Tomatoes!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINALLY, the tomatoes are starting to ripen!
Pulled several pounds of the Black Krims this morning, a few Brandywines, and the Romas and Golden Sunbursts just keep on coming at a steady rate.

We did homemade pizza last night. Mike made the crust from a focaccia recipe in The Cook's Encyclopedia of Bread, which we use CONSTANTLY for baking our own breads (white, wheat, challah, etc.) The Encyclopedia of Soup has been a great purchase, too.
For the pizza sauce, we used a pint of the sauce we canned a couple weeks ago with the first Romas and Golden Sunburst tomatoes we picked.
We topped it with mozzarella (store-bought), mushrooms (store-bought), and lots of tomatoes from the garden--we agreed that our favorites were the Brandywines. The Speckled Romans were good, too, plus they look badass (see below).

Speckled Roman

More Visitors

Mom and Dad Alexander were in Colorado for a visit

in mid-August.
Here are some photos from our adventures:

We went to Rocky Mountain National Park,
panned for gold in Idaho Springs,
canned some pickles,
and enjoyed some relaxation time in Fort Collins!

Postcard August 15, 2010

8 of 11

More In the Garden

More plants...get excited!

Hops--for Mike's brewing ventures.


Artichoke (surprised this is doing as well as it is, actually.
The package said something like 360 days to harvest,
but we might be able to pick it before next March...)

Speckled Roman Heirloom Tomatoes

The Black Krim Heirloom Tomatoes are doing really well!

Raspberries-Fall Gold


Cinderella Pumpkin

Jack-o-lantern Pumpkin

Cake Queen

Our friends, Bruce and Julia, are getting married on August 7.

You might remember them from the Horsetooth Hike post.
Missing my days as a cake decorator in Laramie,
I offered to do their wedding cake for them.


This is what the process has looked like:

1. Ingredients. The cost was about $70, but around $10-15 in cream cheese, butter, jam, and powdered sugar wasn't used. Cost doesn't include the ingredients we already had in the cupboard (vanilla extract, baking soda/powder, salt, etc.)

The Devil's Food Cake recipe comes from The American Woman's Cookbook, which Grandma Simon (Mike's grandmother) gave to me several years ago.

3/4 cup butter or other shortening

1 7/8 cups brown sugar

3 eggs, well beaten

3/4 cup boiling water

3 ounces (3 squares) bitter chocolate

2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup sour milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream shortening thoroughly; add sugar gradually and cream mixture until light and fluffy. Add beaten eggs and beat well. Meanwhile pour the boiling water over chocolate; stir over low heat until smooth and thick; cool and add to egg mixture; blend thoroughly. Sift flour once, measure and combine with remaining dry ingredients and sift 3 times, then add to chocolate mixture, alternately with milk and vanilla combined. Beat well after each addition. Pour batter into greased pans which have been lined with waxed paper. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F.) until done, 25 to 30 minutes. Makes 2 (8-inch) layers.

2. Bake the cakes. I made all of the cakes on Friday and Saturday (with the wedding on the following Saturday). This meant freezing them until mid-week when they could be frosted. 2 x 12" round cakes were baked, 2 x 9" cakes, 4 x 6" cakes (two extra 6" cakes are for a separate cake tier to honor the bride's parents, who will be celebrating their wedding anniversary on the wedding date!)

Unfortunately for me, I tried to move one of the 12" cakes from its pan too early and it cracked (big-time) because it hadn't had time to cool. Then, I dropped one of the 6" cakes (not on the floor, so it was still edible, but not pretty to look at) and it broke in half. Mike was happy about this sad turn of events because it meant he got to be a taster. I baked another 12" and another 6" the next morning (Saturday). And, hey! There was enough leftover batter for 7 cupcakes, too (whatdoyaknow...).





The cakes were put on half-sheet pans, on wax paper, in the freezer. Where they stayed without much of a fuss until Wednesday...


3. Frosting. I did a crumb coat of frosting on Wednesday. Because the cakes are chocolate, the crumbs are highly visible in the white frosting, so a preliminary layer needs to be put on and cooled to hide the bits of chocolate cake that shave off, hence "crumb coat."

The frosting recipe comes from the Home Bakery in Laramie. I sneaked around stealing all the good recipes before I quit. In the bakery, we used to have an enormous mixing bowl where you could dump in 16 lbs. of powdered sugar and 9 lbs. of butter and cream cheese, but for a Kitchenaid mixer at home, use this abbreviated version:

Cream Cheese Frosting
3/4 lbs. butter
1 1/2 lbs. cream cheese
4 lbs. powdered sugar
about a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice

Cream the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar slowly, a little bit at a time until combined. Add the lemon juice. Let whip for about 7 minutes.


Meanwhile, split each cake down the center and add filling. Julia and Bruce requested black raspberry jam on the 12" and 6" layers, orange marmalade on the 9" layer (kind of a Grand Marnier flavor--Mike's favorite). Detailed procedure: Slice one of the 12" cakes lengthwise clean down the middle, fill with jam, put top back on, spread frosting on top. Slice the second 12" cake down the middle, fill with jam, stack on top of the first cake. Coat both cakes with frosting. Let chill overnight in a fridge or freezer.


4. Final coat of frosting and decorating. I made another batch of frosting and put on the final coat. Using a piping bag and tips, I did the borders and EASY designs on the cake. Shove a dowel down the middle to keep the tiers from slipping off of one another.


Once we get the cakes to the reception, we'll add flowers (sunflowers)--I'll post a final pic over the weekend. The nice thing about flowers is they can hide all the wonky bits of your cake, like where the frosting is uneven or the piping bag slipped.

Ta-da!



Go make a wedding cake!

Here's what the final looked like:

First Harvest

Our first tomato harvest was the Sunburst Heirlooms @ the end of July.
We've also gotten a couple of the Djena Lee's Golden Girl Heirlooms.

The Verdict:
the Sunbursts are very sweet; we'll plant them again.

Not big fans of the Djena Lees.
They were lackluster in flavor, ripen really slow. Blah.

Jam-Making Adventure

We tried our hand at making some plum jam on August 4th since pit-fruits (peaches, plums, nectarines) are cheap at the grocery these days.
The recipe came from Whole Living magazine:

3 lbs. plums
3 cups sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Put it all in a pot, let simmer 10-12 minutes, and can. Makes 4 half-pint jars.


So we followed the instructions, but with 9 lbs. of plums, thinking it would yield 6 pint jars, since we didn't have anything smaller lying around.

Wrong.

We came out with 12 pint jars (actually, we ran out of pint jars and ended up having to fill half of a quart jar as a substitute) and the jam turned out quite runny, probably too runny for toast.

Nonetheless, all the lids sealed properly (pretty good for first-timers, eh?) and the flavor is AMAZING! We'll find some use for it (ice cream maybe, or to mix in yoghurt?) The thrill of doing our first batch of canned fruit for the season made the mess worth it.

Plum jam anyone?

What a sticky mess