Tartes

Went to Tartes! Had a really cute-paper gift card! With a typo! ("Past tries", eh? -- instead of ""pastries'). Tartes is this little pink shack with a little bit of floorspace, a display window with a whiteboard sign, and an electric mixer (no mixing/folding by hand, I guess...).

There's also a huge rip in the wall.

Surprisingly enough, I managed to obtain four representative items for exactly $15, which is pretty neat when you consider that the items end in .25, .50, .75, and .00.

1. Chocolate chip pecan cookie - $2: Extremely normal chocolate chip pecan cookie. There aren't even that many chocolate chips or pecans in the batter! I.e. I can make a dozen of these for ~$2.

2. Key Lime Pie - $5.75: Gooey lime curd (but is it KEY LIME curd? I don't think I know the difference between "limes" and "key limes"...which is good because I can use inexpensive normal limes to make lime curd) without sizeable zest. Shortcrust shell that wasn't sweet. Normal whipped cream. Cute, though.

3. Chocolate Chip Toffee Bar - $2.50: Lots of chocolate chips, walnuts, oatmeal and pastry. Toffee bits in 2 forms: tiny crispy chunks, and globs of toffee goo.

4. Lavender Pound Cake - $4.75: Normal-textured poundcake, but it smells and tastes like lavender! Who knew that lavender could be a cake flavour? The icing is also extremely lavender-y and melts perfectly in my mouth. ICING!

Overall...not particularly impressed (except for the lavender icing), mainly because
1. kind of expensive (well, it was "free", but I wouldn't exchange $15 for this), especially as these aren't even made with local or special ingredients
2. I have higher standards since I know how to bake these things/make curd

Tartes
212 Arch St.
Philadelphia

Fairy Cakes

As a reward for being less of a whining brat than usual (she's "only" cried twice in the past 12 hours!), I taught my sister how to make fairy cakes. Basic fairy cakes, without creative fillings.

I got a... mini fairy cake recipe here but I modified it tolerate a stick of butter. I ended up with 10 really buttery fairy cakes, though I did make them in egg tart containers so they were slightly bigger than the conventional fairy cake. And, yes, fairy cakes are essentially cupcakes but the phrase "fairy cakes" sounds better.

My sister followed the recipe, weighed out ingredients (with my help), mixed everything (with my help), and went to read when I stuck everything in/out of the oven.

If an 8 year old can do it, you can. Don't ever revert back to those putrid cake mixes!!

To me, the recipe looks like it's for pound cake.

INGREDIENTS FOR 10-12 FAIRY CAKES
120 g butter
120 g caster sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
120 g self raising flour
METHOD

0. Let butter sit outside fridge for a (few) hours.
1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Beat in eggs and add vanilla.
3. Fold in flour and drop a huge tablespoon into a paper case.
4. Bake at 177 degrees C/350 degrees F in an un-preheated oven, on the second-top shelf, for 22 minutes. I usually use the bottom shelf but today I had potato bread baking down there. The bottom shelf calls for less cooking time, obviously.

5. The top of the cakes should be cooked and a fork stuck into cake should come out with no crumbs or goop. (The fork test always prevails!!) The cakes may look a bit soft and gooey when you take them out, but once they cool, they harden a little but still remain moist (due to the butter).

Usually I'd be done now, but my sister wanted to put icing on four fairy cakes so she made the despicable butter-sugar mixture (with my help).

I made 1/4 of the icing recipe listed here, which was enough to liberally ice 5 fairy cakes.

So, my sister loved the cake. Obviously.