The Pro does it again though we didn't know the strawberries were "macerated"

If you are going to participate in student cake month it helps if you have done it before. You know what to expect and can gauge the competition (or lack thereof this year.) What also helps is if you have had experience in the food and restaurant industry prior to deciding to become a scientist. That is the case with today's contestant. Our boy worked the restaurant scene before he decided he was better suited for research.  The two are not that far apart. Both involve using recipes and protocols to achieve a successful result. In the case of a food career you may end up with a successful restaurant, product endorsements and perhaps cookbook deals.  In the realm of science you get your PhD, a few publications perhaps with a decent impact factor and maybe a patent or two.  Which one sounds more glamorous?  If you choose science good for you!

Having experienced the previous week, I have every right to look comfident!

Nicely done angel food cake!

Add to that some "macerated" strawberries!

Our buddy today sort of dwarfed any competition with his creation that was heavily influenced by how freaking hot it has been around here.  He wanted something cooler and summery.  He came up with angel food cake topped with fresh sliced sweetened strawberries and served with homemade mascarpone gelato. As a finish he added a touch of aged balsamic vinegar. This may sound weird but did you know that balsamics get sweeter and more sugary with age?  That being the case it does not come as a surprise to have one embellish his dish.

Let's slice it up and get things going!

Cake, "macerated" strawberries, a dollop of gelato and a touch of aged balsamic!

Everyone got a slice of the cake, with the strawberries and a dollop of the gelato. The titch of balsamic went on most of them but there was an issue with pouring it so the early slices did not get any.  The angel food cake was spot on and very good being made from scratch. The strawberries made for a perfect topping.  The balsamic added and interesting taste for sure. And the gelato was awesome.  The recipe called for mascarpone, sour cream, yogurt and heavy cream.  If you have dairy issues this was definitely not for you.  The texture was perfect and there was none of the grittiness cause by ice particles that frequently mars homemade ice creams.  No added flavoring was added which is interesting given that it was quite flavorful. This was probably due to the mascarpone.  It was very rich and creamy and exactly like the gelatos that you get in Italy.  We know because we have had a lot of them!

Gelato as good as in Italia!

This cake hour entry gets kudos for preparation, execution and overall creativity and our foodie turned science geek gets his usual five star rating.

A classy summer treat!

News flash:  The recipe for the angel food strawberry mascarpone gelato concoction ostensibly came from the father of the chef.  As it turns out that Emeril guy has something similar  Check it out: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/mascarpone-gelato-with-balsamic-macerated-strawberries-recipe/index.html.  Doesn't macerated sound really special? You think that something really difficult must be happening. But in the case of strawberries it involves slicing, sprinkling with sugar and letting them stew in their own juice.  Macerated is so-o-o-o-o much chicer to say, however.

Fruit Loops Cake and Mamma Fuku to you too!

Our student cake master for the day paid a visit to the Wayland Bakery over on the East Side of PVD. He brought in the large box so we figure it would be something big and indeed it was.  The cake was a large cake intended for birthday's or other events with an empty space on the top for a message.  There was none and we dutifully informed our student colleague to have them put something for an inscription next time like "Student Cake Month 2013" or "Go LRC"! In other words, get creative.

Stopped by the Wayland!

In this view the cake is as big as he is!

This would make a great birthday cake!

Big empty space for your greeting!

The cake had a very precisely smeared chocolate frosting that was of the butter cream type.  It was embellished with some white frosting swirls along the top edge and the base of the cake. For color they added the candy confetti on the white frosting decoration. It looked....fine!  It is just the type of cake that you would get for your kid's birthday.

They did a good job frosting this cake!

Three layers with white frosting in between!

The cake was not chocolate, though. It was a yellow cake with three layers and in between the layers was more of the white frosting.  The cake was basic and....fine. We give it a three star rating. The rating got a half star extra because the cake was very well assembled. Otherwise, although we are sure this was prepared fresh, there was nothing particularly distinguishing about this cake.

Not bad but a tad generic!

Unless of course you believed all the summer student interns who observed that the cake tasted like Fruit Loops...the cereal.  What was interesting is that once one person volunteered that, the next person who was asked, without knowing what was previously said, also said that it tasted like Fruit Loops. Assuming this was no organized mania, to those familiar with the cereal I guess the cake really tasted like Fruit Loops. For those of us for whom the memory of fruit loops is very distant the connection and the taste sensation was not there.

It's the cereal with the Toucan, man!

And the cake supposedly tasted like these!

This conclusion led to a broader discussion about breakfast cereals.  Truth be told, the preferences for our crowd definitely tended towards the sweeter ones.  For a few Lucky Charms was the ultimate cereal whereas others were creeped out by the marshmallows.  Regular Cheerios were deemed inedible as compared to Honey Nut Cheerios...the most expensive cereal on the market. And for a few, things like Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal was breakfast nirvana.  We can't wait to see if, as these age, they develop a taste for steel cut oats or other cardboard tasting grains in the interests of better health.

Enjoy those sweet cereals now because this is what the future holds in store!

The talk of cereals included a remark that cereals like Fruit Loops color the milk.  From this we learned that there is some restaurant in New York where they take such milk, flavored by cereals, and use it to bake cookies.  (I don't know many cookie recipes that call for milk but whatever.) There was some incredulity about that but lo and behold it does exist, http://milkbarstore.com/

It's for real, and they do something with "cereal milk."

Somehow then the name of the restaurant came up which was Mamma Fuku or something like that.  Next we ended up hearing about the restaurant offering a 16 course lunch for $175.00 and a 10 course dinner for $125.00.  The obvious question was asked...who has the time for a 16 course lunch. Check out the website, though: http://momofuku.com/new-york/ko/about/

It's only twelve seats for a 16 course three hour lunch.

Mamma Fuku, despite it's resemblance to an English expletive, is supposed to mean "Happy Peach" in Japanese.  We called for our Japanese colleague to get a confirmation but the did not appear..  We did confirm later that Moma is the word for peach and fuku can mean happy.  Glad we settled that and no one needs to get offended, then, saying the name of the restaurant which, as you see, is Momafuku.

And Moma Fuku to you too from the Happy Peach!

Cake-o Dominicano is not how you say Dominican Cake in Spanish

The correct term is Bizcocho Dominicano.  We had never heard of this before and had no idea what we were getting today was called any particular thing.  This was the latest offering/competitor for student cake month.  When we first saw the cake from afar it looked like somebody's chapeau.  It appeared somewhat lacy and was very, very blue.  Probably the most intense blue color we have ever seen at cake hour.  We were skeptical at first thinking it was another super sweet American style cake but were then told that it was a Dominican Cake.

I'll be at class but hope you like the Dominican cake!

Apparently Bizcocho Dominicano or Dominican Cake is an established item. Gleaning info from recipes as it is apparently not yet worthy of its own Wikipedia page, this is a yellow or vanilla cake cut into layers with a pineapple or other tropical filling between the layers.  The frosting on the top is meringue based and has the taste and consistency of marshmallow.  Our student of the day brought this because he has Domincan heritage and had had this cake as a youngster.  He wanted to share the concept with us and we were certainly happy to be enlightened.

Is this a cake or someone's Easter bonnet?

The frosting was described as Bahama Blue.

This cake was something that no one had really had before.  Visually it was quite remarkable with the aforementioned blue color. The white frosting used for decorating the cake was a nice contrast.  This color and decoration together with the paper doily made the whole thing look very frilly which is okay.

It is actually quite a nice looking cake!

The decorations are a tad on the frilly side!

This cake had four layers which is surprising given how relatively small it was.  In between the layers was a guava filling which no one expected.  Frequently, with this cake, the filling is pineapple but guava was absolutely acceptable.  The cake was very fresh and moist, which is a good thing, and together with the java filling tasted quite good.

Guava filling was a first for cake hour!

The surprise was the frosting.  We expected it would be the usual shortening or lard based coating but this being meringue based was quite different.  It was lighter, not at all dense and reminded people a lot about Marshmallow fluff. It was bit on the sweet side but that was okay.  Everything together worked very well and we could understand why this cake would be popular. We give this a four and a half star rating. Extra points are for originality and the added effort to provide something unique.

That layer of frosting looks thick but was not at all heavy!

Some of our cake hour attendees were caught sharing a music experience.  We don't know what it was they were listening to but they clearly liked it!

Intently listening to God knows what!

Oh yeah, that's cool!

C/mon, you're acting like you never heard of a tuxedo cake!

We are into week two of student cake month and thus far there has been little of the wow factor.  Our participants thus far have all opted for commercial solutions for their entry. Although there was some merit to what they found we have a long way to go for sure.  Today's entry was something with a great name, at least...a Tuxedo cake. It turns out there are several versions of this. The predictable one is the cake that is made to look like a tuxedo.  There is another version that we would love to try as it involves a lot of chocolate cake and whipped cream. The third one we saw is the one that is similar to what we had today, so was the one being listed as coming from Costco in the picture.  It involves marble cake, cream filling a and a chocolate glaze on the top.  Perhaps the different shades of white and chocolate in the cake is where the name comes from. 

This is a tuxedo cake......

...and this is a tuxedo cake...

and this is a tuxedo cake!

This is a tuxedo cake from Costco!

And this is my tuxedo cake..which I had never heard of!

 Today it was a long rectangular cake with the layers visible from the sides.  It consisted of three layers of marble cake with a chocolate mousse filling between the bottom two layers, a white chocolate mousse filling between the top two layers and a dense chocolate frosting on the top. 

Nicely put together!

Good solid chocolate frosting!

We don't know where it came from but it was good and fresh and although it looks like it might be heavy it was pretty light. This might be due to the mousse consistency of the fillings.  In any event everyone was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the day's treat. It gets a four star rating.

Layers of mousse!

The marble cake comes into view!

A representative slice!

The joke of the day was when people were asked what it was and couldn't answer, they were told what it was with some false incredulity and the statement that opens the post.

The Eastside Marketplace?? #not again

We seem to have gotten into a rut for student cake month.  Instead of using this opportunity to further explore and expand their culinary capabilities due to either convenience or lack of imagination our student cake month participants have been relying a lot upon the commercial sector...in particular the East Side Market.  The problem lies in that most of those cakes have already been tried..some of them several times.  So if you are looking to wow and impress this is probably not the way to go...hello?

It's something new for me!

Dèja vu!

A little asymmetry makes a statement!

Choco-crunch for contrast!

Today's treat was also a rerun of something we have had before.  Our intern for the day lived up to her distaste for chocolate cake and instead found a yellow cake, with a few embellishments. In some respects this was the negative of the cake from two days ago. Whereas on Tuesday it was chocolate with white accents, today's cake was white with chocolate accents.  The cake itself was yellow with a vanilla shortening based frosting.  There was a choco-crunch type thing adorning the sides and several sticks of dark chocolate making a pattern..albeit not entirely symmetrical...on the top.  A candied cherry was in the center.

Yellow cake and white frosting..no chocolate need apply!

What's there to say? The cake itself wasn't bad...fresh and not dry.  The frosting was perhaps a bit too basic and commercial. There was a lot left over on plates providing another opportunity for cake frosting art though the white color of the frosting did not contrast well with the plate so our cake art creation is not so distinctive. Overall the cake wasn't either so it gets a two star rating.

A tsunami of swirls!  Today's frosting art!

We did learn that our cake hour intern of the day is trying to gain weight.  That prompted a whole lot of suggestions such as having more than one piece of cake...with which she easily complied today since the cake was not chocolate.  The more creative involved the suggestion to use the high fat rodent diet pellets as croutons on a salad to give extra calories.  We're not really serious but consider ourselves up to the challenge to getting her to put on the pounds. Perhaps she can spend time with her beer drinking colleague!

Have two or three of these a day and you'll pack on some pounds!

Working on that weight gain!

Our younger tech friends helped explain the whole concept of hash tag to yours truly who does not and likely never will tweet.  Hearing it everywhere, it was explained that was the way to link together things that have similar subjects. Assuming you could only follow individual twitter accounts it is comforting to know you can also keep up on all the people who use certain words or phrases like fart.  (That was the example given.) This is truly monumental.  #don't you think. The other question about why on Twitter it has to be called a hash tag and not the pound sign like on the phone was left unresolved. #any ideas?

I would so love to biopsy her liver!

Today we had a duo of cakes for student cake month day three.  These came from the East Side Marketplace in Providence as did yesterday's cake. We see a trend, maybe. 

It's a twofer from the Eastside Marketplace!

Two respectable looking treats!

I'm happy to add a volume element to the competition!

The first one that got sliced up for everyone to try was some described as a lemon torte.  The presentation was nice, for sure  A small rectangular cake frosted on the sides and top with swirls of vanilla cream.  The sides were subsequently covered with some crunchy thing.  A few candy lemon slices completed the look.  The torte was composed of several layers of yellow cake with different fillings between layers. One of the fillings toward the bottom was lemon curd which was a nice touch.  The other filling was lighter vanilla cream. This was not the same as the top which was a typical, heavier cake frosting.  This was unfortunate because it looked like the frosting on the top was whipped cream.  That would have gone better with the lighter filling inside so we suggest this adjustment to their recipe. Overall the cake was moist and the fillings added to the taste. It was a light treat that was easy to eat. This was pretty well received and was a good choice on the part of today's student.

It's a lemon torte!

It should be whipped cream on top...but it's not!

Layer with lemon curd and mousse type vanilla cream inside...nicely done!

But the lemon torte was not the only treat he brought.  The second was a Bailey's Irish Cream Cake.  We have had this before and it is good. It is a chocolate cake with two layers that have a thick layer of Bailey's Irish Cream flavored frosting in between and more on the top.  Add a few florets and some chocolate drizzle and you have the whole thing.  This cake is very moist and the Bailey's cream very light and airy.  This is a replacement type non-dairy whipped cream frosting...like cool whip.  We have had this type of frosting on many cakes before. It is appreciated because it is very light but real whipped cream is always preferred. Altogether this was another good cake. With to offerings that were original and creative we award today's student four stars.

Another good looking offering!

Unfortunately these top florets are also not the real whipped thing!

Lots of cake and lots of filling!

The whipped frosting made it less heavy than it looks!

While eating a piece of the latter cake one of our interns asked the question "What is the alcohol that is in this cake?"  As said person has dietary preferences and thinking there might be beverage issues also the question was asked, "what, do you not drink either?"  This prompted quite a few chuckles from the friends of the individual as the person does indeed drink.  The preferred drink is beer.  Lots of it apparently. Jokes about the amount of her drinking ensued. This led to other comments about how good it is that our dipsomaniacal intern  is working in a Liver Research Center and that since we do research on alcohol in the liver she could be a subject. We study NASH and alcoholic hepatitis and it was mentioned that if she had problems we could do a liver biopsy.  Upon hearing this her friend immediately remarked "I would so love to biopsy her liver!"  Isn't that what friends are for?

Quote of the day: I would so love to biopsy her liver!

This is all it would take!

Our biopsy subject is not so sure!