Cake Tuesday: lovebirds.

Alinea. A destination I've dreamed of since I read the New Yorker article about Grant Achatz and his restaurant in May of 2008. It only took four years, a lot of discussion, several phone calls and two wonderful friends to make it a reality. And it was better than I'd even imagined. The restaurant itself is so understated - not even a sign out front - with soft, neutral colors and lighting, and friendly, completely unpretentious waitstaff. We arrived at least fifteen minutes early but were seated right away, and the next three and a half hours (and nineteen courses) passed too quickly. All the tables were taking pictures - it certainly wasn't discouraged - but my iPhone does the food a disservice. Scroll through the gallery on their website to really get a sense of the breathtaking art and creativity behind every bite. I'll share a few pictures just to help describe a few of the dishes:

As one course began, this platter that was set in the middle of the table. We were each served a small plate of lamb (three different preparations), and this arrangement of over 50 beautiful accompaniments was the centerpiece. We were instructed to select a couple of tastes to go with each bite of the lamb, so every bite was unique and delicious.

These helium-filled edible balloons were green apple taffy, with edible taffy string.

Dessert - strawberries, english peas, lemon, and white chocolate. An exquisite mess on the table that we all just dug into. Frozen bits and melty bits and cotton candy and tiny profiteroles and flower petals and cream. Indescribable and unforgettable, really, just like the whole evening.

The rest of our visit was mainly spent in Wisconsin. One day we drove up to Taliesin, touring Frank Lloyd Wright's school of architecture and former home, as well as his gravesite. We stopped at the Old Feed Mill in Mazomanie on the way back to Chicago - we had dinner and old fashioneds (Wisconsin's state drink, apparently), made with homemade cherry bounce, which were fantastic - I can't wait to get fresh cherries next month and make some.

Another day we drove to the Hamilton Type Museum (Ondine and Adam have a personal and professional interest) in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, which was heartbreaking and wonderful.

This is where most of the wood type in the entire world was made until 1984 (when the Mac and desktop publishing was born). The museum still has over a million pieces of type, and still produces thousands of printed pieces a year, but its future is uncertain as the building's owner is shutting down its (separate) business and selling the property. So much history and global significance in one small place.

(Two Rivers is also, incidentally, where ice cream sundaes were first created.)

On the cake front, here is a clean, classic design I just finished - buttercream rounds with edible gold ribbon. The hearts and lovebirds on the base tier were copied from the couple's own design, on their website and invitations. Sweet and simple!

Cake Tuesday: decisions, decisions.

Dessert buffets are growing more popular by the minute - it's so fun to let guests sample lots of small treats in addition to a slice of delicious cake. One of this weekend's buffets included these tiny ollalieberry tarts:

adorable mini cheesecakes:

as well as housemade sea salt caramels, bittersweet chocolate truffles, Meyer lemon bars, margarita jelly shots (it WAS Cinco de Mayo, after all), and two flavors of wedding cake.

Something, surely, to please nearly everyone.

I haven't posted any cat pictures in far too long, and will lose my budding reputation as a crazy cat lady. So allow me to reintroduce you to Hadley, who for the most part is only sweet when she is sleeping:

And I'll leave you with this shot, which I took on a walk with some girlfriends last week when it debated storming very briefly:

The sky looked like a Turner painting.

Cake Tuesday: catching up in pictures.

Where to begin?! So first we went to Tahoe, because I haven't been boarding in a year and the season's been pretty dull up there but we just got some big storms that helped out:

There weren't many people at ALL, and the snow was great, and the weather was fantastic. We are apparently going CAT-SKIING next winter; I am hoping to get up to the snow at least one more time this year so I don't kill myself in Canada. We got back from the mountains to record waves and sunshine in Santa Cruz:

They don't look like much in this dinky photo but you can see the wharf out there in the background - these were huge. And there were a couple of crazy surfers out there trying to take them on - it was breathtaking to watch.

Then I went to Los Angeles to spend a few days with my mom; we had a super-fun visit. She NEVER STOPS COOKING. I convinced her to let me take them out for breakfast one morning, because I'd read about Lamill Coffee and wanted to go. The article had raved (about this and other "best coffee places in the US", so I made notes for Chicago, San Francisco, and New York), but the Yelp reviews are fairly negative (small portions, surly hipster staff, high prices), and I was reluctant to take my mom and stepdad into a potentially un-fun situation. I should know better than to trust Yelp. It was fantastic. The wait staff were charming and friendly, the portions really generous, and the prices pretty reasonable. The coffee was unbelievably delicious, and we got there early enough to try their legendary housemade beignet donuts:

(I could have eaten the entire plate but I shared.)

Driving home I hit a freak storm on the Grapevine - it was really scary (but apparently not scary enough for me to stop trying to take pictures of the scariness with my phone):

Cars were skidding out all over the place. Once I got over the pass it warmed up and cleared up, and the rest of the drive was fine. Mom sent me home with 10 pounds of kumquats (from a friend's neighbor's tree); I like kumquats a lot but I wasn't sure I could eat 10 pounds:

So I made marmalade. (Which was an ordeal.) But now I have plenty of kumquat marmalade, and even better, I actually have some weddings this year where I will use it.

This weekend was my ten-year wedding anniversary; we have a couple of big trips coming up, so we stayed close to home over the weekend, although I won't say we took it easy:

This is the start of a big loop in Garrapata State Park, through redwood canyons and along high ridge peaks. The whole loop is around seven miles, and takes 3-4 hours to complete. It's insanely steep in sections but the views are lovely, and near the end, just before the descent, is a wooden bench where you can collapse on a rock outcropping overlooking the ocean:

If you look really carefully you can see the barn as a tiny white dot near the road in the upper left. It was a great way to spend the day and certainly relevant to our ten years - whining about how hard things seem and then turning some small corner and realizing how amazing they actually are.

I'll leave you with yet another cherry blossom cake - this one was gluten-free, and wrapped in white chocolate. You've seen the dark chocolate version here, but in white chocolate it's just as pretty:

Cake Tuesday: elegant simplicity.

Last night I was lucky enough to see Jeff Mangum perform in Oakland - something I never thought would happen when  I fell in love with this album 12 years ago and discovered that the band had just broken up and the lead singer/songwriter hated touring. Amazingly, he changed his mind a few years ago and has done small tours, mostly solo performances. His voice is indescribably powerful, and he often uses it like an instrument, with sounds rather than words, sustaining certain notes longer than seems possible. It was fantastic, and the audience was really polite and well-behaved - I think everyone was just so happy to be there.  Here's a sample, if you are unfamiliar: 

This is one of the cakes from the weekend's weddings - it was at a private estate just south of Carmel, with gorgeous views overlooking the bay. The weather was perfect - sunny and breezy - and the cake matched the understated elegance of the whole affair:

Whipped cream cake with fresh strawberries, and red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, all frosted with Italian meringue buttercream. The pattern on the central tier was copied from their invitation design. (Photo taken by the talented Meghan Bailey.)

Not much to say and no time to say it.

It's my last relatively quiet week before things explode, so instead of lying around staring at the ceiling or working my way through my latest stack of books, I've undertaken my twice-yearly Major Cleaning - the kind where you wash the curtains and the windows and empty the cupboards and the fridge and move EVERYTHING out of the closets and from under the bed. It was fine when I started, all sunny and crisp and I could throw open the windows and hum and pretend I was in some Disney movie, then it started to rain and it hasn't been quite as fun.

I also zested and juiced 100 lemons today - at this point I've made mountains of lemon curd, vats of preserved lemons, and gallons of limoncello, so I'm just freezing the zest and juice for future use. And the tree is still loaded. We've also got artichokes coming out our ears:

They're so delicious and so PROLIFIC. We started out with seven plants and have given at least that many away and probably still have at least a dozen plants in the garden. Luckily they're one of my favorite foods. These are solidly housed in one raised bed; one bed is devoted at the moment to collards and kale (I'm still eating kale EVERY day in those green drinks!); and the third is full of borage, waiting for the year's installment of tomatoes. Borage is so pretty - the flowers are edible, and apparently planting them near tomatoes makes the tomatoes sweeter. I used the blossoms at a party this weekend for these:

Becaue the tequila is muddled with cucumber, the borage flowers (which taste like cucumber) are the perfect decoration. They were a huge hit - pretty AND guaranteed to make you loopy.  Speaking of huge hits of the weekend - I told you I was thinking of making homemade Twinkies for a white trash potluck? Behold:

They weren't hard to make at all, and were surprisingly delicious, but the extra frosting did turn REALLY weird by the next morning - you can definitely not make these in advance. Luckily they were the first thing to disappear at the party - they barely had time to cool completely.

Cake Tuesday: catching up.

Well it's been an interesting few weeks. For starters I just found out that we landed a huge, huge (HUGE) job. So exciting and scary and fun. We will quite literally be up to our ears in mini desserts.

I went to North Carolina to visit my family last week, and while I'd love to show you the fantastic shots I got of lighthouses, beaches, boats, oyster shells, and oyster shooters, mostly what I have to show for it is this:

with a little of this:

and quite a bit of this:

This particular version is accompanied by a high-pitched, protracted squeal. My poor, poor phone. All this from stupidly clicking YES to a prompt to install a settings update while sitting on the plane before takeoff at RDU. All I had to do was click NO, switch to airplane mode, and settle in with my (newly purchased) trashy kindle airplane novel, 200+ photos safely intact. Somehow saying yes caused a huge meltdown, resulting in the phone completely corrupting itself beyond recovery and all of my pictures being lost forever. Thank you, Apple.  Many many HUNDREDS of dollars later, I now have Siri, and I have AppleCare protection (for what that's worth), but I have no photos.

I had loaded a couple on Facebook, like this gorgeous beach shot on Ocracoke Island, so you can be just a little bit jealous instead of a lot:

It was fantastic as always - Ocracoke is a treasure and I haven't been since I was a kid; it's a 27-mile ferry ride to get there, then a 14-mile drive from the landing point into the historic town. And we visited the Hope Plantation, where we toured the main house, built in 1803, as well as the King-Bazemore house which was built in 1763, both beautifully restored and full of period art and furniture. And I ate my weight in shrimp and oysters all week, finishing up with she-crab soup and the best key lime pie in the world at Basnight's. (It's become a much-anticipated tradition. And my addiction is such that I've actually bought entire pies to take away. But not to share.) This was certainly one of the best trips ever, except for a brief and unexpected side trip to Raleigh's finest ER (not for me! and everyone involved is ok!), and of course the death of my phone.

On the cake front, while individual desserts are certainly the hottest trend, individual cakes fall into this category, too. Here is an example of some tiny Tiffany boxes I just made - each one hand-grated carrot cake with organic maple cream cheese frosting.

So CUTE. (The XIX is special to the bridal couple.) This weekend in addition to delivering cakes I'm attending a white-trash potluck... I think I'm baking these, just because I actually want to eat what I make (although I must admit that this recipe was tempting...).

Cake Tuesday: Blossoms.

It's been 70 degrees for awhile now, and everything is blooming, from the lavender and roses to the plum trees and asian pears.

We had a Santa Rosa plum that had pink blossoms, but the gophers got it a couple of years ago. Now we have two plums, different varieties planted close together that we hope will grow together into a tangled mess of deliciousness, and both have these beautiful white blossoms.

I've been cleaning out the garden beds and planting collards and kale; it's too late for a winter garden and too early for tomatoes, but I can't stay indoors in this weather and not play in the dirt. I always say THIS is the year I will exercise more and eat more vegetables. It's almost March and I'm not really doing well on the exercise front, but I am conquering my 7-dailies with enthusiasm, thanks to our newest appliance. In less than a minute, this:

Becomes this:

It might not look appealing but it is DELICIOUS. The fruit makes it sweet and the kale makes me feel virtuous. I think this will be my favorite appliance of all time. It came with a book of recipes but so far I'm just picking handfuls of random things and seeing what happens. A little too much fresh ginger this morning, with celery, pear, grapes, kale, and cucumber. Tomorrow I'm throwing in some fennel.

Separate note - how 'bout the Oscars! I was crossing my fingers for The Artist and I'm so, so glad it won. I thought it was incredibly well done - creative and innovative and moving and funny. And Dujardin and Streep both had my votes, too. I wanted the Tuba movie to win the best live action short, but the Irish winner wasn't bad. There haven't been a lot of movies I've wanted to see, although Pina is on my current list (I'm not a fan of 3D, though) - the previews are breathtaking.

Speaking of breathtaking, in a rare happy fluke I was able to see my bride on Sunday - she happened to be coming through during picture sets, and she looked fantastic. (Often the groom is hanging around the reception site with his groomsmen, looking nervous, but the bride is usually sequestered away with her bridesmaids, in a flurry of last-minute touches to hair and makeup.) I didn't get a shot of her, but she was so happy to get a sneak peek at her cake - four tiers of ivory fondant, covered with blooming cherry branches:

The florist had even found a couple of real branches blooming and tucked them into the arrangement at the welcome table. Two tiers were Meyer lemon cake with English lavender buttercream, and two tiers were bittersweet chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream. And there was a small Harvey Wallbanger cake just for the groom. Most recipes start with a cake mix, which I couldn't bring myself to do, so I searched until I found a recipe from scratch. All the cocktail components were there - fresh orange juice, vodka and Galliano - and it turned out great! (Confession: I ate an entire mini test cake by myself... I have to balance out those ridiculously healthy smoothies with SOMETHING, don't I?)