LiveSTRONG With a Taste of Yellow Opéra Cake!

I KNOW! Leave it to me to post way late. Jebus. Right off the bat, I must state how wonderful it was to work with such nice gals this month. Not only did I get the opportunity to co-host with my lovely partner in crime again, but I also got to share the honor with a gorgeous fellow Ohioan, Fran! And that sexy whisk lover, Shea! It’s been a pleasure, girls! I know I wasn’t much help – this really was Ivonne’s baby – but I sure enjoyed working with ya’ll! You did a magnificent job! :D My main objective this month was to keep whatever we chose to make either yellow or light in color. Because May is LiveSTRONG month, we wanted to dedicate our posts to all of those out there that have been touched by cancer, but especially to Barbara. You know, I don’t know Barbara all that well, but the respect I have for her is truly heartfelt, to say the least. Barbara is unfailing in her efforts to keep awareness high when it comes to cancer prevention and living with cancer. Her annual, A Taste of Yellow, supports Lance Armstrong’s LiveSTRONG movement and is a major event in the foodie blogger’s world. And I can say I always feel proud to be a part of it. Thank you for all that you do, Barbara! You are an amazing woman. Figuring out what flavor combination I was going to go with was a no-brainer. Bananas. Caramel. A whisper of cinnamon. RUM. Or, simply put.. A Bananas Foster Opéra Cake. C’mon.. ya’ll groan aloud with me.. yess yess.. feel that lil shimmy of sheer delight trickle down your spine.. Mmm hmm… now THAT’S what I’M talkin’ bout. I knew that I was going to add the cinnamon to the jaconde, that I was going to make a caramelized banana mousse in lieu of the white chocolate mousse and a caramel buttercream. Or was I? After much discussion with my BFF, I went with banana buttercream and made her toffee sauce (only mine was a drunken version complete with spiced rum hiccups!) to brush on the cake layers.. there you have it kids – all the components of a Bananas Foster Opéra Cake. squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The Opéra cake was not as hard to make as I had thought it would be. It certainly looks like you have to pay the devil your very soul to be able to whip up the thin layers of jaconde, buttercream, ganache (or in my case, mousse) and glaze.. but you really don’t. The components of the cake can be made in advance and separately. Since my guru taught me the proper way to fold when she was up for a visit last summer, making the light and airy jaconde was a cinch. I didn’t fear the buttercream, since I’ve become a seasoned pro thanks to The Martha (God love her and damn her fakkin crepe cake) and the mousse.. well I’ve made it before. So what were my challenges? I think the biggest hurdle was layering the cake so that it didn’t look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa when I was finished. It certainly can’t be said that it was perfectly even and flat – but it did end up looking pretty good for a change. har! The second biggest hurdle was discussing with my BFF the technique to incorporate fruit into the buttercream without taking the chance of the buttercream separating. He had made his Opéra already and had created a kiwi infused buttercream. When he explained how he did it, I was flabbergasted! But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he is just a fakkin’ genius. All he did was process kiwis until they “made babyfood look chunky”, as he put it. heheee! Then he added that puree straight to the white sugar with only ¼ of the water called for in the recipe. He brought it all to a boil and up to the required 225º then drizzled it into the meringue being made in the stand mixer. Voila! Add your butter and you’ve got fruit infused buttercream that was incredibly creamy and delish. I followed his direction and used one very ripe banana.. whizzed it until it was liquid, poured it in my lil pot and boiled it up with the sugar & water.. drizzled that heavenly smelling liquid into my meringue and tossed in a couple sticks of butter.. and OHMYGOD I had the best smelling banana buttercream in ALL THE WORLD. My only regret was using just one banana.. next time two for sure. The last hurdle was what to glaze my cake with as I cannot tolerate white chocolate. I was going to melt down some pineapple preserves I had recently purchased and just poured it over the cake.. but again, brainstorming with my BFF.. we started discussing banana jam. Homemade banana jam. I found a recipe.. it was too easy to NOT make.. so I did. And let me tell you.. if you’ve never had banana jam and you like bananas.. you MUST make this stuff. Dear sweet Jebus. YUM! Especially spread thinly on a cracker with a slice of a semi-soft cheese on top.. HEAVEN. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that fantastic on the Opéra cake. It was too dark and pinkish – I KNOW WTF?? - I have no idea why it turned pink.. maybe something to do with whatever it is that turns quince pink when you cook it?? And it was a little too strong for such a delicate cake. So I scraped it all off and went back to my original idea of the melted pineapple preserves and was quite happy with the results. The pineapple actually brought out the banana taste and didn’t take away from it at all.. I still had my Bananas Foster Opéra cake. :) what did I think about my very first Opéra cake? Well.. it looked quite pretty, but unfortunately it wasn’t my cup of tea. I wasn’t fond of the texture of the jaconde. I couldn’t taste the most magnificent caramel/toffee/spiced rum sauce that I had brushed the layers with. And it was sweeeeetttttt. Ohhh my goodnassss it was sweet. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.. but I think I prefer my Bananas Foster warm and my banana cakes slathered in chocolate. hehee Will I make it again? Yes and no. I’m definitely trying the traditional version, but I doubt I’d ever make the light version again. I also purchased 2 lbs of dry roasted pistachios.. so next time it will have a pistachio jaconde and then the traditional flavors of coffee and chocolate for the buttercream and ganache. I look forward! My advice to you would be to go stretch your legs and maybe use one of those eyeball washer thingies to rinse out your peepers after reading this long winded post of mine. Then grab your favorite beverage and start clickin’ on the Daring Baker Blogroll because just from the few I got sneak peeks of earlier this month, you will be AMAZED! and AWED! at the gorgeous cakes that are floating all over the blogosphere today! xoxo

LiveSTRONG Day - May 13th, 2008

As mentioned in my last post, April and May bring two very important foodie events to me. Cooking to Combat Cancer was the first, and LiveSTRONG Day is the 2nd. LiveSTRONG is the motto behind Lance Armstrong's Foundation about cancer awareness, surviving cancer and living with cancer YOUR way. I think this is an amazing and unique organization and it's refreshing to know it's not all about money.. Lance's foundation truly helps those who are battling cancer. Last year, Barbara of Winos and Foodies hosted the first annual LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow and an amazing 149 bloggers participated.. This year she is holding the 2nd annual LiveSTRONG with a Taste of Yellow 2008 and the deadline for participation is April 27th - I hope we all unify to surpass last year's number, especially since she's moved the participation dead line from April 19th. :) I'm quite happy about the extension as my last post kinda left me with nothing afterwards. Not to mention, I wanted to blog about an amazing dish in tribute to Lance AND Barbara and although I had two "yellow" dishes all ready to go, they weren't very special to me. So I decided to hang up my written post and think about what kind of dish I really wanted to submit. Well here in NE Ohio, I think it is safe to assume (am knockin on wood all over the place) that Spring has sprung! We've had lovely weather, not too rainy.. just the right temps - high 60's lower 70's and because we live right on the lake, there is a wonderful breeze coming off it each afternoon. There are Daffodils, Crocuses, Hyanciths, Irises and lots of other beautiful flowers popping up everywhere. The trees have started to bud and the smaller flowering trees are completely covered in their gorgeous blooms.. one cannot help but to think about new beginnings, fresh starts, and awakenings after a gloomy winter has passed by. Now, flowers and trees certainly do scream Spring! to me, but so do fresh vegetables.. for now is the time to start thinking about that garden you'll be planting in a few short weeks. Some of us already have our seedlings growing steady just waiting to be transplanted to their warm summer homes (San Marzanos! Thanks to my beautiful Creampuff! squeeeee!). The hubbs and I have been talking incessantly about what perennials we're going to plant this year and arguing over where the zucchini plants will go in the garden. hehe Last year we found the perfect spot and I had so many zucchini that I didn't know what to do with (thank God for neighbors, co-workers, friends, family and the occasional stranger off the street) and they pretty much took over the middle part of the garden. hee! So I knew I wanted this dish to represent Spring and all of the renewal it brings. Hope, if you will. A startling realization that after the gloom, there is sun. The corn from down south is starting to arrive in our supermarkets and I couldn't resist buying some this past weekend. I wanted to make something light that allowed the corn's sweetness to shine through and I think I did a damn good job of doing just that. :D I roasted 4 ears of corn on our grill until I could no longer stand the amazing fragrance coming from them. I let them cool for a bit and while I left them to do that, I thinly sliced up 4 green onions, diced half of a yellow bell pepper and 1/2 of an avocado. Once the corn was cool enough to handle, I cut the sweet kernals from their cobs and threw about 1/2 of them in with the onions, peppers and avocado. I dressed this mixture simply with a little lime zest, the juice of 1/2 a lime, a sprinkling of sea salt and a splash of good quality olive oil. I mixed gently and let all sit together for a while so that their flavors could meld. Next up was simple grilled, boneless pork chops with nothing but garlic, salt & pepper for seasoning. Once the chops were just cooked through, I topped each with 2 huge spoonfuls of the roasted corn relish. OHMYGOD. I can't tell you how shocked I was at how good this turned out! The bitterness of the lime with the sweetness of the corn and a background zing of the fresh spring onion.. all with the creaminess that the avocado lent.. my, my, my, my and my. I don't think I could have come up with a better tribute to Spring, the new hope it brings, and Barbara and Lance for all they do to keep spirits high. Thank you both for giving so many people the hope and awareness it takes to not look at living with cancer as a death sentence, because it's not. I firmly believe that mind over matter is very, very important. With a better outlook that can be obtained by knowledge, unity and strength the better the chances of kicking cancer's ass until it runs home screaming like a sissy girl to it's mommie. ;) xoxo

A Taste of Yellow

When I first read Barbara's A Taste of Yellow post, I knew immediately that I'd be participating. For I am a cancer survivor. I kicked it's ass and I'm quite proud of it. I had to give up the option of ever having kids, and although that saddens me at least twice a day, it was a small price to pay for being able to still be here with my family and friends. In November of 2005, I was called back in to see my doctor after having a routine pap smear. The first one I'd had in 4 years.* I was then sent to my OB/GYN who did a biopsy, which came back positive. 'kay so I just wrote two paragraphs of what I went through and deleted it.. suffice to say that after all attempts at saving the cervix failed, my only option was to have a radical hysterectomy including removal of the near-by lymph nodes. Amazingly my bout with cancer lasted 2 months only. It's amazing how far some cancer treatments have come. When first diagnosed, I thought for sure I'd be dealing with this for at least 6 months. This past December, I had my 1 year check-up and all results came back negative. =) So you see, I am eternally grateful for people like Lance Armstrong and his LIVESTRONG Day as well as Barbara of Winos and Foodies and her A Taste of Yellow event - these are survivors who take action, who try to make a difference. I don't believe for a minute, that cancer treatment and cures would be where they are today if it weren't for people like Lance and Barbara raising awareness about cancer issues. And that's a true statement. It is with great pleasure that I can participate in such a worthy cause, even if it's just with a simple recipe that took no more than 30 minutes of my time. To even be a miniscule part of helping to make people aware, is a great honor. Thank you to Barbara for organizing this wonderful event! =) Well.. my yellow food, she ain't yeller. But she smells yellow and she tastes yellow - so that counts right? Months ago as I clicked on one of my favorite blogs, Danielle's Habeas Brulee, I found a post she had written about finding a piece of scrap granite that was hers for the taking, and all the ass pain she went through to get that free slab of stone home. Although Danielle's post was fun to read, it was the cookies that stayed in my memory these past 5 months. I KNEW I'd make them at some point. It may not have been immediate, but I knew they wouldn't sit in my "Must Make" pile forever. The cookies are called "Lemon Chocolate Chunk Cookies" and the photo she shared of them was extremely drool-worthy. Oh yeah, baby. I had found an excellent opportunity to make these cookies, as they were a pretty shade of yellow and fit the requirements of this event perfectly. Now, I followed Danielle's recipe - my only change was to use chips instead of chunks of chocolate (as I had depleted my stash of good chocolate on The Martha's Crepe Cake) - but mine did not turn out looking even remotely like hers. Mine look like your normal chocolate chip cookie, with maybe a slight twinge of lemony color. But what's fabulous about them is you can smell the lemon and when you take a bite, the lemon flavor stands out. It's wonderful.. truly. And as we all know.. I'm all about the chocolate/citrus combo these days, eh? (DUDES! I'M THE FIRST BROWNIEBABE! WOOOOO!!) I'm copying Danielle's recipe exactly as she has it on her blog, but I really urge you to go check it out for yourselves. You'll see what I mean about total drool worthiness. Not to mention, this gal can cook! If you haven't been reading Habeas Brulee yet - do yourself a favor and click on over there and read, read, drool, read! Danielle's Lemon Chocolate Chunk Cookies Courtesy of Danielle of Habeas Brulee 1/2 C unsalted butter Zest of 4 lemons 3/8 C granulated sugar 3/8 C packed dark brown sugar 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1 egg 1 1/8 C all-purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda 1 C chocolate chunks Preheat the oven to 375º. You can use store-bought chocolate chips for this if you like, but I prefer to take a hunk of good chocolate and cut it into large chunks myself. Cream the butter, lemon zest, and sugars together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. At low speed, beat in the flour, salt, and baking soda just until blended. Add the chocolate chunks and mix in until evenly distributed. Prepare baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Place heaping tablespoons of dough on the baking sheets about 2″ apart. Bake 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden and done. *Note: Ladies, please don't be stupid like I was. As much of a pain in the arse it is to get your yearly pap smear done, it's crucial that you do not skip it. Had I not blown my test off for 4 years, the cancer could have been caught in the early, early stages and I'd most likely still have all of my pieces parts. This means the decision to have children or not, would not have been taken away from me, without my having a choice. xoxo