Week 50 brought lots of excitement. By excitement I mean that the unfortunate souls that reside at my address wound up all getting the flu. (And, since I know you want to ask, we sure did get the flu shot.) We just wanted to beat the rush of flu sufferers. Additionally, there was the cancellation of the Great (but not as great as the Great British Baking Show) Holiday Baking Show. But I get ahead of myself.
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| Cheesecake stuffed carrot cake |
The first bake Week 50 was the completion of the cheesecake stuffed carrot cake that I had promised JW for the potluck at his work. Since I'd made the components already the week before, the only thing that I needed to do on Wednesday was make some cream cheese frosting an assemble the whole shebang: classic Cook's Illustrated spiced carrot cake with a vanilla bean cheesecake covered with ream cheese frosting, and finished with toasted pecans along the outer edges. I had a couple suspicious sneezes that morning on the way into work, but nothing too worrisome. Or so I thought. After I'd gotten home from work and started putting the whole thing together, I started wondering if my throat was feeling sore. And then after the whole magnificent cake was put together and we were out at the Curling Olympic Trials, I knew for sure that my sore throat and those suspicious sneezes from the morning were the harbingers of doom that I had been afraid of. By Thursday morning, I had the full gamut of symptoms and wound up staying home from work for two days. Big bummer. But I completed the cake and it was transported into the potluck, flu-like symptoms be damned!
After two full days of serious couch surfing and clear liquid consumption, I had a major decision to make. Does the second edition of the view n' eat go on despite the cancellation of the broadcast? The answer was yes. After all, I'd also promised to also whip up a dozen treats for Rachel to bring in for her work treat exchange! So it was a painstakingly slow walk to the store to gather the necessary ingredients and I spent Saturday afternoon putting together some treats. This was made all the more difficult by the self-control and self-awareness needed to keep everything as sterile and flu germ free as possible. So much hand washing was performed.
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| Chocolate red wine cupcakes |
We started with a batch of chocolate red wine cupcakes as per the wizards from Baked, with a dozen set aside for the exchange. This is a lovely recipe made all the better by the decoration which is reminiscent of those tasty Hostess chocolate cupcakes. I think these would only be made better with a bit of cream filling, but this was not the weekend to improvise. I was lucky to be able to just stay upright in the kitchen.
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| Chocolate crinkles |
Given the special request for a metric tons of chocolate for this week's festivities, I also made a giant batch of chocolate crinkles. These cookies are extremely chocolatey and far too easy to eat. Perfect for the chocoholics in the
house.
Next up was something a little lighter that I'd been hoping to take another crack at since the project began: Mary Berry's Christmas pavlova wreath. I made a couple adjustments to the recipe and baking temperature to keep the wreath a bit lighter in color, and also took some tips from Donna Hays' various recipes to form the wreath a little differently for some improved structural integrity. With the berries, pomegranate and mint, this was a looker. Really delicious and I think that pavlovas are my new holiday desserts of choice. Well, except for pie. Because pie is amazing.
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| Pavlova shell, cooled and awaiting adornment |
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| Pavlova wreath, version 2.0 |
The problem with the pavlova is that one is left with a whole host of leftover egg yolks. I suppose that one could make a curd of some sort for the pavlova to solve that problem, but I had a better idea. Since the masses want chocolate, let's also make some chocolate eclairs! Chocolate creme patissiere will surely be an acceptable way to deal with the egg yolk situation. The lesson here is, of course, that when I am delirious with the flu, I most certainly will still get overly ambitious with my bakes. I tried two different ways of filling the eclair shells: the more traditional filling of the enclosed shell and the more modern split shell with the decorative filling. My filling was a bit loose so it didn't hold the piped star shapes nearly as well as I'd wanted with the split shells. And the split shells were quite a bit messier to eat. So my vote goes to the traditional filled eclairs.
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| Chocolate eclairs, traditional fill |
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| Chocolate eclairs, split shell fill |
And with that, a flu-filled week 50 goes into the books. My only regret is that we did unwittingly get LN sick earlier in the week (when we didn't know that we had gotten the flu). But I was also very successful in my decontamination efforts, and did not pass on the flu to anyone else.
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