The 6 Foot Tall Cake

One sunny day in Olympia a few weeks ago (10/24/09), a handful of ladies gathered on a porch to assemble a six-foot-tall cake. Yes, that's right: a six-foot-tall cake. On my birthday this year, my friend KTeeO and I decided that making a six-foot-tall cake was just something we needed to do. So we did (along with 8 or 9 other bakers). And we invited all of our friends to come eat it! The "cake cafe" was a fundraiser for GenderJam: LaD.I.Y. and Trans Fest, an all womyn and transperson event coming up next weekend that a bunch of my female and trans friends have been hard at work organizing for the last couple months. I took all of the following pictures on my SLR Nikon and while I think this was one of the best rolls of film I've ever shot, I think the photos are also a testament to the joyously good time had by all.

I made a lavender cake with lavender icing.

The day before, Riley and I scoped out the porch we were serving off of and engineered this bamboo pole set-up. The pole went through a perfectly-sized hole in the porch and was tied under a brick underneath the porch. After we slid all of the cakes down the pole (inserting cardboard circles between some layers and frosting along the way), we tied the top of the pole around a nail in a rafter.

Some of the cake layers were vegan, like this vegan chocolate fudge cake Kate Long made.

See, six feet!

Then, about ten minutes after we'd cut into the cake, just as things were heating up...

Part of the porch collapsed!!!

but THE CAKE REMAINED STANDING

and our gracious house hosts said, "Let them continue to eat cake!"

Which is exactly what we did.

All in all we made $120,

and had a gloriously, gloriously good time.

Spite and Malice Cookies

I dreamt up these spicy, bitter, sour cookies last year and they were so wicked I had to name them Spite and Malice after the classic card game. This time (10/18/09) I made them gluten free for Whitney by using a Bob's Red Mill brownie mix that I played with until it was cookie consistency, though usually I use this recipe for the cookie base (omitting the walnuts and subbing unsweetened or very dark chocolate chunks for the semisweet chips). What makes them so spiteful and malicious? Black pepper, crystalized ginger, and one of my favorite foraged native plants of the Northwest: ultra-tart Oregon Grape. Mmmm. I forgot to take pictures of the actual cookies, so use your imagination... or make them :)

Soba Noodles with Dipping Sauce, Miso Soup, and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

A fun friend dinner with Jessica, 9/29/09.

Jessica made the soup and noodles, I made the peppers. Jessica is an expert, but if you are a soba noob, Just Hungry has this lovely how-to.

Pickled Roasted Red Peppers

When a Dollar Tree moved into the shopping center a mile from my house in Louisville, pickled roasted red peppers became a staple for my family. And for a dollar, you'd be surprised; they're delicious... though always imported. The last time I looked they were from Turkey. So, I decided I would try my hand at my own pickled peppers with some beauties from the Rising River stand of the Olympia Farmer's Market. Followed this recipe but diluted the pickling liquid with water to taste (I want to say I ended up adding somewhere in the range of a cup and a half?) as it was waaaay too strong as was. I also threw in whole basil leaves and as the garlic lover that I am used more than the called for one clove (I'm guessing it was probably 4-6). If you make these and are roasting at 350, I recommend going longer than 45 minutes. The skins were a little finicky coming off.

9/23/09

Bonus picture: While I didn't have enough to can, here's a pretty pepper I grew in my garden!

Peaches in Rhubarb Sauce

Finally getting around to posting, so for all my adoring followers, prepare for a glut. This was a project I did at Whitney's on 9/23, just after I'd moved into the new house but hadn't really moved into the kitchen yet. Found a terrific low-sweetener recipe for rhubarb sauce on the blog of a fellow canner and after much deliberation and comparing of the amount of sweetener in the sauce and the varying amounts of sweetener in canned peach syrups I decided I could safely preserve peaches in the sauce!

Meredith's Simple Rhubarb Sauce