Creative title, I know. Salads are fun, though. You can put any mix of things in them and they come out wonderfully every time. (as opposed to a cake or cookies or such, in which everything must be measured out precisely.) Nothing beats a salad for simplicity, well, aside from fresh vegetables alone, but what fun is that?

Julienning is an art to be mastered.

I still have yet to master it. Maybe in a few years. They’re still pretty little things, carrots, however they may be cut. And thus, my outcome.

Happily piled into a dish.

I had in this: one Asian pear, sliced into rectangularish pieces; a few leaves of red leaf lettuce, cut into square pieces; two carrots, julienned; a quarter tomato, cut into wedges; and a quarter cucumber, cut into long thin wedges, seeds removed. I topped it with balsamic vinaigrette, which I just love.

For my sister’s birthday, I made a cake, a chocolate cake because she loves them. Personally I don’t fancy them so much, I’d much rather indulge in a fruity cake. Chocolate is better suited in other applications, such as ganache, or hot cocoa. Or even, plain boring chocolate bars. Anyway, I followed orders of my father and created a chocolate cake (or two). The cake recipe is for a German chocolate cake, which somehow isn’t even German, but American. Who would’ve thought? I replaced the traditional coconut-pecan frosting with a mocha buttercream. The espresso was definitely overpowering, even with the pure cocoa bar I used, so if I was to make this again I would either up the chocolate, or lower the espresso content.

Four ounces baking chocolate, chopped.

 

There is a silicone spatula somewhere in there.

 

Combine beaten egg whites with the previous mixture.

 

Freshly baked, in five inch cake pans, yes.

Frost with mocha buttercream.

The buttercream recipe called for semisweet chocolate. I used100% cocoa and it still wasn’t very chocolatey. Oh well, I think it’s just me, I like my chocolate rich and very dark. The chocolate I snack on has a cocoa content of 85%. Compare that to the typical 10% in milk chocolate, or the 50% or so that is in so called dark chocolate. Yeah. I’m probably an extremist.

So immediately after I finished frosting, Liz was all ready to cut it. Like, I nearly didn’t get that last shot because of this. So I took the knife from her and got my photo. And then I proceeded to cut her a fairly large sized slice, and she cried out “that isn’t big enough” Yeah sure whatever, here, have a quarter of the cake. It’s what she wanted, and for her birthday, whatever floats her boat. =D So yeah, in the photo, that big missing part of the cake in the background was her “slice”.

 

And thus…

I also made a shorter two layer version, because I was concerned that this one would collapse with another two layers. And it very well could have considering after cutting away a good portion it was ready to topple over.

The recipes came from the book The Art of Chocolate, by Elaine González.