White Chocolate Espresso Cake

Pastry Affair turns three years old today. While the thought that I have been doing this for so long feels a little surreal, at the same time it feels entirely expected; I can't remember a time when I didn't sit down each evening to play around with the blog in some form or another. Even though I never quite planned on it, I found myself partaking in the unavoidable tradition of combing back through old posts. The steady stream of recipes, photographs, and words from the past year act as a personal history for me. A small record of late night cravings, hours spent behind a camera lens, and several lengthy conversations about my love for breakfast—it's all there, buried between the webpages.

The past year has been a quiet evolution. I am still growing as a blogger, though perhaps not making the large strides I did in the years before. Even so, I feel like I am finding more of myself in the photography and the words, slowly uncovering bits and pieces of my elusive voice. That voice can be so difficult to find.

Throughout the last year I gave myself three challenges. The first was to eat (and bake) vegan for a month. Though it was difficult at first, I successfully completed the challenge and discovered a huge revelation about myself in the process—I'm lactose intolerant. At the time it seemed like an ironic fate for a purveyor of butter and cream, but I have since grown to accept it. Even though the recipes I share with you do not conform to this condition, you can be assured that in my own kitchen I regularly use dairy-free ingredients. Real butter, for better or worse, hasn't found a place in my refrigerator in months.

The second challenge was to include metric measurements with the recipes whenever possible to make baking these recipes easier for those of you who live abroad. Lastly, and perhaps most ambitiously, I challenged myself to consistently develop my own recipes from scratch, to learn recipe development the hard way: through trial and error. To be quite honest, incredibly difficult moments and embarrassing errors were had in my kitchen, most of which I kept to myself. Though I have improved substantially since I began, I am still not immune to failures. Just this morning I tossed a batch of pineapple cakes, hot from the oven, straight into the trash can.

Baking never fails to keep me humble.

Truthfully, though I love the corner of the internet in which this blog rests, you continually make it something special. Through your comments, emails, and endless support, you have made these past three years possible. You have given me the inspiration to keep mixing together new ingredients, to spend time clicking away behind my camera lens, and to spend nights staying up late to share my thoughts with you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you.

I have long believed that celebrations should involve cake and plenty of it. I think three years are worth celebrating, don't you? This cake went through a couple iterations before it reached this final product, but friends and family have all agreed that it is incredible.

White Chocolate Espresso Cake is on the list of my favorite cakes to date. A basic white cake batter is infused with espresso and has a lovely coffee aroma when finished baking. A white chocolate buttercream is spread around the cake; quite sweet, it is best used sparingly, but produces a complementary flavor to the cake. Topped with a sprinkling of cocoa powder and coffee beans, the cake becomes a work of art. As Janet Evanovich preaches, calories don't count during a celebration and I am inclined to agree. Eat up, my friends.

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Fresh Strawberry Cake

I have been keeping a secret from you for the last couple years. Partially out of embarrassment and partially out of the belief that I could quickly remedy the situation, I swept it under the cupboards and kept my lips sealed. The truth is that I do not know how to cook. While I know enough to fill the refrigerator and keep my stomach full, the knowledge and techniques involved in cooking often escape me. Take away my spatula and mixing bowl and things quickly slide downhill.

The ability to cook and the ability to bake are often entwined, but to me they have been two very separate activities. They feel different. Baking comes naturally to me; I understand how to turn butter and flour into something beautiful with little effort. Cooking, on the other hand, has always been a challenge. I fumble around fresh cuts of meat and vegetables, uncertain of myself.

My method of cooking is to throw a few vegetables together with egg noodles, top it with a fried egg, and call it dinner. While I do not mind these bland, makeshift meals, they certainly are not worthy enough to serve to anyone else (in fact, my boyfriend often turns his nose up at the strange combinations that find their way onto my plate). I am miserable when it comes to seasoning food, relying heavily on salt and pepper to rescue my dishes. Other spices seem to be beyond my culinary grasp.

My biggest pitfall, however, comes with cooking protein. Every time I place a chicken breast in a hot pan or grill, I radically misjudge the cooking time. I have to cut apart the chicken to check for a pink center (which there invariably is) as all of the juice runs out. I am excellent at preparing dry chicken. Moreover, I was recently informed that I incorrectly fry hamburger, rendering it to a nearly inedible rubber consistency (to my further discredit, I had assumed this was how it was supposed to be).

I did not realize how far I had fallen until I tuned in to the last season of MasterChef. Gordon Ramsey cursed out a contestant for frying an egg incorrectly. Since the contestant's browned, rejected eggs looked just as my own (beloved) eggs, it was another indication of how little skill I possess in front of a hot stove.

When I try to reproduce a recipe, I am fairly successful. To my own credit, I am quite good at following directions. It is when I am left to my own devices that my culinary skills seem to escape me. Recently I have been phasing processed food out of my diet which makes dinner time feel more difficult. While I do pop open the occasional can of soup or spaghetti sauce, the majority of my meals come together on the cutting board. I would love to learn how to cook, to understand vegetables and proteins as well as butter and sugar. To wield a knife and fry a fish fillet to perfection. Perhaps I just need to set aside some time to teach myself, to take away the intimidation and replace it with confidence.

Until I can cook a dinner from scratch that would make my mother proud, I think I will stick to what I know and love—baking. I like to believe this Fresh Strawberry Cake can effortlessly hide any shortcomings I may have in front of the stove.

Fresh Strawberry Cake has a bright, natural flavor and rustic appearance. Fresh strawberries are quartered and pressed into the top of the batter, which gives the option to choose how many or few berries you would like. Whole wheat flour lends the cake a subtle nutty flavor that makes the bites without the berries positively delightful. This may be a simple cake, both in ingredients and appearance, but the flavor is quite remarkable and worth experiencing.

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Strawberry Charlotte

During the last week, I have been spending most of my time in the kitchen, mixing ingredients by hand and giving my oven a workout. Halfway through my two weeks off from work and school, it is a welcome break to spend time away from the everyday grind, a chance to relax and get my thoughts back in order. Though I like to imagine that I will be productive with my newly found time, the last week has proven otherwise, as reality TV shows and sleeping in have sucked away more time than I would like to admit.

Maybe it is okay to let myself be lazy every once in awhile.

With more time in the kitchen, I have been playing around with elaborate, multi-step desserts, including cakes. While I love a good layered cake, I could not decide on a flavor, arguing back and forth with myself between fruit and chocolate based cakes and fillings. While fruit is lovely, it had been so long since I cut my fork through a thick chocolate cake that the thought grew tempting.

Nevertheless, after a walk outdoors with the weather still settling into early spring, a chocolate cake suddenly seemed too heavy for this delicate time of year. With buds just forming on the bare tree limbs, a sweet, light fruit cake seemed to fit the bill. After a walk through the local market, with pounds of red, ruby strawberries on sale, the deal was sealed.

Charlotte cakes originated in France in the early nineteenth century. They traditionally involve fruit purees, sponge cake, and custards or whipped cream frosting. This particular Strawberry Charlotte is not quite as the original cake, but the spirit is just the same. Instead of layers of sponge cake, I used my favorite light vanilla cake recipe and used a strawberry mousse to fill it. Lined with ladyfingers, either homemade or store bought, the cake becomes quite the sight.

While I did not have one on hand, a white or red ribbon tied around the middle would add a gorgeous finishing touch.

This Strawberry Charlotte is a spring cake that is perfect for all of life's celebrations. Layers of light vanilla cake are filled with an airy strawberry mousse and fresh strawberries and topped off with a coating of whipped cream icing. The strawberry mousse is made from pureed strawberries, which gives the cake a bright fruit flavor. The cake is lined with ladyfingers and graced with whole, fresh strawberries making this a simple, but impressive cake to decorate.

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