The candidates crash cake hour

Today presented another concoction from Sam's Club of all places.  There are quite a few here who are big fans of Sam's and we have had many a cake from the place. They all tend to be on the larger side. This one was no exception though it was not gigantic. It also was bit fancier looking for a Sam's Club entry.  Perhaps in order to get the Artisan Fresh label it had to be a step up from the usual cake monstrosities.  There was a bit of a contradiction in the use of the work fresh to describe the cake and the Sam's Club strawberries that topped it of. Inasmuch as the strawberries were still somewhat frozen we would think they should reclassify it as fresh frozen or frozen fresh to really be accurate.

Artisan Fresh

Fresh Cheesecake, fresh strawberries..so why was it frozen?

Not so bad looking!

Fresh, er frozen strawberries in red goo surrounded by ersatz whipped cream.

Are the strawberries being consumed by the Blob?

It was good, though and there were few complaints. The cheesecake was solid and the strawberries, though frozen crunchy, were not overly sweetened by the reddish goo that they were covered with. (The goo kind of resembled the Blob in the 1988 remake of the famous horror movie starring Kevin Dillon.) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob_%281988_film%29.)The berries were nice and big for fruit lovers and the whipped cream added a final touch although it was not real whipped cream.  Nevertheless we'd easily eat this again should it reappear.

What better than cake hour after a day of interviews!

A current fellow entices a prospect with cake!

Today was the second day of interviews for future clinical fellowships in the Division. For the first time that we can remember the candidates and prospective fellows crashed cake hour and joined in for the tasting. What other institution offers this type of amenity to top off your interview day?  No one!  Cake hour rules!

St. Joseph's Day Cake on St. Patrick's Day

Nothing against St. Patrick but it turns out that St. Joseph's Day is two days later.  This being the case this time of year becomes the time that you can find Zeppole or St. Joseph's Day Cake.  These are a custom in the south of Italy and are featured as part of the Festa di San Giuseppe.  So if you choose you can celebrate St. Pat's with something they make to celebrate St. Joe!  That's kind of what we did.

How about a Zeppola!

Our first taste sensation from this bakery!

And this is what's in the box!

We have had these before but this year they came from DeLuise bakery on Chalkstone Avenue in Providence.  These are large puffs that are filled with pastry cream, jelly, ricotta or something similar. (Not whipped cream though because they would then be a cream puff.) In Malta they fill them with anchovies and eat them during Lent!! The Maltese preference aside, the normal sweet ones are dusted with powdered sugar and topped off with a cherry.  Today's offerings were filled with the traditional pastry cream and were quite large!  No one attempted to finish off an entire one. (If one of our crowd had not given up this stuff for Lent she probably would have eaten a whole one.) This being said they were comparatively light given how heavy pastry cream can be.  All in all they were considered preferable to the ones we had previously and everyone was satisfied even though we couldn't finish them all.

Two offerings - baked and fried!

The classic look!

The plainer version - hold the anchovies!

As fate would have it tomorrow, March 19th, on St. Joseph's Day we are having a dinner of corned beef and cabbage so I guess it all evens out in the end. Happy St. Joseph's Day!

This time its Sayonara Noda-san!

Today we combined cake hour with another going away party. Our colleague Takehiro was returning to Japan to continue his life as a clinician who may get some small chance to do research in the future.  So we had a cake hour celebration of him and the work he has done which of course featured one of our Brown University makeovers.

Two cakes to start with a bit of bubbly!

The Bailey's Irish Cream Cake.

Chocolate shards on a butter cream frosting.

And a skirt of chocolate to boot!

Simple but good!

The cakes - two of them - were supplemented with a bit of bubbly to properly toast the honoree.  They came from the Lasalle bakery in Providence which has been featured a number of times.  The two that we got were a Bailey''s Irish Cream cake and something that we think was called Cream Zabaglione or something similar.  As it turned out the Bailey's Cake alone was enough go around so we ended up with a twofer -  a second cake for tomorrow.  The Bailey's cake was very, very, good and is to be highly recommended!  It helped that this time we took it out of refrigeration early enough so that the butter cream was nice and soft when it came time to serve it.  The chocolate cake was good and fresh and all together it was scrumptious. We have no idea how much Bailey's was in it but what should it matter since it tasted good and we go to wash it down with some champagne.  Stay tuned for the report on the Zabaglione or whatever on another post.

Sensei speaks!

Another successful makeover!

I have to take this on the plane?

I'm Noda, I'm Noda...you hear me, yo!

Of course we had to redo our departing colleague in Brown logo couture.  Our normally reserved friend got into the spirit of the reverse baseball cap and hoodie look as you can see.   We were expecting him to break into a rap song but he didn't take it that far.  The final touch was, of course, a nice picture of the Brown campus for his future professional office. The challenge is to get it back to Japan in one piece. We do select based on the picture size being adequate for storage in the overhead bins of a transcontinental airliner! 

Mardi Gras Français et Lyonnais - FRENCH MARDI GRAS

Today is not Mardi Gras in France. However we are celebrating the way the French People and also those French People in the City of Lyon celebrate Mardi Gras. Hence the title! Instead of king cakes the special treat of French Mardi Gras is crêpes. These we are of course familiar with however on French fat Tuesday they are eaten with lemon and granulated sugar.  We even have a demonstration of how to appropriately prepare the crêpe by our resident French person.  Please take note so that the next time you are able to prepare your crêpe the correct way!    

Everyone was happy to give it a try and we quickly learned how to prepare the little pancakes, taking note to use our index finger to make the proper fold. It is, of course, inconsiderate to use the middle finger to make the fold and flip someone off at the same time.  These were very much enjoyed and it was only regrettable that there were not more but unfortunately a certain husband Nicolas decided to pig out on the pile of crêpes leaving fewer for the group to savor.  Fortunately, however, as a few of our usual participants gave up cake hour for Lent there was less demand anyway. (What were they thinking??)

Les crepes que Nicolas ne mange pas!

Appropriate technique for addition of lemon after the GRANULATED sugar!

And this is the finished product...

....that you eat with abandon!

Giving it a try!

 The crêpe scene was fun as one can see but WAIT, that was not all!  In the city of Lyon, the second largest in France after Paris, they partake of something more than crêpes!  There the Mardi Gras specialty is bugnes. (This is pronounced boon-yeh as opposed to bug-nee as it looks in English.)  These are small pieces of dough cut into some not so specific shapes which are then very quickly fried in hot oil. We were told it is a very dangerous and risky procedure. After cooling they are sprinkled with confectioner's, as opposed to granulated, sugar and voilà ...you have a fattening dish for Fat Tuesday.  Since it is very easy to eat a lot of these and risk getting fatter it is an appropriate dish to stuff yourself with prior to the self-deinal of the Lenten season. Les Lyonnais know what they are doing!

Voilà les bugnes!

Various stages of cook time browned some more than others.

Random shapes with little meaning!

Dusted with POWDERED NOT GRANULATED sugar!

Tasty....just like a beignet only smaller!

I never had one before and now I am hooked! 

Once again cake hour fulfills its unique purpose of enlightening and educating while eating!

Slummin' in with Peeps and the babies

So today we had to rely on the downstairs machine and combine it with the seasonal reappearance of Peeps - those darling little Easter marshmallow chicks!  Usually we just have to go for candy bars or something like that but this time they had some Hostess Suzy Qs.  Since they are basically small sugar cream filled cakes it seemed appropriate to have a few there.  What can one say about them?  Not much but it is amazing that ever single solitary one of them you might get will taste exactly the same.  That's either good quality control or just scary!

Today's vending machine menu!

Featuring Suzy Qs

These will appear the same after nuclear war!

In addition there were some candies and some classic Oreo cookies.  Perfectly acceptable to go with a cup of Joe.  The big event was the reintroduction of marshmallow Peeps to cake time.  These only appear during the Easter season and are as American as McDonald's Apple Pie. They were everywhere last year and even turned up in New Orleans at the DDW meeting haunting one of the attendees from our lab.  No one was sorry to see them and they quickly made their way into hot chocolates. Also, as you can see from the pictures, they hit it off big with the king cake babies!

We're ba-a-a-a-a-ack!

We hear the DDW is in DC this year!

Having fun with the king cake kids!

Happy 18th Birthday ...in absentia

Today we celebrated an 18th birthday party!  The coming of age year, when one can vote, be drafted into the army and in earlier days before they threatened to withdraw your federal highway funds you could drink alcohol at this 18th year milestone.  For the birthday girl however none of that matter because it was the 18th birthday of one of our cats.  A ripe old age for a feline, indeed according to conversion tables that is the equivalent of an 85-88 year old woman. 

Birthday celebration for a good old girl!

A picture in lieu of the birthday girl!

Good old American Birthday cake!

Do you think the frosting is thick enough?

Though she could not be here we celebrated with a traditional American chocolate birthday sheet cake.  The fact that it was fresh a a positive. Like most cakes like this thought the frosting was bit hard to take. We assume it was a standard frosting made from shortening or something similar. We probably could have done with a little less.  We learned that the Eastside Marketplace will take a special order and frost a cake with whipped cream with 24 hours notice. Next time, we're there!

I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille!

This doesn't smell like Sheba!

Make a wish and blow...never mind!

Can I get into the brush box now!

But nevertheless, Happy 18/88th birthday to Zahra T!  She did get to see part of the cake and was presented it with a candle and a verse of Happy Birthday followed up by a vigorous brushing which she likes quite well!  We also honor on the birthday, the memory of her brother/litter mate who did not make it to such a ripe old age.  Happy Birthday to Zeke, too!  We still miss you lots!

The would be birthday guy, gone but never forgotten!

Hanging together in the brush box!

Nothing much to Kheer about!

Kheer is apparently some kind of Indian sweetened rice dish.  Since we are happy to sampleanything from other cultures we were willing to give this a try also.  It was dutifully prepared and brought for cake time.  As mentioned it is rice based with sweetened milk or cream, some almond slivers and certain spices.  A nice big bowl was left for our assemblage.

Rice soup or soupy rice?

Do you think they had enough?

The correct name.

Unfortunately and in breach of protocol the gluten free mafia got wind of the existence of the rice based dish and pigged out before cake hour could begin. The gluttons finished off half the bowl before the official start time.  This left rather a sorry looking slop at the bottom of a glass bowl for us to bring to the world's attention.  I suppose the original presentation might have been more appealing to look at it instead of the bland remnant that we saw.  We did attempt to jazz up the appearance by adding some of the colored sugar garnishes from yesterday's king cakes

Add little Mardi Gras color to spiff it up!

The Kheer tasted like a soupy version of rice pudding though it was not overly sweet.   There probably could have been a bit more spice and a lot more almond slivers for it to really impress.  This was a basic introduction to a new dish we had not even heard of before. We'll just leave it at that.