The "Pimp My Food" Thread (image heavy)

[ralerin]

Hm, not sure if this is a good idea or not or if I'll be smacked by Raps/admins for doing an image heavy thread. We'll see and if I have to get rid of the thread, then so be it.

There's a lot of people here who bake and cook and from reading all of the delicious things, I want to see pictures of what you cook! And I'm sure everyone else would, too. Include the recipes if you can.

Today's baking adventure involved my first "proper" cake, a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I say "proper" because my last cakes came out raw in the middle, I didn't leave them in long enough. This one I did. I halved the recipe with the cake (with the exception of whole milk instead of buttermilk, so the cake will taste different than one made with buttermilk, plus it's not as red as a true cake because I didn't put enough food coloring in) and kept the original for the frosting, with the exception of neufchatel cheese because we didn't have cream cheese. (I prefer neufchatel anyway). It left me with about 1/2 a cup of frosting so I happily ate it whole. Mmm, heaven on a spoon. This was also my first time frosting a cake, so excuse the unprofessional look-but I didn't do too bad.

The cake:



The side:



The interior:



The slice:



The empty plate:



It was gooooooood.

[Green_Fairy]

ooo pretty...now i'm hungry. and as soon as i find my camera, i'm gonna start baking!
*is giddy*

[CoffeeMonkey]

The wedding cake I made for my friends this past Halloween. It is my greatest creation. The inside is triple chocolate fudge cake with raspberry filling and whipped ganache icing.

[BookstoreEscapee]

The wedding cake I made for my friends this past Halloween. It is my greatest creation. The inside is triple chocolate fudge cake with raspberry filling and whipped ganache icing.

Wow! That's beautiful! Sounds delicious but I wouldn't want to cut it!!

[CoffeeMonkey]

Wow! That's beautiful! Sounds delicious but I wouldn't want to cut it!!

It hurt just a little bit to see it cut. Just a little.

[BookstoreEscapee]

It hurt just a little bit to see it cut. Just a little.

Heh, it always kills me to think of some of the "Sunday Sweets" cakes from Cakewrecks.com (they feature actual good cakes on Sundays) being cup up and eaten.

[AdminAssistant]

The folks on Ace of Cakes talk about this a lot, and how they would be hurt if someone refused to eat one of their cakes because it was pretty or cool. In their words, it's cake. Cake is intended to be eaten, so eat it.

[CoffeeMonkey]

Indeed, and that show is what taught me to MAKE fancy cake. So it did hurt a little to see it cut, it was far better than having it NOT been cut, because I knew the inside was delicious and it would be awful for that much work and chocolate to go to waste.

[bookworm]

Darn, I didn't see this thread in time to take a picture, but I made a really good sausage bread thing this weekend. I used some of the Pillsbury baking sheets (crescent rolls that aren't cut up) and piled with italian sausage, mozz. cheese, and pepperonis. Egg washed it and sprinkled with fresh grated parmesan cheese. Sealed it up and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes. It was almost like a calizone or something, and oh so good. We ate it for breakfast.

[Green_Fairy]

i didn't make this, but i found it in the pastry case when i got to work today...it's too cute not to share.

marble loaf is happy to see you!

[lupo pazzesco]

The following is an experiment from a few years ago, that started with the intent to make a strawberry cheesecake. Not quite sure what it is, exactly, but I'm told it's pretty damn tasty. It's been dubbed the "Strawberry Thing"



Aaaaaand these were one of my first attempts at homemade calzones with a burgundy marinara sauce. The recipe has since been tweaked, but still tasty!

[Jester]

I love to cook, as many of you know.

I do not have any pictures of my creations, however. But, being the proud cook daddy that I am, I DO present this, the menu from my most ambitious cooking project ever. To wit, a friend wanted to start an informal dinner club down here, and had me cook the first (and as it turned out, the only) dinner for that endeavor. In the end, it was a four course sit down dinner for 20 people, with the only people cooking for it being myself and my 13-year old (at the time) niece, Dragon.

The first course was my play on Devils on Horseback, which is traditionally bleu cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon. My older sister (The Witch) gave me some inspiration for this. The second course is completely my own creation, and was the first dish I ever created that won me a cookoff. The third dish was one I was rather proud of. I was able to put it together rather well, other than forgetting the baby zucchini at my house, and thus never using it. The coconut rice was awesome, and I was very proud that came together so well. The sauce for the fish was my friend's sauce recipe, and it was brilliant. The amusing part of that was that I did not know what kind of fish I would be using until that day, since I wanted it to be as fresh as possible, so the menu file my sister sent me was incomplete, and I finished and printed it that day after visiting the fish monger and picking up said fish. And the dessert was one of the only one desserts I have ever made, since I don't bake....but that was more cooking and then freezing and setting than baking.

Yes, I AM rather proud of this. 20 people. 4 courses. Me and a 13 year old. Not too damn shabby!


Other than deleting our actual names, this is the menu I put together, and the actual physical menu presented to the attendees (my Lil Sis, who is a graphic artist, added the wonderful background for me):

[Bella_Vixen]

According to a source (a customer, and we all know that customers are not always right), REAL red velvet cake does not have any food coloring in it whatsoever. Something about real chocolate or something.

[Food Lady]

According to a source (a customer, and we all know that customers are not always right), REAL red velvet cake does not have any food coloring in it whatsoever. Something about real chocolate or something.

It does now. But traditionally it was a buttermilk/baking soda cake. The reaction of those 2 items with the cocoa creates a red color. Well, a reddish-brown.

[CoffeeMonkey]

It does now. But traditionally it was a buttermilk/baking soda cake. The reaction of those 2 items with the cocoa creates a red color. Well, a reddish-brown.

My understanding (from watching a lot of food network) is that originally the recipe contained beet juice, which added the red. I've heard two explainations for why. One was that during wartime, sugar was hard to come by, and the juice was a sweetener. The other is that it was added to mask the the cocoa color, since there was not enough to make a true rich chocolate color, and too much for it to be a lovely white cake.