't have the experience or "feel" for ingredients to just wing it and end up with a successful cake like that. But I won't be making any kool-aid cakes, since my kids are sensitive to artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners. I do fondly remember kool-aid from my childhood, though. It is very tart straight out of the packet! I definitely understand why you'd need plenty of sugar or sweetener in a kool-aid cake. And I was more wanting to add to my post to make sure some poor soul did not try making a kool-aid cake without adequate sweetener. Hear you on the artificial colors. As I mentioned before, DD1's lot all have asthma attacks (severe ones, not some piddly minor bronchial spasm) when they ingest one of most of the red food dyes, or one in particular of the yellows. That has inspired me to make sure I have a big enough patch of bull's blood beets to experiment with, and to actually contemplate letting a patch of yellow dock grow up. I know both are edible, unlike many of the other dye plants. I would think of cochineal, that was safely used in food for a very long time, but if the kids ever found out what it was made of there would be a riot!
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Maw!
May 6, 2015 23:15:02 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 6, 2015 23:15:02 GMT -5
Yipes, asthma is scary stuff!
Turmeric gives a very nice yellow color in frostings, and it doesn't take much turmeric extract to color a frosting, so you don't taste it. The color tends to darken/intensify after a few hours, so make your frosting a little lighter yellow than you need or make the frosting ahead to see how the color changes. I know you can't grow turmeric, but it's available in the spice aisle, or you can buy natural food coloring made with it. (Pre-made natural food colors are convenient, but very pricey.)
Getting a true red buttercream frosting is really, really hard with natural food colors. Which makes things like red race car cakes a little tough. But hey, you can always make a volcano and use red jam for lava, stick some plastic dinosaurs on there and boom! Happy boys.
But you can get lovely pinks and purples with beets, red cabbage, purple carrots, various berries, etc. So for those princess and Barbie cakes you actually have a lot of options for avoiding those artificial red dyes.
Hibiscus and roselle are other edible plants to try for a red color. I've never used the plants for coloring myself, but I have purchased red food coloring made with hibiscus. The frosting was still dark pink rather than red, but it made frosting closer to a clear red than the beet-based natural food coloring I tried. You can get closer to a true red by using the natural red food coloring in a chocolate frosting than a white one. But as far as I can tell, that brilliant race car red color can only be obtained with artificial food color.
Bright true blue shades are also tough to get with natural colors...most blue edible plants tend to wind up gray or purplish after mixing in frosting. I have purchased natural food colors that came pretty close, but I had to use a LOT, which gets expensive fast.
One thing I have seen recently in the stores are all-natural fruit snacks made with plant-based colors. Some of them are red...I've considered trying to melt them down and see what I could do with them to color other foods, but I haven't tried it yet.
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Maw!
May 7, 2015 10:08:50 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 7, 2015 10:08:50 GMT -5
Yipes, asthma is scary stuff! Turmeric gives a very nice yellow color in frostings, and it doesn't take much turmeric extract to color a frosting, so you don't taste it. The color tends to darken/intensify after a few hours, so make your frosting a little lighter yellow than you need or make the frosting ahead to see how the color changes. I know you can't grow turmeric, but it's available in the spice aisle, or you can buy natural food coloring made with it. (Pre-made natural food colors are convenient, but very pricey.) Getting a true red buttercream frosting is really, really hard with natural food colors. Which makes things like red race car cakes a little tough. But hey, you can always make a volcano and use red jam for lava, stick some plastic dinosaurs on there and boom! Happy boys. But you can get lovely pinks and purples with beets, red cabbage, purple carrots, various berries, etc. So for those princess and Barbie cakes you actually have a lot of options for avoiding those artificial red dyes. Hibiscus and roselle are other edible plants to try for a red color. I've never used the plants for coloring myself, but I have purchased red food coloring made with hibiscus. The frosting was still dark pink rather than red, but it made frosting closer to a clear red than the beet-based natural food coloring I tried. You can get closer to a true red by using the natural red food coloring in a chocolate frosting than a white one. But as far as I can tell, that brilliant race car red color can only be obtained with artificial food color. Bright true blue shades are also tough to get with natural colors...most blue edible plants tend to wind up gray or purplish after mixing in frosting. I have purchased natural food colors that came pretty close, but I had to use a LOT, which gets expensive fast. One thing I have seen recently in the stores are all-natural fruit snacks made with plant-based colors. Some of them are red...I've considered trying to melt them down and see what I could do with them to color other foods, but I haven't tried it yet. You can grow tumeric indoors just like ginger. You cannot grow it large quantity, but a little bit goes a long way. It can be a bit difficult to find to grow, unless your grocery store has a shipping accident and gets tumeric root instead of regular ginger, which is how we found out you can grow it. You can enhance yellow in your buttercream by using a French, German, or Swiss buttercream. Those call for egg yolks and naturally come out a light yellow. Another source for yellow/yellow orange that you can grow is saffron. Crocus sativa is available to plant by us mere mortals now. It is very labor intensive to harvest, but considering the price of the stuff well worth it. I have found that using a combination of powdered freeze dried fruit and vegetable powders or extracts can give you a decent red, so long as you want something strawberry or raspberry flavored. I feel the raspberry works best as it is a darker color to begin with. The strawberry gives a near flourescent pink. Check some of the red wines, a couple of the local vintages work rather well to bounce up the red factor in quantities as small as a tablespoon or few. Probably less alcohol than vanilla extract, and if you are careful with your flavor balance the right one can help a lot. A good blue has been the holy grail of textile dyers since ancient times. If you do not live where indigo grows blue is really hard to obtain. Yes there is woad, but the sheer quantity required to the the duty of indigo is daunting. Since it is the same chemical, just at a lower level in the plant, the whole stinky process is the same but amplified in stinkiness by the quantity of plant material required. There are other plants, which you need huge quantities of to get not as good an effect. Finding an edible blue is even harder. Now I have George Carlin in my head... Read your label carefully with your all natural fruit snacks. They sometimes contain all natural geletine, or occasionally gum arabic, which cam mess with your texture, and require different handling when it comes to melting them down. Xanthan gum is also a natural ingredient and does not melt for beans. Xanthan works by absorbing fluid and expanding around the other ingredients, as we were told in the art class where we made pastels so long ago. There are other stick together promoting natural ingredients that do not melt gracefully. I would do a multiple experiment, try and dissolve the snacks in a few different friendly fluids, try to melt them, and what the heck try both at once and see what they do in a bit of boiling water, and if they re gel afterwards. Could be they are made with pectin and you have to treat them like an overcooked jelly. Could be melting a bit of jelly in hot water would work better, and I am going to go try that very soon. I think I might find call around here for some frosted cookies...
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Maw!
May 7, 2015 16:11:32 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 7, 2015 16:11:32 GMT -5
That is such good information, nightmist! Thanks especially for the cautions about the texture issues that can come with fruit snacks. That is definitely something I should experiment with on something non-critical before I try to use them for an occasion cake. You know, what you said about growing turmeric jogged my memory of reading about growing turmeric in the Florida gardening forum on the website formerly known as GardenWeb (which was bought by Houz). They might have even talked about getting roots for plants. I should look that up. In South Florida they can grow it outdoors, but I am pretty sure that I would have to bring it in for the winter where I live. For the red, do you think that using a dehydrator to dry berries would work, or would I need to buy/make freeze dried raspberries? The fruit flavor it provides would be okay. I bet that raspberry flavored frosting would be great on a chocolate cake. Also for the red, do you use the wine in addition to the other ingredients, just to enhance the red color? Or is it the primary colorant? Thanks again for all your help!
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Maw!
May 8, 2015 12:42:38 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 8, 2015 12:42:38 GMT -5
For the red, do you think that using a dehydrator to dry berries would work, or would I need to buy/make freeze dried raspberries? The fruit flavor it provides would be okay. I bet that raspberry flavored frosting would be great on a chocolate cake. Also for the red, do you use the wine in addition to the other ingredients, just to enhance the red color? Or is it the primary colorant? Thanks again for all your help! I usually buy freeze dried from Honeyville grains. Can you actually make freeze dried stuff without serious lab gear? If so, start talking! The big advantage to the freeze dried is they powder very easily and rehydrate quickly even when mixed with flour or sugar in a recipe. (small increase of fluid in the recipe might be needed, but not so often as you would think) I have never used fruit from the dehydrator for this. I strikes me that you would have a dickens of a time working with it, but I could be wrong. You can use fresh, but then you have the issues with fluids to deal with. Most of my icing and frosting recipes call for very little fluids if any, and adding a wet solid would make it them a bit difficult. Very much easier to use them as a puree for part of the liquid in the baked item itself. Which I do in season. I grow raspberries and strawberries, and I still buy the freeze dried for some winter baking applications and icings. It does take a fair bit of the freeze dried, for icings I use fruit powder at a ratio of 50% up to equal of the quantity sugar (for a cooked icing I beat it in after the sugar syrup) Like trying a new brand of flour, you have to fuss and meddle a bit with the recipe to get it right. I use the wine as an enhancement. You probably could use it as a primary, but it would take considerably more and you would have a completely different flavor profile. I "accidentally" used it as a primary once when somebody wanted a frosted fruitcake at Christmas. I could not bear to do a sugary frosting on it, and they did not want it rolled in marzipan (tree nut issues) So I "invented" port wine cream cheese frosting. The port was very strong in color, I had wished for tawny and settled for ruby, panicked when it came out mauve and added more wine, so it came out a sort of light red violet. I had to let it sit in the fridge overnight while I burned candles and incense before the deities praying that it thickened up, which it did. After frosting the cake I smacked some plain cake crumbs on the outside of it for good measure, just in case it tried to get sloppy I figured a crumb layer might soak some of that up. Fortunately it all worked out, I think they ate it (very enthusiastically I am told) before it had a chance to warm up. It takes some experimentation to find the right wine for a recipe, as I use local wines I am not sure I can give you a valid recommendation. Most often I use a semi-sweet house red from Johnson Estates. As a New York red it has a good bit of grape flavor to it, and not so much of the 'wine' flavor. You get that more with cold climate wines I think. This particular vintage seems to enhance the fruit flavors when I use the freeze dried fruit, as well as adding that extra bit of fluid and kicking up the color. Raspberry frosting on chocolate cake is very good. I was making a heart shaped Rigo Jansci (1) For valentines day when I was begged to not make chocolate mousse. Dear gods how can anybody beg a body to NOT make chocolate mousse? Some nonsense about watching fat and too much heavy cream. Isn't that why holidays were invented? So you could have too much fat and heavy cream? So I took my two sponge layers, filled them with chocolate pastry cream, and did a strong raspberry icing for it. Definitely one of my best "oh my gosh what the heck am I gonna do now!" freak out recoveries. (1) Rigo Jansci was a gypsy violinist of some acclaim. Look him up for the whole love em and leave em romance and scandal. A baker in Budapest invented a cake in his honor and named it after him. Two intensely chocolate sponge layers, generously filled with insanely chocolate mouse, and finished with a very very chocolate glaze. Voila! Sutemeny Rigo Jancsi! Serve in 1 or 2 inch squares. You will find yourself in a chocolate coma if try and eat any more than that at a go.
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Maw!
May 9, 2015 9:54:35 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 9, 2015 9:54:35 GMT -5
I don't have any knowledge of home freeze drying. Wish I did!
With respect to fruit from the dehydrator, you're assuming that it would be hard to work with because the dehydrator wouldn't get it dry enough to grind it into a powder? You may be right - I've never tried to get fruit that dry. I've taken tomatoes pretty close, though. I wonder if the color would remain intact, though. I know when I dry tomatoes past the leathery stage they turn brownish-red.
I can imagine that using fresh fruit would result in a separated disaster in most icings. Ick.
Whoo, up to 50% fruit powder to sugar ratio for icings? That many freeze dried berries adds up to a really expensive cake.
I laughed at the frosted fruitcake story. Of COURSE they ate it very enthusiastically. And who turns down a chocolate mousse for Valentine's Day? Guilt-free consumption of chocolate and heavy cream are what holidays are made for!
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Maw!
May 9, 2015 11:09:26 GMT -5
Post by nightmist on May 9, 2015 11:09:26 GMT -5
I don't have any knowledge of home freeze drying. Wish I did! With respect to fruit from the dehydrator, you're assuming that it would be hard to work with because the dehydrator wouldn't get it dry enough to grind it into a powder? You may be right - I've never tried to get fruit that dry. I've taken tomatoes pretty close, though. I wonder if the color would remain intact, though. I know when I dry tomatoes past the leathery stage they turn brownish-red. I can imagine that using fresh fruit would result in a separated disaster in most icings. Ick. Whoo, up to 50% fruit powder to sugar ratio for icings? That many freeze dried berries adds up to a really expensive cake. I laughed at the frosted fruitcake story. Of COURSE they ate it very enthusiastically. And who turns down a chocolate mousse for Valentine's Day? Guilt-free consumption of chocolate and heavy cream are what holidays are made for! Exactly so with respect to the dehydrated fruit. When we have fruit in the dehydrator go beyond the leathery stage it gets hard, not 'crisp'. Which gives you a good understanding of why so many old recipes tell you to soak your raisins in something nice. You have to or risk breaking a tooth. Most commercial dried fruits that will keep have a bit of glycerine added. The glycerine is a mild anti-bacterial, but also keeps the fruit soft. As to whether or not dehydrated fruit would work for color I'm not sure. It seems it should, but you never know with chemistry. I can almost see how to use fresh fruit in a cooked icing, In your average American buttercream it would be pretty useless though. Here are the freeze dried raspberries I buy: shop.honeyville.com/products/freeze-dried-food-storage/freeze-dried-fruits/freeze-dried-raspberries.htmlNot something I pick up every month even, but a can lasts a while with an oxygen starver in it (I buy the large cans), and I usually get them when they are running a sale. Compared to the price of boughten fresh, the price of the fruit is not too dire. I started on the fruit when the shop I went to for a fragioli concentrate closed up. There is this Italian company that makes liquor extracts so you can 'make' them at home, fragioli was one of them. Compared to the price for a bottle of actual fragioli, the freeze dried strawberries are downright cheap! As I was using the extract for my crunchberry pinwheel cookies at Christmas the fruit was worth it. Every few months they do a 10 to 20% off your entire order sale, and sometimes a buy a case get a case at half price sale. We usually club up with other people for the case sales. What we buy consistently are the vital wheat gluten and the whey based milk replacer. the former has a lot of uses (gluten balls for stir fry, saitan, in baking etc.), and the latter is our lactose intolerant household members favorite milk replacer. Plus our family strawberry fiend likes the strawberry milk replacer and that is usually pretty cheap. One year we sent some friends out west a variety case of the hot cocoa for Christmas. This place has about the best hot cocoa mix I have come across. Of course milk+chocolate on the stove cannot be beat, but sometimes the mix is handy. Wheat gluten was the gateway drug, and that led to milk, fruit, specialty baking ingredients, and they hooked us on the cocoa by sending free samples. Honeylle, and www.parthenonfoods.com/index.php/all-products are our go to places for specialty foods now that wally world has driven out most of the little shops in town. I am looking at some other places for Scandinavian specialties (can you legally have Christmas without lingonberries?(1)) but haven't tried one yet, and I've an Asian specialty place that was recommended to me on my list of to try places. (1) I had planted some of the stupidly expensive lingonberry plants, but the landlord's lawnmower idiots mowed them down before the plants were strong enough to come back.
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Maw!
May 11, 2015 14:29:51 GMT -5
Post by LinFL on May 11, 2015 14:29:51 GMT -5
Thanks for the links and info! As to lingonberries, that's definitely a regional thing. Since lingonberries don't like to grow in Florida, I can assure you that Floridians have Christmas every year without lingonberries. No one has yet been arrested for it. The closest I have come to eating lingonberries is jam from the grocery store. But I know what you mean about important holiday food traditions.
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