Thursday, January 12, 2012

The 10-Hour Coffee Cake

Okay okay, I know I'm late.  It has been a crazy week!  It's Thursday, but I actually made this coffee cake on Tuesday.  I didn't have time to update the blog that day because of how long the cake took, and then yesterday was my birthday, so I took the night off from cooking or baking :)  Now, back to work!
Tuesday, I left work at 11:00 so that I could come home and take care of Dad while my mom and Rachael went to Kenzie's doctor'sappointment.  Everyone was really nervous about what we might hear, so yet again I told Kenz to choose anything she wanted, and I'd have it ready when they got home.  She chose a raspberry cream cheese coffee cake.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Wrong!  And I was certainly wrong about having it done when they got home, too!

So, the good news: Kenzie's appointment went fine, and she has nothing wrong (except headaches, but we can deal with that!).  We were all really relieved - so relieved and exhausted from the stress of it all that we all fell asleep when they got home!  Luckily my yeasted dough was still proofing then so it didn't slow down the process of baking too much.

This cake was a ton of work.  I had to make the dough (and it was a yeasted dough, so that takes forever), the raspberry sauce, the cream cheese topping, the streusel topping, and the glaze!  And to make the cake, once it had risen and chilled, I had to roll the dough out into a 40 inch rope, twist it, and then coil it up.  As you can tell from the picture, mine did not coming out looking as beautiful as the recipe's photos.  This seems to be a theme with my food.  Still, though, it was absolutely delicious, and well worth the wait of ten hours.  Yes, you read that right; I started it at noon and we ate it at 10:00 that night.  It was definitely delicious (ugly, and way too much work, but still delicious.)  The consistency of the cake was sooo light and fluffy, probably the best I have made.  The toppings were all good too... I just wish it looked more like the recipe.

After that crazy cake, I gave myself my birthday off from my resolution and let Kenzie do the cooking for me!  She totally owed me after all the sympathy food I'd made her!  She made, for the second year in a row, seafood chowder.  This is amazing stuff; it has fish, clams, lobster, scallops, crab - and it is so rich, it's almost sweet.  It makes me a believer in lobster ice cream, which I know they have on the Cape!  It was nice to give myself a night off from baking, and from those never-ending pans (I think I had to wash about 7 pans for the coffee cake, no exaggeration).

As for tonight?  No, I haven't cooked or baked a thing.  I know, bad.  Frankly after the random snowstorm that we had this morning (I reaaaally wanted a 2-hour delay, but no such luck; instead it took Kenzie and I almost an hour to drive to work, and the kids were still straggling in at 10:00!), I had a pounding headache and no motivation.  But still, there is no excuse... well, besides the snowstorm and the fact that we have leftover chicken soup (Mom made it for the non-fish-eaters last night) and chowder, and Mark brought Caprese salads from Via.  I did, however, send Mom and Kenzie to the store with a list of the things that I will need to try a couple different dinner ideas this weekend.  They probably won't be thrilled to hear that the meals are vegetarian, but I am still trying really hard to make them see my way of things!  We will have to see how this goes this weekend :)  Tomorrow night I am going out to eat for my birthday with Mark, Dianah (her birthday is a week after mine) and Ian, so I am not sure about what I will have time to make, but never fear: then it is the weekend and I will get myself back on track!

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