Monday, May 29, 2006

Sailor's Delight

Regatta #2: Sailor's Delight"
This has occupied my time for the past 24 hours or so, off and on, dogs permitting! It is done in hand-dyed silks, with a hand-dyed cotton backing, and measures roughly 12.5" x 17.5".
Kristin and Dave left the beach this morning and were coming here to pick up Marley this evening. We were having Craig's "famous" smoked ribs, his "almost as famous" cole slaw, lima beans, and Tabboulah a la Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa. I was in a quandry as to what to serve for dessert, until I found her recipe for Lemon Cake in "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" I had always wanted to try it, so I got started bright and early this morning:

First I had to prepare the pans, preheat the oven, and then zest the lemons. Phew, now that was a task, since I needed 1/3 cup of lemon zest total!

The recipe also calls for 3/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Boy that Ina is some task master, isn't she? So, I squeezed and squeezed!!

Ina requested that I use 4 extra large eggs, but since we had only larges on hand, I added another.....beating them in separately after creaming 2.5 cups granulated sugar and 2 sticks of unsaled butter. YUMMMM....sounding good, eh?

Here are the two cakes, all mixed up and ready to pop into the oven!

While the cakes were baking, I made the syrup that eventually got spooned over their tops while they cooled: 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup sugar.

Here they are, all syruped and cooling! I'm exhausted...time to go do some sewing, until they are cool enough to add the glaze.


Aha! Finally!!! Looks pretty delish, huh? Well, that's what Barker thought too!!! He only managed to eat about 1/4 of one of the cakes before I caughthim....BUSTED!!!! Fortunately there was plenty remaining for us for dinner, plus a few extra pieces for my Mom and her tablemates at "The Big House".

Tomorrow I am meeting my friend Gail Racy for lunch. She does the most incredible Chinese Brush painting and has three of her pieces on display at the Quinlan Art Center's newest show, "People, Places and Things".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy un birthday. You blog more than I do. I also have not been able to figure out how or if people can " subscribe " to a yahoo blog. I put your blog in my blogroll.
I am going to the Hall County picnic on the 5th. Are you ?

Eva Hagbjärn said...

I can almost smell and taste your lemon cake. My mouth water just to look at it. Sorry we live so far apart from each other, otherwise I had poped up and helped you to eat it ;-)
Well, well soon it's time to make dinner anyhow. I just handed over Agnes to her Daddy, she has been here since 8.30 this morning so now I'm just sitting down for five minutes and taking a break infront of my computer before the next task.

Kat said...

Yum, that makes me hungry.

Gerrie said...

Love the silk sailboats. And that lemon cake has me drooling over my morning coffee.

Anonymous said...

The photos with the cooking piece are exquisite. I think I see an illustrated cookbook in your future.