Oh, Martha... or The Weekend of Extravagance!

I must admit - I just spilled my homemade chai tea latte because I was so excited to be back on blogger. Literally, my internet has been a portal to many a website this week; however, it has been restricting my access to me beloved blog. So sad! And the thing about it is I have so much to share!

Martha Stewart once wrote "Baking offers comfort and joy and something tangible to taste and savor." Man, was she ever right on the money. I was never a huge Martha fan, nor did I get emotionally involved when she was convicted for whatever it was she did. I really only began to marvel at her talents when I developed an extreme fondness for baking. Some people are tremendous at cooking gourmet food; others at concocting creative culinary delights. Furthermore, others are skilled at hosting and homemaking. Martha is tremendous at all of these. I was thrilled to receive her Baking Handbook for Christmas. This past Sunday, I grabbed a cup of tea and read it nearly cover to cover, once again awestruck at the recipes and the pictures that accompanied the descriptions. I have several goodies cookbooks, and most of them do not have pictures. How can you tempt the taste buds if at first you don't excite the eyes? It's a mystery to me, so I gravitated to this Martha masterpiece.

In celebration of Valentine's Day, I decided to make Biscuit a romantic pineapple-mango upside down cake. Martha expertly crafted her pineapple slices to be cored and include a circular center of luscious mango. When I went to core my pineapple slices, instead of using a standard round cookie cutter, I used a heart-shaped cutter. The next part was slightly trickier; trying to slice a ripe mango into pieces that allowed me to cookie cut the corresponding heart shape.

Interestingly enough, the cutting turned out to be the EASIEST part. I confronted my next challenge by creaming together butter and brown sugar. I am pretty good at putting the paddle attachment on the mixer and performing this baking necessity. The challenge on Sunday, however, was that I had to then spread that mixture evenly over the bottom of an 8x8 pan. This part literally took me 20 minutes. To evenly spread creamed butter and brown sugar seems like a simple task when equipped with a little offset spatula. It still took me forever to get this critical part right.

The rest of the process was quite fun! I placed the remaining pineapple and mango in a sieve to drain the juice. I whipped up a light and fluffy cake batter, then I layered the pan: creamed butter mixture on the bottom, aforementioned pineapple/mango cutouts, the remaining fruit, and the cake batter. I popped it in the oven for 50 minutes (no cake in Martha's book take less than fifty minutes to bake, so have a good chunk of time set aside for yourself. Here were the results: Below left - baking in the over. Below right - resting on the cooling rack.

Below center - finished product

Here is a shot of Biscuit enjoying the cake

and some of the slices.

I am quite proud of my first ever upside down cake. I continued to bake nearly all day Sunday. So much so that I had to buy Biscuit some new Wii games so that he would be entertained as I was occupied in the kitchen all day. I made citrus bars with a great deal of success and I tried a caramel crumb bar concoction that just didn't measure up. But just like with baking, certain things have to be done in batches. Such is the case with my blogging today. I will be back ... more than likely later today, to finish raving about my excursion into bar baking, then more on the Peppermint Devil's Food layer cake creation and the cheesecake thumbprints that I made in the last two nights. And, of course I will be telling you about my foray into candy creation when I made my mini marzipan mice. All this and more in the next edition! Stay tuned!