Brown Sugar Buttercream (Page 743)

• Date: Monday, May 8, 2006 - 6pm
• Location: Cambridge, MA (MIT!)
  
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Bridget
• Dining Companions: Vigleik, Shihchi, Mike, John, Haynes, Big Mike, Mark, Prof. McClure, Charles R, etc...
  
• Recipe Rating: B

Vigleik picked this frosting for his thesis defense cake. It was good but yet I was a little disappointed. This is a mousseline buttercream, which is one of my favorite types of frosting. Mousseline buttercreams are light and silky, and both easy to spread and easy to pipe. This version, however, didn't come out quite right. It was much denser than it should have been, and consequently the recipe didn't produce nearly enough frosting for the cake. Luckily, I had already planned to fill the cake with diplomat cream rather than the frosting, but had I wanted to frost between the layers I would not have been able to. I'm not sure what went wrong -- it may be a problem with the recipe, or it could have been user error, but I have made mousseline buttercreams many times and they never came out like this one. The flavor was good though, and the frosting was still extremely smooth. I forgot to take a picture of the frosting alone. Sorry!

Bridget came over on Sunday and we baked Vigleik's defense cake together. I love to cook with other people, but usually I don't like to bake with friends. I'm not totally sure why that is. I think it's because baking with my mother can be frustrating. She enjoys cleaning so much that she will inevitably put away ingredients I haven't yet used, and wash dishes that I am in the process of using, etc... Finally she and I came to an agreement that when I visit her and I bake she should not be in the kitchen. That works out pretty well! I think the other reason I like to bake alone is that a lot of my cakes go through an ugly phase before they are finished, and I prefer to be alone for that!

Despite all this, baking with Bridget was fun! It was good to have another set of hands in the kitchen. Paul stopped by too and helped out with the dishes, which was also appreciated! I think I haven't fully recovered though -- later in the evening, after Bridget had gone home and I was decorating the cake, Paul said to me very gently, "Maybe I shouldn't be here when you do this part." Apparently I was not so pleasant to be around! Whoops! But what would I have done without Paul to operate the blowdryer (long story!)!