Awesome Lemon Layer Cake

When you have an over abundance of things like eggs and lemons, you can make some pretty awesome desserts. I made a very nice lemon mascarpone layer cake last week as an early Mother's Day present to myself. It was kind of labor intensive, with a lot of early preparation that required me to start days in advance.

The cake was a 4-layer cake and the recipe called for lemon curd, which I made from the ranch chickens' eggs and our next door neighbors' lemons. The rest of the recipe calls for some other basic ingredients from the store, like mascarpone cheese, heavy whipping creme, flour, sugar, and butter.

Shown, is a picture of the cake after it was assembled and allowed to rest in the refrigerator overnight. The hard part, was waiting until it was ready to eat! You can check out the recipe that I used and see for yourself.

Well, OK, it was a little bit harder than opening a box of cake mix. This cake requires that you do stuff like separate the eggs, beat the yolks, then the whites separately, folding them back into the yolk mixture. Then, you fold in the flour that you have sifted and carefully measured before hand, doing so in small amounts, trying not to destroy the loftiness of the beaten egg whites; and all that is just for the cake part. Making the frosting means you whip the heavy cream to soft peaks, folding in the lemon curd that you made earlier in the week, combined with the mascarpone. Then after all the mixing, there is the actual assembly of the cake, including frosting it.

This was by far the most labor intensive cake I can remember making in a while, yet it was sooooo worth it. The frosting came out light and lemony, the cake, basted with a lemon syrup was moist and lemony, yet yielded to being cut into layers, and the fun part was playing around with a pastry bag to pipe the rosettes on the top.

I was more than happy to share with the neighbors who provided the lemons, and anyone else who happened by during the few days that cake was around.

For actual Mother's Day, we went out to lunch. I hope all you hard-working mom's had a great day!

New Chickens, Old Chickens

We bought 6 new chicks on Saturday. Here is a photo of them chillin' on their first evening. They will live inside the house, using a heat lamp for warmth for the first few weeks.

This particular batch of chicks is very friendly, which is what we like. I like to buy them when they are very young. If you pay extra, you can get someone else to take an educated guess as to whether or not they are eventually going to be roosters or hens.

Since we cannot have roosters in the city limits, (we are technically still within the city limits,) we prefer hens only. You do not need a rooster for the hens to lay eggs. They will lay them on their own, after they are between 4-6 months old, depending on the breed.

Our other chickens are older. Blondie is two years old, and the Cuckoo Marans, are one year old. Below is a picture of the older chickens. Blondie is the one eyeing the camera in the foreground. She is the only Americauna chicken that I have left out of our original batch. I have lost a few chickens over the years to natural predators, such as coyote and bobcat. The Ranch is bordered on one side by a creek. There are many animals that roam the riparian corridor that is a wildlife habitat common to creeks in our area.

Living On The Rural Edge

Since I have been lucky enough to keep my animals on a small acreage near my house, I thought it might be nice if I shared some of the things that have happend over the years. 'The Ranch' as we call it, is approximately 4.5 acres on the rural edge of a huge city in Silicon Valley, CA. My actual house is just a few blocks away, in your basic suburban neighborhood.

The Ranch is owned by an estate of 22 heirs, and there is no telling when they may decide to sell it off. My time on the property is limited, but I do not know when it will end, which makes for some difficult decision making at times.

Stay tuned. There will be some pictures of my horses to follow.