And although he cares nothing about birthdays, I felt compelled to make him a nice meal, a birthday cake and have nice wine wine. We are big fans of 'Languages of Love' in which you must speak the other's love language. For him, I should simply ignore his birthday. However, I am training him for the next 60-odd years in how I want to be treated on my birthday.
Anyhoo.
First, the menu:
- roast beef
- roast veggies
- yorkshire pudding
- shallot sauce (a Laura Calder recipe that sounded delicious and a French twist to an English roast)
- brussel sprouts (I am convinced I can make the Engineer like them)
- peas with pearl onions and mint
- gravy
AND
- a chocolate cake with four layers of Oreo cream covered in ganache frosting.
Ambitious?
Well, I was attempting to harness my inner-domestic goddess again AND be the perfect wife.
So I called my mum.
Ironically, I am the daughter of a beef farmer. One of my earliest memories is watching a cow give birth. I attended branding parties. Our road trip games including naming various breeds of cattle in far-off fields (and learning the difference between a heifer and a cow: a heifer is a female cow that has never had a calf. A cow is a female, urm, cow that has had a calf). Dear god, my family has been known to have an ENTIRE cow in our freezer at one time.
I should know beef.
But I don't.
Last time I asked about the cuts of beef my dad sent me a butcher's diagram.
I am not kidding.
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| Moo |
Anyhoo, I called to ask how to buy a roast.
This conversation went on for a few days. Get a prime rib roast. But from the local grocery store or local butcher? How big? Should I try a side rib roast instead?
I ended up with a 5lb roast from Loblaw's at $4.99 a pound which meant it cost $23. If I had not talked to my mother, I would have had no idea that this was a very good deal.
Okay. Roast bought.
Now to prepare said roast. And the rest of it. And the cake.
I thought I was so clever in baking the layers of the cake the day before so all I had to do was assemble it. Unfortunately, the layers were very thin so I opted to bake another cake at the same time as prepare my roast.
No problem.
Except my cake was still baking when my roast should have been searing.
Hrm.
Okay, cake out and cooling on rack. Perfect.
Oven temperature up as stated by mother to sear roast for ten minutes.
Now the Engineer wanted to eat around 8 and this was 6. Or maybe 6:30. Anyhoo, plenty of time!
Did I mention that I had to take three photos of the roast to send to my mum so I cooked it the right side up? All recipes say bone down. But this made my roast tipsy. I also sprinkled it with salt & pepper and rubbed it with butter. Mmmmmmm.
Okay, bones down, fat up and roasting in a hot oven.
Now to cut and wash potatoes. Toss them in some olive oil, salt and pepper. Perfect! Ready for when it's time to throw them in with the roast.
Oh crap. I was supposed to boil them for a while first so they don't take forever to roast.
Out of the bowl and into the water.
Waste of perfectly good olive oil.
Begin shallot sauce. When I started to cry profusely, I decided to scrap my plans of peas with pearl onions. Frozen peas was just fine. I also scrapped brussel sprout plan.
The shallot sauce was just shallots slowly cooked in white wine super slowly, then beat (not melted) with butter and herbes of Provence. The recipe called for MELD and said DO NOT LET BUTTER melt. What does that mean?
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| Damn you Laura Calder! |
Called mum.
She didn't know either.
Next was to prepare Yorkshire pudding batter. Done. Easy. Everything is set to go at the same time roast is done. After an hour and a half of roasting I sadly realised I had to keep roasting it for another hour.
Oh dear.
Called mum. Told her that my meat thermometer was broken. Then I realised you were supposed to put the thermometer in the roast all the way and leave it there. Just sticking it in and pulling it out does not work.
Time to decorate the cake. Time to shake it out of the pan. Except only half of it came. WTF? I followed the same pattern as my other perfect cakes!! Or did I? Last time I used shortening and flour before pouring in the batter. This time? Pam.
Oh crap.
I started to panic/cry a little. The Engineer assured me it would still be good and proceeded to eat the ruined cake.
Okay fine, so my cake is crooked/uneven. Still good right? Time to make the ganache. I followed the recipe word for word. SO WHY WOULDN'T IT THICKEN WHEN I WHIP IT?????? After whipping it on medium, then high, then medium, then low for ten minutes and it was still liquid, I reached for the icing sugar to make buttercream icing instead.
Time to take potatoes out of water!
I started to sweat. This is when the husband came up to me with his wine glass and told me that my gift to him on his birthday was to relax.
DOES THE MAN NOT KNOW ME AT ALL????
When in entertainment mode I am actually quite unpleasant. Stressed to the max and focused on the task at hand. From making sure everyone was having fun at our wedding to making sure his birthday beef was perfect.
Sheesh. Maybe I should learn how to relax. That is when I took his wine glass.
Anyways, when all was said and done - the meal was actually . . . . . AMAZING. WOO HOO! My Yorkshire puddings were perfect. Hurrah!! The beef was perfectly rare. Hurrah! The peas. Well they were frozen so they were peas.
We ate at 9:20. Whoops.
Okay, back to the cake which is starting to really upset me because it's almost 10 and I should have just baked and decorated it yesterday. Why oh why do I always think I should do it all on the same day?
This is when things went . . . . sour.
I ignored Martha Stewart telling me to even off each layer of cake with a knife. I felt they were flat already. So layer one: iced. Awesome. Put on layer two (on top of Oreo cream): it started to break in half when I iced it and crumbled on layer one. Crap. Layer three: cracked completely in half and fell on the side of the plate. Crap. Icing was EVERYWHERE
Iced it anyways. Buttercream icing was now breaking up the cake fullstop and had bits of cake in it. So I was icing the cake with icing full of cake.
Screw it. I just stuck the cake bits back together and forced the icing to hold the whole mistake together.
Then I got out my handy-dandy mechanical decorating bag I got for my shower with the white icing to write:
Happy Birthday Jody!
(and then a windmill underneath)
Urm, this is how far I got.
Now for the big moment of lighting the sparklers and singing my new husband 'Happy Birthday'.
Unfortunately our lighter was empty so all I had was matches and couldn't light the sparklers fast enough.
Instead of me telling you, how about I just show you?
Yes. Disaster.
I would like to say that the cake tasted good but it was only okay. I mean it was pretty good - except for the Oreo part! How surprising is that? I thought it would be delicious. Damn you Pinterest for misleading me.
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| As found on Pinterest |
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| My version - inside it looks okay! |
So that was my first birthday dinner as a new wife. If it had been perfect, then what would I attain to these next 60 years right?
Yep. Lots of time for improvement. Lots and lots and lots and lots of time.
