Wedding cake

Last night was James and Bonnie's wedding, and I made the wedding cake.

It's a lot of work making a wedding cake. At times it was frustrating, at times disheartening, but for the most part I had a lot of fun. The bottom tier was marble, the middle tier was chocolate, and the top tier was darker chocolate. The marble turned out the best.

I think some people were turned off by the icing, which is mousseline buttercream. It's made with egg whites, butter and white (not powdered) sugar. It's very light and creamy tasting, not like the confectioners' sugar frosting which is very sweet and sugary. To each his own. What mattered was the bride and groom were happy. :)

Transporting the cake was an adventure in itself. We drove to Lovells, not far from Grayling, probably about 15 miles away. However, to get there you go down two-lane county roads. We were driving like 25 miles an hour tops, and all these cars would get stuck behind us. So my friend Liz (she was my date) made this sign and hung it in the back window:



It was pure ridiculousness. It took us nearly an hour to get to Lovells and we missed the wedding ceremony, but the cake made it intact with only one little smudge (we just turned that part to the back). Here's the final product:



It was a fun project, but I'm glad it's over.

Curiosities

I've been taking walks down my road in the evenings. I've found that since I've come back from Niger I appreciate nature more and notice birds. I used to never notice birds. Now it's like I see them all the time.

Here's some photos of the cool things I've seen while walking down the road.

The new growth on jack pines is known as "candles" because it curves upwards.


I call this "Michigan Millet." It's actually called mullen, but it reminds me of millet because it's got a long stalk that grows seeds. I like the bent one.


I saw this huge, dead bug being devoured by little ants. I don't see many huge bugs here and it kind of reminded me of a cockroach, then brought back memories of being in Niger and using my latrine while fighting off cockroaches with a stick so they wouldn't crawl on my feet.


The new oak leaves are so pretty and colorful.


This is a burl on what I think is a jack pine. I've never seen a "fresh" burl and its color was intriguing. When it dries out it will just look like a big wooden lump.


And what would a walk down the road (or anywhere, for that matter) be without seeing some tent worms? Also known as "army worms," "gypsy moths," and "forest caterpillars," these little bastards will defoliate anything. They multiply and you start seeing them everywhere - on your house, your clothes, your windshield. It's disgusting.


The beautiful AuSable River.


I am reading three books at once - "Kitchen Confidential," by Anthony Bourdain; "Savannah nomads: a study of the Wodaabe pastoral Fulani of Western Bornu Province Northern region, Nigeria," by DJ Stenning, and "The Bone Collector" by Jeffrey Deaver (something to read while at work).

Stressed

I have forgotten how stressful baking can be. I am remembering being stressed about getting things baked back when I lived in Wisconsin. I remember being this crazy Dragon Lady and freaking out over failed baking ventures and being stressed about baking experiments in progress. I remember Zach (my ex-boyfriend) being like, "those cookies weren't made with love, so I'm not eating them." This week's been tough. Let's just say Dragon Lady made a few short appearances. My apologies to my family.

I'm making a wedding cake for my friends James and Bonnie, and their wedding is Memorial Day weekend, May 29, this saturday. They want a three-tiered cake with marble on the bottom and chocolate in the middle and top tiers. I've made a couple of practice cakes to make sure my marble cake recipe is going to work. I also frosted and decorated one of the small practice cakes to make sure it turned out okay, and it did. So now I'm making all the cakes and sticking them in the freezer until friday. Then I will pull them out, let them thaw, and frost the little buggers.

Practice cake - ignore the flaws. :) I'm just happy I successfully piped the Cornelli lace (it was my first time.)


Yesterday the middle and top tiers were baked and are now sitting in the freezer. Today I will work on the marble bottom tier (14", baby). Things are going pretty smoothly. I'm not getting crazy just yet.

On top of this, I'm trying to assemble cabinets from Home Depot for my bedroom, make a scrapbook of my pictures from Niger, take hour-long walks to keep my ass in control, burn sweet African music CDs and mail them to friends, practice the djembe, and arrange a trip to Muskegon to look at Baker College's pastry arts program.

Djam's Ghanaian groundnut soup

Yumyumyum, you are going to love this recipe!

"Groundnut" is what they call peanuts in Ghana, by the way. So it's really peanut soup. But wait, "soup" is what they call sauce in Ghana, so in reality, it's "peanut sauce."

Ingredients

4 raw turkey legs with the skin on (or substitute chicken pieces)
3 chicken bouillon cubes, crumbled
Pinch of salt
Ground black pepper
1 large red onion, chopped
1-3 whole habanero peppers, or to taste
3 oz. tomato paste (no more than one half of a small 6 oz. can)
1-1/2 cups natural peanut butter
2 C water
3-4 carrots, sliced
Note: Djam recommends not adding spices (including garlic and ginger) because they take away from the peanut butter taste.

Instructions

Cut the flesh off the turkey legs into large pieces. Don't worry if you can't get it all cut off.
Combine the turkey meat and bones, crumbled chicken bouillon cubes, pinch of salt, some black pepper, 1/4 cup of the chopped onion, and habanero peppers in a large stockpot. Place lid on pot and heat on medium until it begins sizzling. You don't add any liquid because the meat and onions will give off their own juices. Then turn down heat to medium-low and steam 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In the meantime, combine peanut butter and tomato paste in a frying pan. Heat on lowest setting, stirring constantly, until it turns brownish red and you see the oil separate and come to the top. This will take a while, like 10-15 minutes, so be patient.

Add 2 cups water to the peanut butter mixture, then scrape into the meat pot. Add carrots and remaining onion and more water to cover. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low or medium low heat. Heat, uncovered, about 30 more minutes, or until the oil separates from the mixture and comes to the top. This way you know the flavor has developed.

Before serving, use tongs to remove bones and habanero peppers (if desired).

Serve over hot rice. It's good with jasmine or basmati rice, but any variety will do. Serves 8-10.

New job and drum workshop

I feel like I should post something. I haven't blogged in a while and I know everyone out there is wondering where I've been. (ha ha)

So yeah, what have I been up to lately? I've been really, super duper busy. The last week of April I went to Midland to train for my new job at the bank. The training was pretty interesting, though for a while I felt like I was in college again and had to think for once. Midland was cool, after training I hung out at the mall and other stores to amp up my professional wardrobe (for an $8/hour job, ha ha). It was hard finding appropriate clothes, as the bank has a pretty strict dress code (it was 4 pages long).

Right when I came back to Grayling, I had to take care of some dire business. Djam was coming to town to do a drum-building workshop, and for a while his friend Tani was going to come with him and they were going to do a show. Before I left town I hung up posters and flyers and handouts about the show and everyone was really excited about it.

And then Tani got into a pretty serious car accident. He was side swiped by a big truck on his side of the car, resulting in a broken arm, broken leg, jaw broken in two places, and broken ribs. Poor guy. He was in a coma, and when he woke up in the hospital he was strapped to the bed (to prevent him from moving his injured limbs) and no one else was around. He thought he was in jail. Naturally the show was canceled, but Djam came to town anyway to do the drum-building workshop. I spent a day running around town letting people know what happened and taking down signs.

Djam and Tom with the Boy Scout drum that he re-headed and fixed up.


Djam leading a drum circle at the local coffee shop.


The drum-building workshop was a huge success. There were four participants and they kept Djam pretty busy with all the steps involved in building a drum. Djam is incredibly patient and a great teacher, so he handled it really well. We provided the participants with an African luncheon as part of the workshop fee: hibiscus flower juice (aka "bissap"), peanut stew with turkey, jasmine rice, and spice cookies. Djam taught me how to make good peanut stew, I will post the recipe soon.

Then I started working full time at the bank (I'm now on my second week there.) That's been going well. There's a lot more going on in a bank than you would actually think, but I like that it's complicated. This saturday marks my last day working at Kmart, and soon I will have wonderful banker's hours with weekends all to myself.