Funfetti & Blackberries Cake

It’s that time of year! The calendar has officially turned from Summer to Fall. There are bins of pumpkins overflowing outside every grocery store I frequent, retail decor is ranging from Halloween to Christmas, and Trader Joe’s is an explosion of Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING.

Meanwhile, Karl The Fog has taken his annual vacation (or seems to be thinking about it at least), which means it is finally SF Summer, which means I’m coming at you today with blackberries! And sprinkles!

(I love fall, but if I can’t wear sweaters yet then nobody gets pumpkin anything from me.)

I made this cake twice. The first time, I was supposed to make it for my friend Mercedes’s baby shower, but then she unexpectedly went into labor the day before, and so I was off the hook, but still kind of had it in my head that I wanted to make a cake. So I made a tiny taste-test version for myself, and then, when I saw Mercedes a couple weekends ago, I made her a bigger version, because I felt that after having a baby, especially after that, she still deserved a cake!

I’m really happy I had multiple opportunities to test this one out! I knew I wanted to combine funfetti with blackberries, exactly the way Salt and Straw did it with their Birthday Cakes and Blackberries seasonal flavor earlier this Summer. It sounds weird, but the tart blackberries really compliment the sugar high of vanilla and sprinkles, and together, they make magic.

But which funfetti recipe to use? Claire and I made the Milk Bar recipe for our royal wedding viewing earlier this year, and it was so, so good, but I’d also been wanting to make the other funfetti cake that broke the internet, and try out Molly Yeh’s recipe. So I tried both! For the first taste test version, I made a mini version of Molly’s cake, but using with swiss meringue buttercream to cut down on the sweetness and real vanilla extract. For one, I couldn’t find any clear imitation vanilla in the store (but I did find butter extract. Excuse me, WHO is using this???) and I also thought that maybe real vanilla would pair better with the blackberries. It was tasty, but fussier to make, with the need to separate eggs and bake the layers in separate pans.

So, for the second version, I went back to the Christina Tosi cake, baking up the batter in a quarter sheet pan, then stamping out the layers with a 6-inch cake ring. I used the milk soak she calls for, and the swiss meringue buttercream again, but this time I flavored everything with clear imitation vanilla (which I now own a full 32 oz of, if you know anyone who needs some). I LOVED this one! The milk soak keeps everything moist, the imitation vanilla gives you exactly that nostalgic funfetti flavor we all remember, the frosting isn’t too sweet, and the blackberries zipped right through everything.

The result was festive and summery and full of both jammy and fresh berry flavors. It’s a new favorite for me, and I was going to use the leftovers in my freezer to hang on to Summer as long as the weather stayed hot,* but then the weather cooled down. And also, I ate all the cake.

*AKA, mid-70s. Sorry, I am ruined.

---

Funfetti & Blackberries Cake

Cake layers adapted from Christina Tosi.

For the cake:

• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened to room temp

• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening

• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• 3 tbs, tightly packed, light brown sugar

• 3 eggs

• 1/2 cup buttermilk

• 1/3 cup grapeseed oil

• 2 tsp clear imitation vanilla

• 2 cups cake flour

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 3/4 tsp kosher salt

• 1/4 cup plus 2 tbs rainbow sprinkles (see note)

For the swiss meringue buttercream:

• 4 egg whites

• 1 1/4 cup sugar

• 3 sticks butter, unsalted, room temp

• 1 tsp clear imitation vanilla

For assembly:

• 1/4 cup milk

• 1 tsp clear imitation vanilla

• blackberry jam, good quality

• blackberries, for decorating

• sprinkles, for decorating

1. Bake the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a quarter sheet pan with cooking spray and line with parchment. Set aside.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the butter, shortening, and sugars and beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes, scraping down as needed, and then add the eggs and beat another 2-3 minutes on medium-high.

3. Turn the mixer to low and pour in buttermilk, oil and vanilla extract. With speed on medium-high, beat for 4-6 minutes, until the mixture is very, very pale, almost white, and almost doubled in size. When you see no more streaks of fat or liquid in the batter, it is ready for the dry ingredients. Add the cake flour, baking powder and salt, as well as the 1/4 cup of sprinkles, and mix for no more than a minute, just until everything comes together.

4. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared cake pan and then sprinkle with remaining sprinkles. Bake 30-35 minutes, until puffed and no longer jiggling in the middle. Cool cake completely in the pan, on a wire rack.

5. Make the frosting: Set bowl of mixer over a pot of simmering water, and add the egg whites and sugar and whisk to combine. Continue whisking until sugar dissolves and mixture is very warm to the touch, or reached 160 degrees on an instant read thermometer.

6. Transfer bowl to stand mixer and beat egg white mixture with the whisk attachment on high speed to stiff but not dry peaks. Continue beating until fluffy and cooled, 6 minutes.

7. Switch to the paddle attachment and beat on medium-low speed, adding the butter a bit at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and then beat on low speed for about 2 minutes more, to reduce any air bubbles.

8. To assemble: with a 6-inch cake ring, cut rounds out of the cooled cake, one at the top left corner and one at the bottom right corner. Then cut two half circles as large as possible out of the scraps. Dab a bit of frosting onto the center of a 6-inch cake board, and place in the cake ring. Place the two semi circles in the ring, then fill in the gap in the middle with some of the remaining cake scraps. You want to pack it tight so it forms a sturdy base layer.

9. In a small bowl, mix together the milk and vanilla, then brush 1/3 of the mixture onto the cake layer. Spoon a layer of frosting over the soaked cake, then a few small spoonfuls of the jam. Top with the next cake layer and repeat. Top with remaining cake layer, brush on remaining milk soak, and then frost the cake as desired. You should have enough frosting to fully cover and do some fun piping if you want. Top with fresh blackberries and more sprinkles and enjoy!

Notes:

• When shopping for rainbow sprinkles, go with the bright, neon, artificially colored ones. This is not the time for natural sprinkles. Also? Check the ice cream aisle! You will probably find much bigger containers of sprinkles, and cheaper than the little vials sold in the baking aisle. But check both! I’ve found the same large tub of rainbow sprinkles in both aisles in the past.

Hushpuppies on the River

For the long Labor Day weekend, I flew east to join my sister and brother in law for a trip to visit my grandparents in Virginia. Their house is one of my favorite places, the familiar red brick and cedar perched between railroad tracks on a bank of the New River. I spent a good chunk of my childhood summers there, fishing, playing, catching fireflies, gardening, and most memorably, eating. The fruit trees are a full blown orchard and the flower gardens are gone now, but even still, the trains whistling by at night are comforting rather than disruptive, and especially in summer, the sound of the river and the smell of the grass on a hot, humid late-summer day is perfect. Also, the persistent lackluster cell-signal and wifi make it a super relaxing place to visit!

We packed a lot in three days, trying a new-to-us restaurant, The Palisades, one town over, that I had randomly heard about from my friend Susan’s mom. It was definitely a nice change from Applebee's or Olive Garden, with great pizza, but was admittedly a little too loud, with an original tin roof and brick walls that echo the volume of the dining room into a decibel level that drowned out all table conversation.  The restaurant is in a converted general store, and my Grandma thinks it looks like “a dump” and I thought it was the cutest restaurant I’d seen in a while, so maybe it was just too millennial? We had a nice meal, regardless.

On Saturday, we did a little fishing until we got rained out of the river, and then on Sunday we drove over for brunch at Mountain Lake, a resort best known as the filming location for Dirty Dancing and where the lake has shockingly all but disappeared. Where would Baby practice her lifts now?

But my favorite meal was on Saturday night, when Claire and I shooed our Grandparents out of the kitchen and fried up a feast of fish and chips, coleslaw, and hushpuppies. Grandpa called us "surgical" in our precise planning of the meal, so I think it's safe to say we impressed them! 

However, I wasn't about to fry up any hushpuppies without instructions from the master. To me, hushpuppies are a must with a fish fry, and my Grandpa's hushpuppies are hands down my favorite. But whenever he writes a recipe down for me, it never comes out the same. Maybe it's that food just tastes better when someone makes it for you, but I have a sneaking suspicion he leaves something out, something indefinable, the way my Great-Grandmother used to mix her biscuits until they "just feel right". That's hard to capture in writing. So, I brought him into the kitchen to show me how it's done, and paid close attention as he poured, stirred, and spooned the batter into hot oil. 

This past weekend, I successfully re-created the hushpuppies in my own kitchen, so I think it worked! But also, I think the key here is full faithfulness to the original recipe, which means using self-rising flour and something that is hard to find outside of the south, self-rising cornmeal mix. Those aren't commonly used ingredients in my pantry, but self-rising flours and mixes are a staple in southern baking, so you just have to go with it.

I added some jalapenos to half of mine, which give the hushpuppies a little kick and pair extremely well with the maple butter I spread on the split hushpuppies. But if you don't want to go making them spicy, the original recipe is just fine: crunchy outside, creamy inside, and full of delicious cornbread flavor! They are incredibly difficult to stop eating. 

---

Hushpuppies

This is the way my Grandpa makes these. He uses a fry baby that only has one temperature setting, and he told me to heat the oil until it’s boiling. I interpreted that to mean 375 degrees and it worked perfectly.

•  1 Cup self-rising cornmeal mix

• 1/4 cup self-rising flour

• 3/4 cup buttermilk

• 2 tbs butter, melted

• 1 egg

Maple Butter:

• 2 tbs salted butter

• 1 tsp maple syrup

1. Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another small bowl, whisk together wet ingredients and then whisk into dry mixture. Let sit for at least 10 minutes.

2. Add 3 inches of cooking oil in a large pot and heat to 375 degrees. Gently drop the batter into the hot oil by large spoonfuls and fry until they have flip themselves over and are evenly golden on all sides.

3. Vigorously stir butter and maple syrup together until light and whipped consistency. Serve with hot hushpuppies.

Notes:

• You can spice these up a little by adding a jalapeno. Just seed and finely dice, then stir into the batter.

Vancouver & Victoria

I fled the country! 

Not really, but you know that joke about heading to Canada amid the current domestic climate? I probably made that one at least twice on the drive from Seattle to Vancouver and about ten more times in my head. I amuse myself, at least. I suppose the part that keeps it funny to me is that my Canadian long weekend meant a three-day break from news alerts on my phone. That, at least, felt good.

I was chatting with my friends Susan and Christiana about a long-weekend trip somewhere this summer, and we got the brilliant idea to go to Alaska. But, as it turns out, Alaska is crazy expensive to travel to in the summertime, and so we settled on Canada instead! Christiana and I could fly from the Bay Area to meet up with Susan in Seattle and drive the rest of the way, providing us with a car during the trip and eliminating the need to pay for international flights. Yay!

We decided on staying in the Vancouver area and doing a day trip by ferry to Victoria, and it was so lovely I can't even really say enough. Canadians are actually really that nice, Tim Horton's > Dunkin' Donuts, and the weather was sunny and warm for us the entire weekend, with clear skies showing off breathtaking views of the city.

We stayed in Steveston, a little historic fishing village, that was not 20 minutes outside Vancouver proper as advertised, but did turn out to be the real life shooting location of Once Upon a Time, which meant that we actually stayed in Storybrooke for the weekend! It turns out I'm the only one of the three of us to have ever watched an episode of OUAT, and since I was too busy roadtripping in Oregon to take part in the planning, I missed the part where our Airbnb was called the "Once Upon a Time Suite" with reviews full of diehard fans rhapsodizing about staying above Granny's diner. 

It was a reminder that most of TV is filmed in Vancouver now, to the point where you can accidentally stay on a set. We also walked by a crew setting a scene for The Flash in Stanley Park, so obviously I'm excitedly waiting for the moment this fall where I can point at my TV and loudly proclaim, "I was there five hours before they shot this!" I know my walls will be happy for me.

Our trip wasn't all Hollywood glamour, though. We took the gondola up Grouse Mountain to sweatily take in the previously mentioned stunning views, watch a delightfully cheesy lumberjack show, ride the chairlift, and not do any hiking, as apparently even in July the backcountry trails still have snow on them?? 

We walked around Stanley Park, visited the Totem Poles, walked around Gastown, saw the Steam Clock, drank cocktails with gummy worms in them, and marveled at all the touristy maple or moose-themed things for sale. We drank Caesars and learned the hard way not to plan on a late dinner in Steveston, but the midnight Korean fried chicken we found in Richmond was A+ so I like to think the universe was looking out for us. Richmond is also home to the Summer Night Market, where you can walk endless rows of food stalls selling everything from more KFC to poutine to neon colored "fruit" drinks served in strobing light bulbs. This is also where your friends might convince you to tuck yourself into a giant plastic ball and roll around in a pool filled with water like a human hamster. 

We also took the leisurely, 90 minute ferry ride to Victoria, where we walked around the harbour, stuffed ourselves at the most relaxed, lovely high tea at the Pendray Tea House (we made and cancelled a reservation at the Empress; it may be more famous but the staff was infinitely less welcoming and the crowded room was deafening), and walked through the dreamy Butchart Gardens. It was only on the ferry ride back that I remembered Victoria is the capital of British Columbia, and I spent the rest of the day wondering at the logic of putting your capital city so far away from the mainland and the rest of the province. It's fine now, with airplanes and everything, but how did that work 100 years ago? 

I give Canada a 10/10 and would for sure go back for the prolonged media diet and a maple dip.