Kitsch-en Kounter: Bûche de Pâques

One needn't ponder long before remembering the true meaning of Easter - renewal, rebirth, resurrection.  All of these beautiful messages come with their own springtime symbols - a blossoming flower, a hatchling bird, a world reborn after months of frigid winter (as a lifelong Southern California native, I'll just have to believe that last one to be true).

With rebirth on the brain, I wondered what I could create in the wacky tacky kitsch-en that would represent a seasonally-appropriate gastronomic resurrection.  Without sounding too irreverent, I concluded that there is no better time of year to resurrect a classic symbol of the Christmas season, born again with an Easter Holiday twist!  The Bûche de Noël or Yule Log, is a rolled cake meant to resemble a fallen, winter, woodland log found during Christmas.  Figuring that if it is good enough for the birth then it's good enough for the resurrection, I came up with the "Bûche de Pâques" or "Easter Log" (even if you have no idea what it means, it's a name that sounds much more appetizing in French).

I had all my decorations ready but I didn't take many progress shots because I had never
made a rolled cake before - nerve wracking!  Using a recipe for a coconut-almond genoise,
I found that the cake went together much more easily than I had expected.  Although our
decorations skew Easter, I'm thinking that this cake (made without leavening agents)
might qualify as a Passover offering too - maybe adorned with Passover Possums?!!!

As ever, my visions of professional, cake-decorating perfection narrowly exceeded the spindly grasp of my pitiful pastry prowess.  Nevertheless, having become well acquainted with abject kitsch-en failure (believe it or not, I only show you the "successes"), I am mostly satisfied with the outcome.  The only concession in failure (or mild satisfaction) is that an ugly cake can still be a tasty cake!

Voila!  Mon Bûche de Pâques!!!
Perhaps the English name could be "Rabbit Roulade" or "Bunny Braciole;"
but then we get into the territory of wondering whether Peter Cottontail is
simply on the cake or in the cake...

Nestled on a bed of tinted coconut, the cake (a peeling birch log) is frosted with a coconut buttercream accented by a ganache made of  coconut milk and chocolate.  The bird and "Happy Easter" banner came from the reject room of a cake supply store; I highlighted the bird's features by painting it with the same chocolate ganache.  The toadstools are meringue cookies hand-painted with food coloring.  The blue, vintage Easter bunny was removed from a thrift store wreath - and thoroughly sanitized! 

In preparation for sharing the Bûche de Pâques with you, I obviously made it several days in advance of the Easter Holiday.  Not one to let a good cake go uncelebrated,  I repurposed it as a birthday cake to commemorate Mary's 21st birthday.

HAPPY EASTER BIRTHDAY, MARY!!!
She never knew the difference....

Other than the Bûche de Pâques, the Easter preparations are essentially over around here.  With no children around, there are less eggs to dye and less handfuls of jelly beans and chocolate eggs to surreptitiously rescue from unwatched Easter baskets - the real benefit being the absence of Easter grass to find everywhere, all year long, until next Easter no matter how often we sweep, vacuum, dust, swiffer, lint roll, etc.  Truly, the break is a bit of a relief from the veritable Easter Egg factory that is usual around these parts; we'll just have to get that old Easter feeling from the "Egg Cracker Suite."

"Egg Cracker Suite"

We wish you all the best for a very Happy Easter!!!


Cheers!

Mr. Tiny

Kitsch-en Kounter: Putting The Cherry on Top!

I love maraschino cherries!  To me, anything can be made immediately more special with the addition of these supernatural delights (natural bounty enhanced by the addition of the food color, sugar, etc. makes them pretty darn super, am I right?).  I must talk about my love far too often because a few years ago for my birthday, a friend at work gave me a gallon jar of maraschino cherries.  A very happy birthday indeed!

See what I mean?
A cherry takes plain old pudding from
pedestrian to pleasing.

An ordinary cake is elevated by the very presence of cherries.

From puddings to Christmas Hams, maraschino cherries make EVERYTHING better!!!

Many years ago, under the auspices of some long-forgotten benefactor, my family got to eat at Club 33 at Disneyland.  Much of what happened that day is lost to time and poor memory, but the thing I remember most vividly is the fact that I was allowed to order a 7-Up (we rarely had the privilege of ordering anything but water) and in that soda was not one, but two, candied cherries - one red, one GREEN!  Oh, the hedonism!  I have yet to be diagnosed, but there must be some kind of syndrome/disorder where one can barely remember one's own phone number, but can remember the details of a single soft drink that was consumed more than twenty years ago!

Recently, I came across a recipe of mid-century origins for a maraschino cherry cake.  I am not a baker; I think it's because I don't like recipes very much.  I love to cook, but as insatiable as my sweet tooth might be, I find that my talents are better suited to the savory end of the culinary spectrum where measurements don't have to be so exact.  My love of maraschino cherries extends so far that I even incorporate them into savory recipes like my Pineapple Upside-Down Loaf.  Undeterred by natural inability to bake, I set out to make this cherry cake and make it (bake it) I did.

The cake was leaning...looks like I over-corrected to compensate

.

My mom said that an old family friend was the inventor of the maraschino cherry.  "That can't be," I thought to myself.  The maraschino cherry is as old as the maraschino cherry tree.  Indeed, he would have to be an OLD family friend as the maraschino cherry is named for the Marasca wine-soaked cherries of 16th Century Croatia!  It turns out, he was instrumental in developing the modern process for brining/curing/coloring maraschino cherries.  My debt of gratitude can never be paid.

Maraschino Cherry fun facts:

* In 2009, 8.86 million pounds of cherries were brined to create Maraschino Cherries. (Source)

* In America, 1.2 lbs. per capita of Maraschino Cherries are consumed annually. (Source)  That is about equal to their consumption of fresh cherries at 1.9lbs. (Source)

* Maraschino Cherry is a common name given by the FDA to any processed cherry in which the fruit has been "dyed red, impregnated with sugar, and  packed in a sugar syrup flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor." (Source)

I would share the cake recipe that I used, but the fact is that the internet is just lousy with recipes for Maraschino Cherry Cakes and as promising as the recipe seemed this one didn't turn out as delicious as I had hoped.  It was tasty, but it didn't blow my mind.

I will take some of the responsibility because, as I mentioned, my prowess as a pastry chef has always left a little to be desired; in my mind it is because I have a hard time with "recipes."  I prefer being a tad more experimental than most baking recipes allow and I just can't seem to leave well-enough alone - this cake was no exception.  I replaced the called for walnuts with sliced, toasted almonds.  Doesn't cherry and almond seem like a more natural combination than cherry and walnut?  Don't get me wrong, old faithful walnut, I like you and your flavor profile is just tops in cookies, but almonds really "take the cake" if you know what I mean.  If I were to tweak this recipe more, I would triple the amount of cherries (at least) and throw in some more juice - I wanted a CHERRY cake!!!  

Yours until the next baking disaster adventure....

Cheers!

Mr. Tiny