A really good weekend

7 really good things happened this weekend:

1. We bought a cherry tree - a bing cherry tree
2. We bought a peach tree - an elberta
3. We bought another peach tree - a hale haven
4. We worked on the routing table to use on the wedding cake base
5. We picked out the finishing paint for the wedding cake base (more to follow on the base in days to come - only 12 more days to go!)
6. We bought fruit trees!  (Me!  I've never owned a fruit tree in my life, much less ever thought that I could!  And now we're planting three of them!  I feel like one of the cool kids...)
7. We baked cake!

There are finally layers of wedding cake in the freezer.  Chocolate stout cake for the bottom tier. 

This is the recipe we're using along with a few pics of what it looks like to make it around our house.  Hope you enjoy!  (And yes, I am a serious King Arthur Flour fan!)
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chocolate-stout-cake-recipe

We're doing 4 recipes.  It uses lots of cocoa...

...and lots of sour cream - at least by the time you make it 4 times.

You start by mixing guiness...

...with some butter. 

Ok, maybe lots of butter.  A pound of butter per recipe.  But don't worry.  Everyone knows that the fat goes away when the cake is baked for a wedding.  It's true.  Period.

Then you whisk in some cocoa.  It looks like it's going to just lump at first...

...but keep whisking.  It will eventually look like this - smooth and gorgeous.  And if you taste it, you will distinctly taste the stout and the butter and the cocoa, which is not the same thing as saying it tastes good at this point.  (Take note:  no sugar yet...that makes a difference...)

While that is cooling to room temperature, measure out the flour and sugar - 4 cups of each.  Although the pic looks like it's only sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl, the flour is hiding under all that sugar.

Whisk a bit, and you start to see the flour...

...until they are fully mixed together as one homogenous whole.  (I do like me the word "homogenous."  Such a good wordsmithing type word.)

In your wonderful Kitchen Aid mixer that your mother had the wisdom to tell you to buy almost 20 years ago after the kichen fire blend together 4 eggs and sour cream.  (Your sour cream won't have streaks of cocoa in it like mine unless you use the same yellow 3/4 cup Tupperware measuring cup like me.)  Oh, and one more thing.  I add a splash of vanilla (not called for in the recipe) because I believe vanilla makes things taste more like themselves.  Don't ask me how much a splash is.  I don't measure vanilla.  Not worth getting another measuring spoon dirty.

Add the cooled guiness and cocoa mixture and then the flour and sugar.

It will need to be scraped down and this is what it starts out looking like.

Give it another minute, and it turns out beautiful and glistening and smooth.  (And a lick of the beater now is delightful!)

Split the mixture between your pans.  They look very full, because I want lovely, full layers to hold all of that ganache filling.

While the cakes are baking, clean up the mixing bowls and pan, wish for your new friend, R, the one man cleaning machine, to show up suddenly at your front door, start a load of towels, take out the trash, thankful that your husband is spraying the back yard so the garage door is open, pick up another roll of paper towels from the basement on your way back in, get giddy about your new fruit trees, switch the pans around in the oven, form patties for the grill, turn on the DVR to record 2 hours of the Waltons, swear you won't admit that to anyone else, remember about the bacon tasting you did earlier at Shop-N-Save and feel bad about the less than glowing review you gave to the cute young men taping your response since you're a bacon snob, wish for your new friend, R, again to do more of the dishes, and then before you know it, you have cake baked!

And yes...after 15 minutes...you have the famous...the proof of cake snobbery...cake scraps!

Share them with your new husband, but not your youngest daughter, B.  This cake is not for the chocolate faint of heart.  B admits that she is the chocolate faint of heart.  She plans on eating the cinnamon tier at the wedding.

1 recipe down. 

 Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  (As of this typing, we are 3 times down, which is a very good feeling).  Oh, and don't forget to sweet talk your good friend/sister, W, into letting you use her freezer, cause you don't have quite enough space in your own freezer this time around either...

Have I mentioned that I now have 2 peach trees and 1 cherry?  Everyone is invited over when we get our first harvest!  (Did I just use the word "harvest"?  I may be one of the cool kids after all.)

Or not.  But I don't care!  I'm looking forward to cherries and peaches!  Yea!!!

Hope yours was a really good weekend, too! 

12 days and counting!!!!