Why Barack Obama is Like a Chocolate Soufflé

Chocolate Soufflé: A chocolate soufflé is quickly whipped up and baked into a delicious, light, and airy dessert. Sweet, popular… yet its rise is precarious – even the best chefs must hope their soufflé does not fall.



Barack Obama: Senator Obama’s popularity was quickly whipped up following his stunning 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech and has risen to new heights in the 2008 Presidential campaign. He promises sweet, sweet change… a message that is both popular for some and lacking in substance for others. Can his sweetness hold up? Here’s hoping.

Why Hillary Clinton is Like a Fruitcake

Fruitcake: This staunch dessert is associated most strongly with the holiday season. Often given as a gift, although no one we know has ever been interested in receiving one. Sometimes re-gifted to others who are not interested. Solid, rock hard, dependable year after year. Nearly impossible to destroy.



Hillary Clinton: This staunch Presidential candidate, New York Senator, and Former first lady is associated most strongly with her husband’s tenure as President. She is a mainstay of the Democratic party, although sometimes a controversial figure on the other side of the aisle. Seems to be re-gifting the Clinton era to the American public. Solid, rock hard, dependable year after year. Nearly impossible to destroy.

Layer Cake

White layer cake with vanilla pastry cream and chocolate ganache, Majestic Cafe, Old Town, Alexandria.

Bouchons from Oregon

My friend Parag is having a birthday today (Happy Birthday, Parag!) and is also packing his bags for Portland, Oregon, where he will join Team Obama.

Well Parag, bon voyage! And for your sake, I hope you are gone a long time and ride this train straight into the White House. While you're in Portland, be sure you stop at the Pearl Bakery and load up on these bouchons au chocolat. If I lived there, I might eat one every day.

These perfect little cakes are a bit like a brownie meeting a cake -- dense, chocolatey, but a bit crumbly and dry, not gooey or fudgey. They don't have any baking soda though, so they stay pretty dense and rich, and they're studded with mini-chocolate chips, which melt to create little pockets of rich chocolatey goodness. Thank you to David Lebovitz, who needled this recipe out of the Pearl Bakery and allowed anyone to eat these delightful little cakes, without joining the BHO team.

Bouchons au Chocolat

From the Pearl Bakery, via David Lebovitz's Great Book of Chocolate

Makes 12 mini-cakes

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate
• 3 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1 3/4 c. cake flour
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 1/4 c. granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 c. mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 12-well muffin tin.

Melt the bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate in the microwave, in 30 second installments. Do not scorch or over cook. Beat the butter and the sugar with an electric mixer until they are very light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after adding each one. Stir in the melted chocolate until well incorporated.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder and salt into the bowl, and then fold it into the batter until incorporated, being careful not to overmix. Add the chocolate chips and stir just enough to combine.

Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin wells. Bake the cakes for 18 minutes, or until they still feel quite soft in their centers when pressed lightly with your index finger. Do not overbake them.

Allow the cakes to cool in the muffin tin for ten minutes, then pop them out and let them cool completely on a rack. Wait until they are room temperature before eating.

Serve them mint ice cream, or just eat them at tea time. Or all the time. God they're good.

The McCain Girls > Free Cookies

There are often delicious (free) cookies in my office during lunchtime. Here at Cake and Politics, we take our free work desserts very seriously.

Today, I receieved something EVEN BETTER than a cookie at work - this video in an e-mail from my Republican co-worker (who is lovely, by the way, for realizing it would make this Democrat very, very happy).

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran

I’m with Arianna here – McCain’s blunder (his repeated insistence that Al Queda was being trained in Iran) was way underplayed last week. Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart covered it on their shows… but other than a few other brief mentions on CNN, I saw nothing substantial about it in the press. It’s important to point out here that the other mentions I saw brushed it off as nothing more than a small linguistic snafu – that somehow he didn’t mean it, but simply misspoke.

Now, I have watched this moment multiple times. Senator Lieberman (TURNCOAT) is clearly uncomfortable as McCain babbles on, and when he finally can’t take it anymore, he interrupts McCain to correct him (“extremists, Johnny, EXTREMISTS”) - doesn't this appear to be totally NEW information for McCain? Watch it 10 times and please tell me if you see/hear any spark of recognition in the old guy. He's generally confused. Or, even worse, he MEANT to say it... remember this little ditty?

Not the only time McCain "misspoke" on this issue, however. Maybe they should put Senator Turncoat on the payroll - keep McCain in line.

What makes this even more ridiculous is the “foreign policy expert” label that McCain seems to have had slapped on him – in part by the very same news outlets that have essentially glossed over this story.

Then again… in terms of having a President who knows anything AT ALL about the Middle East… I guess we have nowhere to go but up.

Pecan Pie

One bite of this pecan pie they were giving away at work today...



...and I started wondering whatever happened to ol' Johnny Edwards?

Bobbie Edwards' (John's mom) Pecan Pie

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. light brown sugar, packed
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 4 Tbsp milk or cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 stick of margarine or butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup pecans
• 1 unbaked pie shell (9")

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Mix and pour ingredients into the pie shell
3. Place on a cookie sheet
4. Put in oven and bake 20 mins
5. Reduce oven temperature to 275
6. Bake approx. 20 mins longer
7. Center should be slightly soft -- check pie during last 10 minutes of baking

Clinton and the Fruit Cake

When the Bundtit and I were discussing cake and candidates, we made the analogy that Hillary is the fruit cake in the group. Solid, rock hard, dependable year after year. No one really likes a fruit cake, but don't be surprised if it's the only one left standing after the rest of the Christmas buffet has been demolished.

Let them eat... red meat?

State fairs. Local diners. Picnics. Fast food on the road. It’s safe to say that our fearless candidates for President have eaten their way across most of the country… in what now has proven to be the longest presidential primary ever.

It’s hard to remember a time when the Obama-Clinton-McCain triangle wasn’t the only thing we talked about… just a few short months ago we had a plethora of ridiculous and wonderful candidates to speculate about and laugh at and watch eat. I have not forgotten Duncan Hunter’s insane ramblings about fences or Mike Gravel’s assertion that he felt like a potted plant. I miss Mitt’s hair and Dodd’s eyebrows. In the spirit of remembrance, I give you this oldie-but-goodie – a list of the candidate’s favorite foods to cook.

Yes We Can (eat cake)!

This blog was born of a rather unfortunate conversation that went something like this:

"Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can...what? What do the Obama people think we can do exactly?!"

"Yes we can...win? Yes we can...govern?"

"Is it time for lunch?"

"Yes we can...eat cake?"

"Wow. That is a winning slogan."

"I want some cake."

You see, there's nothing we like more than cake...unless it's politics. In this forum, we hope to explore that delicious intersection of the two. We will read the headlines, we will bake cakes and by God, we will find a way to combine the two.

So if your political life isn't "sweet" enough (groan), then tune in regularly for a little politcal sugar high. Just don't send us the dental bills.