I think this is the greatest post I will ever make, so here it is again.
Welcome to what might be the only real blog post on this blog. Nice of you to join me.
In these final couple of weeks before I move (? kind of), I will try to turn all the stubborn ingredients in my house (these ingredients either have limited uses or many uses but ones that only consume a relatively small amount) into something yummy. Last night, I made whole wheat banana bread with raisins and chocolate, which used up substantial amounts of the following stubborn ingredients:
– whole wheat flour
– honey
– frozen/chilled overripe bananas
– raisins
– 100% chocolate or cacao ???? nib things that are kind of nasty
it turned out alright. But today I made Citrus Olive Oil Semolina Cake!!! which used these:
– olive oil
– AP flour
– semolina flour
– sour cream
– brown sugar
– honey
– orange liqueur
Here is my story…
syrup
I started by making a syrup which I would later pour onto the cake, adding sweetness, citrus flavor, and moisture. I cut the sugar substantially as I do with most recipes. I substituted granulated white sugar for a combination of brown sugar and honey. Then I added water, orange zest, orange juice, and lemon juice. Upon reflection I should’ve added the juices closer to the end; I hear it preserves the flavor better. I brought these to a boil and then let it cook down until it had lost a lot of volume.
For whatever reason, I thought I needed to add the orange liqueur at the very end after I had actually cooked everything. I think maybe because I was looking at an orange liqueur cake and that’s what they did? But then I realized I didn’t want this to taste like alcohol and ngl I started stressing a little because I had already cooked it as much as I was supposed to.
the liqueur in question
So I googled:
I didn’t actually read anything on this page
Then I had another realization that none of this fucking mattered. I just threw in the liqueur, cooked it a few more minutes, and that was that.
Next, the actual cake! I started with my dry ingredients: AP flour, semolina flour, baking soda, and baking powder:
the aforementioned ingredients
By the way, while writing this my keyboard spontaneously stopped working, forcing me to restart my computer I think twice. While that was happening, I went on reddit and aired my grievances about r/actuallesbians, one of the worst fucking subreddits I’ve ever joined, about how its full of basically erotica and general cringe. I realized–a lot of realizations today–that people were not going to like this and that I am just another keyboard warrior, but I don’t care.
Moving on, I realized I had my bowl sizes wrong, so I had to put my dry ingredients someplace else:
a smaller bowl
Then I did a few things I forgot to take pictures of. I beat the olive oil with some sugar in the now unoccupied big green bowl. I then added my dry ingredients along with sour cream (substituted for yogurt), egg yolks, vanilla, and lemon zest. It looked like this:
it was surprisingly thick
I’m really starting to see the appeal of writing a cooking blog. It’s so wonderful to think someone out there would care about this shit. I feel really important right now.
My next step was to preheat the oven (no picture, hopefully you can imagine this one), and then to beat some egg whites to fold into my batter.
economizing bowl space like nobody’s business
Naturally, I beat them by hand because I am a BEAST and I don’t care about my tendonitis anymore.
I mixed that all together to achieve my final batter, which I forgot to take a picture of. Then I put that in my pan, which I did take a picture of!
an oversize tube pan with batter
This cake was gonna be smaller than I had thought, but no biggie. I popped it into the oven just as it finished preheating. Am I the solution to global warming?
had some tea while the cake baked
I pulled the cake out of the oven after a mere 25ish minutes. I figured the pan would speed up cooking time. I stabbed a bunch of holes in it and poured most of the syrup into the pan and let it sit while I cleaned. I had made a big ol mess.
After it had cooled, I dumped it onto a plate and it miraculously stayed intact. My mom and I tried it and it was quite delicious! A smashing success.
the cake
If you want some cake, you can come to my house and I’ll give you some. I will be doing more baking in the coming days, so stay tuned!
Welcome to Neural Nirvana 