What a Gal!

There is this girl I know. She is kind of rad. I don't know her as well as I would like, but enough to know she is special. One of a kind for sure!
Afew weeks back, she had a little gathering at her place the night before she moved back to England. It was an all day/evening event with people coming and going all the time. I planned to stop by in the evening with a cake for her. Little did I know that they decided last minute to get married on the front porch in the morning. So i guess its good that i made the cake white 8)
I pondered for sometime what flavor to make for this little powerhouse of a woman. I wanted to come up with something unique and interesting just like her. And I finally decided on flavors from one of my favorite cocktails. Pineapple and basil. Sounds abit odd doesn't it? But open up your mind, give it a try, like procuttio and melon or strawberries and black pepper. Sometimes it just works.

So I made up a basic little vanilla cake. I winged an attempt at pineapple curd with crushed pineapple, didn't turn out how I had hoped, but it tasted good, so into the middle of the cake it went. then I boiled down some pineapple juice with fresh basil, making a concentrated flavor syrup, which i strained carefully and added to my favorite Italian butter cream. Next I thought about how to take it to another level. How can i have more fun with this? Molecular Gastronomy! Many chefs scoff at these sciencey methods, but i find them fascinating. I haven't learned too much yet, but i think it is interesting. specification is my favorite right now. so that's what i did.

Often bakers brush their cakes with simple syrup for moisture. I don't usually have to, because i make a dense moist home style cake, but i do use this method to add flavors. But this time instead of brushing the cake layers with the simple syrup, i turned it into Sweet Basil Caviar. The method is actually quite simple, I got these supplies from a local chocolate supply shop. I have used them a couple times, just for fun. I added afew grams of the Algin to the simple syrup mixture. and afew grams of the calcic to a couple cups of water. then i used a weird syringy thing to drop the basil algin mixture into the calcic solution. I wont get into how t works, but basically it forms a thin membrane around each individual drop, basically turning it into caviar, which pops in your mouth. I thought it might be an interesting way to introduce flavor and texture to the cake in a way befitting to my friend.

I cant wait to try this with other flavors!!!

I was very nervous of what people would think, and i had to explain the idea many times, but it was well received, and Queen Muskafa was there to pimp my cake and make me feel good about myself, lol! So when the cake was cut, each piece got a spoon full of the spheres which kind of "sauced" the cake in their mouth. Funky!