New Vanilla

A long time ago (we used to be friends) I bought a vanilla infusion kit. I had seen vanilla made with bourbon, and I loves me my whiskey, so I decided to make vanilla using bourbon. I bought some Knob Creek and added it to the bottle with a couple of split vanilla beans on September 4th, 2008. I put the bottle in the cabinet, and it has been sitting there ever since. As you can see in the photo the liquid didn't turn black. It smells slightly like vanilla. I really expected more vanilla flavor after two years. I started using the vanilla a couple of weeks ago, and it gave the butter cookies I made a little something extra. A mellow bourbon flavor.
I've also made vanilla sugar using vanilla beans and regular sugar. We were running out of vanilla sugar, so I decided to buy new beans. When I found the beans I also found some vanilla paste. The vanilla paste is awesome. It is like a thick vanilla speck syrup. You get the vanilla flavor and the nice little specks. So far it makes great steamed vanilla milk and vanilla cappuccinos.

America's Test Kitchen In My Kitchen

Last weekend while laying on the couch I caught the tail end of America's Test Kitchen on PBS. They were handing out slices of chocolate cake. I love cake. I want cake. So I decided to find the recipe and try it out myself. So, yesterday I made old fashioned chocolate cake. It wasn't too difficult. The chocolate for the cake didn't exactly melt into creaminess. Since it was just unsweetened chocolate, cocoa powder and a little water it formed a kind of paste. I cooked the cake layers for 25 minutes (the recipe says 25-30 mins), but it was still liquid. After another 7 minutes, it was fudgy. So I left it in another 7 minutes. I think that was a little too long. The cake is slightly dry and didn't want to come out of the pans. There were chocolate cake crumbs all over the kitchen. The icing was a little more tricky. Man, there's a whole pound of chocolate and a stick of butter in the frosting! I thought the icing had a funny aftertaste, but it got better after regfrigeration. As you can see half of the cake is already gone. I lost the photos of the whole cake....something might be wrong with my memory card. Anyways, I don't think the cake turned out in my kitchen the way it did in America's Test Kitchen, but it's definitely edible.

I was trying to bake because I haven't baked in a long time. I'm not sure I like cooking and baking. I get mad when things don't turn out perfectly. I just made do when the cake disintegrated (I glued it with icing), and things turned to seem out all right. I'm not sure what I'll bake up next, but I think I might like the chocolate frosting on a yellow cake. That's saying a lot, because I'm not a frosting fan. If I try something next week maybe I'll make it something a little less sinful ... I'm trying to lose weight before my trip to NYC.

Old Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake