I have a history of messing up Julia’s birthday cakes.
There was the year her chocolate cake cracked as it came out of the pans. That year, I blamed the weather.
There was the year her carrot cake came out of the pans in 17 pieces. Per layer. That year (OK, fine. It was THIS year), I blamed the oven temperature.
And there was the year of The Doll Cake That Almost Wasn’t.
Let me back up a moment. At the time of this story, Julia was turning three years old.
I was still living with my parents. We had invited a few family members over for lunch and cake that Saturday.
For some reason, I got in late that Friday night, and I still needed to make her cake.
Inexplicably, I decided to make a doll cake.
If you’ve never seen one of these before, you should know that a doll cake is a sculptural atrocity made by perching a Barbie-type head and torso atop a cake that has been iced to resemble a hoop skirt.
Did I hop on Google to find a recipe? No, ma’am.
Did I check a cookbook? Absolutely not.
Did I even phone a friend? Oh, sister. You ought to know by now I didn’t.
Instead, I winged it. I mixed up a chocolate cake mix and poured it into a prepared bundt pan.
Well, that did not look like nearly enough cake batter to bake up into a nice tall skirt.
At this point, did I check any source other than my own flawed intuition?
Nah. Instead, I mixed up a second cake mix, poured it in with the first, and popped the whole thing in the oven.
At the time, I assumed that if it looked OK, it would BE OK. (Note to any young people in the audience: this is unequivocally false and a blasphemous lie.)
Long story short: I baked that cake. And I baked that cake. And I baked and I baked and I baked that cake.
Finally, after well over an hour of bake time, I removed it from the oven. I let it cool for a bit. (No longer – it was already the wee hours of the morning.)
And then I tried to turn it out of the pan.
And y’all. That cake began to destroy itself.
A crack, tiny at first but growing wider and longer by the second, crept across the outside edge and made its way to the top of the cake.
That cake was not cooked. It was not cooked in the middle, and it was not going to pretend to be cooked just for my edification.
Honey, I slammed the pan right back on top of that cake and left the kitchen.
And then I went upstairs and cried.
By the time I came down to the kitchen the next morning, my mom had found the whole mess sitting on her counter. I told her the story.
In true Mom fashion, she quickly made a success out of my abysmal failure. She carefully lifted off the bundt pan, cut off the fully baked portions, and crumbled them into a glass dish.
She added a bit of blue food coloring to a tub of whipped topping and used it to create “waves” on top of the cake crumbles.
She carefully washed and dried a few plastic figurines from her days as a preschool teacher: Ariel, Flounder, Eric in a rowboat, and Ursula.
She staged each on top of the waves.
Boom. Another Christina masterpiece.
Oh, goodness. I hope you didn’t think that, after all that, I was going to give you a recipe for a real doll cake. I’ve still never made one of those.
However, I have learned how to make a few Indian-type dishes, thanks to my daughter’s predilection for Indian foods.
One year, we had butter chicken. That one was enjoyed by all.
Last year was some type of spinach sauce with paneer floating in it. That one was – not so much a favorite.
This year, she requested paneer masala.
I don’t actually know what paneer masala is, if you want to know the truth.
However, I found a recipe for chicken tikka masala and was able to adjust it to make a chicken entree for those who prefer it and a paneer entree for those (ahem, only Julia) who prefer that.
Here it is, adapted from twosleevers.com:
ADAPTED CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA
Ingredients
3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into thirds
For the marinade:
1 cup whole milk Greek yogurt (plain)
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon minced ginger
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon (more or less to taste; 1/4 teaspoon is not at all spicy) cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoon liquid smoke
For the sauce:
2 onions, diced
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 carrots, scraped and diced
10 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon minced ginger
2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon paprika
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon garam masala
2 teaspoon cumin
To finish:
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup chopped cilantro
Optional:
1-2 packages paneer, cut into 1-inch cubes.
Directions
■ Mix all marinade ingredients well. Add chicken pieces to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
■ Throw all sauce ingredients except cream and cilantro into pressure cooker. Stir. Add chicken pieces and any remaining yogurt from the marinade. Do not stir. Cook on high pressure for 10 minutes. Do a quick release. Remove chicken from pot and set aside. Add cream to pot.
■ Using an immersion blender or a regular blender in batches, puree sauce until smooth. If you are making a paneer version, pour off about half the sauce into a separate pan and add paneer cubes to it. Heat over low to medium heat until cheese is warm (cheese will not melt). Add chicken back to other portion of sauce. Serve over rice or with naan. Garnish each serving with cilantro if desired.
Note: this makes quite a bit of sauce. We had 2-3 cups of sauce leftover, even after we had eaten all we wanted and put aside a few servings of chicken and paneer for lunch. I froze the sauce flat in a ziplock bag and will serve it over cooked chicken later.
Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].
Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.
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