nailed it...at home

so you've seen "nailed it" on netflix, right?  the show where they bring on amateur bakers and have them recreate some sort of crazy concoction usually made of cake and fondant and assorted decorations, which usually results in hilarity because it's just so ridiculous.  well, they started doing a "nailed it at home" challenge - you buy a ticket, which gets you a box full of (almost) all the ingredients needed to put together a fun themed baked treat that you assemble while on a zoom call with a host and the other participants.

you know we had to do this. we love watching the show, although i'm definitely no good at cake decorating.  that's been proven time and time again.  heh.  i was pretty excited when the goodie box arrived, just a few days before the day of the challenge.

the first two steps of the process needed to be completed a few hours before the start of the zoom call, so on saturday morning i pulled everything out and mixed up the batter to bake the cake.  this is also when i realized that i didn't have a basic 13"x9" cake pan in the house.  i don't even know how that's possible.  i ended up using the one pan i had that's slightly bigger, and i just hoped the cake wouldn't be too thin.

here's the instruction card i was referring to, with a picture of what the finished cake would look like.

when it had cooled fully, i sliced the cake as directed.  it baked beautifully, and luckily wasn't as thin as i'd thought.  body and wings, ready!

the bean came out to join in the fun, and we logged on and waited for the party to start.

a few minutes later, we got to see how many other people were playing along.  there were a LOT - which makes sense, considering this was a virtual event and you could join in from pretty much anywhere.

our "show producer" appeared next, to welcome everyone and then introduce our host for the hour - cathy ang, one of the actresses in netflix's "over the moon."

we started the decorating process by spreading frosting all over the whole cake.  this wasn't easy, with the cake so soft and fresh and the frosting slightly stiff and thick.  the logical step here would have been to thin the frosting out a little, but we were on limited time and just worked with what we had.

one of the show's judges and baking experts, jacques torres, appeared on screen to offer some baking tips.  too bad he talked about how to bake the cake, which we'd already done, so it really wasn't helpful for us at that moment.

they threw out some "challenges" throughout the hour, like having to work with just one hand, not being on your feet, and this one...not using hands at all.

when we'd covered the cake sufficiently with frosting, we put it in the fridge to chill a little while we rolled out the fondant.

pictures didn't really happen here because our hands were such a mess from everything we were doing.  here's when we spread the fondant over the cake and tried to pat it into place, only to find that we were a little short for the nose of the rocket.  oops.

no worries, though.  we just used another piece of fondant and covered it up.  not perfect, but good enough.  and i kept getting cake crumbs stuck in it.  d-oh!

the rest of the decorating process went pretty quickly, using all of the candy and the candles we'd found in the box.

i think we did a halfway decent job, considering.  we got to see some of the other participants' creations and ours was up there in terms of recreating the basic shape and style of the example.  and then it was all over.

the messy aftermath:

and the final photos.

we even managed to take a time lapse video of the whole thing.  here's an hour of cake decorating fun condensed down to about 23 seconds:

they're doing another challenge next month, holiday-themed.  you know i've already joined the waitlist to buy a ticket for that one.  we can't wait.

birthday celebrations, 2020 style

the bean has a good number of friends who also have october birthdays.  in fact, two of her most cherished BFFs actually share a birthday, and they often celebrate together.  this year was different though, as it is for most other folks.  i'd suggested that we do a quick, properly socially distanced cake & ice cream gathering on one of their driveways, but we couldn't get our schedules synced up to make it happen.  this is where i also mention that both families are in the medical industry and are two of my most trusted friends, so i knew they were being cautious throughout this whole pandemic.  both girls had attended the bean's birthday car parade, and her friend soccer thought it was so much fun that she asked her mom to organize one for her too. 

her other buddy, brainiac, lives a little further away from the rest of us.  it would've been a little harder to get a bunch of their friends to head out for a parade, so the bean and i decided we'd just go over and surprise her with some balloons and presents after school on her actual birthday. brainiac's family is a bit more cautious, and so when we arrived we made sure to keep a good distance and placed the goodies on their porch.  i did manage to capture at least one photo to commemorate the occasion, though:

later that evening, we joined soccer and her family for birthday dinner out on the patio at cheesecake factory.

unlike the bean and me, soccer doesn't have a huge sweet tooth and isn't a chocolate fan at all.  sadly for her (but lucky for us), the only cake her dad was able to procure for her that morning was a chocolate one. and so when i got up the next morning - with her birthday parade scheduled for that afternoon - i decided to bust out a couple of old tried-and-true recipes, for a simple white cake with seven-minute frosting.  and because i like to make things more complicated than they need to be, i decided to try "tie-dying" the cake batter.  i divided it into four bowls and picked out some fun colors:

but i got distracted after spooning the colored batter into the prepared pans and forgot to swirl the colors together to create the tie-dye effect.  oops.  still, the layers were fun and colorful.

i mixed up that seven-minute frosting, and must have done something wrong because after five whole minutes of whipping it wasn't as light and fluffy as i remembered it being.  oh well.  i used it anyway, placing the first layer on the plate and topping it with a nice big dollop.

my original idea was to use all four layers, frosting just the top and leaving the sides bare.  except that as i continued to assemble it, i remembered that i suck at cake.  like, i always have these grand ideas but they never work out.  i really should just stick to cookies.

i got up to the third layer when things started to go sideways.  remembering the disaster that hit two years ago while making the bean's birthday cake, i pulled out some wooden skewers and placed them in the cake to keep the layers from sliding right off.  except that even with the reinforcement, i still had a leaning tower of cake happening.  and by then i was just kind over it and ended up frosting the whole damn thing after all.  i busted out some decorations from my arsenal of sprinkles and ended up with this:

and since i was also unsuccessful with the bean's cake last week (sense a pattern here?  i definitely need to start learning from my mistakes), i had this fun topper that didn't end up going unused after all.

i got the hub to drive us to the parade so that i could hold the cake on the way there.  i wasn't at all sure that the bean would keep it steady (sorry, kid, it's true) and so i wanted to be the one to try and keep it as safe as possible.  shockingly, we got all the way there without incident and i happily handed it over to the birthday girl's mom for safekeeping.

back at home, i'd used the leftover frosting to top the fourth layer of cake.  after we had dinner, i sliced it up and the bean and i got to have birthday cake after all.

better late than never, eh?

sweets for the sweet

so yeah, making meals at home has been lots of fun.  but you know what else is even better?  DESSERT.

a trip to the asian grocery store yielded a case of mangoes and a bag of sweet rice.  add some coconut milk, sugar and a little salt and you get the most delicious treat ever - mango sticky rice.

and because i'd opened a can of evaporated milk for something - maybe the mochi bubble waffles? - along with some leftover sweetened condensed milk that went in something else that i can't remember, i figured it was the perfect time to try my hand at a tres leches cake.  a quick google search later i was mixing it up and then a little while later i pulled this out of the oven:

so basically it's like a poke cake.  you let the cake cool for a bit before using a fork to poke a bunch of holes in the top and then you mix up the "syrup" and pour it on, saturating the cake completely.

refrigerate it for awhile and then mix up the topping.  most of the recipes i found actually called for whipped cream, but i wanted it to be like the cake we get at porto's so i went the meringue route.  i stuck it under the broiler for just a minute or two so the meringue got a little toasty and then we dug in.

holy moly...so good.  just looking at that makes me want to make it again and eat it all.

i did learn my lesson about making sure there's some space between the heating element for the broiler and the baking rack, though.  i learned that shit the hard way.  i'd mixed up a batch of salty & sweet s'mores bars and topped it with giant marshmallows:

and then i popped that pan into the oven with the broiler on, but didn't realize how close the pan was to the top.  when i opened the door a couple of minutes later, i was met with a pan of fire.  and i panicked.  thank goodness the old lady and her special friend were there, because i was literally frozen and couldn't remember any of the things we've been taught about fires in the kitchen.  the bean actually took video of my panic, the little shit.  and no, i'm not sharing it.  but here's what we ended up pulling out of the oven:

all we had to do was scrape the burnt layer off the top (although lots of people like their marshmallows all burnt like that) and the rest of it was fine.  but i think i was traumatized by the whole experience and couldn't bring myself to eat more than a bite or two.  oy vey.  such a failure.

speaking of failures, i also managed to screw up another s'mores-themed dessert.  i'd seen a few people post about making s'mores eggrolls using their air fryer, which sounded delicious.  so i decided to give it a shot.

i assembled three of those bad boys and put them into the air fryer, where the marshmallows decided they didn't want to stay inside the wrappers and exploded right out onto the rack.  yarg.

by the time i turned it off and pulled them out of there, it was a sticky mess and the marshmallows were pretty much eviscerated.

on a brighter note, i did bust out a pretty good chocolate bundt cake.

AND i even dipped a toe back into the cookie making waters with this super fun request from a friend who'd finalized her divorce after six long years.

this copycat starbucks lemon loaf went to a friend who helped us out when we were in a bind:

a super random craving had me going back to smitten kitchen's almond-vanilla rice pudding recipe, something i hadn't made in probably a decade.  it was so good, i made a second batch two days later.

and lest you think the poor hub was being left out of all the dessert-y goodness, here's a keto-friendly cheesecake i made for him:

plus a lemon bundt cake that he really seemed to enjoy.

i've got a recipe for some japanese bakery-style milk bread that i've been dying to try, and there's a rum cake that's calling my name.  OH!  and we finally put all of our fitness equipment in the old lady's old room, so now there's no excuses.

bring on the sweets!