Christmas cake, and what to bake?

It is that time of year again when I start thinking about Christmas cake. For the past six years I have been obsessed with the heavy fruit cakes (and Christmas puddings) that my mom always made in September. She would wrap them up in layers and layers of tinfoil and keep them in a sturdy Tupperware. Every so often she would open up the container and douse them liberally in brandy, then re-wrap them in tinfoil with such care, akin to the way you swaddle a newborn. 

In December the Christmas cakes would make their debut along with tons of marzipan and Royal Icing and we would spend all day sticking our fingers into bowls, or trying to steal pieces of the marzipan, or arguing about who gets to put which special cake ornament where. It was a very special time for us, so much so that I have attempted to recreate it here at home. The only major issues with this whole endeavor lead to the expense of the cake, and the few people who would actually eat it. 

I personally am incapable (as is my mom) of having Christmas cake in the house in my freezer. I know logically it can keep for years. You have to understand that in my thinking, Christmas cake with a thick wedge (the thicker the marzipan the happier I am) of marzipan clinging for dear life onto the apricot jam smeared side of a dark heavy brandy laced fruit cake is the perfect 100% complete meal for breakfast, lunch, dinner as well as any tea times... or midnight snacks. A single piece of the cake, about the length of your index finger, and about an inch thick, has at least 400 calories. So I DON'T want to make a cake like that, not until we have a full house again for Christmas. Or I will be forced to eat it whilst entirely sedentary in the recliner, covered in a blanket, in the dark basement, all by myself... 

Which lead me to thinking about other alternatives for our Christmas cake. My mom recently came back from London with a bevy of miniature fondant snowmen and 'silver balls' which you can not get here in the USA because the FDA has decided that silver food coloring is harmful. The FDA has already stolen Biltong from me, as well as Royal Icing is considered dangerous because of the salmonella threat. So the FDA really can go and jump. I think they should go and target some of the strange Asian foods and leave my cake and dried meat alone. Back to the silver balls, they look amazing on cupcakes. 

So I first thought that carrot cupcakes would be fun. But then my mom reminded me what about Red Velvet Cake, which we both don't eat because of all of the red dye you have to use in the recipes... so I went on a little research binge on the history of the Red Velvet Cake. It was supposed to (many different theories) be first served at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in the 1920's. It is a light chocolate, moist cake, coloured with beetroot! In the South, Red Velvet Cake is a big favourite, just like sweet tea. 

So I just think this looks like so much fun, and it looks delicious, so I  wanted to share this from SophistiMoms Blog.  She did all the hard work and experimentation for us.







All Natural Red Velvet Cake
2 large beets (enough for 1 1/2 cups puree)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 sticks (16 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened, but not quite room temperature
1 8 ounce package of cream cheese, softened slightly
2 1/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 tablespoons natural (not dark or dutch processed) cocoa powder
cream cheese frosting (recipe follows)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (165 degrees celsius). Place beets in a small baking dish and add a 1/2 cup of water. Cover with parchment paper and foil, and roast until quite tender, about 60-90 minutes. Allow to cool completely.
2. Butter 3 8 inch cake pans. Cut out parchment paper circles and place in the bottoms of the pans. Butter the parchment paper and dust with flour. Set aside. Peel the beets and cut into large chunks. Place in a food processor (or a very good blender) with the lemon juice, and pulse until smooth and pureed. Stir in the vinegar.
3. In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and cream cheese. Pour in sugar and mix until smooth. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing well until each is incorporated. Mix in vanilla.
4. While ingredients are mixing, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder in a separate bowl. Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Measure out 1 1/2 cups of the beet puree mixture, and fold into the cake batter. Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans. Tap pans on the counter to remove any air bubbles.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean. Invert cakes onto cooling racks, and allow to cool completely. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate or freeze until ready to frost.
cream cheese frosting
2 packages cream cheese, at room temperature
2 sticks (16 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 pound (4 cups) confectioner’s (powdered) sugar
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon pure almond extract
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Switch to the whisk attachment, and mix until smooth and slightly fluffy.

From http://www.sophistimom.com/red-velvet-cake-all-natural-no-red-dye/

"Toddlers in Tiara's" : their mamas and their dramas...

We watch Toddlers in Tiara's on TLC with great relish. Firstly its not the kind of show you stay up to watch. You record it and on a lazy day, you grab your kiddos (my six year old loves to watch it with me) and make a bowl of popcorn and just enjoy this little glimpse into other peoples realities. 

I don't think the moms are necessarily 'bad moms'... because there are far worse mothers out there. I felt awful when I saw a mom force an 18 month old (with barely any hair) to wear a hair piece, and when they put the bobby clips in it hurt the baby (the older step sister winced when the baby got hurt, but the mother didn't).... I do see the GOOD and I do see having a very driven daughter needing a way to channel her energy... I just don't think it would work in our house hold. 

Last night there was an 11 year old girl Sydney who was just gorgeous and brilliant. She was "facially gifted" (real term from the show)... but they showed a clip of her doing her competition style cheering and this kid was amazing. So I can see her leading her mom a bit and giving her mom something to be excited about. 

Just who are these people? How do they pay for this stuff? I mean they have boxes and boxes of $1500 frilly bedazzled dresses... fake hair, fake teeth, fake tans, kids get waxed and manicures, pedicures, professional make up artists... I mean this is way more than simply playing fancy dress. This is fancy dress on steroids. 

As a South African, growing up with immense poverty right in front of you all of the time, I find excess to be perverted and disgusting. I know that necessarily my view is not the 'norm'. But in my life, for me, less is more. Everything that I buy has an intrinsic and extrinsic value attached to it. Is this item useful. Can it be used many times by many different people? Who can I give it to when I am done with it? 

I dress my kids well, they both have their 'own things' and their 'special' things, but they're not overly provided with things that amuse them, or things that are pretty, or things that are perfect. My kids play with the garden hose. The broom. Plastic chairs in the garden. Rocks. Lizards. We try to teach them that what counts is on the inside. Its how kind you are, not when you have to be. How useful you are to society. How brave you are in the face of adversity. How sincere you can be when you could choose to be controversial or argumentative. How the only things you need in life are inside of your heart, and can never be taken from you. 


So some of the things the parents say on Toddlers in Tiara's are just so weird to me. The lessons taught (and oh the kids believe every word the parents say) don't apply to the real world. Like how is pouting and pointing to your cheeks whilst wearing "Weston Wear" supposed to help you make friends, or to find a career, or to make you feel comfortable in your own skin without the glitz, hair spray, and fake eyelashes? 


I mean don't get me wrong. Girls do need a sort of finishing school and guidance from their moms and families on how to dress, what works, what doesnt work,  which make up and skin care products to use etc, but to dress a four year old up and to tell her shes only worthy because shes beautiful is so terrible to me. 


The outside world is so shallow. Your mom especially and your family are supposed to be your sanctum of sanctums. You're supposed to be able to be who you are supposed to be, without pageant coaching, within the safety of your home. 


So in my house, we applaud inner beauty, good decisions, thinking things through. We applaud Christ like qualities. I truly think that is what counts. And not how many trophies and crowns you can stick on your kids bedroom wall. 

The sum of my family is this: That they love the Lord. Nothing else matters.

Fronds of optimism.

I have had such a strange and busy week. I think its soccer being added into my schedule, the lack of swimming and sunlight, new stupid stress (I lost my car keys), making tiramisu for 50 people and taking photos at a wedding this Saturday that is also weighing heavily on my mind. 

Essentially I have a darling husband and adorable childers that love me. And everything else is just superfluous noise trying to distract me from my happiness. 

I stayed up with my neighbours daughter making the tiramisu. I use the Williams-Sonoma recipe and I made my own Genoise sponge cake instead of buying lady fingers from Publix. I needed 96 servings of lady fingers... Publix would never carry that amount. In fact the selection of lady fingers has been appalling. 

Generally, we South Africans, prefer to make tiramisu with a boudoir biscuit base. Bakers Biscuits from South Africa has apparently stopped making them.... (three years ago!!) so no wonder I couldn't find them here. The boudoir biscuit will be sadly missed. It was the favourite 'baby' teething biscuit. Long and dry like a finger, ie lady fingers being used as a substitute. 

I have fond memories of my brother, now 22, sitting in his high chair and gumming on a boudoir biscuit. He also then painted the wall next to him with the goooey brown boudoir concrete paste he created with his saliva and biscuit... he he he... was so funny... I thought my own Felicia would be able to have boudoir biscuits when she teethed... but the only thing we found were Baby Mum Mums which in fact turned out to be a product of China. So they got turfed into the trash ASAP. 

Because I quadrupled the recipe, the egg yolks came up higher in the double boiler than I imagined they would. And my tiramisu seems a bit wobbly this morning even though it was refridgerated over night. I have over $100 in the 96 servings of tiramisu. It tastes amazing (I have a heavy hand with the liqueur).... so wobbly it shall be. 

This morning I went and bought some white sugar roses to decorate the top of the tiramisu.... and white ribbon for the wedding pressie... its in a purple box... thought white ribbon would be classic. I really would love to have made the white sugar roses, but I would need fondant, fondant tools, and oh a marble top work space, and not the crammed linoleum and compressed particle board laminate that I have in my kitchen... :) 


Tonight is Mitzi's soccer photo shoot... got to wash her hair after school and blow dry it and jazz it up with some red ribbons.... The photos will be at 6h20pm... so just adorable I am sure... UNLESS it rains. There's just something amazing and magic with the air this time of year, especially at dusk and dawn. Its almost tangible... sort of a magic magnetic quality. I know other people feel it too. Its like our little plateau of a town becomes an easel for the displaying of the most beautiful colours and bedazzling light shows when the sun cracks through the dawn, or when it fades into the sky at night. 
 

Downgrading dysphoria.

Some weeks I just feel so squashed between two heavy plates of dysphoria. I feel almost like the plates will leave indelible marks on me. Like maybe they have been tooled with iniquity and ineptitude. And I feel almost like the discomfort and disease is a learning time, a time to be reformed and reworked into something better, and more beautiful, akin to the butterfly struggling with her chrysalis. 

But I feel like my expected growth or gain is immature and the dysphoria returns, perpetually lurking in the shadows of my otherwise carefree and happy life. 

My baby brother has recently gone off on a three year mission to Germany and then Afghanistan. His job is high risk, high output, but high yield, high gain. He is doing what he wants. How many of us actually get to do that. The attainments of ones dreams and goals are so few and seldom that when it happens we congratulate the person, and then stand in awe of them. How did they get their ducks in a row and know that A +B =C? 


I disintegrate it. Is it maturity, adult awareness and decision processes, is it drive, ambition, knowledge, opportunity, fate, grace, all of the above? Is it simply leaning backwards into the breeze, like a kite on the beach, and surrendering to the will of the wind. 


I often spend a huge amount of time plotting and creating and researching my five year and ten year plans, ruminating, pondering, obsessing, cow chewing the cud through four stomachs, over and over again, plans that never happen for whatever reason. Then I am bereft. I feel a loss for what was not. So then I tell myself next time to be more relaxed, laid back, colloquial, less rigid and confined, and I skip along essentially aimlessly and find myself watching a lot of late night TV, incapable of reading a book or being able to fall into the arms of sleep. 


I sound like I don't have much going on in my life. But the opposite is true. I make about 45% of the money in the house hold. I have two daughters that I do 99% of the caring for. I drive them to school, to sports, to the library, to parties, to friends, I dress them up, photograph them, read to them, make birthday cakes, love them, revel in them, dote on them, adore them, do all these ancillary functions for them that benefit them, all the supportive motherly functions, etc... for them. 


So I am thrust always into activity for them. But then in the stillness in me, I feel like I am living someone elses life. That I didnt chose this for me? But maybe it was chosen for me? 


My question is, how do you get to the part where you stop chasing pipe dreams, and just learn to purely exist in the here and now. Because my here and now is absolutely perfect. Just why do I always feel like I could have done something more, or I could have been smarter, or I could have made better decisions. How do I let all of that go, and just be okay with me?