Somehow, I just plain forgot to take any pictures of last week's Cake Thursday cake. Though it did look like any old chocolate sheet cake with chocolate frosting, it was not—it contained a secret ingredient.
This was the invite I sent out:
I watched as everyone ate and tried to guess. After everything from beets and sweet potatoes to cyanide (?!) were called out, I paused, as the small crowd circled around me, and said...
"Sauerkraut."
A simultaneous gasp was emitted, followed by puzzled looks and laughter. You could absolutely not taste the sauerkraut, though it did add a little texture to the cake. And a very good cake it was: richly chocolaty, moist, and dense. Though the recipe I used came from Maida Heater's wonderful book,
Cakes (now out-of-print, though available used
online), a basic
Google search reveals plenty of others to choose from should you be interested.
______________________________________________
My co-worker, Amy, recently celebrated a birthday. In honor of the occasion, I baked a Hummingbird Cake, one of her favorites. As a pretty spur-of-the-moment decorator, I used a color printout of a hummingbird taped to a coffee stirrer to personalize it for her.
_______________________________________________
Last, but not least,
I finally made it to the Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar.
The pastry chef, Christina Tosi (whom I recognized from reading
this New York magazine interview), kindly let me take an action shot of her at work:
After fawning over her for a moment, (I'm a sucker for pastry chefs—they're like movie stars to me.) I bought a cereal milk and a slice of the Pistachio Cake. The milk was consumed on the spot. It tasted, well, exactly like its name. As a fan of such tastes, I loved it.
The cake was packed up in a box...
for the subway ride home with me. I finally dug into it later that evening.
It was quite good, moist and bright, though I will admit to it tasting a little like Fruity Pebbles...
Maybe cereal milk is her secret ingredient?
