Mother’s Day Daisy Cake Give-Away

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This past Friday, I finally tracked down Kim Nelson of Daisy Cakes- she was in Nashville, TN looking at a new distribution company for her cakes and very generously took the time to talk to me.  A little background if you haven’t yet heard of Kim Nelson and Daisy Cakes because the way she is taking the cake world by storm, you will soon (www.ilovedaisycakes.com).  Kim is from Spartanburg, SC and has been baking with her mother and grandmother since she can remember.  After catering and giving cooking lessons, Kim decided to start selling her old family recipe cakes on line and nation wide.  After a year and a lot of time, money and effort, a friend suggested that Kim try out for the show Shark Tank on ABC where a group of investors are presented ideas and decide to invest in the business or not.  Out of the 22,000 people that uploaded their information to be on season 2 of Shark Tank, 80 people were chosen to pitch their ideas initially and then 32 people made it on air.  Kim was one of the lucky.  Not only did she make it on the air, but she got a $50,000 investment from Barbara Corcoran which has turned her small cake company around.  Here is the link to the episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVM-RuLh2KI.  The episode aired just over a year ago, and since then, Kim has been on the Nate Berkus show and QVC, and she was invited to be a guest at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival where her cakes were a huge hit.  She will also be appearing on the Today Show at the end of June, and her “cakes of the month club” will be featured as a prize on the Wheel on Wheel of Fortune as well as being “the next item up for bid” on the Price is Right.  She is in the process of moving the Daisy Cake distribution center from New York to Nashville, TN so that she can be closer and keep an eye on things.  She started out making about 2,000 cakes a year, and from April of last year to December, she sold over 25,000 cakes.  Quite a jump in just a year!  What I was most impressed with was the reaction people had when tasting her cake for the first time.  Watching the Shark Tank episode, she serves up her cakes to some pretty heavy hitters who are no strangers to the best chefs and restaurants in the county.  All of the reactions were surprise- because its cake, and how much different can one chocolate cake or lemon zest cake taste from the rest.  All of these people were surprised at how delicious these cakes were.  It was unbelievable!  Now, I have yet to taste one of these cakes, but I am dying to, and I bet you are too!  Not only is Kim an incredible baker, but she is also extremely generous because she has donated three of her cakes for us to give away to lucky readers!!!  The first cake that we will be giving away is the May Cake of the Month- Pink Velvet Cake- four layers of pink velvet cake with cream cheese icing- how good does that sound!!!  All you have to do to enter is comment on this post- write a smiley face or just say hi, and we will randomly pick a reader to win the cake and announce it on Friday, May 11th.  The cake will be shipped to the winner who will then hopefully invite us all over for cake!!  So pass this along to all of your friends and neighbors and start commenting so you can win, and if you don’t win this time, we still have to more cakes to give away!

Lowcountry Local First Farm Tour

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I was asked to write an article for Eat This! Charleston about the Lowcountry Local First Farm Tour.  It was so much fun!!  Corby, Walker, Nemo (our 11-year-old Springer Spaniel) and I piled into the car and drove out to John’s Island, where we met up with Ian, the photographer (his photograph is to the left and there are a lot more in the article) from Eat This!. Ian is a sophomore in high school and got into photography through the school newspaper, and he is extremely talented- I can’t wait to see where this kid is in ten years.  There were seven farms on the tour, and because of timing and the fact that we had Nemo with us, we only ended up going to five farms.  It was so interesting to see what an amazing impact of the whole “buy local, eat local” movement is having on these farms that might otherwise be out of business.  The best part of the whole thing was that each farm was serving some sort of food, and clearly, since I was writing an article, I needed to try everything that they had.  It was really tough for me when we got to the winery, and all they had was four fantastic desserts that we just had to buy and eat.  It was awesome.  Here is the article from the magazine- hope you like it! http://www.eatthischarleston.com/index.php/features/item/the-low-down-on-our-local-farms#

And here is the picture of the pet Walker adopted at one of the farms.  He, of course, wanted to keep him and his justification for taking him home was that we wouldn’t need to mow the grass anymore!

Carrot Art, Carrot Ninja, Carrot Cake

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My wonderful 8-going-on-40-year-old son Walker has recently gone on another health kick.  Usually, he comes home from school and has an hour of downtime before any afternoon activities or before he does his homework.  He, of course, goes right to the refrigerator to get a snack which is typically lemonade and a bag of chips.  Well, now he has turned in the bag of chips for “long carrots” as he calls them (as opposed to the mini carrots that come already peeled).  I know he must love the taste of carrots, but I think he has more fun peeling the carrots and carving them up into different shapes before he eats them.  I came downstairs the other day to find carrot peeling all over the sink, counter and window behind the sink.  Exasperated, I asked him how he got peelings everywhere.  He replied that he just peels carrots so fast, like a ninja, that they fly all over the place and then proceeded to show me.  He is too funny, and it is impossible to get mad at him for carrot peelings all over the kitchen when he is a self-proclaimed carrot ninja.  He also has taken to cutting his carrots into pipes or different animals.  I googled “carrot art” today and am not sure whether or not I should show this to him as he will have me buy all the carrots in the store so he can try to make something similar.

So with all the carrots in my house now, I guess a carrot cake is necessary.  I looked up a bunch of carrot cake recipes, and surprisingly, a lot of them had pineapple or cranberry or some other type of fruit or nut.  I was just after a plain carrot cake with cream cheese icing (which makes everything better), and this seemed to be the best one.  Let me know if you have a better recipe!!

Ingredient for Carrot Cake:

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 cup oil

4 eggs

3 cups shredded carrots

Directions:

Mix all dry ingredients

Add sugar, oil and eggs

Mix well

Add carrots, mix well

Bake at 350 for 1 hour

Ingredients for Cream Cheese Icing:

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy

Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar

Store in the refrigerator after use

 

A Day on the Dock with just a few Ticks

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With the weather so nice and summer just around the corner, we decided it was time to get back on the water, so we spent the afternoon with friends on their dock at Bailey’s Island which is out at Edisto.  It was so relaxing and wonderful to hang out by the water, get a little sun, and watch Walker swim and swim.  Our friends just got a new puppy, Sierra, an English Setter who is so beautiful and awesome- I mean look at this face!! So a lot of the day was watching her and her enormous paws play in the mud and chase the fiddler crabs.  Finally, around sunset, we packed it in and went to the gas station where they also have a BBQ restaurant which is delicious for dinner.  Sweaty, salty and totally relaxed, I went to wash my hands, and that is when it started- the invasion of the ticks.  I guess it is more accurate to call it the realization of the invasion of the ticks.  I found one on my jeans and another one crawling my stomach. Gross!  Back at the table, it turns out that everybody had found one or two as well.  Needless to say, the car ride home was rather itchy as I was imagining them all over me.  And they actually were.  When I got in the shower, I found three more that had actually attached.  Walker had two and Corby had one.  And we kept finding them for two more days.  I think that we are all in the clear at this point, but it was really pretty traumatizing.  I couldn’t think of anything to memorialize this event, so I googled Edisto Island recipes and found one on the Edisto Island Guide that was submitted by Cindy Hartpence.  I don’t know why, but this Red Rice recipe seems to encapsulate our tick adventure.

Red Rice

5 slices bacon or side meat

2 cups cooked rice

¾ cup chopped onion

2 cups canned tomatoes

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon hot sauce

In a 10-inch cast iron skillet, cook bacon and reserve grease. Crumble bacon and set aside.

Saute the onions in the reserved bacon drippings until tender. Add tomatoes, rice, salt, pepper and bacon. Cook on low heat for 30-40 minutes, stirring and adding water as needed. Add hot sauce and serve.

Home Grown Breakfast

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I recently was asked to write an article for a new food magazine in Charleston called Eat This! Charleston.  It is a great magazine about the amazingness of the food in Charleston and all of the wonderful “farm to table” initiatives we have here.  The article was on a breakfast hosted at Butcher and Bee which is a relatively new restaurant way up King Street, and it was sponsored by Lowcountry Local First which is all about connecting farmers to restaurants and grocery stores to help people by local.  Several different farms were represented, and the food was delicious.  Here is the link to the article, and check out the rest of the magazine on-line as well http://www.eatthischarleston.com/index.php/features/item/home-grown-breakfast.  Stay tuned- I am going on a farm tour of all the farms on John’s Island and Wadmalaw Island this weekend and will be writing an article about that as well!

The Surprising Taste of Honey

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Walker went on a field trip recently to Bee City (www.beecity.net) as his science class is studying pollination and the different parts of a flower.  He had a ball! In addition to the bee hives,  they have a petting zoo with llamas, lemurs, monkeys, miniature horses, etc.  The best thing though was that he came home with a big plastic bear full of honey.  He promptly asked if he could try it, and so he opened up the squeeze top and squeezed a little into his mouth.  I am so sad that I didn’t have my camera with me because his face was priceless.  His eyes opened so wide and he said, “That is not at all what I thought it would taste like!!!”  I was shocked that he had never tried honey before.  How had I let this happen?  Honey is not something that I keep around- I don’t put it in tea or on toast.  I love honey, but I just never use it.   I have no idea what he thought it was going to taste like, and of course, he really couldn’t describe what it did in fact taste like.  He is an extremely adventurous eater.  He has tried blood sausage, tripe, quails eggs, escargot, any kind of liver pate, he loves caviar, so I had just assumed that honey was on the list as well- I guess not.  I, on the other hand, have been known to be a touch picky when it comes to food.  I have to say that I am much much more adventurous now, thanks to Walker, and that it really has never been a fear of what food will taste like, but it is more about the texture.  I was recently out to dinner with friends, and the chef brought out a dish of breakfast radishes for us to try.  Everyone was raving over them, and I thought about Walker and his surprise with the honey.  So I tried the radish, and it wasn’t anything like I thought it would taste.  Isn’t it amazing that food can taste so different than how you thought it was going to be.  But, back to the honey.  Now that I have a big plastic bear full of honey, I started looking for a recipe that would use the wonderful and “surprising” taste of honey to make the dish.  I found this Classic Honey Flan recipe and photo on www.honey.com which seemed like a pretty reliable source for all things honey.

Classic Honey Flan

Ingredients:

3 eggs beaten

1 1/2 cups 2% milk

1/2 cup of honey divided

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

Combine eggs, milk, 1/4 cup honey and vanilla. Beat until mixed but not foamy. Combine remaining 1/4 cup honey and cinnamon in small bowl; mix well. Place 4 (6-ounce) custard cups in 8-inch square baking dish. Spoon 1 tablespoon honey-cinnamon mixture into each custard cup; divide egg mixture into each custard cup. Place baking dish on middle rack of oven; pour boiling water into baking dish around custard cups to 1-inch depth. Bake at 325°F 30 to 45 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Serve warm or cold.

Easter Angel Cake

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It was over 90 degrees in Charleston yesterday.  It is 50 degrees today.  Other than the obvious answer of a cold front, how does that happen?  I feel like it is colder Easter weekend than it was for Christmas.  The one good thing about the cold. I was supposed to go to the Masters today but had to give up my ticket because my dad had surgery today (he’s ok), and I didn’t want to be out of touch for the entire day.  The good thing about the cold is that now I don’t really mind that I missed the Masters.  I really don’t care that much for golf, and I would have been miserable walking around for hours in this weather.  So, instead, I have caught up on some TV, and I made an Easter Angel Cake.  I was looking at Pinterest.com yesterday and saw so many great ideas for Easter.  People are so freaking creative it boggles my mind.  I am not one of those people, but this sounded so easy and cute that I thought I would give it a try.  All you need is a box of Angel Food cake mix, whip cream (you can either make it or just use cool whip which is what I did because I was running a little short on time), green sprinkles, and some sort of fun Easter candy- I used pastel colored Reeces Pieces- yum.  There was the suggestion to use shaved coconut but I am not a huge coconut fan, so I decided to skip that, but I do think I would look very pretty and fun.  So, basically, follow the directions on the Angel Food box to make the cake.  Let the cake cool and the cover with the whip cream.  Then decorate with sprinkles and candy to make it look like a little egg hunt.  I was hoping to do this yesterday with Walker because this is such a fun and easy thing to do with kids, but after homework and soccer practice, we ran out of time.  He headed off to NYC today to spend Easter with his dad, so I had to decorate the cake alone, but I think Walker would be pleased with my efforts.

Alice Boffin Toft’s Bakery

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This is Alice Boffin Toft’s Bakery.  I am not sure where or when we got this, but as a child, this was a favorite.  It was my sister’s, and while she allowed me to play with it, I was extremely jealous, so for a birthday, I got a vegetable cart which you will see in other pictures.  Obviously, not nearly as cool, but when combined, the two were better than any mini grocery store.  If you look closely, in the front is a big yellow cake with a yellow rose.  I thought that was the most beautiful cake in the world and dreamed one day of being able to get a cake like that.  I actually hadn’t thought about that cake for some time, but my wonderful, awesome, beautiful nieces- Phoebe  age almost 6 and Anna age 2 1/2- came for a visit last week, and my mother brought out the Alice Boffin Toft bakery and the vegetable stand.  They loved it!  I will readily admit to taking the box and playing with the bakery while Anna was taking a nap and Phoebe and Walker were off doing something else.  Well, of couse Anna woke up from her nap and busted me in the living room playing with the bakery (you can see the vegetable cart in this picture).  Then Walker and Phoebe found us, and then my play time was over.  I am so glad that this little bakery and all its wonderful treats is still something that little girls and even little boys when dragged along by their sweet cousins want to play with.  In keeping with loving things from the past, here is my great grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe which is super delicious.  However, one day, I hope to be a baker fine enough to make a beautiful yellow cake with a beautiful yellow rose, but until then, I can always pull out Alice Boffin for fun!

Sarah Walker’s Chocolate Cake:

Cream:

1 ¼ sticks butter

2 cups brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

Then add, one at a time

2 large eggs

Mix:

1 ½ cups unbleached flour

1 tsp. salt

Mix:

1 tsp. baking soda in ½ c. boiling water

1/3 cup buttermilk

Melt:

2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 350.  Place chocolate in small pan to melt in oven or in microwave.  Beat butter and sugar, add eggs.  Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with buttermilk and soda mixture.  Bake in 2  8” pans at 350 for 30 minutes.