Sunday, May 5, 2013

Star Wars Day

May the 4th be with you! Happy Star Wars day!!! There are two major dork things that I don't even try to closet: Harry Potter and Star Wars. For once, I'm actually going all out for Star Wars Day. Full on movie watching, cake making, drink inventing, Star Wars shirt wearing day. And I'm not alone, so don't assume I'm some anomaly here.

Foreshadowing
For my birthday, I received a Star Wars cookbook. What better time to bust it out? Granted most of these things are real treats but with clever names but still, the artwork is exceptional. Initially I was going to make a bundt cake and decorate it like the Sarlac Pit (aka: a giant pit in the sand full of a monster that digests you for a hundred years) but then I decided to make Angel Food cake instead. You don't mess with Angel Food cake. You leave it in its perfect angelic state of fluff and you don't ice it or add creatures. And you buy a new pan for it.

Angel Food cake requires a dozen egg whites. Which means you have a lot of egg yolks lying around, perfect for accompanying the cake with homemade ice cream. Yeeees!

I even sifted the flour!
So I diligently follow the recipe, only deviating to account for my use of all-purpose flour instead of pastry flour (because I didn't read it properly before buying ingredients). I tried not to over-beat the egg whites but I think I did the opposite and didn't whip them enough. As I added the dry ingredients, I realized the batter was much runnier than it should be, based on the pictures. But I persevered. And poured the batter into the shiny new pan I bought for this express purpose. Well I guess the batter for this pan is meant to be thicker because it seeped through the seems of the pan (it came in two pieces) and leaked egg all over my stove. Disaster!

Red flag number one.
I was able to salvage some of the batter and dumped it into a bundt pan instead. But the recipe said not to grease it so I didn't. And I hung it upside down, overnight, to let the cake get nice and fluffy. But it never fell out. So I had to tug and pull it out, causing a bit of a dense top. The fluffy part was quite delicious though!

Slightly dense Angel Food cake.
The ice cream was actually very easy to make, it just took time. Egg yolks, sugar, water, cream of tartar and heavy cream. Whipped together at various stages and delicious. I'm sure you could just add strawberries or extracts to make a flavor but vanilla was good enough for me!
Ice cream!! Just before the final phase anyways.
And for good measure, Mos Eisley treats were made from the Star Wars cookbook. It was a combination of Oreo-cream cheese crust and chocolate peanut butter topping. No left overs for me!!
So much chocolate and peanut butter.