That said, could there be a nicer way to end a busy day? A mug of red tea and this:

Asparagus, roasted with a little olive oil and a little parmigiano reggiano, topped with a fried cage-free egg. Not a slice of cake, but oh gosh, such an cozy transition from summer to fall.

I know, I know…how is that even possible?! Well…I’m sad or maybe proud to say I’ve discovered and in fact breached the upper limit of acceptable frosting production (measured, of course, in cubic feet per cake.)

This weekend I had to ask myself a serious question. Does cake love me? As I mentioned before I’ve been on a diet for the past few weeks…slow going, but I’m pleased to say things are finally paying off. Seven pounds to go! I’ve been tracking what I eat in Excel, mostly as an excuse to play with Excel because I’m lame, but ALSO because it’s a good way to make sure I’m being honest with myself and track my progress and all that. It’s really the most OCD spreadsheet ever…I’m not anal about much, but what I am anal about…seems pretty arbitrary. Anyway:) A good friend from my old job had a baby shower this weekend, so it was the perfect opportunity to try out one of the most thrillingly decadent recipes I’ve been saving away for a better, thinner time.

A long time ago, I had a slice of cake with regular frosting on top, but cheesecake between the layers. I’m pretty sure it was from Costco haha…now granted, Costco is not exactly a Parisian patisserie, but for a warehouse where you can buy spray cheese in 20 lb increments, it puts out some pretty tasty baked goods…dare I say…among the top mass produced pastries out there?? It’s weird to think about. But anyway. The cheesecake filling was a little softer and creamier than normal but not so much that it seemed like the no-bake kind. It was delicious. In fact, it blew my mind. And so, after quite a few years of searching madly for a recipe that was close at least, you can imagine my excitement when, while browsing the Food Network site, I happened upon a recipe for—get this—“Chocolate Layer Cake with Cheesecake Filling” by the one and only Paula Deen. Now I adore Paula, if not only for her unflinching dedication to deep frying at every opportunity (she also has a recipe for deep fried pumpkin cake. Dear God. Maybe Thanksgiving) but I have yet to actually try out one of her recipes. This one wasn’t rated yet eeeither, so I knew I was taking a bit of a chance, but it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially because the baby showeree is equally passionate about cheesecake.

Onward!

Oh lord. So I’ve established that I’m sorely lacking in kitchen experience. Still, I should have taken one look at the recipe and known something was terribly wrong. But I pressed on, knowing Paula to be an envelope pusher and like…famous for her incredible cooking. As I beat 12 ounces of chocolate…

…quite a bit of chocolate…

…into the two sticks of butter the recipe called for and then proceeded to add 6 cups of powdered sugar, I think I actually said out loud, “Alriiiight Paula, if you say so…” never imagining that when I was done, I would have roughly 3 lbs of frosting-flavored chunks that best resembled dog food—3 tablespoons of Amaretto was supposedly enough to get it to the proper consistency. Roughly half a jug of milk later, things were looking a little better—essentially it produced several pounds of marginally spreadable fudge. Pretty tasty…I mean, butter…sugar…chocolate…but just too sweet and rich for the cake.

Now the cake. Maybe I messed up, but reducing the water by that much and adding half a cup of Amaretto made it pretty bitter and dry. So now I have 2.5 lbs of frosting and a bitter and dry cake in the freezer…rainy days do appear out of nowhere from time to time:)

I’m sure either I goofed or the recipe wasn’t quite entered correctly, but I ended up remaking everything but the cheesecake insert which…I meeeeean….it was good. Just a bit grainy. I’d probably add more sour cream next time. Instead of using the fudgy frosting, I made a chocolate cream cheese frosting which seemed to mesh well. So ok:) Here’s my version of the recipe:

—

The idea is to have your cake look like this:

Cake

Frosting

Cheesecake

Frosting

Cake

or:

…and then cover the whole thing with more frosting:) Since I had it, I used a small fraction of the fudgy frosting on either side of the cheesecake, and frosted the top and sides of the cake with the cream cheese frosting. This worked out very well, but it’s probably not worth the extra work, unless you happen to have several pounds of fudgy frosting in your freezer. Like I will for the next year or so:)

Ok so for each part…

For the cake:

Make a chocolate cake in two 9” round pans. You can attempt to tweak the original recipe, or use your favorite—something darker and less sweet is probably ideal, due to the voluminous robes of frosting that await it. On the same note, I’d go for something dense enough to hold up under the weight of all that frosting, plus a (thin but still substantial) cheesecake.

For the cheesecake filling:

2 (8 oz) packages Neufchatel

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

(I added Amaretto because the recipe said to…really, though, you couldn’t taste it…you could do a little vanilla or almond extract if you feel so inclined though!)

Line a 9” cake pan with foil, so the foil drapes over the edges. Preheat the oven for 300.

Beat the cream cheese at medium speed until creamy. Add the sugar, then the eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Add the sour cream (and extract if you’d like)—beat until everything is smooth and creamy, and pour into the pan. Bake for 45 minutes, then turn off the oven and let it sit in there with the door closed for another hour. Afterwards, set the pan on a wire rack and let the cheesecake cool completely—cover and chill it for at least 4 hours. When you’re ready to put the cake together, just pull out the cheesecake by the foil, peel off said foil (…as I’m sure you know:)…) and whap it between the layers!

For the frosting:

6 tablespoons butter, softened

1 (8 oz) package Neufchatel

3 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled to room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

Beat the butter and cheese til creamy, add the chocolate and vanilla and mix until it’s well-blended. Add the confectioner’s sugar gradually, and then beat everything until it’s nice and fluffy. Tada!

Also the best way to get your toasted marshmallow fix…oh thoughts mashmallow products invading my head…

Lucky for me, this isn’t a exactly a food blog… but because I’m dieting and fasting and all that, food is at the forefront of my mind, and I can’t help but focus on it for just a little while.

Since I’m fasting, though, I can be a little less strict about the diet. In other words, it’s my big chance to eat whatever the heck I want…within reason…precisely at sundown.   

Today, I thought I’d take the opportunity to cook up all those vegetables I got from the farmers market…interestingly enough, my lovely local spread made up all the major ingredients of ratatouille!…plus green beans… and peaches.  So I went to the (grocery store) bakery for a nice crusty loaf of Italian bread, and made a ratatouille panini!

Check out the inside of this eggplant…so creamy and beautiful!

A long time ago, Bon Appétit had a recipe for grilled ratatouille, so I tried to do something similar to that. I chopped everything up, tossed it in a little garlic olive oil, and grilled it (since I live in an apartment, I had to use a grilling pan siiiigh. But everything still turned out ok:))  Behold, a big pile of grilled stuff!

After everything was grilled, I heaped as much of it as I could (not much at all, I’m afraid) between slices of bread brushed with olive oil and added some crushed basil from the garden, a pretty liberal drizzle of balsamic vinegar, and as much fresh feta as I could mound on there (again, hardly any…if there was a way to get more of it on there, that would be awesome.)

Put it on the George Foreman for five minutes and tada!!! A delicious panini.

This turned out to be the perfect thing to chow into after a busy day of chores and no eating. The white eggplant was a little funny…kind of tart and bitter (which is odd, because everything I read about them says they’re supposed to be more tender and mild…so something could have gone wrong on my end haha…still though, I think I’ll try a different variety next time.) But everything else, especially the feta cheese! was delicious. Which is good since I’ll be eating this for the next week.  I feel rather successful! I also have a craving for some Fluff. Oh sugar…

It’s the last day of August, which is so hard to believe. There’s a huge race now between my eggplant, which has yet to produce anything resembling an eggplant, and the frost. First blossoms showed up the other day, but I have the feeling vegetables are still a ways away. But still, I’m crossing my fingers.  I planted the seeds back in February so I really don’t know why it’s so behind schedule!

I couldn’t decide on which kind of eggplant to get so I opted for one I’d never tried: this white one! How smooth and creepy and wonderful! Apparently eggplants got their name from these white ones…for obvious reasons. Funny—I’ve always thought it was because eggplants taste eggy. Ah, the power of suggestion:)

Later on I had some friends over who, after an evening of gin, had understandably worked up an appetite. So we made holey eggs, which is something I hadn’t done in ages. If you’ve never done this before, you should make one right now by:

1)      Melting an enormous amount of butter in a frying pan

2)      Cutting out a hole, just larger than the circumference of a golf ball maybe, in the center of a slice of bread.

3)      Placing both the slice and the cutout in the pan

4)      Cracking an egg into the hole

5)      Salting, peppering and flipping as needed until the egg is cooked through and the bread is nice and toasty.

This is drunk food at its best. I googled “holey egg” to see if I could find a nice picture, since I didn’t take any and don’t plan on making any more anytime soon:) Sadly, most of the pictures that came up were there because people misspelled “holy,” not because they depicted anything holey:/ But here’s one…and it looks completely awesome. Lilyandchew puts my eggs to shame!

My favorite blogs are by people with a lot of talent and stuff to share. Hence the blog. I, however, am very much at the base of the learning curve when it comes to crafts and cooking and baking and gardening and all the other exciting activities one fills a blog with. So what’s my contribution?

Well, I thought it would at the very least be amusing to chart my epic failures (and maybe even occasional successes!!) as I charge boldly ahead into activities that I somehow love in spite of having no idea how to do them. This is also a nice place for me to indulge in cataloging all of my very favorite things about life, because, after all, what is a blog if not at least a little self-indulgent?

Let’s start with today.

Actually let’s start with tomorrow. Ah, off to a good start:)