Let Them Eat Cake… (So we won’t have to!)

Busy days, spent writing and, in D’s case, running around representing Uni faculty. He has turned in to a fill-in lecturer, as a few of the professors have been out with pregnancies and illnesses. He’s always prepared to step in, but his last gig included traveling to the other end of the city and carrying the flag for the university during a tour of the library and archive collection at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. That was unusual, to say the least, but entertaining. Sadly, he couldn’t take pictures, so you’ll have to ask him about the original Audubon paintings he saw.

Housing Update:Not much to say, since the heat/boiler situation hasn’t much changed. Sadly, the issue has moved into the realm of litigation; our downstairs neighbor can’t get the property manager to even pick up her phone calls anymore. She advised us not to mention her name when we phoned.

So. Not much change, not much nice to say, and both of us bracing ourselves against the idea of having to move, if things aren’t resolved or well on their way to resolution, by the end of the month. Deep in our souls we groan, “NOT AGAIN!!!“… but we will if we have to… People are beginning to look at us oddly, though. What is it about us and boilers? And ovens? Or, is it Scotland!? We vote it’s just Glasgow.

---

No, this is not a cake doughnut. It’s an actual cake. It was the practice run of the Guinness Cake brought for dessert this past weekend. One of D’s supervisors gamely keeps inviting us over, despite the fact that we haven’t yet had a house where we can be comfortable in inviting them to a meal in return. (Lacking sufficient furniture and/or heat most of the time does create an issue.) Since we can’t host them, we always bring part of the meal, and this time, D’s coworkers got to taste the “reject” cake.

It wasn’t a true reject cake; we just wanted to make it late at night, and, realizing we had no cocoa powder, substituted a bar of very dark chocolate, just to see what would happen. We observed the recipe on Epicurious, and halved it as Smitten Kitchen did, and then added our own twist and made a creative frosting.

The first thing we noticed is how much different the stout smelled. Americans who try this recipe should know that Guinness…beer? Ale? Stout? Whatever you call it — has a different brewing recipe in the U.S., in Scotland, and in Ireland from whence it hails. Therefore: no two Guinness Cakes, apparently, are going to turn out the same. Add to that, flour of a higher humidity on the West Coast of the U.S. (baking in humid areas changes the flour, no matter how you sift it, it’s just not as light), and a different oven, and we came up with a whole new cake than our first try back in January.

It was much more moist and dense, thanks to the moisture in the air and the additional oils from using a chocolate bar in the batter. To T., at least, the sugar in the chocolate bar made the cake far too sweet, and it seemed the sugar was almost granular and crunchable, like the first cake we made in January back in California. Even the whipped-cream frosting didn’t help cut the sweet on that one! However, palates differ wildly, and oh, our Glaswegian buddies have a sweet tooth. D. and his coworkers finished work on Friday with a cheerful sugar high and probably bounced all the way home. Funniest were their reminiscences about Desserts of Fridays Past: “Oh, do you remember when he made that apricot pastry?” “No, I didn’t get any of that one. But that lemon cake… yeah, that was good.”

This February marks two years that D.’s been consulting for the company… and so, it’s time for a raise. If for nothing else, his boss owes him for the cakes with which he supplies the staff for tea! He’s asked, and been told that they’ll chat about it.

The real cake we made Friday afternoon, and iced just before lunch the following day. This one had a good cocoa powder in it in addition to the chocolate bar (70% dark), and we went with a more traditional ganache frosting. D. and I confined ourselves to tiny slivers at the Professor’s house, but even his two year old son was quite taken with it. Dense and rich and much more moist than our first two tries, it was sliced up and carried off to church on Sunday with the Professor’s wife, as she feared for her hips if she left it at home for too long. It really turned out well, and the addition of instant coffee granules in the ganache gave just a ghost of bitterness to the already less sweet cake. It was perfect with a hot drink, like black coffee.

Of course, there’s a moral to the story: no good deed goes unpunished. Bringing more cake to the Professor’s house reminder his wife of her long-ago wish D. cater her son’s birthday party someday. Since the wee man is turning three, he’s having a costume party, at The Tall Ship, and of course, the theme is pirates. Wouldn’t D. just love to make her son a nice pirate cake? She’s willing to pay him… Please? (She begs very attractively.) (Imagine T’s eye-rolling.)

She’s the wife of D’s PhD supervisor… so, what are you going to do? Exactly. Meanwhile, stay tuned for Aaargh! The Pirate Cake. And more of T’s eye-rolling.

(Seriously, D loves baking, and finds many creative things a challenge, so he’s not bothered. Ignore T’s eyes. If you look at her squinting, you can just pretend she’s blinking or something.)