Rainbow Pasta Project

Welcome to the story of the rainbow pasta project. I haven't tuned a recipe of my own at this point, but I will link to the recipes I've referenced with notes on what challenges I encountered and the cutting / shaping process overall.

You eat with your eyes first, and while it's always true that beautiful presentation enhances a meal, for the kids it's a crucial element for enjoyment. I love having them engage with the making of food and appreciate the beauty in colors and flavors, so I welcome ideas they offer for the kitchen. This rainbow food phase started when the little one got her hands on the Unicorn Food book (non-affiliate link), which she likes to browse like a restaurant menu. One of the ideas in the book that I kept putting off was the rainbow farfalle, not just because pasta from scratch is a more involved undertaking, but because I knew I didn't want to use any food dyes so each of the 6 colors would need individual attention. In the end, I used 4 different recipes and made slight variations to suit my color needs, and I absolutely love how they turned out.

 First up, my all time favorite for quick home made pasta - the basic pasta dough recipe from Anne Burrell (find it here). The olive oil makes it silky and supple, and the eggs add just enough elasticity to make it fairly easy to work with, but not heavy like yolk-forward egg pasta doughs. I made two half batches, with one including beetroot powder for the red color and one with turmeric powder and a pinch of crushed saffron for the yellow colored dough. The fridge rest time is important in allowing the flour to properly hydrate and the dough to relax enough to roll out easily.

Next, I took on the purple and orange doughs - Japanese purple sweet potatoes and regular (orange) sweet potato baked whole in the oven until creamy were used. I found that the purple sweet potatoes had much lower water content and felt starchier in general, so while they needed a dash extra liquid from the recipe directions, the other ones needed quite a bit extra flour - next time I'll first squeeze them in a towel to remove some of that extra moisture first. I used this recipe as a starting point, and aimed for similar consistency to the basic egg pasta doughs from earlier in adjusting the liquid/flour amounts on the fly.

The blue dough was my only vegan dough (recipe) - since I used butterfly pea flowers infused in water (and reduced to concentrate the color) for the hue I wanted, I didn't need the additional liquid of the eggs. It took a bit more kneading to get the texture right on this one, the the protein from the eggs wasn't there to bind it as easily. It still turned out great in the end, and rolled just as well as the other colors.

Last but certainly not least, spinach was the star of the green pasta - I used an old copy of Saveur magazine that I saved in my recipe binder for the dough recipe (link). I chopped the spinach by hand, and while blending it may have resulted in more uniform color, I love the speckled look of the little spinach pieces give the dough. They do make rolling a bit more unwieldy, but it worked well enough. 

I played the shaping of the farfalle by ear/eye, but it's a pretty manually intensive process. I worked with one color at a time while the others continued to rest in the fridge, so they wouldn't dry out. I used the pasta roller attachment of my Kitchen Aid to make long sheets - starting with a few rolls and folds at the #1 setting to get the dough more supple and ready to roll thinner, then passing it through each number one by one until it felt thin enough to cut and shape - I stopped at #5 though #4 would have probably worked as well. Next, I used the wavy blade of my pie dough roller to cut each sheet (the width of the roller) in 3 long and equal strips, then I cut them across with the straight blade in 1" strips. Each ~2.5" by 1" rectangle got pinched in the middle to form that classic farfalle shape (farfalla means butterfly in Italian).

In the end, I only used about half of each color (so 1/4 recipe of each of the recipes I followed) to make farfalle, and decided I would try something else both for variation and ease for the rest. The amount of farfalle that I shaped was enough for 2 meals for our family of four. I rolled out the remaining dough to #5 thickness and passed it through the spaghetti cutter attachment. I used a good amount of flour to keep the strands separated, then put them on parchment in little nests and froze them to keep fresh for a later meal - the spaghetti was also enough for 2 good sized dinners, unsurprisingly.

Last but not least, I wanted to play around with pasta lamination as inspired by a pasta aficionado I admire on Instragram (account link). I probably took it a bit too far putting all 6 colors together, but if you look closely you can still see each individual color, which is so cool! I hand cut these and shaped them into cavatelli as I learned from Chef Keller's Masterclass. The dark colors and disproportionately tiny plate make them look a bit funny in the one picture I captured, but they were delicious and perfectly al dente :)

Overall, this was a pretty involved multi-day project, but the glimmer in the kids' eyes when seeing the colorful pasta was worth it. I really enjoyed how each of the colors had a distinctive flavor as well, and I still have some spaghetti in the freezer for a future meal awaiting me. Pictured above, turkey Lebanese meatballs with roasted mushrooms and a light cream sauce. Below simply buttered farfalle with a dose of fresh garlic served with a quick salad and oven roasted chicken and veggies.

Birthday Cake Project

When I started the new chapter of this blog, I envisioned it as a mix of project chronicles and recipes. These past two weeks I've undertaken one of my more ambitious projects to date, simply because I've been dying to stretch myself a little and practice some old favorites while trying my hand at new skills. Perfect opportunity - my own birthday cake. Using inspiration and feedback from a friend, I set out with some general goals in mind: strawberry cake, naked cake aesthetic with the cake tiers cut out in number shapes, try as many techniques as feasible in one dessert. 

As I thought about it more and various things piqued my interest, I settled on the final flavor profile: strawberry, dragon fruit and black sesame. I want to document all the different components that went into this dessert here not only for having a place with richer context for the final result, but as a reference to myself to find some of what worked best for later reference. A birthday diary, if you will. 

First, the cake - I wanted to make a strawberry cake since the fruit is in season and wonderfully flavorful, and my favorite recipe is, unsurprisingly, from Sally's Baking Addition (link). I wanted an ombre look (are we doing technique bingo? we should haha) so I replaced a quarter of the strawberry puree with thawed pitaya puree (pink dragonfruit) for a brighter pink in one of the batches, followed the recipe exactly in another, and substituted 1tbsp of liquid in the third with white coloring for a lighter pink. I baked each in a half sheet pan, then cooled thoroughly before cutting out the numbers using a template. 

I knew from the start that the buttercream would have to be Swiss Meringue Buttercream - it's my favorite, it's light and silky and would be the perfect texture to showcase in a naked cake design. My dear husband volunteered to make the buttercream for me as his contribution to my birthday dessert and I happily presented him with my all time go to recipe, the one from Liv (link). Perfect execution, made me proud :) For the black sesame flavor, he added 1/4 cup of black sesame powder after it was perfectly fluffy and velvety, whisked it in and it was a beautiful thing. 

I noticed a related link for German Buttercream and I was intrigued, so I went down that rabbithole as well. I first made the creme patissiere, then incorporated it in fluffed up butter and whisked in reduced strawberry puree for a mildly sweet, incredibly creamy buttercream. 

Toppings

The toppings are where I got to flex my technique muscles/try new things. I wasn't good about taking progress shots of each one as many of these happened late at night with Netflix playing in the background, but see if you can spy them on the finished cake :)

- chocolate cookie chips: I adapted this recipe for the cookie topping for melon buns to incorporate cocoa powder, and cut them in thin circles that I baked until lightly crisp and trimmed to a neat circle when still hot.

- cream puffs: I made regular cream puffs (1/4 recipe) but piped them really small and baked half of them with a thin wafer of the above mentioned cookie dough on top, it worked as a chocolate craquelin in a pinch. The second half of the cream puffs got dipped in a simple dragon fruit sugar glaze (powder sugar,  a few drops of pitaya puree). I filled all of them with chocolate buttercream.

- white chocolate mousse spheres: I melted white chocolate with a simmer mixture of coconut cream, vanilla bean and glucose, then mixed in a bit more cream and chilled until set in the fridge. Later, I whisked it until fluffy and piped into spherical molds that went into the freezer until ready to use. Lesson learned - coconut cream does not like heat, it held up nicely in the fridge after assembly though.

- air sprayed macarons with dragon fruit jelly filling: the one and only Not so humble pie recipe finally broke my bad streak of sad macarons in the new oven. I got smooth and perfectly risen cookies with consistent texture, and I piped some with spiky edges and basil seeds on top to look like slices of dragon fruit. I then air sprayed them hot pink to look like the pink skin of the fruit and filled them with black sesame buttercream sandwiched with pitaya jelly.

- strawberry macarons with white chocolate coconut mousse filling: I followed the same recipe from above, but added pulverized freeze dried strawberries (to replace some of the powder sugar), probably a bit too much as I struggled to get the consistency quite right, but overall happy with the results. I painted on "seeds" with edible marker and filled with white chocolate coconut mousse left over from spheres.

- meringue cookies with strawberry/black sesame: I piped meringue cookies (recipe) in different shapes to play around with what would hold up the best, and sprinkled pulverized freeze dries strawberries on some and powdered black sesame on others.

- dragon fruit jujubes: I pureed fresh golden dragon fruit and mixed it with simmered agar agar syrup then let it set in a thin layer in the fridge, cubed it up and it was ready to go (recipe).

- dragon fruit jellies: I used frozen dragon fruit puree (pitaya) that comes in a hot pink color with intense pigmentation, and used this recipe to make soft set jellies for accents.

- strawberry + dragon fruit mousse spheres: I followed my own fruit mousse recipe from the entremet project, replacing mango with reduced strawberry puree and a dash of the thawed pitaya puree. I piped the mousse in the same kind of spherical moulds as the white chocolate mousse and let them set in the freezer. The kids loved the leftovers from the mousse on their waffles for breakfast. 

- strawberry jelly pearls: what's a crazy project without a dose of molecular gastronomy? I used fresh strawberries and agar agar to make fruit caviar. Easy to do, magical to witness, the kids really loved this one.

- candy melt curls:  this is very straightforward, no recipe required, only a little bit of patience. I gently melted hot pink candy melts in the microwave, then dropped them in dollops on a strip of acetate and spread it with the back of the spoon to get a petal effect. I used tape to curl them slightly and let them set in a champagne flute in the fridge (glass just happened to be about the right width).

- black sesame lace cookies: I didn't want the black sesame to be the only flavor that didn't show up in more than one form, so I added these to the lineup last minute. I love lace cookies but I don't get to make them very often, so this sounded fun and I love the visual effect of the black sesame seeds floating in an airy wafer of sugary delight. I used this recipe to make a small batch and left some larger for shards while I cut others to small circle size while still hot from the oven so they cooled to a crisp in perfect little coins.

- fresh strawberries: just wanted to highlight these as well, the only secret here is the non-melting sugar. It's a nifty dessert pantry ingredient, essentially just powdered sugar with a bit of incorporated fat that prevents it from readily melting in surface moisture from desserts. I dipped the edges of a couple of halves strawberries in it to give them a bit of a highlight and put them directly on the cake.

Assembly

This is where my passion for mise-en-place really paid off. There were really two stages to assembling this cake - carving the layers and stacking them with buttercream, and decorating. 

I did the first part the night before, letting each layer firm up. a bit in the fridge before placing the next to be more forgiving to uneven pressure when transferring the laters on top of each other. After the last layer firmed up, I wrapped everything in plastic to prevent the exposed edges of the cake from drying out. The strawberry cake is so deliciously moist that it kept really well, no syrup needed.

Then, after finishing dinner prep and with the casserole already in the oven, I set up my decorating station - all the toppings, all the tools I needed and of course, the cake. This was the easy and most satisfying part of the process, seeing it come together. Apart from eating it, of course, it was both delicious and well enjoyed by everyone in the family which always makes my heart sing. A wonderful birthday indeed!

We had a delightful family dinner to celebrate the day, and finished on a sweet note with slices of this cake. Obligatory crumb shot to show the nice and even layers, but also it how moist the layers of cake are throughout. Onto another exciting trip around the sun and many exciting projects to come!