A Very Dairy-Free Birthday

Today is my friend Michelle's birthday, and she asked me to make her a simple cake with chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.  I was extremely happy to comply!  Michelle's situation is unique in that neither she nor her son can eat dairy, so no part of this creation could contain any milk, butter, or milk solids whatsoever.  

The result is something I like to call Dairy-Free Decadence:

Please excuse the chair in the background... ;-)

This is a double layer chocolate cake with dark chocolate mousse filling, chocolate "buttercream", and dark chocolate curls and deco.  I used a simple vegan chocolate cake recipe that I know I can rely on, using whole wheat pastry flour; canola oil was the fat source. The inner mousse layer is dark chocolate, granulated sugar, and eggs.  The chocolate "buttercream" is also vegan, using organic, non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening, almond milk, powdered sugar, and of course, chocolate. 

The chocolate curls and deco I made myself out of dark chocolate. 

Welcome!

Welcome to The Jaded Spoon blog!

The Jaded Spoon is me, Dara Jade Cramp, and the creative culinary delights that come from my small home kitchen.

My love for all things food is life-long, probably hereditary. I learned most of what I instinctually know about food and cooking from years spent at my mama's elbow.  I have been baking bread and cookies from scratch since I was in elementary school; I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't know how to knead bread dough.

I catered my first event when I was sixteen: my mom's 40th Birthday Party.  I remember beautifully setting the table with white linen and glass, the pineapple upside down cake that remains one of her favorites, and double layer chocolate fudge cake as well.

Four years and a few food-service type jobs later, I enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu at Scottsdale Culinary Institute with the intent of becoming a pastry chef. I took the complete associate's program, learning both the hot and cold sides of the professional kitchen, as their pastry-exclusive program had not yet gotten off the ground. Learning both sides of the kitchen is something I am very glad to have done.  Since graduation I have worked as a line cook, a pastry chef, a sous chef, and a cake decorator.  I have worked in both catering and restaurant situations, and am glad for the experience and skills they all have given me.

Despite my love for all things food, I did reach a point where the small pay didn't make up for the high stress of working in that industry.  I became a little jaded and took a desk job.  I traveled, got married, had a baby, but always, always was cooking, through it all.


I will be using this blog to chronicle my upcoming creations, adventures in cooking, and catering from my home kitchen.  Please follow here or on Facebook to see what I've been cooking.