Best White Cake

(Wait a second, you charlatan, that's the cake you just posted and it was chocolate. Okay, you caught me. The thing is: When you have a house full of 7 children, thinking about taking pictures just doesn't rank very high in brain function. And then, before you know it, the cake is gone.)

Since we're talking about cake and all, let me tell you about this incredible one we made several weeks ago. It. wasn't. chocolate. I know, you've hit the floor. Your relatives are calling 911 as we speak. Well, get up because if you die of cardiac arrest, you want to die after you eat this cake.

As you know, chocolate is definitely the cake of choice around here. Partly because Kip loves it with his whole soul and part of my stay-thin plan is to have him eat the majority of the sweets I make (Does this make me a bad person? Yes. But it's a variety of bad personness that Kip rather enjoys. Which is no excuse. But still.) Also, I've spent a lot of time (probably more time than a person should be proud of) finding some perfect chocolate cake recipes and perfecting my chocolate cake skills. And, while the white and yellow cakes I've tried have come out fine, they just haven't been good enough to sing about. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and nephews were visiting. Apparently, they didn't get the memo about chocolate cake being the only cake and my nephew Noah requested, gasp, a white cake. A white cake dyed in a rainbow of colors, mind you, but a white cake at heart nevertheless. What was I to do?

Fortunately my sister-in-law had sent me a recommendation for a killer white cake months ago. I'd been needing a reason to make it and here that reason stood in cute little blond-headed form.

Now I have to tell you that if my cake goddess sister-in-law hadn't recommended it, there's no way I would have picked this cake out of a line up. Why? The ingredients are posted kind of weird and the instructions are whacked. Still, I have to give the person who posted this credit. Because it's awesome. Not to toot my own horn or anything (toot toot), but it'll be even more awesome with the instructions below. (P.S. After writing this boast, I nearly forgot to list the sugar; don't worry; I caught it; whew.)


Best White Cake
adapted from food
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Cost: $1.85
eggs: .50, milk: .15, flour: .30, butter: .85, other stuff: .05

Note: You're going to have egg yolks on hand after this. Make yourself a lovely pudding. Or some ice cream. Of just add them to some regular eggs for a rich omelette.

5 egg whites
1 C buttermilk (or 1 scant cup milk mixed with 1 Tbsp white vinegar)
2 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 tsp vanilla
3 C cake flour (which I did use, although my sis-in-law says all purpose works too)
2 C sugar
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
12 Tbsp unsalted butter, very soft (if using salted, omit some or all of salt)
1 C boiling water
food coloring if your nephew is requesting a rainbow

Preheat oven to 350. Take 2 9-inch pans, grease them, line them with wax paper, and grease them again.

In small bowl combine buttermilk (or milk and vinegar) and baking soda.

In medium bowl whisk together egg white, 1/4 C of the milk mixture, and the vanilla. (Just whisk it until it comes together; you're not going for a lot of air in the whites or anything.)

In large bowl, combine remaining dry ingredients (including the sugar). Add the butter and the remaining 3/4 C milk mixture. Mix on low until moistened and then increase the mixing speed to medium and beat until well incorporated.

Gradually add the egg mixture, mixing to incorporate. (We kind of did this in batches. We added 1/3 of the mixture, then beat, then another 1/3, beat, then the last 1/3, and beat.) Scrape down the sides as you do this.

Add the boiling water and beat until everything is incorporated. It's going to be runny and you might feel nervous. Don't feel nervous. It'll be great.

Add food coloring if using. We poured our batter into the pans and then just gently swirled to get a green and a blue layer.

Bake 15-20 minutes. It should be taken out when you stick a fork in and it comes out with a few moist crumbs and is just barely starting to pull away from the edge (just barely). (Note: The original recipe said 35 minutes. I don't know what it is about cake recipes. I feel like many of them have you bake your cake until it's 2 days old. Maybe it's my oven, but I'm pretty sure it bakes at the correct temperature. Anyway, we checked ours at 20 minutes and it was definitely done, but if yours takes longer, don't despair.)

PRINTABLE RECIPE

'S' Is for Awesssome: A Cake Decorating Idea

Savannah is my best helper chef. Thus, it seems fitting that she be the one to set birthday trends around here. Last year, she started the four-layer rainbow cake thing (every birthday kid after that also requested this cake). This year, we took it to a whole new level with the teeny tiny flower rainbow-colored cake.

The good news about this cake is that it's easy. If, by easy, you mean 'does not require much skill or artistic gifting.' However, if by easy you mean 'takes 15 minutes,' you will have to look elsewhere. Because I'm not going to lie, the tiny flower creating took about an hour to do. On the one hand, it was kind of meditative. On the other hand it made my hand hurt. On the hand you don't have because you already used two, there was that frustrating moment near the end when Emma swiped her fingers down one side of tiny flower-dots and promptly shoved that hand in her mouth before I could cart her off to her room.

I found the idea for this on Pinterest. There's really no skill necessary, but you do need a frosting bag, a coupler, and the tip that makes the little flowers. If you're doing multiple colors, multiple bags and couplers would be nice so you can just put your colors into bags and then move your tip around. Here are some ideas.


(Don't expect a flower like that unless you're good. I just squirt some frosting out and mash it and it makes a sort of flower-dot/blob like you see in these pictures.


Or you could use one like the top one in this set. I think that's the kind that was used in the Pinterest picture. It should also give a bigger flower and that would save some time and hand cramping.


I use disposable bags because it keeps me off the crazy farm.


And these are couplers. They're the little white things that make it so your tip stays on your bag.

To create this cake, all you do is make the flower dots in one color all over the cake, but not touching. Then add another color and another and try to keep the same colors from touching. Like this:

pink

Then blue.

Then green. 

Then yellow.

And purple

And dark blue

A couple of tips:
1. You'll notice that I pre-frosted the cake with a thin layer of colored frosting. This is a good idea because if you run out of steam or time or frosting, the cake still looks really really good.
2. When you start with a color, put the flower-dots closer together than you think you should. Otherwise, you'll be mixing more colors near the end in order to fill up holes. This cake, for example, was supposed to only have 4 colors. It wound up with 6 because there were places that needed to be filled with a new and exciting color so that none of the same colors (heaven forbid) touched each other. Whew.

I made this 3-layer cake and frosted it with a recipe and a half of this vanilla frosting.

Basil Spinach Pesto

It's that pesto time of year. Basil is on and oh, I love it.

While basil, in and of itself, is not at all devoid of nutrition, it's still not quite the powerhouse that other things green and leafy are. I'm okay with that, but I did start wondering what would happen to my pesto if I mixed some spinach into it. Because, you know, when you're mixing green stuff into pasta made from white flour, well, you (and by 'you' I mean 'me') want to feel kind of good about yourself. I mean you really don't want to feel like the pickiest nine-year-old alive who is sitting across from you and eating his pasta with tomato sauce is actually getting more nutrition. Because that's just embarrassing. And then one day as I was pondering about spinach pesto, I found this. Okay, so I'm never the first one to a party, but that doesn't mean I can't take home a party favor.

Since pine nuts are expensive enough right now to set into a gold band, I used walnuts in this. I also omitted the Parmesan (as I always do in pesto, figuring you can add it into your dish later if you want it).

I was worried that the spinach and parsley would overpower the basil, but basil--she's a strong girl and can carry her own. I had this for lunch today and while it was a wee wee bit less basil-y than my classic pesto, it was still a basil-based pesto through and through. Truly, if I hadn't been trying to compare the spinach to the sans spinach versions, I never would have thought to notice a difference. In fact, if there is someone in your family who doesn't like classic pesto because it has so very very much basil-y kick (cough, Kip), this might be just the ticket as it is slightly more subdued. How awesome is that? You can please your picky eaters and trick them into eating spinach at the same time. I'm kind of freaking out about it it.

This was great on pasta and would be delicious on sandwiches, pizza, and over meat. You can also use it in your pasta sauces and meatballs (two places I love me some pesto), although here I must say that I do prefer the classic pesto in my meatballs and spaghetti sauce. That said, 'prefer' doesn't mean that this spinach-y one wasn't still very good in those things. It was good (and the difference was not noticed by anyone but me); it just wasn't quite as good.

Basil Spinach Pesto
adapted from Gluten Free A-Z Blog
Makes about 2 Cups (about enough to fill up an ice cube tray)
Prep time: 20-30 minutes (the de-leafing of the herbs gets you)
Cost: $2.00
basil: mine's from the garden and free; I'm guessing it would be .50-1.00, but don't know as I haven't bought it in several years; parsley: .20, spinach: .50, olive oil: .50-1.00)

Note: This recipe also calls for parsley (not too shabby nutritionally either). I did use parsley and this pesto really was great, but I think that if you don't have it, you could probably add another cup of spinach, basil or a combo of both to very good effect as the parsley adds only a very subtle mildness to the pesto.

2 C basil leaves
2 C spinach leaves
2 C parsley leaves
1/2-1 C walnuts (use sunflower seeds for a nut-free version)
4 cloves garlic
1/2-1 C olive oil

Clean and remove leaves from their stems. Peel and crush the garlic. Add ingredients to food processor or blender and process until smooth (The blender gives me a smoother pesto if you care about that sort of thing).

Store it. I freeze mine in ice cube trays, then plop them into a Ziploc bag. Then I can add 1 or 2 to sandwiches or a dip or whatever if I just need a small amount, which I often do.

PRINTABLE RECIPE