Every Monday night is room mate potluck night. For the past month or so I have been slacking on the potluck nights and haven't had much time to put a lot into my contribution for the evening. Yesterday I had some free time and decided to make this Neapolitan cake that has vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavors combined. For the chocolate icing I used a cake decorating icing pipe to make the icing look fancy (this was fun!). I am not sure the photographs really capture this. Overall this was a delicious dessert but I think next time I would like more icing on it!
In other news, I am considering buying an Excalibur dehydrator in the very near future (possibly by the end of the month). I have decided to purchase the four tray dehydrator. I have put a lot of thought into this and I decided that since I consider dehydrated food to be more of a side dish to accompany lots of fresh fruits and veggies I want one just big enough to make a decent portion. I also don't want it to take up too much space in my kitchen and I feel I can easily put this one away when I don't want to use it. I have been using the four tray nesco dehydrator for the past three years and I have enjoyed it for making flax crackers, dried fruit and raw pizzas but I also find it to be limiting with what I can make, very hard to clean, and it is slowly falling apart. Another item I would like to purchase, maybe by the end of the summer is a nice camera where I can take very good clear shots of food and other events in my life. I am not sure which type of camera I want to buy yet and need to do some more research on this.
Finally, I want to try and give myself goals each week to accomplish. For the past month I have fallen away from doing much cardio activity and I want to add at least 3 days of cardio to my week. This may be in the form of a zumba class, step aerobics or running 3 miles. Thanks for reading and here is the recipe for my yummy cake!
Neapolitan Cake:
Cake Ingredients: 2 cups of dates, 6 cups of coconut flakes (unsweetened), 1/2 cup of strawberries, 1 tsp vanilla
Directions for cake: In a vitzmixer or blender add one cup of water and 2 cups of dates. Blend until you get a pureed consistency. Add half of this to 3 cups of coconut flakes as well as the vanilla flavoring. Mix this until it is well combined and press the first part of the cake into a pie pan. For the strawberry cake add strawberries to the date mixture in the blender and mix until smooth. Combine this with the other 3 cups of coconut flakes and mix together until well combined. Add this as the second layer of the cake.
Icing Ingredients: 2 avocados, 1/4 cup of coconut oil, 1/2 cup of honey, 1/4 cup of raw chocolate powder, sea salt to taste, 1/2 cup of water.
Icing Directions: Combine these ingredients into a blender or vitamixer until the mixture is smooth without any lumps. Spread your icing on top of your cake or put it into a piping bag to make fancy icing on top of your cake. Enjoy!
I do have one comment on the 4 tray versus five tray. I got the 4 tray at first and it was ok, but the actual area of the trays is a smaller than the 5 and 9 trays. Now that I have a 9 tray, I realized this. So when I had the 4 tray, I was always going right to the edge and the whole machine got a lot messier. Now I appreciate my 9 tray but if I wanted a smaller one I'd go for a 5 tray just for the area.
ReplyDeleteUnless you want a DSLR camera, which are upwards of 800+ dollars, I suggest a canon powershot. I've been really happy with mine.
The cake looks pretty but almost like there are black pansies on it. Which would be edible of course.
Bitt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your advice on the dehyrator! I really do appreciate it and that may end up changing my mind! With the cake that was my attempt at decorating it. Instead of just spreading the icing out in one layer I used a piping bag to create this little flower like icing topping. Have a great day.