The Funky Kitchen

is that you can pick out all of your favorite things to put in it! And! You can leave out the parts of fruit salad that may not tickle your fancy so much.

My selections included: mango, pear, apple, cherries and raspberries. They are the fruits I like best, and so that is what we ate. It is nice to be the resident culinarily inclined person who cooks all the time, because you get to pander to your likes and dislikes. Ha ha.

Fruit salad is also a really great breakfast because it takes minutes to prepare and gets you revved up for a busy itinerary that follows. A big bowl of fruit salad, mellowed by a little bit of honey and electrified by a little bit of lime  was a great point from which to launch an awesome day.

All Dana’s Favorites Fruit Salad

1 Macintosh Apple

1 Anjou pear

1 mango

2⁄3 Cup cherries

1⁄2 Cup raspberries

1 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tbsp honey

• Wash all of your fruit thoroughly.
• Core the apple and pear and dice into half inch pieces, and put them in a large bowl
• Peel the mango and remove the flesh from the pip, also dicing it into half inch pieces to add to the bowl.
• Seed your cherries by cutting longitudinally around the pit and twisting the  two halves in opposing directions. One half will pop off easily, and then you can remove the stone from the other side with your fingers or the tip of a knife.
• Add the halved and pitted cherries to the bowl with the apple, pear and mango.
• Tumble the raspberries gently into the bowl.
• Mix together the lime juice and honey so that they will pour easily, and drizzle them over top of the fruit. The lime juice will help prevent the cut fruit from oxidizing, and the honey creates a hygroscopic environment around the fruit that encourages them to release their juices and macerate.
• Toss the fruit gently to distribute the honey and lime, and then dig in ravenously with a spoon.

This fruit salad fed four for breakfast, and because it was made up of all of my favorites it was pretty phenomenal in my books. What would you put in your fruit salad?

Mister liked my fruit salad, but found it a little tart. He says he would include more melon in his favorite picks fruit salad. What a good idea!

Much like last year, I baked my birthday cake for the party this year. I only wish that it had been bigger, because nobody got to have a very big cake. Perhaps next year, twin cakes will be called for, but I suppose we’ll see.

This cake wasn’t an unambiguously Dana-esque cake. Normally, I would describe myself as an intense-chocolate-explosion cake type of person, as can be seen with the last birthday cake, or any of the chocolate wonders in the recipe index. This one did have chocolate, but this cake was not an intense chocolate explosion. This lovely, tasty cake that disappeared too quickly was far from intense, it was delicate. Raspberry, lemon curd, and white chocolate came together in a way that was deliberately non-explosive.

I never thought that I would like something pale pink this much, but when I saw the recipe I knew I needed to make it. The recipe kicked around in my recipe box for a while, and this weekend, when the proper opportunity arose, I plucked it from the recipe pile and off we went. There were a lot of changes made, it was weirdly written; there was some guess work, the recipe didn’t say what temperature to bake the cake at. All in all though, such a show stopping cake.

I split the cake making into two days (well, actually three because I made the lemon curd the day before, but that doesn’t count): I made filling Friday and the cake Saturday. I would suggest this methodology to anyone else contemplating baking this cake, the raspberry and lemon flavor of the filling deepens over time.

Lemon Raspberry White Chocolate Cake

(adapted quite a lot from Ciao! magazine)

3 Cups whipping cream

1 Cup half-and-half

1/2 Cup icing sugar

3/4 Cup lemon curd

3/4 Cup raspberries

9 ounces white chocolate

1/2 Cup warm water

5 egg yolks

12 egg whites

1 Cup sugar

1 Cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

• Start to whip the combined creams, and slowly add in the icing sugar.
• Once the icing sugar is completely added, continue to whip this combination until it forms slouchy peaks.
• Mash the raspberries, using a fork or a mortar and pestle, until they have come apart but have not completely liquefied.
• Add the lemon curd and raspberries to the whipping cream and continue to whip until the peaks are fairly stiff.
• Cover the filling with cling film and refrigerate until the cakes are ready. Overnight really helps to develop the flavor.

• In a bain-marie, melt the white chocolate into the warm water.
• Fold in the egg yolks ever so slowly, or temper first if you are worried about curdling.
• Whisk until the mixture is thickened and then remove the chocolate mixture from heat.
• Begin to whip the egg whites, adding the sugar in slowly as if you were making a meringue. When they reach the stiff peak stage, stop whipping them.
• 
• In this time, the chocolate-yolk mixture should have cooled considerably. Combine the flour and baking soda, and slowly sift them into the chocolate-yolk mixture. Keep mixing until there are no clumps, clumps would be bad in this situation.
• Carefully fold in the cloudy egg whites, you don’t want to lose any of the leavening air bubbles you spent all of that time whipping into them.
• Divide the batter into two greased 10-inch spring form pans and pop those ladies into a 350° oven for a tan (~45 minutes). You can tell when they are done if you shake the pan and there is no jiggle left to them.
• 
• Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool, they will most likely fall a little bit.

• Cut a few ounces (3-4) of white chocolate into curls. I used a vegetable peeler, it wasn’t a fantastic method, but it got the job done.
• 
• Cut both of the cakes into two layers, this will leave you with 4 layers of cake.
• Stack the cake up, spreading the filling between each of the layers.
• Because there was so much filling left over, I iced the cake with the filling as well. Remember, top first, then the sides.
• Last but not least, cover the sides with the chocolate curls, and if you’re feeling arty, plop a couple of raspberries on top.

Majestic. Just plain majestic.

Like I said before, I wish there was more cake so we could have had more. It was a birthday cake to remember for a birthday to remember.

And now, for Mister’s say: This cake was fluffy and light with subtle flavors. Where the chocolate Guinness cake was sinful, this cake was heavenly. Just the right way to absolve it of its sins.

Dear Mister,

Today the two of us being a we has reached a second birthday.

I love you ever so much and to save the internet a long mushy speech about all of the ways in which I love you, I’m going to keep it simple: you are my best friend, you make me the happiest girl in the world, and you are the perfect man for me. I am so lucky to have found you.

I love you more than raspberries, and I love those a whole lot.

Love always,

Dana

(So, I made you Raspberry Eskimo Pie, because you love it and I love you. And I didn’t even change it in any way, I followed the recipe very strictly because I don’t want to mess with your childhood memories of this pie.

Now come home so we can eat it!)

Raspberry Eskimo Pie

(from the 1996 Philadelphia Cheesecake Calendar)

1 Cup chocolate wafer crumbs

2 Tbsp melted butter

1 – 250 g package cream cheese (I used light)

1 – 12 oz can raspberry juice concentrate, thawed

2 Tbsp icing sugar

1 – 1 L container of whipped topping (once again, I used light)

raspberries for garnish

• Combine chocolate wafer crumbs and melted butter with a fork.
• Press crust into the bottom of a pie plate (I pushed it part way up the sides, because I found it more visually pleasing, but that left the crust pretty thin). Put it in the freezer while you make the filling.
• Blend the cream cheese, juice concentrate and icing sugar until smooth, and then fold in the whipped topping.
• Pour filling over the prepared crust and pop the pie back into the freezer.
• Freeze until firm (~4 hours), and remove from freezer 10 minutes before serving.
• Garnish with raspberries and serve.

This pie is so ridiculously good, the raspberry flavor is so intense, and it is so very easy to make.