Rose Frasier & the Case of the Missing Garnish

I’ll start at the end of the story: It was delicious. I regret nothing.

But perhaps I should start at the beginning?

It was a dark and stormy night (ok, it was just dark and night, no storms to be seen) and I was cooking up a storm in my cozy kitchen. Minestrone soup was bubbling on the stove, the DH was tucked away in his man-cave, and all was well with the world.

Or was it?

Who knows what darkness lurks in the heart of men, and when that darkness leads to the filching and consumption of…garnishes, well, the bell tolls for thee, my friend, the bell tolls for thee.

Ah, but stay with me, and I will tell you a story of hunger, of cravings, of…substitutions? (SUBSITUTIONS IN THE HOUSE, YO’!)

So. My online baking group is baking a Rose Frasier cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi cookbook this week. It’s a fluffy yoghurt cake, flavoured with rose extract, filled with strawberries and a mixture of whipping cream and pastry cream. The strawberries are sliced so that you can see the layers of strawberry and cream in a pretty design on the sides of the cake.

Things I switched up, because you know I did:

• I halved the recipe.
• I didn’t have gelatin and also, it’s not vegetarian, so I added agar-agar while making the pastry cream, a big, heaping tablespoon full, and then crossed my fingers that it would work.
• I had two egg whites left after making the pastry cream, and needed 1 1/2 eggs for the cake, so I used 1 egg and the two egg whites.
• I didn’t have plain Greek yoghurt, so I used lactose-free probiotic strawberry yoghurt in the cake.
• I didn’t use rose extract in the cake because yuck. (I know, it’s very fancy and elegant. But my senses insist that there is something inherently wrong with eating a rose. Roses are for smelling and looking at, not for chomping on, says my olfactory & gustatory systems. So, out with the rose extract and in with the vanilla extract.)
• I made two small loaf pan cakes, and 1 mini cake, instead of the regular sized cake Dorie made.
• I used a parchment paper wrap to hold the filling in place while it set, because when I tried it without, it was a (tasty) mess.
• I didn’t use red currant jelly for the glaze; I used some red wine jelly I had leftover from goodness knows when that I found in the back of my fridge.
• I didn’t use whipping cream for the topping, I used leftover filling. And I drizzled the afore-mentioned red currant jelly over that.

I assembled the two loaf cakes (so fluffy! so perfectly golden!) and the DH and I each ate one with gusto. Delish! Then I assembled the one that I wanted to photograph. But I wanted the filling to set before I garnished it. I sliced the very last of the strawberries and sprinkled sugar on them. And then I went to do some errands/chores/busywork/what-have-you. When I came back…oh, the horror! The garnish was gone! All that was left was the empty bowl, with some syrupy red remnants of what it once held.

*shakes fist in air in the direction of DH’s man-cave*

So, improvisation. Wine jelly streaks as garnish instead of artfully arranged sugared strawberries.

The DH popped his head in the kitchen, looking for a midnight snack. I told the DH the cake wasn’t ready. He went to bed.

And then I ate it all.

Like I said, I regret nothing!

(My arteries probably disagree, considering all the whipping cream, but they’re not the boss of me! Also, I plan to be suitably penitent and add in dehydrated broccoli powder to my kale smoothie tomorrow. Wild and crazy times in this here home, I tell you.)

TLDR; the DH ate my garnish. But I ate the cake! BWA-HA-HA!

Next Post: Skor Cupcakes! Yum-city!