An Edible Marriage

Well, since my last post I graduated college, got married, went on honeymoon, packed up my entire life, and moved to California where the new hubby and I have been in limbo for a few weeks between a storage unit and my dad's house. Needless to say, things have been a bit crazy...

Anyway, first things first - I must give props to the deliciousness that graced our wedding:

Edible Flower Bouquets - I wanted my bridesmaids and I to have completely edible bouquets, so I grew lots of edible flowers in my own yard, but ended up using flowers grown by the folks at Colinwood Farm.

Also, my friend Sarah figured out how to make roses out of bacon!! She put a dab of hot glue on a skewer, topped the glue with lettuce, and topped the lettuce with bacon baked in the shape of a rose bud. The glue gave the structure integrity while the lettuce acted as a barrier between bacon an glue. Brilliant!  While I was freaking out before the wedding, my bridesmaids assembled our bouquets with bacon roses, pea vines, bachelor buttons, squash blossoms, calendula, nasturtiums, and my favorite - columbine! Then immediately after the ceremony we chowed down.

Madres Catering - These ladies were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were totally chill and down for anything. They used local and/or organic produce and let us provide the meat and bread from our favorite folks at the farmers market (Skagit River Valley Ranch, Stokesberry Farms, and Tall Grass Bakery).  After our ceremony, we were greeted at our reception venue by Madres' lovely staff and a selection of appetizers. We chose to have a "heavy appetizer" style reception so our guests could be free to eat and drink as they please without having to conform to a set dinner plan. Here is our menu with pictures where I have them:

Salad Cups! 

Soup Shots 

Shots of zesty tomato soup that I found to be an important injection of calories between hugs and conversation!

Crostinis with:

Shredded chicken tinga

Roasted cumin mushrooms with parmesan

Dilled salmon

Polenta Triangles with Roast Tomato Chutney (so good!)

Bacon Wrapped Cesar Potatoes

Roast potatoes with Cesar dressing, wrapped in bacon (delicious!)

Sausage Bites with a Trio of Dips

Skagit Valley sweet and hot Italian sausages wrapped in pastry dough

Slider Bar:

Cuban pulled pork

Beef patties

Vegan roast veggies

Condiments

Tall Grass Bakery brioche or mutli-grain slider buns

NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Heather's Groovy Drink Mix

(Heather is one of the owners of Madres, she is a wizard with a blender and whatever happens to be in season!)

Dry Sodas

ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES:

Homebrew!

Made by me, Alex, and our friends!

(and supplemented with Elysian beer and Charles Shaw wine)

The only one not on the list is the beer we toasted with - a brew that Alex and I concocted together:

Lavender Ginger IPA

(Also Sarah designed this gorgeous drink menu!)

Trophy Cupcakes - Dessert was a couple hundred mini cupcakes of three different flavors: Snickerdoodle, Triple Chocolate, and Hummingbird (a more savory dessert cake made with banana, pineapple, and coconut).

In addition to Trophy cupcakes, Alex's sister made gluten-free vegan cupcakes ( you can see a few at the edges of the photo above, at the base of the tier).

T'was a delicious wedding indeed!

Katrina Cakes!

Katrina Cakes are very similar to Mandy Cakes, except I'm actually writing down the recipe this time and Katrina Cakes are simply vegan, whereas Mandy Cakes are vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free. I started with the Joy of Cooking's standard muffin recipe and morphed it into this:

Mix in one bowl:

2 cups Flour (Bob's Red Mill All Purpose)

6 Tbsp Cocoa Powder (Scharffen Berger Unsweetened)

1 1/2 Tbsp Baking Powder (also Bob's Red Mill)

tiny pinch salt

Mix in a second bowl:

1 cup Sugar (evaporated cane juice)

1/4 tsp Organic Molasses

1 cup Hemp Milk

6 Tbsp Organic Coconut Oil, melted

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Pour the contents of the second bowl into the first bowl and whip until smooth. Then add about 1/3 cup of Mini Chocolate Chips and portion into a pre-greased muffin tin (I greased it with coconut oil). Bake on the top rack at 400 degrees F.

This makes about 16-18 cupcakes.

Funny Story: My first batch of cupcakes burned, filled our apartment with smoke, and set off all the smoke alarms as I was writing the above. That all took less than 10 minutes! Sooo, here's some lessons learned:

1) Keep an eye on the clock! (batch number two has been in the oven for 6 minutes now...)

2) Keep an eye on the oven! (nothing burning yet, and the temp inside the oven is in fact 400)

3) Bake cakes at the top of the oven! (they were near the bottom first time)

4) Egg Replacer has a funny texture. So for batch number two I omitted egg replacer and increased the amount of baking powder and coconut oil instead. I also added a little bit more vanilla. (they might have been burnt, but that first batch was a good taste-test!)

5) Ripping the smoke alarm off the ceiling and throwing it under a bunch of blankets is an extremely effective way of making that god-awful noise stop.

The second batch came out beautifully and I topped them with coconut frosting. I used the rest of a 14oz. jar of coconut oil, plus a lot of powdered sugar (at least 1 cup), and some food coloring and edible sparkles to make the frosting. I tried to make purple, but the thing about purple is that it's not necessarily equal parts red and blue, especially when you're using cheap food coloring... sooo, if they're in the right lighting, I swear they're lavendery, but the important part is that they are sparkly!

(For the record, to turn Katrina Cakes into Mandy Cakes; just substitute some Gluten Free All Purpose Flour for the regular gluteny flour.)

Mandy Cakes!

Oh the things I do for my friends... Believe it or not, these little cakes do not contain any gluten, dairy, eggs, or soy! And yes, they are edible and actually quite tasty - I thought the texture was a little off, but for someone who can't eat the real thing, it's about as close as you can get! I started with the Joy of Cooking's standard blueberry muffin recipe and substituted egg-replacer for the eggs, Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose flour for the flour, water for milk (I should really use hemp milk next time), and huckleberries for blueberries ...I also tweaked the ratios slightly so the dough was the right consistency with all the substitutions. I greased the muffin pans with coconut oil, which made the muffins incredibly easy to get out of the pan - something I'm going to do more often! The frosting is coconut oil with lots of powdered sugar and some pink food coloring, then I sprinkled granulated sugar and grated coconut on top.

The Great Cupcake Adventure Part 1

The rules:

1) Chocolate cupcakes only
2) Cupcakes made with real wholesome ingredients (no vegan, gluten free, low fat, etc.)

Here is my research thus far:


North Hill Bakery - The Fudgy Pudgy $2.00
This is the cupcake that will satiate any chocolate craving, no matter how severe. This may be the only cupcake I've ever had trouble finishing because it was so intense.. I kid you not, this is an incredible cupcake; incredibly moist, dense, and with a mesmerizing even crumb. The dark chocolate flavor is obviously one of high quality chocolate. The chocolate frosting is merely icing on the cake and adds an extra level of ridiculous chocolate intensity, although it could not compare in moisture content to the cake part. Visually, this cupcake was not particularly stunning; nearly black in color (always a good sign), with neat yet casually spread chocolate frosting - about the same color as the cake and sprinkled with a few circular multicolored sprinkles to add a bit of color to this delicious black hole.


Trophy Cupcakes - Chocolate Chip Mint $1.99
This cupcakerie wins for presentation and fanciness (The framed picture of the owner with Martha Stewart says it all). They have a wide selection of creative cupcake flavors like Chai Cardamom and Margaritta. Some even show-off a bit of piping technique, sugar modeling, and candying. The sugar "mint leaf" on top of my cupcake surprisingly held its form as I dipped it into the frosting, and then promptly melted on my tongue with the frosting. This frosting blows my mind. It had a perfect wintermint flavor and was so moist and delectable in my mouth, I was amazed it held it's shape on the cupcake. I also appreciated the large quantity of icing that was just enough so that every single bite could include both icing and cake. Their website says that they use buttercream icing, I had no idea, this is by far the best buttercream I've ever had. The cake was nothing spectacular, not as dark as the Fudgy Pudgy, but still made with good chocolate (their website says Valrhona, quite posh). It was a wee bit on the dry side, but when paired with the icing, it was perfect. Lastly the mini chocolate chips, both in the cake and sprinkled on top, were a cute garnish and added yet another level of delicious complexity.


Cupcake Royale - Orange U Glad $2.75
So this is the cupcakerie that every Seattlite knows - their persistent marketing has obviously paid off, but how about their cupcakes? All their cupcakes look relatively the same with their signature method of spreading frosting. Their selection is expansive, but the most creative cakes I saw were red velvet or spicy mexican-style chocolate - not too impressive. I had a chocolate cake with orange flavored frosting. The frosting had a brittle crust and a moist fine-grainy texture that I believe was a buttercream. The orange flavor was precisely that of orange soda, not exactly my favorite type of orange flavor and I personally thought it was too overpoweringly sweet. The cake had an interesting texture, it wasn't dry, although I wouldn't call it moist either. It had an extremely fine crumb and tended to stick to my teeth. Also, the cake didn't hold it's shape very well, the top entirely separated from the bottom at first bite, not to mention it was a task to get it into my mouth before it completely crumbled under it's own weight - perhaps they should serve their cupcakes with a fork...


Sugar Bakery & Cafe - Cookies and Cream $3.00
Like North Hill Bakery, Sugar Bakery does much more than just cupcakes. They only had three flavors on display and there was nothing high-class about any of them. Sugar has nothing to hide with all the charm of a quality down-home bakery in small-town-nowhere-USA. Their cookies and cream cupcake had vanilla frosting that could almost be mistaken for an incredible pudding - can you say addicting! A liberal packing of Oreo cookie bits added some crunch and the chocolate cake I felt could have been more chocolatey, although it was tasty. The cake was not dry , but could have been moister. And I appreciated the fork that accompanied the cupcake, a wonderful touch of hospitality.