The names Cake... Chocolate Cake.

A friends birthday was on Sunday, and somehow me making a cake was brought into play. I had a half flat of strawberries left over from Jam-a-Thon, so adding those somehow was for sure in the cards. My first offering was a white cream cake (which I'll still probably make this week sometime), but we settled on a dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and strawberry filling.

I found recipes for both the cake and frosting pretty fast, but had a much tougher time finding a good recipe for the filling. I had in my head exactly what I wanted and I just couldn't find it. I wanted a clear glaze to spread over sliced berries, but found this recipe and decided to settle for it (*note, I used the second recipe*).

I ended up baking it at my wonderful sister's place and it went pretty well. I made both the filling and butter cream before hand because I wanted to make sure that both set right. It's a good thing I did, because the filling set like crap (half because the directions are crap and half because I was too impatient to go "wait, that doesn't look right"). If you do finding yourself using this recipe, be sure to cook the mixture AFTER you add the corn starch and sugar. Some people may find that a 'duh' thing. I didn't. And I ended up having to re-heat a fairly cold mixture to try and get it to gel at all. The butter cream turned out perfect (I made a half-portion extra since I wasn't doing a sheet cake). The taste was spot on, although I think I would have liked a richer chocolate color.

The cake was very simple and cooked great. We let it cool, then slice each layer in half (the more filling the better I say). I used a piping bag with a large round tip to ring the edges of each layer so the filling didn't squeeze out. I then added the slice berries and topped it with the jam-like filling (place on next layer and repeat).

The cake turned out beautiful!

Jam-A-Thon Part 1

We have a local strawberry farm that is a-maz-ing. It seems like summer doesn't start until they open for the season. Saturday morning, and old friend (we'll call her... Tessa) who I've been planning to do some canning which called and asked if I wanted to grab some strawberries and have a jamming day. I agreed, and Project Jam-A-Thon began.

I picked up the berries, and overestimated as usual, so I ended up buying 2 flat of strawberries. Which if you aren't familiar, is a whole lot of strawberries. I figure it's about 25 pounds altogether. We then realized I only had 12 pint jars on hand, and put in a call to Tessa's mom who said we'd need at least 24 jars to finish the job.

Got the extra jars and some more pectin and went to work. And let me tell you, canning with two people is so much easier. We finished 2 batches, and Tessa had to split, so I finished off as much as I could alone. I ended up using all the jars and still having a half flat of strawberries. We also tried a Strawberry Vanilla recipe I found in my Ball Preserving Book, so that should be interesting.

Returned for a Quick Trip

I just got back from a on the fly trip to Northern California to my mom. It was pretty much a whirlwind, but we managed to see some family (including an adorable niece I had yet to see) and even squeezed in a couple hours in the Bay Area.

Today I'm playing catch up, but I plan on posting quite a bit more this week. In the gauntlet is attempt #1 at Spaghetti Sauce (I'm doing Attempt #2 tonight or tomorrow), canning said sauce, whipping up some buffalo meatballs, hopefully canning (and maybe pickling) some asparagus and anything else I can think of.

Strawberry season is coming any day, and a Jam-A-Thon is in the works. Hopefully I'll be canning quite a bit as the newest veggies and fruits came in over the next several weeks.

War of the Jams, The Frozen Finale

My second round of jam went much better then the first. I followed the plain ol' strawberry jam recipe from inside the box of pectin I bought. It went something like THIS.

I won't bore you with the gory details, seeing as I've done that for the last two posts. The fact of the matter is, I followed the recipe to the tee, didn't fudge with the amounts, and very carefully washing and sanitized everything in between batches. The results were wonderfully colored and textured jam that tastes as great as it looks.

Each batch (aka amount described for one package of pectic) yielded about 4 total pints. I chose to split them into both pint and half pint jars, and also into the screw-lid 2-cup Ziploc Tupperware things. I didn't bother with fancy-smancy jelly jars since this was mostly a test-run I plan to eat myself and pawn off on friends and family until I can perfect the method.

Today I grabbed some bread, toasted it in the oven (I'm a sucker for oven toast, don't ask me why. Well, that and I can't find my toaster) slathered it with whipped butter and smeared on some jam. This was the result...


The Boy and I managed to polish off the 4 pieces in about 15 seconds. Which left this...



All in all, I think the Freezer Jam experiment can be considered a success. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other 6 pounds of strawberries.

War of the Jams, Part 2

So I gave up and tossed my original attempt at the strawberry freezer jam. I hate to do that, but I really had no way to salvage it.

For round 2 of the Jam War I wanted to be ready to battle. I went to the local big box store and stocked up on some things I decided I should have. A colander for washing/draining the fruit, dry good measuring cups, table/teaspoons, an egg timer and a veggie peeler. I'm trying to get everything in a non-reactive form (i.e, plastic, coated ceramic, or wood) so if I lose my mind and decide to make pickles I don't have to buy all new stuff. I also picked up Canning for Dummies which sadly didn't have an actual freezer jam section (their own loss, in my opinion).

I went to the still local, but much bigger grocery store, because frankly our little "Ma and Pa" mart is seriously lacking in the fresh fruits and veggies. I managed to pick up very very nice strawberries for about $2.50 a pound so I bought a lot more then I needed, but oh well. They also had a really good variety of jars from quart mason jars clear down to the fancy quilted jelly jars. Ironically, there was only about $1.00 difference in the flats of jars regardless of size.

I prefer wide mouth jars for just about everything you have to dig out. Sauces are one thing, but I hate trying to scrape around for that last bit of jelly and having it be just out of reach. And well, I like highest reward for the least amount of work. I picked up two flats of the wide mouth mason jars; one half-pint and one pint sized. I figure these are pretty good sizes for myself, and for smaller jars to give away to friends.

I was much more careful this time around about which pectin I chose, and I ended up just getting the regular ball "cook for 1 min" pectin. I trust something more when it has been used for decades, and I wasn't about to filch it again this time around.

I ended up making almost 20 jars of jam last night, and it turned out amazing. I'm very very proud of myself, and tomorrow I'll write a bit more to explain that process.

In the meantime, you can rest assured knowing that the Boy has been promised Belgium waffles in the morning.

Freezer Jam 1, Maggy 0

I headed to the local grocery store last night after work to grab some groceries I needed for dinner, and since my dad had informed me that they have strawberries on sale I figured I'd take a shot at the freezer jam. I wandered through the various aisles, scoring some great reusable twist seal containers (2 cups, perfect jam size IMO), a ginormous bag of sugar and worked my way down to the small canning section.

Now let's get this out right off, using pectin scares the hebee's out of me. I've had trouble making functional jello in the past. I can cook my pants off, and love every second of it. I'm a fly by the seat of my pants chef, I add what I want and what I think will work out. 99% of the time, it does. But the whole "this has to set properly, don't screw up the portions, yata yata" freaks me out a bit. So I'm scanning the aisle and see about 18 types of pectin, and my confidence is starting to shutter a bit. Then BAM! The miracle occurs! Right in front of my face is pectin just for freezer jam! Pre-portioned? Perfect! No cook? Even better! I throw a few packages in my cart and move on.

I get home and set to the task of cleaning and cutting the strawberries. Find a potato masher, and set to work making myself some crushed strawberries. This part was actually my favorite. Worked out quite a bit of aggression and was productive at the same time. I remember from when my grandma made freezer jam that's it's pretty straight forward. 2 cups sugar to each cup of fruit, let stand to soften, add pectin and POOF! Wonderful Freezer Jam. I mix the strawberries and sugar and set aside to work it's special magic. I grab the pectin, and start to read the directions.

I know what your thinking, I should have read them before I started all this. In hindsight I agree with that completely. The recipe on the box not only calls for Splenda (?!) but says to mix the sugar and pectin, then add the fruit. Um, a bit too late for that. After my initial moment of sheer panic, and keep reading, and notice in another recipe it says to mix the ingredients and just add the pectin, stirring for 3 mins.

I follow directions #2, and set the containers aside to chill out. I've also had some conflicting stuff with this, some says overnight, POS pectic package says 30 mins. I settled for a bedtime as a middle ground, and chuck them in the freezer about 9:30.

The next morning I realize I forgot to take pictures of this whole process (as was my plan) so I whip some out to do a mini photo shoot. At that point, I realize my jam endeavor was an epic fail. Not only has it not set at all, but the jam has completely separated into fruit on the top, goo in the middle, pectin/sugar goo on the bottom.


Although I'm sure my novice is slightly to blame for this, I was completely unimpressed with the Freezer Jam Pectin. The portion is great, but I didn't have 4 cups of fruit, I had 6. And it seemed that each container I had made about 1.25 cups of fruit. So unless I feel like tossing some of it (no way) or making a 12 cup batch, it was not actually helpful. The recipes on the back of the container called only for Splenda, and had no alternative amounts to people using good ol' white sugar.

Tonight, I'm going to the store (again) buying (more) strawberries, real honest to goodness pectic, pitching the old and starting over.