Kitchen Bliss

Martha's Birthday Cake and My Mom's Surprise 70th Birthday Party

2012-02-01T11:35:00.004-05:00

Ever since we saw the episode featuring the "Martha's Birthday Cake", my mom and I had thought "wow that would be yummy!" We both love meringue. I don't think I remembered that it had apricot as its main fruity flavor but I know my mom loves apricot preserves in her cakes and tortes also. So for my mom's 70th surprise birthday party, I decided I was going to try and pull off this unusual-looking cake.

The cake after having been torched

I followed the recipe to a T because I wanted it to be excellent. To be honest, I'll never make this cake again, especially not the cake recipe. A box cake would have been more enjoyable! I would definitely try a round-cake again and as far as the meringue topping, I would never do that again for a cake I was going to travel with nor in the summer. It got sorta soft and weepy over the course of hours. The meringue needs to be chilled or served right away after browning. The frosting underneath was a good recipe and I'd make that again. I'm sure I did something wrong to make the cake so dense however, Martha, if you'd just put weights for your recipes, this would eliminate any variation in that realm. That's why if I'm making a scratch cake, I like recipes with weights the best.

The smoked BBQ pulled pork and fixin's

I think my mom was generally pleased with the cake or at least all the effort it took to put it together. On top of that, my husband was stuck in the office all days leading up to this including that day, and I had a baby to tend to who refused to nap that day in particular, also. I was coordinating a secret list of invitees and also all the food, including pulled pork that had been smoked for 20 hours in our smoker, and all of the typical BBQ fixin's to go along with it - homemade baked beans, colorful coleslaw, fresh corn and bell pepper salad, and more. I also made some cupcakes and I was able to buy a few dishes at Nino's and a few guests brought some things and everyone showed up so it was a great success.

The dessert table

As for my mom, she was quite upset once I arrived and announced that "sorry I'm late and I should mention that in 45 minutes everyone will be here so you might want to put on some lipstick..." and she threw a little fit. However once people arrived and were there to celebrate, she got into the groove of things and was quite pleased and appreciative afterwards. It was a little hard to listen to all of the complaints and yelling while setting up after hours and hours of hard work to pull it off; but as they say - "in one ear and out the other" and I knew that it will work out in the end. Some people do not like surprises, I guess!

Martha's Birthday Cake
The recipe for Martha's birthday cake and directions can be found here on marthastewart.com

Using vanilla beans for the cake batter

The buttercream frosting and meringue

The frosted dome cake

The cake now has meringue piped onto it and is ready to be torched

Mini Key Lime Tarts and Rum Cakes

2012-01-31T15:20:00.001-05:00

The Husband's coworkers were having another gathering and the theme again was cuban! I decided to think of some island-y desserts and one of our favorites is key lime pie. I have a mini tart pan and thought it would be great to put that to use and make mini key lime tarts with meringue.

I made a basic graham cracker crust - one or two batches (you'll know if you don't have enough, it takes no time to whip up more) and pressed it into my mini tart pan - high up on the sides so that the pies would (hopefully) pop out easily. Then I made my favorite key lime pie filling recipe (per Blue Heaven Restaurant in Key West) to pour into each cup. That gets baked for a few minutes to set and then I let them cool. Last, I whipped up some meringue and piped it on top of each tart which I had already removed from the pan (they came out pretty easily!)

The meringue got golden and toasty under the broiler for a few minutes and then the tarts were complete. This is one of The Husband and I's very favorite desserts. I think we finally realized that we prefer sweetened whipped cream topping instead of meringue... however that is something I will have to reserve for serving this pie at home where I can keep everything chilled. These mini tarts with the meringue topping did fine sitting out for a few hours during the party.

I also decided to try out a recipe that I heard from a friend is popular in the Caribbean islands - rum cake! I found a copycat recipe online and gave it a whirl and decided it was time to use my mini tea cake pan. That pan has a lot of details and the rum cakes worked out OK but I think a tea cake recipe would be best for that pan in the future. The rum cakes were tasty - a rum-infused cake batter which incorporates nuts and gets baked until golden brown. Then a sweet vanilla island rum syrup (with tons of real rum) is created and poured into the warm cakes to soak in. This results in a moist little vanilla rum flavored cake with a zing - you can tell there's alcohol in it!

Basic Graham Cracker Crust
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (pulse in your cuisinart food processor, I used my mini one)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup melted butter
a touch of cinnamon

Mix until a wet sandy mixture is formed and press into the bottom of your pie/tart pans. Bake in the oven at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

Key Lime Filling
Recipe claimed to be from Blue Heaven, a restaurant in Key West famous for their key lime pies
(this is a half batch which will be more than enough for 24 mini tarts)

1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)
1/2 cup fresh squeezed key lime juice (use key limes or it won't be the same!)
4 egg yolks

Whisk in a stainless steel bowl. Pour into your already baked graham cracker crust shell(s).

Meringue Topping
This will make more than enough meringue -

4 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/6 cup of powdered sugar

Beat egg whites to a soft peak. Add cream of tartar and continue whipping until a stiff peak is achieved. Whip in the confectioners' sugar until stiff peaks are formed. Decoratively add the meringue on top of your previously baked and cooled mini key lime tarts. Place in the oven under the broiler and broil (carefully) until your peaks have a golden attractive color. Or, bake in a preheated oven at 450 until your meringue is golden in color.

Let cool and enjoy!

Almost Tortuga Rum Cakes
as seen here on this food.com website

Basic Cake Mix
2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter , cut into bits
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
For the Cake
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
1 (3 1/2 ounce) package vanilla instant pudding mix
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs
1/2 cup whaler vanille rum (Hawaiian-style rum)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Rum soaking Glaze
1/2 cup butter (do not substitute)
1/4 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup whaler vanille rum (Hawaiian-style rum)
Directions
Basic Cake Mix:
In a large mixing bowl, combine basic cake mix ingredients.
On low speed combine ingredients until the mix is the consistency of fine gravel, and all particles are about the same size.
This mix may be contained and stored for up to 3 months in the refrigerator.
For the Cake:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Spray a large Bundt pan (12 cup) with nonstick cooking spray.
Sprinkle the chopped walnuts on the bottom.
Place Basic Cake Mix, pudding mix, milk, eggs, rum, oil, and vanilla extract in a large bowl and combine on medium speed with electric mixer for 2 to 3 minutes, scrape down the bowl halfway through.
Batter should be very smooth.
Pour into Bundt pan.
Bake for about 55 minutes- until fully golden and tester comes out clean and cake springs back.
Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack while making the soaking glaze.
Rum Soaking Glaze:.
Combine butter, water and sugar in a small saucepan.
Bring to a boil carefully as mixture boils over very easily.
Reduce to a simmer and cook until sugar is dissolved and syrup is well combined and a little thicker.
Remove from the heat and add the rum, mix to combine.
While cake is still cooling, pour some of the hot syrup on top of the cake, allowing it time to soak in (this may take a few minutes as there will be a lot of syrup) continue to add syrup until all of the syrup is added.
Allow cake to cool completerly in pan before turning out onto serving platter.
This cake is delicate, so once it is turned out, it can not be moved around easily.
Can be eaten when fully cool, but even better the next day!

Planning Cake Portions and Servings using Cake Mix Boxes

2012-01-31T12:42:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure why I didn't think of this earlier but I think this post might be helpful for many at-home bakers. I took a really basic cake decorating class a few years ago and the teacher gave us this simple hand out which had some numbers as to how many cake mixes you need for a particular size pan and how many servings it yields. The hand out was clearly copied from somewhere and I do not have the original source but I know it was not that class nor teacher, so oh well. I have fixed it up and added my own spin on things and created a handy PDF that you can download and print and use for your future reference.

A few notes:
1. Yes this is talking about using those store-bought cake mix boxes to make celebration cakes, wedding cakes, whatever kind of cake you want. I full well know how to make some kick-butt from-scratch cakes but sometimes I choose to use cake mixes. For an intricately decorated cake, I often prefer to focus my time on the decorating. Cake mixes are predictable and easy to use and taste fine

2. You can use doctored cake mixes or your own scratch cake recipe and still benefit from my serving and size estimations by using the following conversion: a cake mix box typically yields about 4.5 to 5cups of batter. You can measure out your batter and fill up the pans 2/3rds full and continue on as noted in the PDF

3. I tend to prefer Betty Crocker cake mixes and the "butter recipe" flavor variations are the best

Click here for the Kitchen Bliss Cake Portion Planning PDF

Ahh... Simplicity

2012-01-31T11:37:00.003-05:00

I finally took some time to make a new blog title image. The previous one was definitely ugly and I am happy to see it gone. I hope you enjoy the new simple look, although the baked good that is featured is truly nothing special, but I guess sometimes it is the simple things that make us happy. I hope you all find yourselves having a great 2012!

Ice Cream Pie - One of my New Favorites

2012-01-14T09:26:00.000-05:00

You can't beat a super simple dessert that doesn't really require any baking but it's decadent and everyone will love it! I never thought to make my own ice cream cake (or pie) until some of our good friends brought over dessert a few months ago. They had stopped at TCBY and it was this chocolate decadance ice cream cake(pie?). I keep calling it a cake but there's no actual cake in it, so.. I guess it's a pie. I thought to myself - boy, this is delicious... AND... I could easily just make one of these myself but use my own flavors and toppings. Yum!

So, I waited a while for the right occasion to try this out - finally I had offered to bring over dessert to The Husband's parents house... I can't remember the occasion. End of summer, I think. Anyway, I found a recipe for a homemade chocolate cookie crust - 2 cups chocolate graham crackers, 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/3 cup sugar. For my 10 inch round cake pan that is 3 inches tall, I needed at least 1.5 batches of this crust, if not two. I wanted tall sides to my crust to hold all the ice cream in. Plan on using 2 of the 3 packages of graham crackers out of the graham cracker box.

Pat the crust into a springform pan and press against the sides, also. Bake at a 400 degree oven for 5-10 minutes and let cool.

Meanwhile, you could make your own ice cream if you have the time/equipment, but otherwise, take your ice cream out of the freezer and start to let it melt. I ended up microwaving mine for a few seconds here and there. Get out your other cake fillings also - anything goes here - chopped up cookies, snickers bars, nuts, candy, chocolate chips, fudge, caramel,... you name it!

Spread the soft ice cream into the cooled crust. I ended up making this cake a 2nd time, for the "adult" dessert at my son's 1st birthday party. The first time I made the cake, I used 2 flavors of ice cream and in between the two layers, I had oreo cookies and Sanders hot fudge spread around. The second time I made the cake, I used one gallon of ice cream but forgot to make a middle layer so I just dug some oreo cookies down in it and put the rest on top, topped with more Sanders hot fudge. I personally would like snickers bar chunks in here but I was avoiding nuts for some of my guests. Peanut butter cups and such would be great in here also, however, The Husband is really weird in that he hates peanut butter!

Anyway, the idea here is - fill up your crust with any ice cream flavor, topping, and filling that you can think of. I then used cool whip and took out a large star tip decorators tip and piped on a nice border of whipped cream. More oreos/chocolate chip cookie chunks/etc and hot fudge should definitely go on top for decoration. You could either be really casual and have a mish-mash on top, or you could spend some time making a really pretty design on top also.

After the crust is filled up (oh by the way, feel free to use whatever flavor crust you might like!), pop this puppy into the freezer. The first time I made this, I made it in the morning and took it over to another location and it had to go into the freezer there for a few hours also and it was still sorta soft by dinner time. The 2nd time I made it, I froze it overnight and it was as expected - rock solid - so that is ideal. You can let it soften for 10 minutes before cutting, but otherwise a sharp knife will do the trick.

This is one of my favorite desserts and it takes no talent whatsoever. I used Hudsonville ice cream which is a Made-In-Michigan local product and it is absolutely fabulous along with the best-ever Sanders Milk Chocolate Hot Fudge, another Detroit specialty. Using high quality ingredients will set this over the top and your guests will love it. Enjoy!

Baby Shower Cake for Shiloh

2012-01-13T22:41:00.001-05:00

Our wonderful friends are expecting to bring home little Shiloh any day now. I was very excited to make the baby shower cake for their family and friends. I was looking online for cute girl cake ideas and didn't come up with much until I saw this adorable owl theme. I decided to go with it since my little Clark's room has forest animals in it also and I really love owls. I thought it was a nice unusual animal but still cute for a girl-themed cake.

I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's mousseline recipe, it took one 11 cup batch and one more 5 cup batch on top of that and there was none to spare. I used the white chocolate mousseline recipe (and when I used white chocolate chips, they seized up and made for a gritty texture but this was OK) which I mixed sweetened shaved coconut into. I thought this was the best buttercream filling I've had in ages, I'd definitely do this again with the mousseline! I used the coconut filling for the bottom tier. For the top tier, I used mousseline mixed with raspberry preserves.

I used pink polka dotted ribbon to trim the cake and just used a frosting comb for the sides. I wasn't too pleased with the final smoothness of the cake but I really didn't have any more frosting to help me out with that. I tried out a new ready-made fondant from Sarah's Cake Supplies (which actually tastes good unlike the Wilton stuff!) and I made the separate colors for the owl the day before. I placed them on the cake then also, and left it all out overnight and everything was fine the next day.

Since Shiloh is from Ethiopia, I wanted to honor her heritage by bringing that into the cake design somehow. I decided to color the cake layers of the bottom tier into red, yellow, and green which matches the Ethiopian flag. I told Andrea and Jan that there was a surprise when you cut into the cake and everyone seemed to like that so I was happy I tried it out.

This was a really fun cake to make and it was nice to get back into the cake-decorating swing of things with a little one around. Hope to be adding more blog posts soon!

We Be Jammin' - Making and Canning Your Own Blueberry Jam

2011-09-19T15:45:00.000-04:00

I tried raspberry freezer jam once a year or two ago... it was pretty good, as I remember it from my childhood but for us it's not quite as good as a regular jam. July and August are special in Michigan - it's blueberry season! Blueberry buckle, blueberry muffins, blueberry pies and tarts are all popular around our house. We also buy this Bonne Maman Wild Blueberry Preserves frequently, it is our absolute favorite jam. So it's no surprise we chose blueberry jam to be my first "real" jam and canning experience!

Bonne Maman jam is usually $3.99 for 13oz cute little jar. If you already have jars for jam, this recipe is about half the cost. Just a fun fact. I did it for the fun of it and not to save a few bucks (or a few cents as it works out). Blueberries can be expensive, I bought 10 lbs for $24 from the local blueberry farm. It made two batches of this recipe plus left me one gallon ziploc full to put in the freezer for future pancakes, desserts and baby food. When it's all said and done, I saved about half the cost. If you factor in buying jars which are around $10 a flat, you save about 0.05 an oz. Something like that.... so maybe not as cost effective as you might think! And smuckers is a lot cheaper, I'm talking expensive jams in comparison here.

I have never tried canning anything before and I finally had to make time since my parents had picked up the blueberries for me from their favorite blueberry farm stand. I bought jars a long time ago for a party to use them as glasses for sangria, plus The Husband had gotten me a "canning kit" for Christmas a year or two ago. So I was ready to rumble!!

How To Make & Can Your Own Blueberry Jam
As summarized from what I found here, which has more detail and great information

Ingredients
10 cups of blueberries
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
7 cups of sugar
1/2 cup water
1 package pectin (you can use slightly more than 1 box if you like thicker jam)

Canning equipment
jars - this recipe makes about 6 pints (plus some to put in the fridge for immediate enjoyment)
lids - enough for the number of jars you're filling
rings - to screw the lids on
a large canning pot - to boil the jars in
jar grabber - to lift the hot jars out of the boiling water
lid magnet - the lids have to be warmed in hot water so this lid magnet will grab one lid at a time out of the hot water
jar funnel - very helpful for filling the jars

The funnel, magnet, and grabber will be included in any canning kit. The jars and lids and rings are sold in most grocery stores. Other items may also come in your kit but the ones above are what I used and was thankful that I had.

1. Preparations:
A. Run the jars and rings through your dish washer and sanitize setting, time it so that hopefully they will still be hot right when you want to ladel the hot jam into the jars, if possible.
B. Also get a giant canning pot ready with water coming up to boil. I used my beer brewing pot. This takes a long time.
C. Third, get a small little sauce pan with water and boil the jar lids for 5-10 minutes and keep them warm (follow the directions on your jars or pectin box also). This softens the gum sealant on the lids.

2. I started by washing and picking through the blueberries so that I had 10 cups. I'd measure one cup, put it in a bowl and mash it with a masher, and then add it to the rest of the mashed blueberries

3. Mix the pectin with 1/4 c of the sugar

4. Mix the blueberries, lemon juice, and pectin mixture and cook to a full boil (the kind that cannot be stirred away). This takes time

5. Add the rest of the sugar, bring it back to a boil, and boil it hard for 1 minute

6. You can add a little more pectin if you want your jam thicker (test it using the spoon method and letting it cool as noted in the linked website above)

7. Fill the jars (make sure the jars are hot.. if they aren't hot from the dishwasher, I dipped them in the canning boiling water as long as I could stand it (10-15 seconds) to heat the glass). Use a ladle and the funnel

8. Wipe the mouths of the jars clean and seal the jars by placing a lid (use the lid lifter magnet) on the top and screwing on a ring

9. Use the jar tongs to place the jars in the boiling water bath in the canning pot and keep them there for 5-10 minutes

10. Take the jars out (use the tons again) and let them rest at room temperature. The lids should pop down over the next 24 hours. If they don't seal properly (they make a popping noise when you push on the lid), you should start by eating that jam first or you could try boiling it again... I tried that and it did seem to work for some of the jars.

I believe this jam lasts up to 12 months but with a blueberry jam eating machine around like The Husband, they might not last that long. I have made this recipe twice, the second time I did two back-to-back batches so I actually have 18 pints of blueberry jam on my hands right now. I have 24 4oz jars and 12 pints and I plan to give some away. The Husband was not going to let me give any away without making this kind of quantity

I'm really happy to have my first canning experience under my belt! I hope to find a great salsa recipe some day and try canning that, or maybe some apple butter in the fall using Michigan apples. I also hope to get the late-summer raspberries from the farmer's market and make some raspberry jam but we're already running out of time! I also need some more jars though we found some in the basement from the previous home owner. This recipe tastes great and just as good as the high-end blueberry jams I typically buy. I hope you enjoy. The website procedure that I followed here has a lot more information and was very helpful with photos and all so I recommend checking it out.

Banana Crumb Muffins

2011-09-19T14:43:00.003-04:00

This is a tasty little recipe. I wanted to make something special for The Husband for breakfast as well as use up some super ripe bananas. Of course, this was extra super duper nice of me because I was specifically cutting out sweets from my diet for several weeks... so I threw the rest in the freezer. This was a good experiment though and a few weeks later I pulled a few out, popped them in the microwave for a few seconds, and tried one and it was still quite moist and very tasty. I definitely would make this recipe again. This would also be a good make-ahead recipe for a breakfast or brunch since they would keep for a few days and they freeze well also. I hope you enjoy!

Banana Crumb Muffins
As seen here on AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 bananas, mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter
Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 10 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Breakfast Pizza and Grilled Pizza but not Grilled Breakfast Pizza

2011-08-05T15:08:00.004-04:00

At Nino Salvaggio's and many other grocery stores, you can buy raw pizza dough - usually in the freezer section. I like Nino's version and have used it a few times for making grilled pizzas. Who hasn't seen an episode on Food Network where some one is quickly throwing on some dough and whipping up a delicious-looking grilled pizza? I always saw that and wondered - maybe we should try it?? Well you should! It's not too difficult, especially if you buy pre-made dough. I heard you can even go to your local pizzeria and ask to buy their dough so that might work, also. Look, I've also made homemade pizza dough. It was a nice experience, recipe was only OK so I'd like to try another but on this day I didn't have time for that.

We had some great visitors - Gwen and Tom - over for dinner last weekend and The Husband and I both thought of "grilled pizzas!" for a dinner idea. We always make some BBQ chicken pizza - shredded or diced chicken seasoned to your liking, bacon, onions, bell peppers, BBQ sauce, mozzarella cheese, and we also made a regular supreme pizza - bacon, onions, bell peppers, and fennel sausage, mozzarella cheese and regular pizza sauce. I also had some fresh basil from my herb garden on top but I forgot to sprinkle on oregano, darn!

The method for grilled pizzas is this - thaw / let your pizza dough come to room temp - oil the bowl and loosely cover and let it rise/come to room temp. This took 3-4 hours for a fully frozen pizza dough. One dough that I buy from Nino's makes 4 personal-sized pizzas. I was concerned this might not be exactly enough so I took a half of another pizza dough and made 2 more -- I knew this would be too much but leftover pizza isn't so bad!

When the pizza dough is room temp, cut into 4 chunks and roll/stretch out the pizzas. You can make a super large pizza if you want. I didn't have a lot of time to let the dough rest and I know that makes the stretching easier, but I love crisp thin pizzas so a little more time and rolling will probably help. Use olive oil to grease the tops and bottoms of the pizza crusts. I usually put them on squares of parchment papers and use cookie sheets to move them outside to the grill.

Turn you grill on to med-high heat - nice and hot and pre-heated. The dough will seem too soft and I thought "that will sink between the grates" .. and it seems like it will but grill one side of the pizza doughs for 2-3 minutes or until charred to your liking. You'll see they are puffing up and perfect when you check on them. Remove the one-side grilled crusts back onto your parchment paper/cookie sheets, grilled side up.

Now take all your pizza crusts inside and put your toppings on the grilled side of the crusts. I had my crusts half-grilled and waiting - this is a good stopping point for a do-ahead dinner. Have your guests arrive and top their own half-grilled pizzas - make a "pizza bar" with all of the different toppings laid out. All you have to do next is pop the crusts back on the grill to char up the raw side of the crusts for another 2-3 minutes and voila - grilled pizza! Close the lid to the grill too, and your cheese will melt and all will be well in the world. I pre-cook my onions and peppers and things just because the crusts aren't on the grill for too long.

So - I should have taken more pictures of the grilled pizza... I just have this one photo of what we reheated for lunch the next day (it was tasty after baking in the oven for a while!)

I do have pictures of what I made the next day with the 1/2 of the dough I had left over. Breakfast pizza! I have never made this before or even eaten it. People order it from Holden's in Milford and bring it into work but I'm always on a diet or not there and miss out. Anyway, there seem to be 2 types of breakfast pizzas. One where the eggs are beaten and then they turn into a scrambled egg topping and one where the eggs are more like a sunny side up. I asked The Husband and the choice for us was sunny-side up style so we could get that runny yolk.

I still had leftover toppings from the night before which was so helpful. Bacon, sausage, cheese, onions, peppers... all good stuff. I made half with a little pizza sauce too because I didn't know if that would be good or not.

I followed the method as noted here on The Kitchn - preheated my oven to 500 degrees. I prepared the dough as I did for grilling - olive oil and rolling/stretching out the dough into one big pizza. I sprinkled all the toppings on except the eggs. I placed it in the oven for 5 minutes. After that I slipped 4 eggs on top of the pizza and put it back in the oven until the eggs were set. It took about 10 minutes when it was all said and done.

The results were delicious and The Husband agreed, we'd definitely make this again and having some extra pizza dough on hand is not a bad thing at all. Yum! Hope you try it and enjoy.

Extra Frosting? Make some flower cupcakes!

2011-06-21T06:30:00.004-04:00

After Brenda's baby shower cake, we had some extra frosting and my dear friend Natalie was coming over to go to a mom2mom sale with me. My mom whipped up some cupcakes and I decided to make some pink and purple roses to adorn the cupcakes. I overdid the purple a little but oh well, just thought I'd post it anyway!

Brenda's Baby Shower Cake

2011-06-20T19:29:00.003-04:00

Well this post is a little overdue as Brenda has already given birth to beautiful Brittany! However, here is a little bit about the adventure my mom and I had while putting together her baby shower cake.

Since I had just had a baby, we still wanted to do a shower cake for my very dear childhood friend Brenda, but I enlisted my mom for help since I wasn't sure about how such a large cake would go while having a baby. My mom was in charge of doing the baking and prepping the icing, then I just get to waltz in and do all the decorating.. talk about an ideal situation! haha

I have already made a bassinet shower cake for Cindy so I wanted to put a new twist on it. I had seen a few examples of this on cakecentral.com - a white chocolate hood instead of using cake for the hood. I did a practice run with some chocolate melts and a bowl and it seemed to work out OK. You simply spread the melted candy melts onto half of a stainless steel bowl and pop it in the freezer until it hardens and pops out of the bowl easily. I also used some masking tape to create straight edges.

We made marshmallow buttercream tinted pink (she didn't want anything fruity otherwise I would've used raspberry!) and chocolate cake, since Brenda was having chocolate cravings. Yum! I carved the ends of the cake to be more rounded so we could get rid of that square cake look and have more of an oval shape.

I made up some pink icing, green icing, and a little yellow and orange for the 4-color basketweave I wanted to do on the side. The ruffles on the bottom and top of the lower portion of the cake were going to be white, pink, and some details of green.

The sheets of the bassinet were green and I made a criss cross pattern plus used some papertowel pressing to give it a swirly dotted texture if you looked really close.

My favorite thing about the cake was the fondant blanket which I made by rolling out fondant, using a scalloped ribbon cutter for the edges, a circle decorator's tip to cut out the circles and then a star decorator's tip to create a textured "star" effect in diagonals, which you could see through. I loved how it turned out.

That's as far as I got on the Friday before the shower - I was busy on Saturday but came back on Sunday and finished up the cake. I added a little more detail around the bottom green ribbon of buttercream on top of the ruffles. I made the bassinet hood with white chocolate and once we placed that on the cake, I covered it with pink and white buttercream ruffles.

It was a bumpy ride to the shower location so we had a little bit of a mishap with some of the buttercream in the back. I would still do this design again but I would definitely create some kind of a hidden platform on which to place the white chocolate hood so that it had more support instead of the edges of the cake.

We had a great time making the cake and a nice time at the shower seeing Brenda! Congrats Brenda and Kris!

My First Frozen Buttercream Transfer

2011-06-05T15:57:00.001-04:00

A perfect opportunity to try out the "frozen buttercream transfer" method of decorating a cake was my nephew's 3rd birthday. He loves Mickey Mouse and I saw a lot of great Mickey birthday cakes on cakecentral.com, so I decided to finally try out this new frozen buttercream transfer thing.

You can do this for any kind of intricate or character design that you can print out a template for - and it's pretty handy because you can do it in advance. I found a free coloring book image of mickey mouse with some balloons (as seen here... took me a while to find this so I hope this helps!) I reversed it and then printed it out in the size that worked for me. It fit nicely on a 10x10 square cake.

The idea is to put your reversed printed out template underneath some parchment paper so you can see through it. Start with the black outline color (I bought all my vivid colors because we can't have Mickey with gray ears and pink trousers!) and with a small decorating tip (size #2 or so), outline everything on the parchment paper. Then start filling in the colors - start with the colors that would be on TOP of the cake (you have to think of this backwards...). For instance, after the black outline, you have to do the white buttons before doing the red trousers because you'll eventually flip this image over and what gets frosted first will be on the top.

I filled in the eyes, gloves and buttons in white, yellow balloon, shoes and hat portions, then I did the blue balloon and hat, red tongue and trousers and then the skin tone last. And because I didn't want an edge around the mickey image, I decided to just transfer the entire top of the cake so I did a big layer of white which was my cake's background color. I'm not sure I'd do this again - you could definitely see the piping lines. I think it was hard to smooth the icing also, so I may have had my icing too thick. I also had problems with the black outline moving around as I filled in different colors, and as you can see some of the blue bled over the lines and there were some other imperfections like that. Overall, I think my nephew recognized it was Mickey and was happy so that was the main thing.

After you get all of your buttercream drawn out, you slide the parchment onto a baking sheet and freeze it. I froze mine overnight but you can do so for longer. I baked and filled and crumb coated my cake and I also had the sides done already. I then took the frozen transfer out of the freezer and flipped it upside down onto the cake, centered it, and peeled off the parchment. Actually it was solid and it came off in a block and the parchment slipped right off, so that part was easy.

The buttercream starts to come to room temperature where I tried to smooth out the edges and round them down to match up with the sides. I should've leveled my cake better so I had to prop up some of the transfer with more frosting and tried to smooth it out. It worked out OK and I would definitely try the frozen buttercream transfer method again.

I used the following blog tutorial with how to do it and I highly recommend going there instead of using my silly instructions above. It was very helpful!

Helpful Frozen Buttercream Transfer Tutorial on Soggy Cheerios

More Brunch: Pomegranate Mimosas and McClures Bloody Marys

2011-06-05T15:20:00.000-04:00

Speaking of brunch (the last few posts have been french toast and sugar buns!), I just noticed some pictures of the drinks we had at our brunch we hosted for some near and dear friends.

One of our friends brought some fabulous bloody mary mix from Detroit's own McClures
(known for their amazing pickles!) - he also brought some hot pickles to garnish and we had some stuffed olives and it was great. The mix and pickles were spicy and delicious. If you find yourself typically buying bloody mary mix and having to add a bunch of ingredients to make it tasty, try McClures, it's got different spices in it and the pickling brine in it and a lot of great flavor right from the get-go. Plus it's always great to support a Michigan company. I've seen McClures featured on FoodNetwork and the first time I saw their pickles available was at the Eastern Market in Detroit. Now you can find them in stores around!

We also had two kinds of pomegranate mimosas - one with a splash of orange juice and one without. This was a tasty and pretty drink, fruit and champagne in the morning is always a good thing. Some one has already thought of this, I'm sure, but I think I'll call it the Pom-osa! I guess I already posted a blog about this here, but oh well!

Martha Stewart's Sugar Buns

2011-06-04T14:46:00.008-04:00

Well I've made The Husband's mom's fabulous quiche recipe several times but for a recent brunch, I decided to try a new recipe to go along with that - Martha Stewart's sugar buns. We were having a brunch at our house on Easter weekend with some of the nearest and dearest friends of The Husband and I ... the newly engaged and the new parents... all sorts of wonderful things to celebrate. So this called for a tasty breakfast!

I had seen this on Martha Bakes! at my mom's house and it was a recipe for her yeast dough which can be then used for sugar buns or sticky buns or monkey bread, I think. I hadn't done much with yeast before so that was fun. I probably didn't do it quite right or maybe over mixed but I think these turned out tasty nonetheless. I think baking and doughs take a lot of practice and there is a "feel" to the perfect dough that I just don't know yet. I look forward to making some cinnamon buns sometime soon also. This was fun and they were pretty good - what's not to like about cinnamon sugary doughy goodness? They were especially wonderful while still warm out of the oven.

Another thing I liked about this recipe is that you can make the dough and let it rise the first time the day before, roll it and fill with cinnamon and sugar goodness, slice and put into the cupcake tin, and then place in the fridge overnight to rise the second time. This way, in the morning before your guests arrive, you can take the muffin tins out to come to room temperature and the rising will be all finished and they're ready to go for baking. Very easy and convenient and no need to get your hands dirty the day of your brunch!

Martha's Sugar Buns
The recipe can be found here on MarthaStewart.com

Valentine's Day French Toast

2011-06-04T14:29:00.001-04:00

So this post is a million years late, but I just came across the picture and it looks like a tasty little breakfast. It's a good make-ahead breakfast - you can keep this warm in the oven. To celebrate Valentine's day, I made some special french toast for The Husband and I. Here is how I do "special occasion" french toast (instead of just using regular sandwich bread and a few eggs and milk)....

1 loaf of challah or other egg bread.. this was braided challah with raisins from Nino's.. yum
eggs (I don't know, 4 or 5?)
cream (milk would still work...)
vanilla
fresh grated nutmeg
cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut the challah into big thick slices. In a big casserole dish, beat the eggs and cream with a fork. Grate in the fresh nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Place all of the slices of bread in the dish and make sure there's enough egg/cream mixture to get around halfway up the slices. Let sit for 5 minutes or so and then flip the slices so that the other sides can soak up the rest of the egg mixture. We're making a little "egg custard" soaked french toast here.

Once your bread has soaked up all the liquid and it is generally juicy (if there are dry spots, you need a little more egg/cream). Get a big skillet or frying pan going with some butter (this is not a diet recipe, folks). An electric griddle that you use for pancakes would be great for this also. Once the butter is bubbly, brown the bread slices on one side - maybe 5 minutes, then flip for another 5 minutes. Depending how hot your griddle is - keep an eye so that you keep things "golden" and not overdone. If you have cut some nice thick slices, that's great and don't worry - the egg inside might still be raw so just take your browned slices and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment or foil and finish cooking the french toast in the oven for 10 minutes or so.

I'm sorry the directions are fuzzy but we're talking about french toast here.. probably you all know how to make it already! This was a nice treat - with a 2month old at home, I hadn't been spending much time in the kitchen and special meals are few and far in between.

New Pom-Wonderful Cocktail Recipes

2011-04-23T17:48:00.001-04:00

The nice people over at POM-Wonderful sent me some free samples of Pomegranate-Cranberry juice. I can finally start having some cocktails again, now that I'm not pregnant so it was time to do some experimenting. So far, I have three tasty concoctions:

POM-Cranberry Cosmopolitan

Basically it's just an ounce of vodka, 1/2 ounce of cointreau or other citrus spirit, and an ounce or two of POM-Cranberry with a splash of lime juice or twist of a lime. Very tasty.

POM-Cranberry Hard Iced Tea

This was our favorite - it's sweet but it's delicious. My sister-in-law, Jessie, was sweet enough to send us a bottle of Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka. I hadn't really tried it much and it sat on the shelf all last year but boy it was a great match with the POM-Cranberry juice. I would say equal parts Firefly Vodka and POM-Cranberry is a great match - it's sweet and delicious. A great summer cocktail.

POM-Cranberry Mimosas

We had a brunch this morning and with some leftover champagne, I decided to try out the POM-Cranberry to see what would happen (besides making a very pretty rose colored mimosa!). I tried it both ways - add a splash of POM-Cranberry to your champagne, with or without a splash of orange juice. They were both good and a nice variation from your classic mimosa.

Anyway I had some fun with trying out the new flavor, so thanks to POM-Wonderful for sending along some free samples.

Indispensable Kitchen Tools

2011-02-28T11:26:00.000-05:00

Tricia of Jonski Blogski Jonski Blogski challenged the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers to create a post in February about our most "indispensable kitchen tools".

So let's see, what are basic tools that I use every day and can't live without in the kitchen? At first I was thinking of things that I don't use very often but are handy when I do need them - like a submersible blender for soups and gravies, a scale for when I'm baking or weighing food for one reason or another, or my kitchenaid stand mixer, which I use for desserts more than anything else. The thing is, I don't use those items daily, and not even weekly. For tools that I really really can't live without, I had to get more basic.

The first thing that comes to mind are my knives.

We never had fancy knives growing up and my mom is downright nervous around these things, but when I was getting married in 2006, the "thing to do" was to register for a fabulous set of knives and we were lucky enough to get these Wusthof Classics for our wedding! We also got the matching set of 6 steak knives but we don't need those as often so they don't make the "indispensable tools" cut! I was so pleased with how wonderful it was having a good quality knife in the kitchen that we got my mom a set and she enjoys them too - how did we cook for so long without them? It's one of those things. I use my super large chef's knife every day whether it is for cutting apples for a snack or chopping some onions and peppers for dinner mise en place. I even go as far as bringing it with me when we rent cottages for vacation. I love to do all the cooking on our vacations but I can't stand the crappy knives that the rental owners leave in the kitchens! (I don't blame them for stocking their rentals with crappy knives, actually, but I just work around it!)

Let's see, what else do I use in the kitchen all the time? Well with knives go cutting boards. I should probably just get a bunch of those plastic ones that can go into the dishwasher but I still have several wood ones. The Oneida ones shown above are dishwasher safe and I use them frequently. I particularly like the rubber ends which grip the countertop and mine also has a rim around it for catching juices and liquids - very handy. You just can't have your cutting board slip-sliding all around - you'll cut yourself! And you can't have juices leaking all over your counter, either. Honestly, every time some one mentions cutting boards on TV, they literally are changing their mind about whether wood or plastic is better. So I'm not about to throw out my wood ones yet, I just heard they were better last week! Ha. I try not to cut raw meat on any of my boards and just use a paper plate usually, just to make myself feel better sanitation-wise.

The third and final must-have item for me is my range. It was more expensive of a stove than The Husband was planning to get (this was before we were married), but it turns out the stupid layout in our kitchen meant that the dishwasher door would hit the handles of cheaper ranges so he got this Bosch gas stove, which is wonderful. Obviously I use this basically every day and it has never failed. I love gas stoves and I never want to go back to electric. That might be a problem when and if we ever get to move out into the country, but I'll deal with that then. Propane is expensive! For now, this is working out perfectly and the stove has gotten me through many-o-parties and entertaining, cake baking and simmering.

Well that sums up my most favorite kitchen basics. I use these items every day! Thanks for the challenge, Tricia!

My First Homemade Granola

2011-02-11T11:27:00.000-05:00

Well I'll definitely be making this again! I had to leave out nuts and coconut since The Husband doesn't like those, but we love granola in general so I've always wanted to make it. I have a gigantic oatmeal canister and I had some leftover dried cranberries from last week's apple, pear and cranberry crisp... so homemade granola came to mind. I looked online for recipes on making "clumpy" granola... when I buy those artisan granolas from the store for like $6, I get annoyed when the oats are all separated. I found a few recipes and decided to alter it for our taste.

Clumpy Lumpy Homemade Cranberry Granola

Preheat oven to 250

Mix in a bowl:
4 cups old fashioned oatmeal
3/4 cup sunflower seeds (mine were roasted and salted so I didn't add additional salt)
3/4 cup dried cranberries (I think I added less because all recipes said to add them after baking.. I only added a few prior to baking and they turned out great - I'll add a bunch more next time, about 3/4 cup sounds good)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix in a microwaveable measuring cup:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
6 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Pop the measuring cup with all of those ingredients into the microwave for 1 minute. Pour into the oats/seeds mixture and mix to coat the oats evenly.

Spread the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, it is good to have it one big solid "bar" of granola... that way it will bake into a solid sheet and you can break it up into big clumps later. Cover loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil and bake in the oven for an hour and 15 minutes.

Let cool. The sheet of granola should be ready to break off into as big of clumps and lumps as you like, with still some loose granola for you also. This would be a great addition to any boring cereals, yogurt, ice cream, or just as a tasty wholesome snack!

Ina's Apple Pear Cranberry Crisp

2011-02-04T12:01:00.000-05:00

Yummy! I saw Ina making some tasty treats on her show the other day and she just so happened to be making this crisp which caught my eye because I had just purchased 4 bosc pears. I was possibly going to try poaching them but the more I thought about it, the less I thought The Husband might like a poached pear. Maybe I'll still try it someday, but this crisp was going to be right up The Husband's alley!

It is pretty simple to throw together and Ina had made like 10 personal ramekins so I decided to half the recipe which worked out great for us - dessert for a few days. The dish I used was about 8x8 or 9x9. You simply chop up the fruit, mix up the ingredients and bake. I didn't have a lemon so I just used orange juice and some clementine peel grated, which is what I had on hand. The orange flavor was pronounced so I was worried The Husband wouldn't like it, but he did. I also put cinnamon into the crisp topping, and instead of parchment, I just sprayed my baking dish with nonstick cooking spray and I used room temp butter and slightly less, plus I used granny smith apples, since that's what I had handy. Other than that, I followed the recipe and it turned out just fabulous. I love the dried cranberry addition! Alas, we were out of ice cream but this would be perfect with it. I might make just an apple-cranberry crisp next time, the topping is a keeper also - really delicious. It tastes like little crumbled sandy cookies on top.

Ina's Apple Pear Cranberry Crisp
as seen here on foodtv.com
Ingredients

2 pounds ripe Bosc pears (4 pears)
2 pounds firm Macoun apples (6 apples)
3/4 cup dried cranberries
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

For the topping:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Peel and core the pears and apples and cut them into large chunks. Place the fruit in a large bowl and toss with the cranberries, zests, juices, granulated sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pour into a 9 by 12 by 2-inch baking dish

For the topping:
Combine the flour, sugars, salt, oatmeal, and cold butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on low speed for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the mixture is in large crumbles. Sprinkle evenly over the fruit, covering the fruit completely.

Place the baking dish on a parchment-lined sheet pan and bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until the top is brown and the fruit is bubbly. Serve warm.

Pretzel Crusted Mahi Mahi

2011-02-02T13:41:00.000-05:00

I got a bag of frozen Mahi Mahi filets from Costco and I was looking for a tasty way to make them besides fish tacos. The Husband and I aren't into fish all that much, I personally need it to either have a topping or sauce or something to add flavor and I always choose the mild tasting fish, for instance we love walleye, perch, salmon, etc. Fried is always good too but I don't deep fry in my kitchen hardly ever. Anyway - I have also a ton of mini pretzel packages since we got a box of those from Costco also (and basically only the mustard flavored ones are getting eaten!) so I thought I should try a pretzel crust for the fish. I've heard of a cracker crust and I think I've seen a pretzel crust somewhere, so I googled for a recipe to follow. I know Mahi Mahi isn't usually crusted with things, and thus I didn't find a recipe for it, but I decided to follow a pretzel crust recipe for some other fish and just give it a whirl with what we have.

I thawed the mahi mahi, seasoned with cajun seasoning and Old Bay seasoning (which we found out we loved when we were in Baltimore!) and then coated them in some pulverized pretzels - I used 3 packages for 4 pieces of fish. I put some foil and cooking spray on a baking sheet and placed the fish on there and let them go. They took about 15-20 minutes and went great with some green beans and garlic and herb couscous with some olives thrown in. Very tasty, and even your family members who don't love fish all that much should like these, we both did and The Husband said to definitely make them again.

Pretzel Crusted Mahi Mahi

4 portions of mahi mahi filets (such as the ones from the frozen bag at Costco which can be thawed in 15-20minutes)
3 mini bags of pretzels or about 1.5 cups of pretzels
Old Bay seasoning or your favorite seasoned salt
Cajun Seasoning
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400. Pulverize the pretzels in your mini food processor or give them a good whack in a plastic bag until they are broken up pretty well. Season the thawed mahi mahi filets with your favorite seasonings, such as old bay and cajun seasoning (herbs and salt and pepper would do just fine also).

Put the pretzels on a plate, season with more spices and salt and pepper if you're interested, and press both sides of the mahi mahi filets into the pretzels and place on a baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed with cooking spray. I sprayed the tops of my fish with more Pam to help with baking and I also put more Old Bay seasoning on top of the filets. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until done. The package said 10-12 minutes but mine took longer, so keep an eye on yours. Enjoy this healthy dinner.. each filet (without pretzel topping) is only 95 calories, so that's some healthy protein for you!

A Daring Baker's Challenge - My Baby Shower Favors - Decorated Sugar Cookies

2011-02-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

So this post is WAY late but I did go to a lot of trouble to make these favors, especially since I was 7 months pregnant! So I definitely still wanted to put the post up, even though it's way too late to get credit for participating in the September Daring Baker's Challenge. It just so happened that the September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

I have always wanted try my hand at making some of those "professional" looking cutout decorated sugar cookies around. Those Cookies By Design places can charge 3 or 4 dollars per cookie so that certainly would add up fast if you were to use them for a wedding or party favor.

My mom was having my baby shower at her house and we went back and forth about favors, she wanted to just hand out random desserts but I wanted a more uniform favor that was packaged and ready to go, and preferrably something special that I've handmade. We still had an assortment of delicious pastries and confections for dessert. So, I decided the sugar cookies would be great for favors, plus I'd be completing a Daring Baker's challenge, which I haven't done so much while being pregnant. I decided on the "onesie" cut out shape and chose four different designs that I liked, using neutral colors (since we didn't know if it would be a boy or a girl!).

I used royal icing to decorate the tops of the cookies, which isn't my favorite flavor of icing at all, but it hardens nicely and you can do some intricate decorating. This was my first time doing "fill in" work for cookie decorating and it went pretty well, though at first I overflowed on a few cookies until I got the right consistencies and techniques down. The cookie recipe was just OK, I added some grated nutmeg and also some flavorings into the royal icing but I must be honest I won't use this recipe again. You can find the recipe here on Mandy's great blog! I thought the cookies definitely kept their shape well, and the icing certainly was good for packaging.

I bought some cellophane bags and made little favor tags "Thanks from Baby Bliss" and tied them on with ribbon. I think the decorated cookie is always a great favor idea, I always love edible favors myself!

Thanks to Mandy for a great Daring Baker's Challenge, and sorry that my post is about 6 months late! At least I did the challenge part on time!

My Baby Shower Invites!

2011-01-27T22:31:00.002-05:00

I had ordered these super cute baby shower invites from TinyPrints and I had them sent to my mom's house since I was going to be gone on a long East Coast Trip and they needed to get in the mail. Well, during my trip my mom kept saying she was surprised they hadn't arrived. I didn't understand that since they really should've been there... sure enough they weren't even there by the time I got back. To make a long story short, the problem wasn't with TinyPrints but with the post office, who delivered them a week before the shower, for some odd reason. TinyPrints was super cool about it, sent a second shipment and gave me a great gift card (which I used for some fabulous baby announcements) and really it was a shame all those shower invites will go to waste but maybe I can find a use for them someday if I get out some scrapbooking materials.

Speaking of scrapbooking, about 3 weeks before the shower I had to give up on the ordered invites and figure out a plan B. I wasn't too keen on just buying some crappy invites at a store but I was also really busy and tired so I wasn't sure if I'd have time to make some special ones.

I decided to just go at least try to find something I could improve upon and headed over to Target. I then went to Michaels to compare, and then back to Target to get these polkadot invites, and then I went back to Michaels to get some materials to dress them up - some card stock, vellum and linen paper, some ribbon, etc.

I covered up the writing on the store-bought invitations with some yellow linen paper and then printed out the invitation writing on some see-through vellum, and I trimmed the top of the invite with some green stitched ribbon with some sparkles. I also printed out some ducky pictures on cardstock and punched them out and mounted them ona thick adhesive to get a 3-D effect.

I think they turned out super cute and I was even more proud of them than I would've been of my TinyPrints invites, even though it took several hours to put them together. I finally got the shower invites out in the mail and I was super annoyed that they were only a few weeks before the event. Had I known the first ones weren't going to arrive, I would've handmade them ages ago. Then it was time to start working on the shower favors which I was also going to make!

Braised Short Ribs

2011-01-25T21:46:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my first post since becoming a Mom! The little guy is 6 weeks old so I guess you could say I'm starting to get a little used to this crazy new lifestyle.

I've seen short ribs mentioned on several of the cooking shows I watch on TV and they always look so good. I've never used them before and I was surprised how expensive they were.. but I think getting 6 to 8 of them, or around 6lbs, was a little more than we needed. However, a lot of the weight is bones and we did have plenty for another big meal. Some day I'd still like to try some asian inspired ones but for now, let's talk about Anne Burrell's recipe which I tried several months ago (but failed to make a blog post!)

The process of making this dish was unlike one I've done before -puree the mirepoix - onions, celery and carrots plus garlic and after browning the short ribs, remove those from the pan and start browning the puree, scraping up the crud, adding the tomato paste, and basically browning everything into a taste flavorful "crud" as she calls it.. you add the wine, reduce by half, and then it's time to throw the short ribs back in the mix, add some water and fresh herbs, and let things go for 3 hours in the oven.

Check out Anne's recipe here, this turned out just delicious. The first night, I served it with celeriac and potato puree which was fabulous. The Husband liked it even better the next day, where I took the meat and sauce and added it to buttery egg noodles. I've heard that braised short ribs are even better served the next day and are often made a day in advance by chefs, so I might try that next time!

This is a very rich dish and it has wonderful flavor, so definitely give it a try if you'd like to try out braised short ribs for the first time like I have, or if this recipe sounds good to you. It's hearty and a sure thing at the dinner table!

Anne Burrell's Braised Short Ribs
As seen on foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

6 bone-in short ribs (about 5 3/4 pounds)
Kosher salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 large Spanish onion, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 ribs celery, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 carrots, peeled, cut in 1/2 lengthwise, then cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, smashed
1 1/2 cups tomato paste
2 to 3 cups hearty red wine
2 cups water
1 bunch fresh thyme, tied with kitchen string
2 bay leaves

Directions

Season each short rib generously with salt. Coat a pot large enough to accommodate all the meat and vegetables with olive oil and bring to a high heat. Add the short ribs to the pan and brown very well, about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Do not overcrowd pan. Cook in batches, if necessary.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

While the short ribs are browning, puree all the vegetables and garlic in the food processor until it forms a coarse paste. When the short ribs are very brown on all sides, remove them from the pan. Drain the fat, coat the bottom of same pan with fresh oil and add the pureed vegetables. Season the vegetables generously with salt and brown until they are very dark and a crud has formed on the bottom of the pan, approximately 5 to 7 minutes. Scrape the crud and let it reform. Scrape the crud again and add the tomato paste. Brown the tomato paste for 4 to 5 minutes. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan. Lower the heat if things start to burn. Reduce the mixture by half.

Return the short ribs to the pan and add 2 cups water or until the water has just about covered the meat. Add the thyme bundle and bay leaves. Cover the pan and place in the preheated oven for 3 hours. Check periodically during the cooking process and add more water, if needed. Turn the ribs over halfway through the cooking time. Remove the lid during the last 20 minutes of cooking to let things get nice and brown and to let the sauce reduce. When done the meat should be very tender but not falling apart. Serve with the braising liquid.

Martha's Key Lime Bars

2010-08-07T17:55:00.001-04:00

I made these for a fun dinner night with some of The Husband's coworkers where we were also doing flank steak fajitas and mojitos so I thought they would go along with the somewhat island/cuban theme. This is another recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookies book and I've been wanting to try this recipe for a long time. It took a few packages of key limes and a ton of time with the juicer to get all of the juice out, but real key lime pie is one of our favorite desserts so I knew it would be all worth it.

Well... these were extremely tart. I followed the recipe to a T and you really need some kind of sweetened whipped cream or a meringue would be good on top but really, the lime part is soo pungent that it will turn some people off.. it needs more sugar to balance out all that tart lime juice. They also didn't set up very great for me but I don't think I gave them enough time. I probably wouldn't make this recipe again and just wanted to post my experience in case some one is wondering if this is a great recipe or not. I believe there were other reviews on her website saying it was too tart also so that's just something to keep in mind. I think I would just adapt my Blue Heaven original key lime pie recipe that I love so much, if I ever wanted to make key lime bars again.

Ina's Panzanella

2010-08-04T17:39:00.000-04:00

It was in the thick of tomato season here in Michigan that I got an opportunity to try out Ina Garten's recipe for Panzanella. I had seen a few of her shows where she has made it and I had always wanted to try it - a salad without lettuce and giant croutons! It was pretty tasty and a nice little fresh salad that you might want to try if you're looking for something different. I have seen some other recipes with feta cheese which I know I would really like but I left it out due to The Husband partaking in this salad.

Panzanella
As seen on foodnetwork.com and Ina Garten's show 'Barefoot Contessa'
3 tablespoons good olive oil
1 small French bread or boule, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 large, ripe tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and sliced 1/2-inch thick
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
1/2 red onion, cut in 1/2 and thinly sliced
20 large basil leaves, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons capers, drained

For the vinaigrette:

1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons Champagne vinegar
1/2 cup good olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Heat the oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread and salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Add more oil as needed.

For the vinaigrette, whisk all the ingredients together.

In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, yellow pepper, red onion, basil, and capers. Add the bread cubes and toss with the vinaigrette. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Serve, or allow the salad to sit for about half an hour for the flavors to blend.

Surprise Cookies

2010-08-03T17:29:00.001-04:00

This is another recipe from one of my favorite cookie books, Martha Stewart Cookies. I made it a few times in a short period of time this summer because they were a big hit!

The main idea is to make a chocolate cookie which is soft and cakey but not too crumbly. Then close toward the end of baking you put a half of a large marshmallow (or I also did this with several mini marshmallows) and pop the cookies back in the oven for a few minutes to melt the marshmallows and finish baking the cookies.

Last but not least, after the cookies have cooled a little, you make a quick chocolate buttercream frosting that is rich and delicious - and spread that on top of the marshmallow area so that you can't see it. I love marshmallows so that's just the kind of surprise I like in a cookie. This is an another great recipe from this book so if you love chocolate and marshmallow, definitely give it a try!

Surprise Cookies
Recipe seen here on MarthaStewart.com

A Taste of Buffalo, New York

2010-08-01T16:49:00.000-04:00

The Husband decided to run the Buffalo Marathon over Memorial Day weekend this year and his parents and I made a weekend trip of the race and got to see a little bit of Buffalo. I had only driven through the city but it was interesting to see a closer look. We stayed at the Hyatt which was fine, I'm a fan of any place that gives me cookies upon arrival. We hit up the Pearl Street Brewery for dinner the night before the race, which was pretty tasty. Having just cleared the 1st Trimester, I wasn't sampling the beer but I think everyone else enjoyed theirs pretty well.

Race morning, The Husband was off running and he and his parents and I had some time to walk around the city and take a few pictures. After the race, we made sure to go to the Anchor Bar for the original buffalo style chicken wings. We had been wondering if we should try to go to both the Anchor Bar and Duff's, both of which have been featured on The Food Network and Travel Channel for having the best wings in town and quite a rivalry. We were feeling sorta behind schedule and The Husband was (obviously) tired so I remember telling him "we can just go to this one place, I don't feel like eating too many wings anyway" .. I ate more wings than anyone else at the table, hahaha. They were so good! We got an order of 20 originals and yes I've had Buffalo Wild Wings before but there was something about these that really set them apart. They were crispy, the sauce was classic buffalo sauce, and it was just delicious. The Anchor Bar was pretty neat on the inside and it is definitely worth a stop if you are in Buffalo. I remember reading reviews saying the wings weren't so good and they might be soggy and service was bad and none of that seemed true from our point of view, so definitely give it a try!

We also tried the famous sandwich known around this area as Beef on Weck, where you have sliced mid rare roast beef piled onto a "kummelweck" roll (bun with caraway seeds), dipped in au jus, and served with fresh horseradish. It was decent, nothing too exceptional and tasted exactly as we expected, so it was interesting to try that too. It's a Western New York specialty apparently.

Anchor Bar
Home of the Original Buffalo Chicken Wings
http://www.anchorbar.com/

Sandwiches for the Boys

2010-07-23T15:47:00.000-04:00

The Husband had a "boys weekend" and I thought they might need some snacks before I left for some girl time myself. I left work a little early and ran over to Nino Salvaggio's and got one of those big ciabatta loafs, some sliced meats, fresh tomatoes, and other goodies needed. It's been a few months but I think the basic makeup of this sandwich was the following:

* 1 ciabatta loaf (like 15in long and 6 inches wide), sliced in half lengthwise and extra bread on the inside dug out

* Spread the inside of breads with your favorite mustard, such as dijon or that fabulous Honeycup honey mustard with that sharp horseradish bite to it

* Stack up your meats on the bottom layer of mustard - sliced ham, smoked turkey, genoa salami, or anything else your meat lovers enjoy

* Top with your favorite cheese - swiss, provolones were chosen here since they are favorite for The Husband

* Top with thinly sliced onions, roma tomatoes, and some fresh lettuce or spinach

* Drizzle sandwich/sub dressing (sorta like italian dressing) on top of the lettuce and I like to also sprinkle some italian seasoning on top of that

* Before topping with the top layer of bread, spread a hefty layer of olive tapanade (chopped olives in olive oil) and then place that on top of everything else

* Cut into little bites and enjoy.. this would be good for a football party or something like that. I even got out my cute little bambo toothpicks for the occasion. By the time I was home from Natalie's, the sandwiches were long gone!

Fruit Topped Cheesecake

2010-07-20T16:34:00.000-04:00

The Husband is back from his fishing trip, yay! The tradition is that they always come home late Saturday night and then a fish fry for all of the fishing camp men plus wives happens on Sunday. My assignment was to bring dessert and I decided on a cheesecake. I loved Abbey's cheesecake recipe from a previous Daring Bakers challenge so I used that. I wasn't sure how many people would be there so I needed to scale up the cheesecake size by a 1/3 to fit into my 10in springform pan. The 1/3 was the right scale change so that was good to know.

The main thing I was worried about was my springform pan.. I wrapped it in four layers of heavy duty extra wide foil and from what I could tell, no water seeped in from the water bath. The bottom of the crust was a little soggy so maybe that was from not blind baking like Alton Brown does? I can't remember if that happened the first time I made this recipe.. anyway the edges were crisp enough and as usual I put in a little cinnamon into the crust, and I just love graham cracker crust on cheesecake. This recipe is super creamy with a great texture and any cheesecake lover will be very pleased if you make it for them!

I used an assortment of fruit to decorate the top - strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, kiwis, and cherries. I think it would also be great with a one-fruit sauce/topping, like a sweet blueberry or strawberry topping.. yum. It's blueberry season and I was excited to be using Michigan blueberries!

Anyway follow this link for Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake Recipe for more information, if you're interested!

The Daring Cooks Strike Again: Homemade Nut Butters!

2010-07-14T00:08:00.000-04:00

I have had to take some time off from The Daring Kitchen and blogging a bit due to my current condition - pregnancy! I had some major morning sickness/nausea and it took me a while to bounce back from that and get back into the kitchen. I was worried the Daring Bakers/Cooks might kick me out but when I logged in a few days ago, I still had access so I checked out the Daring Cooks' July Challenge.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

This sounded like the perfect "come back" recipe to try. This is Fishing Camp week and The Husband is 800 miles north into Canada and he hates nut butters, so it's time for me to enjoy all the things he hates all week! Indian food is next on my list! I made a fresh cashew butter since I conveniently had a jar of unopened cashews that had been waiting too long to make it into some cookies. This cashew butter was to be used for the Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew Dressing which featured some rice noodles and veggies. The ingredients sounded delicious and boy was I pleasantly surprised.

The cashew dressing is totally awesome! This dish reminded me of something I would order and love from a Thai restaurant so I am going to go ahead and say this is the best thai food I've ever made in my kitchen. I skipped the shrimp but went ahead with wide rice noodles and some sugar snap peas and red bell peppers.

I made the cashew butter in the food processor and then just tossed in the dressing ingredients which was super convenient, you don't have to dirty another bowl or blender!

The combination of the sugar, garlic, soy sauce and vinegar is so good, and I chopped some fresh green onions and basil from my herb garden on top. A squeeze of lime juice and then I was in heaven - so good! This recipe makes two very large portions with a lot more dressing leftover for use in something else. I hope you try it, it was one of the best and surprising things I've made recently - this could the be the perfect thing to pull you out of your kitchen doldrums!

**UPDATE** - Instead of just eating leftovers tonight, I decided to make a curried coconut cashew eggplant dish and use up the rest of my cashews that I still had in the pantry. It turned out fabulous and I have a ton more leftovers - it was a perfect dish while The Husband is gone on his fishing trip this week.. he hates coconut, eggplant, nuts, and curry... perfect time for me to enjoy! This might be the first time I did a back-to-back Daring Cook/Baker recipe night so I am proud of that. Leaving the food processor out on my counter overnight sure was handy!

Curried Coconut Cashew Eggplant with PitaNo formal recipe as I just tasted as I went, but it went something like this: I sauteed one small eggplant (which amounted to quite a lot of eggplant cubes!), one large tomato, one large onion, about half a can of coconut milk, maybe 3 tablespoons of cashew butter, 3 pressed garlic cloves, and an assortment of seasonings: ground fennel, tumeric, garam masala, hot curry powder, coriander seeds, cumin, ginger, salt and honey to taste. I served this on a pita (I was planning to make hummous this week.. something The Husband also hates!) and it was so delicious but you would also enjoy it on rice, naan or a chipati. Chicken would be great in this dish also.

Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew (or Peanut) Dressing

Yield: 4 servings

Recipe notes: Customize the salad by adding or substituting your favorite vegetables. Shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, and slivered carrots would make nice additions. Obviously, you can omit the shrimp, or substitute chicken or tofu or the protein of your choice. The dressing is equally as good with peanut butter rather than cashew butter. We tested the dressing with nut butters made from salted cashews & peanuts with good results.

Ingredients:

Cashew Butter:
1 cup (240 ml) cashews*

Cashew Dressing:
½ inch (1 cm) slice of fresh ginger, chopped
8 cloves garlic, more or less to taste, chopped
½ cup (120 ml) cashew butter
¼ cup (60 ml) soy sauce
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) sugar
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) vinegar
3 Tablespoons (45 ml) toasted sesame oil
¼ cup plus 1 Tablespoon (75 ml) water
Hot sauce to taste (optional)

Noodle Salad:
1/2 pound (225 g) linguine or thin rice noodles
1 tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil
1/2 pound (225 g) small or medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 large red bell pepper, cored and seeded, cut into thin strips
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, sliced
1/4 cup (60 ml) sliced green onions
1/4 cup (60 ml) chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) chopped cashews (optional garnish)
Lime wedges (optional)

Directions:
Make cashew butter: Grind cashews in food processor for about 2 minutes until smooth. (*Or start with ½ cup (120 ml) prepared cashew butter.)

Prepare cashew dressing: Combine ginger, garlic, cashew butter, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, sesame oil, and water in food processor or blender. Process/blend until smooth. Be sure to process long enough to puree the ginger and garlic. The dressing should be pourable, about the same thickness as cream. Adjust consistency – thinner or thicker -- to your liking by adding more water or cashew butter. Taste and add your favorite hot sauce if desired. (If the cashew butter was unsalted, you may want to add salt to taste.) Makes about 1 ½ cups (360 ml) dressing. Store any leftover dressing in the refrigerator.

Prepare noodles according to package instructions in salted water. Rinse and drain noodles. Set aside.

Heat oil in large non-stick pan over medium heat. Add shrimp to the pan and sauté for about 3 to 4 minutes or until opaque throughout. Alternately, cook shrimp in boiling water for about 2 to 3 minutes or until done.

Slice basil into thin ribbons. Combine noodles, bell pepper, cucumber, onions, and basil in a large bowl. Add about ½ cup (120 ml) cashew dressing; toss gently to coat. Add more cashew dressing as desired, using as much or as little as you’d like. Scatter shrimp on top. Squeeze fresh lime juice over salad or serve with lime wedges. Sprinkle with chopped cashews if desired.

Mother's Day Carrot Cakes and some Exciting News!

2010-07-13T14:33:00.000-04:00

I know that Mother's Day has come and past but I never got around to making this post... mostly because of my current condition - I'm pregnant! Mother's Day was a special day because that is when we told our mothers (and the rest of our families) by showing them our first ultrasound pictures. Blogging has slowed down a bit, especially during the nausea portions of the first trimester. Anyway, I had wanted to make a carrot cake for my mother-in-law since I kept missing opportunities to do so earlier in the year. I decided to try out a new recipe which turned out really well, it was moist and had some interesting flavors in it - not just your basic carrot cake! I made a small 6inch layered cake for my mother-in-law and my mom got a set of 9 cupcakes. Toppings featured cream cheese frosting plus pecans and toasted coconut.

It was a while ago but I'm pretty sure this is the right recipe - it was basically one of the highest rated carrot cake recipes on AllRecipes.com, and it included interesting additions like buttermilk, coconut, pineapple, and walnuts. This makes delicious cupcakes also!

Sam's Famous Carrot Cake
As found on AllRecipes.com here

Ingredients

3 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups shredded carrots
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple with juice
1 cup raisins

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well.

In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins.

Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well.

Pour into prepared 8x12 inch pan, and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour. Check with toothpick.

Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.

A Quick Weeknight Meal: Turkey Meatball Subs

2010-07-13T14:11:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post since it's been a while! This wasn't really following a recipe but since I've been grilling food almost every day for a few weeks, this was just something different that The Husband ended up liking pretty well. I bought some meaty sauce from Nino's and a crusty football shaped bun and we had some provolone on hand. I used about a pound of turkey, some extra breakfast sausage that I had on hand, and then added in an egg, parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and italian seasonings such as parsley, garlic, thyme, basil, rosemary, etc.

I rolled meatballs out, pan fried them to brown on all sides and then put them in a casserole dish with the sauce and covered with foil to finish baking through.. Then it was ready to put them on sub buns! I popped the sub into the broiler to melt the cheese and then dinner was served. Some fresh basil would have been nice, also!

Slows Bar B Q - Best BBQ in Detroit

2010-05-25T11:46:00.001-04:00

Slows Bar B Q is in Corktown over by the rubble that used to be the old Tiger Stadium. It's not a great area but it's cute with Michigan Avenue being made of brick through this area. This area used to be largely populated with Irish people from County Cork, hence Corktown. There isn't much that remains from those roots and in fact it was pretty desolate, empty and generally unsafe, like much of Detroit. Anyway, all that aside, Slows Bar B Q is always packed with a wait. I have tried to eat here before but the long line was a deterrent but finally for The Husband's birthday dinner we decided we'd wait it out.. which did not end up being that long of a wait after all.

It was nice and sunny out so waiting outside was no problem (the bar area inside is cramped), and it was slightly awkward because of the bum sitting on the stoop next to the door, but we had a GREAT time watching all of the customers after us walk right past the front door and try to get in through a window or non-working door.... Slows' front door is nice looking but it doesn't look like a door so it blends in all too well. I was glad I wasn't the only one who didn't think it looked like a door.

I've seen Slows featured on the Food Network... especially the Man vs Food (or was it Diners Drive-Ins and Dives?) where they talked about their various barbecue sauces and the triple threat sandwich.. which didn't look that good to me (I like juicy sandwiches) since it was just a bunch with three meats and nothing else. Anyway the sauces looked good and The Husband had been there many times and everything was supposed to be pretty good.

We weren't disappointed. I decided to try the duo of spare ribs and pulled pork and my two sides I picked were the most comforting of comfort foods that I could think of - mac 'n' cheese and sweet potato mash. I totally devoured the sides and gave 90% of my meat to Tim and we brought some home. I'm a sides kinda gal but the pulled pork was very good and the spareribs weren't bad for being spareribs (I like baby backs the best but decided to try something new).

The Husband got the trio of barbecue chicken, pulled pork and beef brisket. The chicken was not what we expected - it was a breast.. no juicy dark meat to be found so that was our least favorite. The pork and brisket were excellent. He got the green beans and waffle fries as a side.. I snuck in a few fries but missed out on the beans but I heard they were fabulous.

Anyway, if you have a hankering for real barbecue that is made by true 'que connoisseurs, Slows Bar B Q is the place to go. It's a neat atmosphere on the inside, they have some fantastic sauces that they seem to rotate (the apple flavored one was The Husbands favorite, while I liked to mix them all up), and there's a reason why it's always packed with a line out the door - the food is fabulous. Hope you try Slows and enjoy!

Slows Bar B Q

http://slowsbarbq.com/

2138 Michigan Ave

Detroit, MI

313-962-9828

Detroit Coney Taste-Off: American vs Lafayette

2010-04-11T14:47:00.000-04:00

A recent trip into Detroit left us wondering where to have lunch and we decided to do the coney taste off, as featured on the Travel Channel's "Food Wars" and soon to be featured on the pilot of the Food Network's "Food Feud."

There are two famous coney islands right smack dab next to eachother in downtown Detroit. Maybe we should back up.... not everyone has "coney islands" or "coney dogs" available locally! What is a coney dog? I guess I always thought it had something to do with New York's Coney Island and that everyone had them, but Wikipedia has informed me that it is actually a Michigan / midwest food specialty. A classic coney dog is made with an all-beef natural casing hot dog on a soft white bun with an all-meat chili on top, with yellow mustard and chopped yellow onions. It's a tasty combination and Michigan has a plethora of "Coney Islands" (which are little diner-style greasy spoon restaurants) and they all serve coney dogs, among other things like breakfast all day and Hany pita sandwiches, chili cheese fries, and many greek specialties... many Coney Islands are owned by greek families.

There are two styles of a Michigan coney dog - Flint vs Detroit. Detroit's chili topping is more soupy while the Flint topping (made of beef tongue) is dry, more like ground meat. They are both delicious and I know my mom prefers the Flint style. I like them both. I love Koegel hotdogs, which are made in Flint.

American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island both claim they invented the coney dog combination. American's website says it was founded in 1917. Lafayette doesn't have a website and I don't know much about its history but it has been in Detroit for a long time, too, right next door to American Coney on Lafayette Street. Lafayette Coney is much smaller and you sit at long old-school diner tables that you will possibly share with other patrons. American is the uniquely shaped restaurant on the corner and has a lot more, colorful dining space. I believe they are both open 24/7.

We went to Lafayette Coney first. We didn't order chili cheese fries but he dropped them off anyway and who are we to turn down fries. I scarfed down my hotdog faster than The Husband could say "geez, Wife" - needless to say, I was starving. This isn't exactly how I wanted to do my hotdog taste off - I had wanted to get take out from both places and then do a side by side comparison, but The Husband just doesn't understand so I just went along. I must say that while Lafayette went down fast, I could not really taste much in the chili topping - it had a nice consistency but I just wasn't getting any flavor from it.

Next, at American coney, we ordered another hotdog. The picture below is a little more sloppy than they are usually served, but that's the general look of a classic coney dog. We both agreed that the chili at American had more flavor and tasted like a classic coney dog that you would expect. It wasn't really that it was mind-shattering.. it tasted like what you'd get at National Coney Island or at the baseball game - and it was great. So, as Food Wars and Food Feud have both voted, we also voted for American Coney. I wanted it to be the little guy, Lafayette... but American coney had a lot more flavor in the chili and it was a tasty coney dog.

Easter Cakes

2010-04-07T14:21:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post showing a few cakes I made around Easter. The first one is just a trial-run cake with this new frosting medium that I am using for an upcoming wedding cake for a coworker. They had a sample of Marco/Joe's nerdy birthday cake and liked the bettercreme filling and want that used as all of the frosting - outside and in. Bettercreme is a nondairy icing by Rich's and it is basically the type of frosting they use at Walmart and Costco. I can buy a quart of it from my cake supply store for $6.99 so it is relatively pricey. It is light and airy and comes in vanilla or chocolate and then you can use flavoring like puddings, extracts, etc to embellish it. I'm not a HUGE fan .. because it's fake... but for being fake it is OK and I needed to see how it would hold up on the outside of the cake for piping and sitting out overnight. What I don't like about it is that it doesn't "crust" like real butter buttercream would, so it is harder to get a perfectly smooth finish and if you accidentally bump the cake later, you can't smooth it back over - that will be ruined.

So the little bettercreme cake was just a trial run and I used a carrot cake mix that I had leftover and brought it into work for my bride-to-be coworker to take some home and then give the rest to my coworkers. Yes, those are carrots on a vine to decorate the top and I am well aware that carrots do not grow on a vine.. get over it. :)

For Easter dinner with The Husband's family, I had volunteered to bring a carrot cake but that got veto'd by The Husband and others, so I decided to make a scratch yellow cake from The Cake Bible (which was a totally awesome recipe, best scratch cake ever!) and I used blueberry and raspberry preserves in between the layers, along with the rest of my bettercreme which was flavored with pudding. I saw this cake on Martha Stewart (which used lemon curd but otherwise looked the same as mine) and I liked the look of the cake with just filling and no frosting on the sides of the cake - sometimes too much frosting is annoying. I made a 1.5 batch of the Cake Bible's "All Occasion Downy Cake" which ended up being too much and the cake was taller than it needed to be ... another monstrosity from Kitchen Bliss. I topped it with fresh raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. I also made some chocolate-covered strawberries since I sprung for the stemmed strawberries from Nino's, and I decorated them with white chocolate. The Husband loved the cake so that made me happy, though I am still in trouble for not making him a birthday cake. Oops!

Michigan Lady Food Bloggers Go to the Eastern Market

2010-03-30T12:55:00.000-04:00

I've only been to the Eastern Market in Detroit twice, both in the spring for buying a bunch of flowers and vegetable plants for my garden. I hate having to water plants every morning before work and getting my sandaled feet all wet in the morning dew.. but still, I water every morning, filling and toting a watering can because we don't have a hose hooked up in the back. The garden still does poorly, (maybe because I also hate to weed?) and on top of that I'm afraid to eat any vegetables because now we get the lawn fertilized and I always picture some poison floating over into the garden. I am OK with not being a huge gardener.. it was a nice idea, but I think I'll stick to the kitchen. I am downsizing my annual flowers that I'm going to buy this year and totally nixxing the veggie garden ... I think I will just throw a bunch of sunflower seeds there and see if they grow. Anyway, instead of growing my own crappy veggies, (maybe I'll have a tomato or pepper pot on my deck but that's IT), why not leave it up to the wonderful farmer's markets? I hope to visit the Eastern Market or maybe the Royal Oak Market, which I've never been to, more frequently this summer and get inspired by fresh veggies to make some tasty foods for The Husband and I.

March 27th was my first food-centric trip to the Eastern Market and I was lucky enough to be going with two fellow Michigan Lady Food Bloggers - Noelle of Simmer Down! and Amy of Runs With Spatula who were already pros at exploring the Eastern Market and they made for great tour guides to me, the newbie!

We started off our morning at the Russell Street Deli, which was totally awesome. I didn't take a picture but I had a mouth watering "scramble" and since it was the special scramble of the day, I don't remember exactly was in it, but I think porcini mushrooms and shaved reggiano-like cheese and some tasty veggies.. all served with a side of flavorful fried potatoes and I had the cranberry nut bread from Avalon bakery. I would definitely go here again for breakfast, and everyone else has the same idea - I think the line is usually out the door but I think it's worth it - especially if you get there early! I'd love to go back to try some of their awesome homemade soups. Everything there is fresh, homemade and unique. I was really excited to see a breakfast meat option was Kopitko's (in Hamtramck) smoked sausage which is the "coobassa" sausage my family will drive 60 miles to get a few times a year, and have for decades.

Next we hit up Rocky's which has some bulk spices, dried fruits, and other random goods and I got several items- some madjool dates for my mom (only $3.99 a pound compared to $7.99 at Nino's!), some bulk ground cumin, and some additional Carolina Classic BBQ (Sticky Fingers) which we were out of. Next we hit up J.R. Hirt across the way which is a store with tons of interesting foods and related products. I got an oven mit that has the map of the lower peninsula on one side and the upper peninsula on the other, love it!

We stopped at a lebanese store looking for an ingredient for Amy, and then we started hitting up the market sheds and see what the vendors had in store for us. Some of my favorite finds were Kenzoil - a delicious and zesty herbed olive oil great for dipping crusty bread, such as from the Avalon bakery. I got two loaves from Avalon - one of raisin cinnamon which made some kick-butt french toast and one long baguette which didn't last long with Kenzoil!

I also stopped at McClure's pickles, which I saw featured on the Food Networks "Best Thing I Ever Ate" - they were unique in flavor and I still haven't opened my jar at home, but I look forward to eating this Detroit/New York specialty. Even though my Michigan Lady Food Bloggers tote bag was getting heavy, that didn't stop me - I got a dozen of fresh Amish eggs as well as a batch of totally killer chocolate chunk cookies from Traffic Jam and Snug. I've been to Traffic Jam for drinks and dinner before, and I didn't know they would have a cheese and cookie display at the market, and those cookies were just absolutely to die for.

I also stopped at the Spice Misers who had lots of spices for sale but I particularly liked their wide selection of $0.99 packs, or 6/$5 so I grabbed 6 that I thought sounded good or unusual to share with my mom. I like that you can try out an herb/spice before investing in a huge amount. We also picked up some blueberries and strawberries which were cheap. There was lots of produce that looked interesting though obviously it wasn't local!

Noelle was on the lookout for some goat so we went into this meat market that I never would've ventured in by myself. They had halves of pigs and such hanging behind the counter and it turns out they the GOAT Noelle was looking for! So this is where you can get your goat!

She wanted some bone-in goat pieces and the butcher guy obliged and chopped off part of the half of goat and she was pretty pleased with her find. With the goat, Noelle was successful in making her Aloo Gosht which looks like it turned out totally delicious in her post here.

So after a few hours and with a heavy tote bag, we finished up our Saturday morning visit of Detroit Eastern Market. I am looking forward to going back and thank Noelle and Amy for the fun! It was so nice to hang out with people with the same interests as me, and they also had their cameras with them (even bigger and fancier than mine!) so for once I did not feel like a freak documenting my foodie adventures!

A Birthday Cake for a Few Lucky Nerds

2010-03-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure why I agreed to do it, I guess I just couldn't fathom my coworker, Joe, having to go out to Milford Bakery to get a little birthday cake made for he and our other coworker, Marco, who shared the same birthday on March 19th. I said "oh, hm, well instead of that, I have no class for once this Thursday so I could probably make something..?" ... and then Marco stopped by later saying he likely wouldn't be in Friday, so "you don't have to bring anything in Friday...." which was quickly followed up with "but Monday would be good."

I guess I had spoiled my coworkers with Cookies for a Cause almost every Friday for the last half of 2009, and since 2010 has come around, there hasn't been anything like that going on from Kitchen Bliss. They're hungry and need their sugar buzzes. I also miss baking, I have been trying to keep the stuff out of the house but it's always fun to make a new cake,.. so I agreed to make one for Marco and Joe last weekend. I knew it had to be nerdy since we work in a software/electrical engineering area.

I also wanted to utilize the opportunity to try a few new things, so there was at least a benefit to me. :) I tried out a version of White Almond Sour Cream cake, aka (WASC), which a ton of people on CakeCentral use for wedding cakes and such. I also had a carton of Bettercreme which I had wanted to try as a filling but hadn't had a chance to yet. I had a box of vanilla cake mix, and the WASC recipe starts with that and adds a 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup water, some salt, 3 eggs, and some flavoring. See all of the information here. It was the perfect amount for one 10x10 square layer and I was hoping it would make the cake tall enough to torte and then fill and not have to make another layer. It worked out pretty well, it was much shorter than my cakes usually are, but my cakes are usually like 5 or 6 inches tall which is a little high.

My opinion of the WASC recipe was that it needed more flavoring (granted I didn't measure out my vanilla, almond, and baker's compliment exactly), and it was a lot more dense than just the cake box alone. I liked the dense part, it was more sturdy and felt less likely to crumble or crack, which is helpful for stacking cakes and traveling. The flavoring I can adjust, plus the frosting overpowers the cake flavor most of the time.

As for Rich's Bettercreme, which is also popular on CakeCentral and around bakeries everywhere, it was pretty tasty. Now I know it is not fancy, it is a non-dairy whipped topping basically, and it has been described to me as "the stuff Walmart, Costco, and Sam's club use on their cakes".. so if you like that "light and airy" whipped frosting and think that American buttercream is too sweet and heavy and greasy, you might want to give this stuff a try. My local cake store sells it by the carton in liquid form. It whipped up quickly in the kitchenaid and as recommended on CakeCentral by MacsMom and Melvira, two ladies who do awesome things with Bettercreme, I also added one box of pudding mix - Cheesecake flavor to be exact, and some milk. It tasted great, I don't care if it is fake. I am one of those people who like the light and whipped frostings as well. I like mousseline which is light and airy and very buttery too, and American buttercream as well (made with at least half of real butter), so I am not too picky I guess. Not a huge fan of store-bought frosting jars or any of that stuff.

One thing I especially liked about the Bettercreme (besides it's easy to whip, flavor, and it's tasty and light and airy) is that it keeps its volume when being pressed between two layers of cake. You can actually get that big 3/4 or 1 inch thick layer of airy filling that looks so delicious, and it didn't seep out the edges or deflate upon sitting or anything like that. I am going to do some experiments because I'll be doing a wedding cake and my friend wants to see if we can do it ALL in Bettercreme... so stay tuned for more Bettercreme news at KitchenBliss.

I used a layer of raspberry jam along with the thick layer of cheesecake flavored bettercreme, and then my cake was ready to be frosted. I used my typical 2 sticks butter, same volume crisco, and about 6-8 cups powdered sugar as my outside frosting. This is the wilton recipe for decorator's frosting, and you can flavor it with whatever extracts you want, and can add milk or water or corn syrup to change consistency. I used a little orange extract along with my usual vanilla, almond and baker's compliment, so that was really very nice.

When I was cruising around CakeCentral, I noticed a very pretty black and white cake which had this interesting lacey/flower pattern piped onto it, so I wanted to try that on this cake, just for fun. Then I had to think of a way to make it nerdy. So it was Sunday night and I finally came up with a birthday software algorithm that I thought they would like.. it went something like this:

if ((VeDAY_e_Today = 'CeDAY_e_March19th') && ((VeNAME_e_Coworker == 'CeNAME_e_Marco) || (VeNAME_e_Coworker == 'CeNAME_e_Joe)) && (VeWORK_e_Group = 'CeWORK_e_ETC_and_SafetySystems'))
{
VeMSG_e_Wish = 'Happy Birthday You Guys';
VeCAKE_e_Priority = 'CeCAKE_e_FirstSlice';
}
else
{
VeCAKE_e_Priority = 'CeCAKE_e_Wait_Your_Turn';
}

I write software so this is all looking pretty normal to me and I wrote it in a style so that they'd be able to read it pretty easily, even if these guys weren't coders themselves.. and if they didn't understand it, no cake! I took out some fondant and colored it green and rolled it out and had no good ideas for the shape and just went for a starburst type of thing. It was already after 10pm on Sunday night and maybe I could've used some food coloring or piped all of this code out, but my little paint brush was not fine enough so I totally just used a caligraphy marker and knew no one would eat the fondant anyway (I'd make sure of it, plus it's Wilton and tastes gross). So the marker went on pretty fast, though I had to shorten some of the code.

So if you're looking for an idea on how to make a birthday cake for a software engineer or a computer geek or a birthday cake for a nerdy computer science person, this might be an interesting idea for you. Everyone in the group loved it - the nerdy code and also the taste and look of the cake. Joe ate probably 3 slices just so he could get more Bettercreme filling - it was a big hit!

And so this ends the description of 2010's first cake from Kitchen Bliss. It isn't the fanciest or nicest looking cake but it served its purpose and turned out well.

Apple Pie Cake for Padma (and one for us)

2010-03-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

Martha Stewart's Apple Pie Cake recipe that showed up in a Everyday Food magazine a few years ago (February 2003) is still one of The Husband's favorite desserts. This was my first time making it, and I did realize that my mom must have made extra streusel topping for all of those times she made it for us, but the original recipe is still quite good, and relatively easy. The most time consuming part is peeling, slicing, and coring the apples... my apples were small but my trusty crank apple peeler/slicer/corer machine did most of the work. My husband is a #1 Fan of Apple Pie Type Stuff and I also have a coworker, Padma, who is in the same boat - can't say no to a delicious crumb-topped apple pie. Yes it has to be one of those crumbly dutch apple pies - who likes those ones that don't have crumb topping, anyway? :)

I made one as the recipe called for, in a 9in springform pan, which was going to Padma for her birthday. That's why I couldn't get a great photo of the inside of that one - I just sent the whole pan home with her for her and her family. I also made a half batch in a little square dish for The Husband and I to enjoy on Sunday after our really long workout. I was too lazy to photograph the pretty slice on my plate, where you could see all the layers of juicy apple.. go look at Martha's recipe for a better photo. A half recipe made about 6 medium sized servings.. the Apple Pie Cake name is a little deceiving.. it is more of a crumble or pie than a cake. Really you're just putting the streusel topping down, topping that with apples, and then topping it off with the rest of the streusel.. it turns into a moist, buttery, crumbly appley, cinnamonny, delicious little dessert that is sure to be a hit at your house. Serve slightly warm and if you must, it would go great with a creamy vanilla ice cream. Totally yummy! Try this recipe, it is a keeper and I'm sure it will be a favorite for any apple lovers in your family. It does get slightly mushy by the next day but it is still good.

Apple Pie Cake
as seen on MarthaStewart.com

Serves 6

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
5 pounds tart apples, such as Granny Smith (about 12)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Using an electric mixer or a pastry cutter, cut in the butter until the mixture forms pea-size pieces. Press two-thirds of the crumb mixture into the bottom and 1 inch up the sides of a 9-inch springform pan.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Core and peel the apples. Cut into thin slices, and place in a large bowl. Toss the apple slices with the remaining teaspoon cinnamon and the lemon juice. Arrange apples in the prepared pan; they will come up over the sides of the pan. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture over the apples.

Place pan on an aluminum foil–lined baking sheet, and bake until cooked through and golden brown on top, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan, and let the cake cool in the pan to set. Serve, or refrigerate for 2 hours to set more firmly. Serve at room temperature.

Daring Cooks: Risotto

2010-03-16T13:38:00.000-04:00

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was brought to us from Eleanor (http://geekdomaustralio.blogspot.com/) and Jess (http://jessthebaker.blogspot.com/) and they shared with us some wonderful recipes for the heart warming comfort food - Risotto! The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

I've only made Risotto one other time - alla milanese (pretty simply prepared, but with saffron to make it a little yellow, and usually served as a side dish with osso buco). The Husband ended up not liking it and at that time I thought it was because of the saffron - the recipe called for a whole tsp, and even though I skimped, it seemed to overpower the dish with this... dark, musty, saffrony flavor.. which turns out, we are not huge fans of. It doesn't bother me as much as The Husband, though.

I was excited to try risotto again and bought another $6 package of fancy risotto rice from Kroger. This time I was going to skip the saffron and go with a more familiar flavor - wild mushrooms. I know we love porcini mushrooms with steak so I thought that would be great in this dish too.

Also, part of the challenge was to use your own homemade stock for the risotto. So on a weeknight, I tried a new recipe for making stock - roasting chicken drumsticks (was my cheapest option) with aromatic veggies until nice and brown, and then covering with water and simmering for a few hours until a great broth was formed. I added some parsley and additional onions, celery and carrots into the bath, as well. After that, I strained everything and had my very own chicken stock ready for the risotto I'd be making the next night!

The broth ended up really jelly-like which is a great characteristic of good stock and I was able to get it to liquid form by quickly microwaving the stock, as needed. I follow the directions for a full batch of risotto, and I used a mixture of the water that I used to rehydrate my porcini mushrooms, plus my homemade chicken stock, to moisten the risotto while cooking. Risotto rice is great because as it cooks, it gets creamier and creamier and doesn't typically require the addition or cream or cheese to get that wonderful homey consistency. Mine wasn't the creamiest but it was still pretty good. It took a long time of periodically adding broth to the rice and stirring, then adding more broth, until the rice was finally done. I had sauteed up some button mushrooms and added some chopped fresh parsley and shaved parmesan to finish the dish. We were starving since we had gotten home from work, went to the gym for an hour, and now were eating after 9pm on a Tuesday night... not ideal, but the promise of a great dish was keeping us alive.

Well... bummer. The Husband didn't like this risotto either! As soon as I added the white wine, I noticed the rice had the same musty, dark, "saffrony" flavor we didn't quite like the last time I made risotto.... all this time I was blaming saffron, and I think it comes down to the fact that The Husband really doesn't like white wine in rice. Really, what's there not to like about flavored rice? I am totally going to trick The Husband and make this again, skip the white wine though, and make sure he knows that he too can like risotto! As of right now, I think it is banned from the kitchen and I still have a huge container of rice!

Since we're eating healthy, I didn't do any deep fried risotto balls, or arancini that others were making, so I brought in the remaining risotto to work and fed it to my Italian coworker who absolutely loved it. Thanks to Jess and Eleanor for a great challenge and I look forward to trying risotto again!

Here is the base recipe for the risotto we followed (and we allowed to add our own variation):
Risotto Base Recipe

Ingredients:
olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
Any type of risotto rice will do. I use Arborio but the recipe itself says Vialone Nano. Another to look for is Carnaroli.
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L

Directions:

Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard. (We diced ours and left it in as we like onion).

Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.

Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.

Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two). Don't actually stick your finger in, it will be hot. Just eye it off.

Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.

Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step. .

Repeat, save 100ml for the final stage.

Once you are at this point, the base is made. You now get to add your own variation.

Maui Banana Bread

2010-03-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

I'm always searching for the "perfect banana bread recipe"... something that compares to the best banana bread I've ever had, which was at the Halfway to Hana road stop in Maui while we were on our honeymoon. Probably everything tastes better when you're on a honeymoon traveling through rainforests in a convertible and swimming in waterfalls, however, based on the zillions of reviews online of the place and its mention in the Maui Revealed book, the bread is actually really really good. I've been searching for a copycat recipe ever since our honeymoon to no avail... but last weekend, we had a plethora of ripe bananas and I searched again.

I came across this "Maui Banana Bread" recipe, which I thought would turn out to be one of those Hawaii-esque quick breads that have coconut and macadamia nuts and stuff mixed into banana bread to give it an island taste (whcih is not what I'm looking for at all), but this recipe looked very very simple. No raisins or even cinnamon, just bananas and a few other basics. I noticed it used shortening instead of butter or oil and I thought that maybe this was how they made banana bread in Maui... I doubt that they had a ton of butter on hand decades ago and shortening would sure survive the long boat rides... maybe that's how the people at the Halfway to Hana make it. It was worth a shot! The recipe is from the Hana Maui Botanical Gardens so that was also a great sign that this was going to be authentic and delicious.

I did alter the recipe slightly by adding cinnamon sugar into the buttered loaf pan and swirling it around to coat it, and then pour the rest of the cinnamon sugar mixture on top of the batter once it is poured in. I thought it was a great addition and the bread itself is totally awesome. Extremely moist, very banana-y and it is the closest thing I've had that is like the banana bread of my dreams... honestly it's been too long since Maui (3.5 years) so I don't quite remember what the bread tasted like, and this bread could really be it... or at least close. I noticed that it used a cup or so less of flour than other recipes, which I think means it is less bready and more moist and has a wonderfully strong banana flavor compared to your typical slightly dry Bette Crocker type recipe. It's so simple but absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, try it .. I think you will love this recipe. I did bake it about 5 or 10 minutes longer than it called for, I think. Yummy!

Hawaiian/Maui Banana Bread
as found as the recipe from the Hana Maui Botanical Gardens on the 1st Travelers Choice Internet Cookbook website here

1-1/4 cup of flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 small very ripe bananas
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
2 eggs

*I also had a few tablespoons of sugar with cinnamon in it which I swirled into the greased pan prior to pouring the batter, and then poured the rest on top of the batter before baking. Yum!
Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Blend together bananas, shortening, and eggs. Fold flour mix into blended ingredients ...don't over mix. Spoon into 9 x 9 x 2-inch pan, sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Thump once to remove air holes. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool. Cut into squares.

I did type in the ingredients and tabulated the calories.... don't look if you don't want to see the bad news... but the whole loaf has 2700 calories in it.

Daring Bakers: Tiramisu

2010-02-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Tiramisu is one of The Husband's favorite desserts so I had planned to make it for Valentine's day... but, things did not go as planned. In fact this is being posted a day after the reveal date, as I only finished the dessert today. The week before Valentine's day, I started getting a sore throat and it escalated into a full blown bad case of strep throat plus a bad sinus infection set in, and since the first doctor's visit amounted in an antibiotic that didn't work, by Friday I also had pink eye in both eyes and my ears hurt and I felt just terrible. It took a good week to get over and finally last week I began thinking about putting together the tiramisu. The recipe is made up of several components... a zabaglione (like an egg custard type of thing), mascarpone cheese, whipped cream, pastry cream, savoiardi / ladyfinger biscuits, and such.. many of it having to be done in advance. I began with the mascarpone cheese on Wednesday but again my plans were foiled for finishing the tiramisu on time.

The Husband had gotten the stomach flu earlier in the week and by Thursday it had spread to me... awesome.. sick again! So, with more days off work and not wanting to even look at food, even by Saturday the 27th, the reveal date, I wasn't able to put together the tiramisu in time, let alone even eat it if I had it. Still, I was starting to feel a little better, though my stupid throat still hurts due to that sinus infection that won't seem to go away and my immune system must be in terrible condition.... anyway I finally made two more components on the 27th (yesterday). I made the pastry cream which was basically milk and flour and very tasty, as well as the zabaglione, which was egg yolks, lemon, and marsala wine. I am not so sure about my zabaglione... it seemed really thick and there wasn't much of it. It tasted pretty good though and I was happy to use up some of my marsala wine.

This morning, my appetite was finally starting to come back and The Husband has pretty much totally recovered, so it was time to finish up this challenge. I made the savoiardi / ladyfinger biscuits, which actually turned out really good. You make them by making a meringue of egg whites and then folding in the yolks and flour and then pipe them into finger shapes and top with powdered sugar.. they baked up great and mine were crispy and tasty. I brewed some extra espresso and added the sugar and had that ready to go.

I then whipped more heavy cream with vanilla and sugar and was ready to incorporate that with the homemade mascarpone cheese (I think mine was a little soupy), the zabaglione (mine had to be warmed up so that it was mixable), and then the pastry cream. Then it was simply a matter of dipping my ladyfingers into the sweetened espresso, laying them in a layer in the bottom of my trifle dish, putting a layer of cream, a sprinkling of cocoa and repeating for 4 total biscuit layers. Then it was off to the fridge to chill.

I found the taste to be very rich, from all of the crazy amounts of heavy cream in this and it was heavy on the lemon flavor. I did enjoy the marsala touch, and I wished it had more of a coffee flavor so maybe I didn't dip my biscuits long enough or just needed to add more coffee somehow.. I think I would like a little more chocolate or coffee incporated in my next trial of this, maybe in the form of a chocolate/coffee liqueur which I have used in previous tiramisu recipes. This is the first time I've made my own ladyfinger biscuits and they were delicious, and I'd definitely try the zabaglione and cream mixtures again. A very tasty challenge and I know my coworkers will appreciate tasting it tomorrow and the leftovers won't last long around here.

Thanks for the great challenge and sorry it's a day late but I'm glad I finally feel well enough to finally do some baking! I missed the January Daring Bakers and I certainly didn't want to miss two in a row and risk getting the boot!! :)

Dinner Tonight: Our Favorite Meaty Chili

2010-02-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

I'll have to see what The Husband says, but this was my first attempt at remaking the Epic Chili for Deer Camp 2009, which was the best venison chili we've had to date, by far. I make decent chilis, which I got a general "add a million spices" idea from my mom and growing up, and from having tweaked it over the years including entering and winning and hosting several chili cookoffs at work. Anyway, last fall I noticed that there were some different styles of chili being brought to my chili cookoff and I took note of different components that I enjoyed. I decided to switch up my recipe a bit to see if I could add more depth and just make it more balanced and .. well, tastier! More tomatoes and the addition of stew meat to add that tender beef stew texture were on the list of things to try. I never follow a chili recipe but I had a feeling that the Epic Chili for Deer Camp 2009 was going to be special so I wrote down the ingredients I put in as I went, although I didn't measure all of the spices exactly, but at least they were there on paper to spark my memory.

If you're worried that this is a venison chili, first, feel free to use beef or something, second, if you are like me and are not a huge fan of the flavor of ground venison but always have lots of it in the freezer.. have no fear, this is the best chili and you don't taste any gamey flavor. The meat is not quite half venison so there's plenty of pig and cow to balance out the venison. It's just meaty goodness and this is a great way to use your frozen venison burger, stew meat, or bulk venison sausage that you have in your freezer. Anyway, this recipe turned out to be totally awesome and I unfortunately had to send it away for the boys to enjoy at Deer Camp (which they did), but I was so glad I had written down a few notes about what I put into it (and sorry I didn't save more for me!). Tonight is the first time I'm following those notes and I think it tastes really good again, but I can't remember if it is the same as E.C.4.D.C.'09 so we'll see what The Husband says when he gets home for dinner tonight. Three animals and over 36 ingredients!!

Here is a rough recipe in case any of you want to try your hand at it.. I know I'm always looking for a good venison recipe so hopefully this helps some one. I'll have to post my venison stuffed bell pepper recipe I made a few weeks ago which was also very tasty.

Epic Chili for Deer Camp 2009 RecipeThis makes a huge batch so feel free to adjust. Also, adjust any seasoning amounts.. the amounts are my best guess, I don't get out my measuring spoons for chili.

1 lb beef stew meat
2 lb deer burger (mine usually has pork ground into it, which is good)
1 lb sweet italian bulk sausage (or spicy if you like)
1 lb ground sirloin
3 small tomato paste cans
1 can corn, drained
2 cans of kidney beans, drained
1 can of chili flavored beans
1 can 16oz tomato sauce
32 oz beef broth
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 large onion chopped
1 green pepper chopped
1/2 yellow pepper chopped
1-2 tablespoons of cocoa
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons worchestshire sauce
2-4 tablespoons molasses
3 regular chili seasoning packets (McCormick)
1 mild chili seasoning packet
1 hot chili seasoning packet
4 or so bay leaves
garlic powder - lots
garlic salt, maybe 1 tsp
cumin - lots - 2 tablespoons maybe
cinnamon, allspice, cloves - 1/4 tsp of each maybe
pinch of 5 Spice
dash of Emeril Essence
onion powder
coriander
paprika - dash
red pepper - dash if you want more heat
chili powder - dash if you want it hotter
brown sugar - if more sweetness is needed

Brown the stew meat and set aside (this step might be able to be skipped). Dump all of the ground meats into a giant stock pot and add several cups of water, one at a time, mixing the ground meats with a big wooden spoon, trying to combine them uniformly. I keep adding water until I can easily mix all of the meats together and it is the consistency of rice pudding. While stirring, cook over medium-high heat. Brown the meat evenly, mixing frequently and breaking up the meat pieces into small bits.

Once the meat is thoroughly browned, turn off the heat and carefully drain the liquid out of the pot. Once it is fairly drained, add the stew meat back in, turn the heat back up to high, and begin adding all of the other ingredients, starting with the beef broth. Add the beans, tomato paste, tomatoes, corn, onions, peppers,
bay leaves,... etc etc etc. Add it all in there and stir it up and let it come to a bowl and turn the heat down to medium or even lower. Cook slowly for an hour or two, until the beef stew meat pieces are tender when you cut them with a fork. Taste the chili over and over and adjust seasonings until you get something you like. Needs more tang? Add vinegar or worchestshire sauce, .. too much tang? Add molasses or brown sugar.. .. and so it goes. :)

Hope you enjoy!

Visiting My Parents: Seared Scallops and Roasted Root Vegetables

2010-01-19T15:06:00.001-05:00

Whenever I visit my parents, tasty things happen. I think this was the same day I made the amogghio/crostinis for The Husband to hang out with some guys and I decided I'd spent the rest of Saturday visiting with my parents. I always like to cook something special and in particular, when The Husband isn't around, I will pick something I don't usually eat because he doesn't like... like Indian food and such. Oh I still have to post some awesome Indian food recipes we made a while ago at my parents house, yum. Anyway, in this case, The Husband is allergic to mollusks.. or that's what we're assuming. He had a bad reaction years before we met to a seafood soup, and we'll just assume it is mollusks.. he can have crab and shrimp and fish of all types as far as we can tell, but maybe it's the clams, mussels, scallop type things that he needs to stray from... we don't feel like testing it.

I haven't had scallops in years .. never from a fancy restaurant and only small ones my mom has made in the past that always taste the same usually. I watch those Top Chef and Chopped and Hell's Kitchen and a lot of the food challenge shows and seared scallops are very common.. those big juicy scallops. The searing comes into play by cooking the scallops quickly over high heat so that they get a nice crispy crust but are just barely cooked through and juicy on the inside.

I looked up some recipes and they all seem to be the same. Put butter and oil in a pan, set over high heat (probably would be better in a stainless pan but my mom only had nonstick), right at about the point the fat is smoking -- sear dryed-off and salt and peppered scallops and sear for a few minutes, then flip and do the same on the other side. I had really large scallops and some of all sizes, no thanks to the Nino's butcher guy, so I had to cook mine longer. I had 16 scallops (some gigantic) so I used two pans to get it done all at once. After the scallops were seared, I added some leftover herbs I had - parsley, oregano, etc and a splash of cheap white rhine wine (what my mom has on hand) to the pan and made a little tasty sauce out of the yummy brown bits, butter and olive oil that was in the pan. This went on top of the scallops and they were quite delicious.

On the side we have some roasted root vegetables. I almost made these for Thanksgiving but thought it might be tricky roasting them plus the turkey and that I probably had enough already, so they got nixed. I decided to pick random root vegetables that I would normally never buy and also play a guessing game with my parents to see if they could guess which ones they were. We had fennel bulbs (a first), red and golden beets both (a first), celeriac/celery root (a first time buy for me too), rutabaga, butternut squash, garlic cloves, and turnips. I think that was it. We peeled and chopped everything and I put it on a big sheet pan and drizzled olive oil, salt, pepper and roasted them in the oven for a long while - probably 40-55 minutes at 400 degrees or so. It turned out delicious! Of everything, I think the rutabagas were my favorite.. probably most reminiscent of a potato and I am a potato lover... but the celeriac and fennel and everything else were also totally superb. It was fun to try all those different vegetables.

This was a really nice, relatively light and very filling winter meal. I am glad I got to try two things I had been meaning to try for quite a while now.. and they were tasty!

Ammoghio Sauce (Sicilian Salsa) from Nino's

2010-01-17T14:52:00.001-05:00

I know I haven't been posting on here for a few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been cooking, baking and collecting recipes for you all. Just a little break to refresh my motivation for 2010 and now it's back to work on Kitchen Bliss!

A few weeks ago, The Husband needed an appetizer to bring over to a guy's night. So it had to be simple and not require any cooking onsite. I thought of a recent purchase at Nino Salvaggio's (local specialty italian market) - Ammoghio sauce. The container said it could be served as a bruschetta topping or like a salsa cold, or warm for dipping bread or as a pasta sauce, I think. We dipped bread into it and it was SO good. I know Nino's has recipes on their websites and lo and behold, Ammoghio sauce was one of the published recipes.

So, for the appetizers, I thought I'd make some herbed crispy crostinis - bias sliced french baguettes that that had olive oil drizzled on them plus salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian herbs sprinkled on top - baked until crispy. Then I'd make the ammoghio sauce and The Husband could take a nice platter of crispy breads and sauce to nosh on while they eat their buffalo wild wings and other boy stuff.

The ammoghio sauce was pretty good, I didn't use all the parsley it called for because it just sounds like way too much and I don't remember parsley being such a huge flavor in the one I bought from the store... I am not sure if this tasted exactly like the store-bought one, I'm guessing it is a different recipe, BUT it was still good. There was a little leftover which didn't last long in our house. So if you want a red dipping sauce or a bruschetta topper that is fast and easy, try this and it is open for tweaking! Yum!

Ammoghio (Sicilian Salsa)

From Nino Salvaggio's online recipe collection

INGREDIENTS:
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 oz. chopped curly fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. minced fresh marjoram
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 oz. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
black pepper to taste (start with a pinch)

DIRECTIONS: Combine all ingredients and toss. Refrigerate if desired, serve at room temperature.

SERVING INFO: Ammoghio can be used as a topping for breaded steak, pork chops, sandwiches, tortilla chips, etc. It makes a wonderful topping on Italian style bread

GREAT WITH: Drain salsa in a colander and this sauce can be used as a bruschetta topping on crusty Italian or French bread.. After draining, spread on bread.

The Daring Bakers Do It Again: December 2009 Challenge, Gingerbread House

2009-12-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Well, I have made a gingerbread house once before (for my gingerbread house decorating party... where I made all four of the really!), but this was a "first" for me on many levels. I have never made a gingerbread house with windows or any kind of a light fixture, so that was a fun aspect to include. I also hadn't done any piping on the gingerbread pieces before assembling the walls of the house before but I also really liked that fact.

I have an old Wilton Gingerbread House/Holiday book from like 1983 thanks to my mom, and I thumbed through that to pick out my favorite project to work on. There were so many good ideas but this church was my favorite and I just had to do it. (I've always wanted to do a replica of my suburban house but that'll have to be for next time)... there were templates in the back of the book so I transferred them to parchment paper and then cut out poster board templates.

We were given two recipes to choose from but after comparing them to my tried-and-true 1980s recipe I just had to go with the one in the magazine. It seemed people were having problems with dry dough and mine is a dream to work with. Let me know if you'd like the recipe! Anyway, after rolling out the dough (chilling is not even necessary), I carved out all the pieces and baked and they all grew slightly but in the same amount so they assembled together nicely.

I waited for them to cool and worked on my electrical portion of the project. The nice man at Ace Hardware helped me set up a large battery that connected via wires to a socket and flashlight bulb which I inserted into a carved out whole of my two 16x16 cakeboards. It's not too festive looking if you look at the battery but all I have to do is make a connection with the wires and then the light is on. I should be able to use this year after year.

Next I whipped up some royal icing, also the recipe from the book - 3 tbsp meringue powder, 1 lb powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp cream of tartar and 3.5 oz of warm water.. mix for 6 or 7 minutes until light and fluffy. This worked as a tasty and perfect glue for assembling my pieces. I used a small circle cake decorating tip to put designs around the windows of my walls. I also made some hard candy... which I subsequently forgot about and almost burned (but luckily it was a golden amber color when it was all said and done) and poured out hot sugar for my "glass shards" which would be pasted on for windows with more royal icing.

Once all of the pre-assembly details were done, it was time to put up the walls. That really didn't take long thanks to the royal icing and how quick it dries. Then the roof and the front part of the church. I also piped out a cross for the top and put on the door, but all the rest of the decorating would be saved for the next day.

The following day I had a "sugar party" which was similar to my gingerbread decorating party but we were decorating Christmas cookies and Christmas cupcakes instead.

It was very fun and I was happy to have Megan, Chris and Carol over, and they did an awesome job even though they claim to be novices.

After all the cookies and cupcakes, it was time to finish off my gingerbread church which had dried overnight. I used necco wafers for the roof and jelly bellies for the bottom border/foundation, and then silly gummy spearmint green candies for bushes. I used the rest of the frosting to make snow and eventually ran out but that was OK.

I was very pleased with my ltitle creation and I hope I will be able to donate it somewhere to some one who will enjoy it, as I have no kids and feel it is sort of a shame to let go to waste. Maybe some one on facebook will want it. :)

Thanks to Anna and Y for such a fun challenge, I just loved it. Today (the 23rd) is my birthday and it is a great way to ring in my 29th year, by displaying a gingerbread church for all to enjoy!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Kitchen Bliss!!

Another Daring Cooks Adventure: Beef Wellington

2009-12-14T22:32:00.000-05:00

Hi All! It's another delicious edition of the Daring Cooks and this month the challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online. This was very very exciting to me because while the salmon looked totally delicious, I have always wanted to make Beef Wellington.. it is one of our favorites and we get it almost every year for my birthday (though not needed this year) and we even had it for our wedding entree. I only had a chance to make the Beef Wellington (just in the nick of time yesterday!) but I would love to make the salmon recipe because it looks so delicious, and I bet my parents would love it too. (Sometimes The Husband needs some coaxing to eat fish...)

We had two holiday parties this past weekend - Friday and Saturday night - both with fancy and hearty meals so I must say we were feeling a little burnt out from fancy meals by the time it came to Sunday night's Beef Wellington. But.. for Daring Cooks.. the dinner must go on!

I tried a short crust pastry for a pumpkin/pecan pie I made for Thanksgiving and the crust was a little tough, so I was a little nervous to try out yet another short crust pastry but I felt that I should just try it again, that would be the main part of the challenge for me, plus I had all the ingredients. I put the crust together much like I remember Audax's awesome directions (in the Daring Cooks forum) and hoped for the best while it chilled. I always seem to need to add extra water to my crusts. Anyway, meanwhile, I made the duxelles .. I followed a recipe I saw online. Duxelles is a mixture of shallots, button mushrooms, garlic, and thyme all chopped up and sauteed which I then set aside to be wrapped around the meat. I had some leftover fillet of beef from a large Costco one that I chopped up and froze in pieces, which ended up being more than I expected and we had tons of leftovers! Some of the beef wellington recipes I saw online said to wrap the beef and duxelles with prosciutto but I have a vendetta against that stuff so I skipped it.

What I did do was follow the Good Food Online recipe and made some herb crepes. The purpose of these crepes (just milk, flour, herbs) is to absorb any extra liquid from the duxelles and meat, so that the flakey crust can stay nice and crisp. I laid down the crepes on plastic wrap, spread the duxelles mixture on top and then laid the seared beef across and wrapped everything up into a log. That got chilled while I rolled out my pastry.

The pastry worked out OK and I wrapped the log of meat in the pastry and popped it into the oven. I stuck an instant-read thermometer into the thickest end and waited for the meat to get to 123 degrees. This didn't take too long. I left the log to rest and the temperature did rise a good 10 degrees.

Even with how burnt out we were with holiday parties... we both agreed.. this was an awesome meal. My fear of short crust pastry is no longer with me as this crust actually turned out flakey and delicious. Yay! Take that, Mom! This recipe is totally Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or New Years Eve-worthy... this would also be an excellent recipe to impress some dinner guests. You can make the duxelles and crepes in advance and the whole thing can be chilled.. it really isn't that much work, minus the quick pastry. I will definitely make this recipe again.. we served it with a Detroit specialty - Zip Sauce, and with some broccoli. Yum! Thanks to Simone for making me try this recipe and I can't wait to try the salmon version.

Daring Bakers: Cannoli

2009-11-27T00:05:00.054-05:00

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

Gosh, I have the Soprano's cookbook but I didn't even bother to consult it and just used the recipe as posted in the The Daring Baker's forum. Anyway, YUM! I never deep fry anything - except a turkey here and there, and in fact I think it would be bad news for me to own a deep fryer, but these cannoli are proof that fried foods are as fantastic as ever. I have probably only had real cannoli once or twice, luckily I work with an Italian-American and he's brought in homemade delights before... and as soon as I put together this easy-to-assemble dough, the smell of the Marsala and cinnamon and cocoa really smelled exactly what a cannoli should smell like.

After refrigerating the dough overnight, it was time to start making the cannoli tubes! I rolled out the dough into to parts and used a 3-4in biscuit cutter which resulted in "small/medium" sized cannoli. The dough kept shrinking back on me but I tried to roll out the circles as thin as I could and wrap them around my brand new cannoli metal shape forms. I picked those up at the cake supply store by my house for only $4, wahoo! More kitchen utensils!

I didn't quite have 3 inches of oil but that was way too much for my 2-at-a-time cannoli cooking method. My Le Creuset worked out just fine for this task and I used metal tongs to place and remove the cannoli as they were frying. They only took a minute or two to brown up. I would've preferred the dough to be a little lighter so that I could enjoy that golden crispy glow a little bit more, as these probably look "burnt".. but just check out the color of my raw dough and know that I cooked them until crispy and that was it. :)

I only deep fried the tip of my middle finger for a moment.. yeoow.... but other than that, no injuries. I also didn't heed the recipe which said "wait for the cannoli forms to cool down before rolling another circle on".. I was too impatient and just went with it. I only had a few of my cannoli bust open due to a fault egg-white seam breaking, which those turned into puffy discs which were great taste testers for my fillings!

Let's talk about these killer fillings. First, I made half of Lisa's posted recipe using this wonderful mascarpone cheese which I picked up from a great market - Colasanti's in Milford. Oh it was soo creamy and sweet before I even added any sugar or flavoring, and you wouldn't believe it was cheese after this filling was complete. I skipped the candied orange peel and nuts since I didn't run into any at the store plus The Husband probably wouldn't like it, and just used chopped chocolate chunks. With the cinnamon and creaminess of the mascarpone, it was just such a wonderful filling. This was leagues ahead of that pesky "Pastry Cream" I made for the vols-au-vent Daring Bakers challenge... that pastry filling was pretty much just vanilla pudding. Now this mascarpone cannoli filling was so light and airy, my mom even had to ask me if I had whipped cream in there - nope! It was a perfect filling which I think would go wonderfully in cakes, doughnuts, and other pastries. Yum!! See the recipes below! To even top this awesome filling, I did dip a few of my cannoli into melted chocolate chips and roll them into chopped nuts.. that was SO good!

Second, and I hope I don't get Tony Soprano's mother to roll over in her grave, but.. I came up with a savory cannoli filling that was very unorthodox... I was thinking "hmm deep fried shell.... and.. .. how about mexican?? " I whipped up some refried beans and cheese and squirted that into the fried crispy shells. Topped with even more cheese and popped into the oven under the broiler for about 5 minutes, and these little puppies were delicious! These would be great with salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and/or cilantro and they would make a very unusual and tasty appetizer. I had a little concern wondering what the marsala-cinnamon-chocolate dough would be like with beans, but have no fear - it was delightful.

So this was an extremely fun challenge - something totally off the wall for me that I would never have tried, and successes all around with both of my fillings. I was happy to be able to share these with my brother and sister-in-law who were up from South Carolina visiting us in Michigan. It's always nice to be able to share Daring Baker challenge goodies with friends and family and I think they picked a good weekend to visit!

Lidisano’s Cannoli

Makes 22-24 4-inch cannoli

Prep time:
Dough – 2 hours and 10-20 minutes, including resting time, and depending on whether you do it by hand or machine.
Filling – 5-10 minutes plus chilling time (about 2 hours or more)
Frying – 1-2 minutes per cannoli
Assemble – 20–30 minutes

CANNOLI SHELLS

2 cups (250 grams/16 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons(28 grams/1 ounce) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.06 ounces) unsweetened baking cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (approx. 3 grams/0.11 ounces) salt
3 tablespoons (42 grams/1.5 ounces) vegetable or olive oil
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.18 ounces) white wine vinegar
Approximately 1/2 cup (approx. 59 grams/approx. 4 fluid ounces/approx. 125 ml) sweet Marsala or any white or red wine you have on hand
1 large egg, separated (you will need the egg white but not the yolk)
Vegetable or any neutral oil for frying – about 2 quarts (8 cups/approx. 2 litres)
1/2 cup (approx. 62 grams/2 ounces) toasted, chopped pistachio nuts, mini chocolate chips/grated chocolate and/or candied or plain zests, fruits etc.. for garnish

Confectioners' sugar

Note - If you want a chocolate cannoli dough, substitute a few tablespoons of the flour (about 25%) with a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process) and a little more wine until you have a workable dough (Thanks to Audax).

CANNOLI FILLING
2 lbs (approx. 3.5 cups/approx. 1 kg/32 ounces) ricotta cheese, drained
1 2/3 cups cup (160 grams/6 ounces) confectioner’s sugar, (more or less, depending on how sweet you want it), sifted
1/2 teaspoon (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon (4 grams/0.15 ounces) pure vanilla extract or the beans from one vanilla bean
3 tablespoons (approx. 28 grams/approx. 1 ounce) finely chopped good quality chocolate of your choice
2 tablespoons (12 grams/0.42 ounces) of finely chopped, candied orange peel, or the grated zest of one small to medium orange
3 tablespoons (23 grams/0.81 ounce) toasted, finely chopped pistachios

Note - If you want chocolate ricotta filling, add a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder to the above recipe, and thin it out with a few drops of warm water if too thick to pipe.

DIRECTIONS FOR SHELLS:
. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer or food processor, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the oil, vinegar, and enough of the wine to make a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and well blended, about 2 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge from 2 hours to overnight.

2 Cut the dough into two pieces. Keep the remaining dough covered while you work. Lightly flour a large cutting or pastry board and roll the dough until super thin, about 1/16 to 1/8” thick (An area of about 13 inches by 18 inches should give you that). Cut out 3 to 5-inch circles (3-inch – small/medium; 4-inch – medium/large; 5-inch;- large. Your choice). Roll the cut out circle into an oval, rolling it larger and thinner if it’s shrunk a little.

3 Oil the outside of the cannoli tubes (You only have to do this once, as the oil from the deep fry will keep them well, uhh, oiled..lol). Roll a dough oval from the long side (If square, position like a diamond, and place tube/form on the corner closest to you, then roll) around each tube/form and dab a little egg white on the dough where the edges overlap. (Avoid getting egg white on the tube, or the pastry will stick to it.) Press well to seal. Set aside to let the egg white seal dry a little.

4. In a deep heavy saucepan, pour enough oil to reach a depth of 3 inches, or if using an electric deep-fryer, follow the manufacturer's directions. Heat the oil to 375°F (190 °C) on a deep fry thermometer, or until a small piece of the dough or bread cube placed in the oil sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Have ready a tray or sheet pan lined with paper towels or paper bags.

5. Carefully lower a few of the cannoli tubes into the hot oil. Do not crowd the pan. Fry the shells until golden, about 2 minutes, turning them so that they brown evenly.

8. Lift a cannoli tube with a wire skimmer or large slotted spoon, out of the oil. Using tongs, grasp the cannoli tube at one end. Very carefully remove the cannoli tube with the open sides straight up and down so that the oil flows back into the pan. Place the tube on paper towels or bags to drain. Repeat with the remaining tubes. While they are still hot, grasp the tubes with a potholder and pull the cannoli shells off the tubes with a pair of tongs, or with your hand protected by an oven mitt or towel. Let the shells cool completely on the paper towels. Place shells on cooling rack until ready to fill.

9. Repeat making and frying the shells with the remaining dough. If you are reusing the cannoli tubes, let them cool before wrapping them in the dough.

DIRECTIONS FOR FILLING:

1. Line a strainer with cheesecloth. Place the ricotta in the strainer over a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap and a towel. Weight it down with a heavy can, and let the ricotta drain in the refrigerator for several hours to overnight.

2. In a bowl with electric mixer, beat ricotta until smooth and creamy. Beat in confectioner’s sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and blend until smooth. Transfer to another bowl and stir in chocolate, zest and nuts. Chill until firm.(The filling can be made up to 24 hours prior to filling the shells. Just cover and keep refrigerated).

ASSEMBLE THE CANNOLI:
1. When ready to serve..fill a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain or star tip, or a ziplock bag, with the ricotta cream. If using a ziplock bag, cut about 1/2 inch off one corner. Insert the tip in the cannoli shell and squeeze gently until the shell is half filled. Turn the shell and fill the other side. You can also use a teaspoon to do this, although it’s messier and will take longer.

2. Press or dip cannoli in chopped pistachios, grated chocolate/mini chocolate chips, candied fruit or zest into the cream at each end. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and/or drizzles of melted chocolate if desired.

Pumpkin Gooey Bars - Revisited

2009-11-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

These Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake Bars... my goodness, they are so delicious I have made 3 batches in the last few weeks! The first lucky recipients of a double batch were my coworkers during my annual chili cookoff at work.

However, my brother and sister-in-law were recently visiting us in Michigan and they had seen my previous post of the Pumpkin Gooey Bars and said "these look really good!" So, one more batch was whipped up in honor of their visit from South Carolina. It was even sunny when I was taking the pictures so check out this excellent looking portable stack of Pumpkin Gooey Bars which they got to bring home with them.

Thanks again to Paula Deen (click here for original post and recipe) for another delicious fall dessert adventure, this would be perfect for Thanksgiving dessert These are too easy and so delightfully delicious. I am even wondering if I should bother with the Epicurious version of Pecan Pumpkin Pie from Paul Prodhomme for Thanksgiving or if I should just make another batch of Pumpkin Gooey Bars in a springform pan and call it good! Let me know if you have an opinion on which I should do for Thanksgiving!

Thanks for visiting, Andrew and Jessie, we had a great time!

Blue Nile Ethiopian Restaurant

2009-11-21T12:30:00.001-05:00

This is certainly one of my family's favorite restaurants. My parents have only been able to go once or twice, while I was living in Ann Arbor, but The Husband and I used to make this a tradition to go for my birthday dinner to the establishment in Ferndale. The food and tea and setting are pretty much the same so just go to the one closest to you! The last few years we replaced the Blue Nile birthday tradition with the Holly Hotel to work into our schedules a little better, so we hadn't been in a few years but we finally talked my brother and sister-in-law into going during their brief visit to Michigan this past weekend. Oh yummy yum yum, it was just as delicious as we remembered!

This kind of cuisine needs a little bit of explanation - Ethiopian food isn't very common for Michiganders and I will admit I had no idea what to expect my first time visiting the Blue Nile when I was in college. First off, it's a really beautiful setting with rich tapestries, bright bold colors, and ethnic decor. The Ferndale location has many purple/blue/magent fabric umbrellas hanging upsidedown from the ceiling. It is a romantic setting and you typically have two options for styles of table - one is a more ethnic choice, either low chairs or normal chairs set around a tall basket. The food is served to you in the basket and everyone in your group leans over to eat from the same tray. Likewise, they have booths which you can also be served in, which might be more comfortable for those who do not like low tables.

What does it taste like? Well I can't really say it's like Indian because The Husband hates Indian but loves Blue Nile... but the style of stewing the meat and lentils seems similar... it's just a different flavor profile than Indian, like nothing we have had before anywhere else.

As far as I am concerned, there are only two options of menu items - Vegetarian or Meat. We always get the meat choice and it is around $19 per person... but before you freak out about spending that much on stewed meat and lentils, it is all-you-can-eat so you won't leave hungry or disappointed. The food is served family style - they bring out a big tray that is lined with their spongey edible "bread" called injera, and they have several bowls of various items to dump onto your injera-covered table. You also get a basket of injera which you use as a utensil to scoop up all of the delicious meat and lentil dishes.

Because we never spend much time looking at the menu, we don't usually learn the ethnic names of the dishes but I was able to do a little research. My all-time favorite "Spicy Beef" and "Spicy Chicken" are Zilzil Wat and Doro Wat... I must find a recipe for these dishes somewhere online. The Husband and I just totally love them. These are the dark red meaty items in the picture above. They also have a mild chicken and lamb dish, and our lamb was a little chewy this time but the chicken was very good.

That's it for the meat dishes and they surround all of those with several vegetable dishes - spicy red lentils (Yemisir Kik Wat), Kik Alecha (split yellow peas), Tekil Gomen (cabbage), Gomen (collard greens), and one of my favorites - Mixed Vegetables (it sounds simple but the potatoes, carrots, etc are totally delicious). There are few more veggie lentil/pea dishes too, and they're all very enjoyable.

I didn't realize this before but the website says that Ethiopian food is extremely healthy and has very little added fat, etc to their foods. I guess it is pretty healthy but - I usually eat waaaay too much here so I associate it with being incredibly full! I also always insist on getting the Ethiopian Tea which is basically cinnamon flavored but it is naturally sweetened with orange and lemon peel and I just love its spiciness and sweetness.

Anyway, if you are an adventurous diner and looking for a unique restaurant - something totally out of the ordinary - that's delicious, healthy and fun... then try the Blue Nile! It is one of our favorites and continues to be a family favorite, so I hope they stick around in Michigan.

The Blue Nile
545 West Nine Mile Rd
Ferndale, Michigan
248-547-6699
Blue Nile Website

Cookies for a Cause: Magic Blondies

2009-11-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

Hmmm I must not have released this post because it was waiting for a picture, so it is a little old. This was the Cookies-For-A-Cause recipe I chose for August 28th...

A new fundraising record! These Magic Blondies from Martha Stewart's "Cookies" book were definitely tasty treats. I whipped up a double batch and they consist of blondie batter studded with walnuts (and some pecans which I had on hand), dried cherries, chocolate chips, and coconut. Then more coco-nut-choc-cherry topping goes on top and bake in easy-to-unwrap cupcake liners.

The recipe makes 12 but I squeezed out a few extra and brought the big batch into work. This was our highest amount of money that we were able to raise so far, and I am pleased to say that we raised $32.33 for the Alzheimer's Association, making our new total money raised over $200 just by my baking and my generous coworkers! As I've mentioned before, my Cookies for a Cause work as a one-woman bake sale - my donations are the ingredients and time baking and 100% of my coworkers' donations are given to charities of my choice.

I'll keep baking if they keep donating! Hope you enjoy if you try the recipe!

Magic Blondies
from here on Martha Stewart's websitehttp://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/magic-blondies

Ingredients
Makes 1 dozen
2/3 cup sweetened flaked coconut
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (about 2 1/2 ounces)
2/3 cup dried cherries or cranberries
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
9 tablespoons (1 1/8 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners; set aside. Stir together coconut, chocolate, walnuts, and cherries in a medium bowl; set aside.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla; mix until combined.

Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture, and mix, scraping down sides of bowl, until well combined. Mix in 1 cup coconut mixture.

Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each about three-quarters full. Sprinkle remaining coconut mixture over tops. Bake blondies until a cake tester inserted into center comes out with a few crumbs but is not wet, about 25 minutes. Blondies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 days.

From Holiday Cookies 2005, Special Issue 2005

Anne-Marie's Apple Cake

2009-11-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

I work with a wonderful french lady who was nice enough to share her grandmother's recipe for a deliciously moist apple cake with me. The original recipe does not call for any cinnamon so the only change I made was add just a touch of cinnamon, and when I buttered the pan, I sprinkled cinnamon-sugar into the pan and swirled it around to cover the sides. It was delicious and worked out perfectly even though I thought it looked like too many apples when mixing the batter.. have no fear, it will work out great. I was happy to use my bundt pan, the poor neglected thing.

Anne-Marie's Applecake Recipe

3 eggs
250 g flour
150 g sugar
100 g butter
1 tablespoon baking powder
4 large apples, peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces
vanilla flour - 1 bag (I just used vanilla extract here)
optional - 1 tablespoon rum

2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon for pan

Preheat oven to 375. Butter a bundt pan and pour in cinnamon sugar, and shake and swirl until all of the sides and bottom are covered. In a large bowl, mix melted butter with sugar and add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla extract and rum if using. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking soda (and cinnamon) and then add into your egg mixture. Add the apples. Pour batter into the prepared pan. Loaf pan can also be used.

The directions were a little unclear with how hot and how long to bake the cake so I believe I took the average of the two temperatures, and baked the cake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Enjoy this delicious, moist amd simple apple cake! Thanks Anne-Marie! The Husband loved this recipe and so did Marco.

Moroccan Slow-Cooked Lamb

2009-11-10T21:33:00.001-05:00

Yes, this dish is totally fabulous! I made this for a birthday celebration for my dad.. it was my mom's idea to do Moroccan and dad likes pretty much anything so I went with that idea. I just couldn't decide between our favorite Moroccan dish - Lemon, Olive, and Chicken Tagine recipe and this new Moroccan lamb stew recipe I saw on epicurious.com, which sounded equally as delicious. We don't have lamb very often, but I knew the chicken dish was a winner.. finally I decided, we're doing them both. Leftovers will be delicious, if there would be any, and we get to compare these two dishes side by side. We had already had our chicken tagine recipe for dinner on Wednesday but we were both like "I'd definitely have that again Sunday" and the lamb dish was going to offer a different set of flavors - apricots, chickpeas, fennel seeds, lemon, cinnamon, ginger... it sounded very flavorful!

Everything turned out perfectly - I followed the recipe exactly and sure enough, about an hour and a half later, the lamb was incredibly tender and the flavors were awesome. The sweetness of the apricots offset the spicy lamb and the chickpeas added a nice body to the stew. Topped with some fresh cilantro, and this is possibly our new favorite Moroccan dish. This is a must try, simply delicious.

Moroccan Slow-Cooked Lamb
Find the recipe here on Epicurious.com

1 tablespoon ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 1/2 pounds trimmed boned lamb shoulder, cut into 1 1/2- to 2-inch pieces
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cups low-salt chicken broth
1 15 1/2-ounce can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
1 cup dried apricots (about 5 ounces)
2 large plum tomatoes, chopped
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
2 teaspoons (packed) grated lemon peel

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl. Add lamb and toss to coat. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Working in batches, add lamb to skillet and cook until browned on all sides, turning occasionally and adding 2 more tablespoons oil to skillet between batches, about 8 minutes per batch. Transfer lamb to another large bowl after each batch.

Add onion and tomato paste to drippings in skillet. Reduce heat to medium; sauté until onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add broth, garbanzo beans, apricots, tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, ginger, and lemon peel and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits. Return lamb to skillet and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until lamb is just tender, about 1 hour. Uncover and simmer until sauce thickens enough to coat spoon, about 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cool slightly. Refrigerate uncovered until cold, then cover and keep chilled. Rewarm over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally.)

Transfer lamb and sauce to bowl. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

Cookies for a Cause: Lime Meltaways

2009-11-06T13:21:00.001-05:00

I thought these looked great from Martha Stewarts Cookie book, but I must say they were not the favorite cookie of anyone who tried them at work except my mom who also tried them. I guess some people don't like lime, and while I do and I thought the cookies were good, it's just not something I would ever crave or say "you have to try this right this second they are so good!" I thought the dough was a little salty and desparately needed a thick coat of powdered sugar around the outside, but it was still a nice cookie. I would be happy with this cookie if I wanted to make a festive cookie platter, this would be a nice cookie that would offer a sweet-tart counterpoint, something unusual but still tasty.

On the bright side, we did raise some money for Capuchin Soup Kitchen - I collected $15.93, bringing our grand total to $395.13 for various charities that I have chosen. As usual, my donation is the preparation and ingredients for the cookies (and sometimes a dollar or two if I eat one at work), and 100% of the money collected from my coworkers goes to charities. This is going awesome and we're almost to $400!!

I was happy to have inspired one of my best friends, Andrea, to try and start up a one-woman bake sale at her workplace. She was all fired up and brought in a batch of one of our favorites - Brown Butter Toffee Bars - to her office.... and it turns out she wasn't allowed to be raising money at work!! So they made her take down her jar, even though she had already done really well with her collections, and we were both super bummed out about her not being able to carry on. Kudos to Dre for trying, anyway. Maybe they will change their rules... go to the head of HR!! :)

Lime Meltaways
Find the recipe here on Martha Stewart.com

Ingredients

Makes about 3 dozen

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup confectioners' sugar
Finely grated zest of 2 limes
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

Directions

Put butter and 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, and mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Add lime zest and juice and vanilla, and mix until fluffy.

Whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt in a bowl. Add to butter mixture, and mix on low speed until just combined.

Divide dough in half. Place each half on an 8-by-12-inch sheet of parchment paper. Roll in parchment to form a log 1 1/4 inches in diameter, pressing a ruler along edge of parchment at each turn to narrow log. Refrigerate logs until cold and firm, at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove parchment from logs; cut into 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Space rounds 1 inch apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake cookies until barely golden, about 13 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool slightly, 8 to 10 minutes. While still warm, toss cookies with remaining 2/3 cup sugar in a resealable plastic bag. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature up to 2 weeks.

From The Martha Stewart Show, March 2008

Still The Ultimate Quiche

2009-10-28T11:35:00.001-04:00

Today was my "bagel day" for the bagel club at work, and we have so many people in the club that the last time I brought in bagels was like February or something. I always like to do something a little special in addition to just bagels and donuts and coffee (Panera for bagels and coffee and Knapp's for the best donuts, in my opinion!) and I thought this time I would make a double batch of my Ultimate Quiche recipe that has turned out well in the past (Except for in Montana for whatever reason which caused me to believe my original post was in err but turns out it is correct!) I whipped up a batch of the recipe noted in my original Ultimate Quiche post here. I did make a few changes because of what I had on hand, so I just wanted to point that out:

* I only used 2 cups of heavy cream (actually slightly less and the rest was filled up with skim milk) and this didn't reduce the richness or deliciosity (haha not a word) at all

* I forgot to buy gruyere but luckily I had 6oz at home so I used monterrey jack cheese as the rest of the cheese and it turned out wonderfully, so any mix of swiss/white cheese is probably delightful.

I made the same changes to the original recipe as I did last time - used an 11x17 pan, doubled the recipe, used 1 lb bacon, probably extra fresh grated nutmeg, and it was done after the 45 minute mark. I also had no problem baking this the night before, letting it cool mostly and then suran-wrapping it to sit in the fridge overnight. Then when I woke up, I popped it in the oven at 350 while I got ready for work for 40-50 minutes, and even an hour and a half later, by the time I got to work, the quiche was still warm and just delicious. This is a great recipe for a make-ahead breakfast or brunch and it works very well reheated or being served at room temperature. My boss even said it was "divine" and I already gave the recipe out to another coworker. So if you are looking for a delicious alternative to doughnuts and bagels as a breakfast to bring into the office, try this quiche recipe and you won't disappoint. Thanks to Chris again for this recipe. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Gooey Bars

2009-10-27T22:37:00.000-04:00

Okay. These are pretty killer. Paula Deen? You shouldn't have. Okay, well, maybe you should have... but these little delectable treats are borderline evil. Paula's original Gooey Butter Cake recipe is delicious on its own, and it is also delicious once you add in chocolate chips which I've done before. She notes on her website that the Pumpkin Gooey Bar version is her favorite of all Gooey Butter Cakes, and so when I was looking for a dessert to make for my work's Chili Cook-Off, I decided it was the perfect time to try out her Pumpkin Gooey Bars.

These are great because they are simple - you start with a yellow cake box and add a few ingredients and pat them into the bottom of a 9x13 pan. I made two batches at a time and it was great. Then you mix the pumpkin, cream cheese, egg, powdered sugar and such and spread that over top the cake bottom and then bake. Not too shabby!

And the result? These are sooo tasty. They are a gooey cakey chewy bottom with a sweet pumpkin pie topping, almost like a cheesecake. The topping blends perfectly into the cake bottom and there certainly were no leftovers when I unveiled these at the Chili Cook-Off. If you love pumpkin pie, you must try these - I'd be surprised if you didn't prefer these over the classic version of pumpkin pie! This might be a good recipe for some one who wants a pumpkin dessert but something a little different than your average boring pie. (Don't get me wrong, pumpkin pie is delicious.)

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Gooey Bars
From Paula Deen as found on FoodNetwork.com here.

Ingredients

Cake:
1 (18 1/4-ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 egg
8 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 tablespoons butter, melted
1 (16-ounce) box powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well with an electric mixer. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 by 9-inch baking pan.

To make the filling: In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and pumpkin until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter, and beat together. Next, add the powdered sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and mix well. Spread pumpkin mixture over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Make sure not to overbake as the center should be a little gooey.

Serve with fresh whipped cream.

Variations: For a Pineapple Gooey Cake: Instead of the pumpkin, add a drained 20-ounce can of crushed pineapple to the cream cheese filling. Proceed as directed above.

For a Banana Gooey Cake: Prepare cream cheese filling as directed, beating in 2 ripe bananas instead of the pumpkin. Proceed as directed above.

For a Peanut Butter Gooey Cake: Use a chocolate cake mix. Add 1 cup creamy peanut butter to the cream cheese filling instead of the pumpkin. Proceed as directed above.

Try these, you'll like them!!!!!!!! Unless you're one of those people who doesn't like rich, deliciously decadent desserts. :)

Halloween Cupcakes Take 2

2009-10-27T22:28:00.000-04:00

Just another set of Halloween cupcakes that I made a few weeks ago for The Husband's boss' birthday to share with the office. I am also planning on making some more this week for my work. Now that I have that handy cupcake carrying case, making cupcakes is perfect for office treats!

I made pumpkins, spiders on spider webs, ghosts, and mummies.

Since I was already making the 6 batches ginger brownies and a butternut squash soup, I didn't have time for 6 kinds like I did last year. I sure do sign myself up for a lot of cooking activities. :)

These aren't very difficult to make, it just takes a lot of time to make all the different colors and different frosting bags and then switch all the tips and squeeze out all the details. My hands were definitely sore by the end of the night but it was fun. :)

Happy Halloween!

Another Daring Baker Challenge: French Macaroons

2009-10-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S from Baking Without Fear. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe. Before joining the Daring Bakers, I would think of a sweet, chewy coconut cookies when I hear "Macaroons" but in reality this is a classic dessert - the French Macaron - and it has nothing to do with coconut.

French macarons/macaroons are meringue "cookies" that are sandwiched with a filling - like a chocolate ganache or jam or something. I've never seen one of these in a bakery before (or maybe just never knew what they were if I had) and have never had a real macaroon, but I was excited to try this recipe because I loooove meringues and especially with chocolate. Yum!

The recipe is relatively simple. Unfortunately I had to purchase a $12 bag of almond flour (I guess I could have ground my own but almonds are pricey anyway) but after that the ingredients were easy to find - room temperature eggwhites (5) and a little sugar, plus powdered sugar and any flavoring for the meringue and fillings that you can think of. I started out by whipping the eggwhites to soft peaks and then adding the sugar. Then they were whipped to stiff peaks and I wisked the almond flour and powdered sugar together.

I think the next step must have been where I went wrong - I must have folded the flour mixture into the too roughly even though I was trying to be gentle, or maybe I took too long. I noticed the eggwhites had lots a lot of their fluffyness and this was obvious once I piped the cookies onto the parchment and silpat.

Needless to say, I sorta botched this challenge - my macaroons were flat as little chewy pancakes. However they were still tasty and I made up a quick ganache out of cream and semi-sweet chocolate chips, and peeled the flat macaroons off the parchment and made a few sandwiches. I found the silpat was worse at releasing the meringues than the parchment paper was. The Husband liked them too so at least I had one happy customer but now I will have to try the recipe again or try to find a real macaroon somewhere in the area. Thanks to Ami for a great challenge, and I'll try and do better next time! :)

Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger

2009-10-19T22:23:00.000-04:00

I must admit right off the bat that the photo above is not actually the ginger squash soup but it is a picture of my other favorite, curried butternut squash soup. I ended up not getting a photo of the ginger squash soup but - it looks pretty much the same, a beautiful warm velvety orange color which looked spectacular with the chopped fresh flatleaf parsley garnish (also not pictured). This recipe was recommended to me by Chris who said it was one of Karen's favorite soups and I regard both of their foodie opinions highly so I was really looking forward to trying it. I love pumpkin pies and acorn squash with butter and brown sugar so I thought this recipe which combined fresh ginger and a cinnamon stick would be right up my alley and not too unusual.

I followed the recipe exactly except I didn't measure my two giant squashes so I think they were way more than called for and maybe my chicken stock was not salty so I did end up adding some salt and also a few splenda packets to sweeten it up a bit.

The purpose of making this soup was for the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers soup exchange/Oktoberfest beer tasting night. I have been part of the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers (a band of ladies who reside in Michigan and blog about food related topics) for a few months but this was my first chance to participate in a gathering, yay! I made the soup (and ginger brownies which I was also bringing) on Thursday night and packed everything up to go to work on Friday. I work in Milford and this event was in Ann Arbor so I was going to head over right after work before making the long trek home. Well, Friday just wasn't my best day. I started out running late (no surprise for a Cookies for a Cause morning) ... but then I realized about 40 minutes into my commute that I was missing one important item.... soup? no, that was here,.. crockpot? nope, had that,... spoon, extra bowls and parsley garnish? check,... 6 batches of ginger brownies? check... purse? check. Stupid laptop so I can do some work at work? Argh! No laptop! Unbelievable. I had to turn around, drive 40 minutes, and then drive another hour back to work. I would have considered just working from home but that would waste all those cookies and I needed to be in A^2 that night anyway.

That wasn't the end of my bad luck however! The soup exchange was at 7 so I worked until 6 and made up some time there, and walked out to my car with enough time to stop and get some of my favorite beer, Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier and head over to partay..... I started to drive away and then realized my car wasn't handling very well. DAMNIT. I knew it was another flat tire. Totally flat by the feel of it. I pulled off into the lobby parking lot and sure enough, my stupid tire was completely flat. This is incredibly infuriating because this is my 4th flat tire in three years, plus that was my 1 new tire.

What a drag..... I called AAA and they offered to come within an hour but luckily, the nice security men at the proving grounds hooked me up and found the metal shard in my stupid tire and put the spare on for me. I wonder which of my three times between work and home had given me the gift of the metal shard.. oh well at least I didn't get a blowout on the expressway.

This story is getting long so I'll hurry it up as best I can... I got the beer and headed out on my way about 40 minutes behind schedule, and totally ended up getting lost probably due to talking on the phone and it being dark and apparently I was looking for a dirt road - but didn't know it. I ended up in downtown AA (not correct) and that's when my out-of-gas "ding" went off. Awesome. No time for getting gas and there were no gas stations anyway so I had my dad help me over the phone find the house (on an empty tank). Cindy and Alison nicely helped me adjust my directions after the party so that I would hit a gas station before heading home, but that was only after I was lost in their subdivision and went around Loch Alpine circle a few times. Awesome, gotta love being lost twice on an empty tank in the middle of nowhere! My dad helped me over the phone again and I eventually made it to said gas station..... to find that it was closed. Awesome again! It took me 40 minutes to get a few miles to this closed gas station so this night was really turning out awesome. I luckily didn't get on the expressway and found a Meijer gas station a little bit down the way... then it was the long trek home on my stupid spare tire so that I could only go 60mph. Luckily my mom talked to me on the phone so I had no trouble staying awake (it had been a loooong week.. and AA-Troy sure is a boring drive).

Anyway the actual soup exchange and beer/oktoberfest party went great and it was nice to meet some other MLFB ladies. We all brought portions of different soups and food home with us and everything was delicious. I can't wait to get all of the recipes. I look forward to the next event.. sounds like a holiday cookie exchange! At least I got all my bad luck out of my system, the next party should go swimmingly. :)

Here's the recipe, try the soup, it's tasty! And join the MLFB if you're a Michigan Lady Food Blogger. :)

Butternutsquash Soup with Ginger
As seen on Epicurious.com here!

Yield: Serves 6

2 butternut squash (about 4 3/4 pounds total), halved lengthwise, seeded
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups thinly sliced onion
1 tablespoon golden brown sugar
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1/2 cinnamon stick
5 cups (or more) canned low-salt chicken broth
Chopped fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 375°F. Oil baking sheet. Place squash, cut side down, on baking sheet. Bake until squash is very soft, about 50 minutes. Using paring knife, remove peel from squash; discard peel. Cut squash into 2-inch pieces. Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-low heat. Mix in onion, brown sugar, ginger, garlic and cinnamon. Cover pot and cook until onion is tender, about 15 minutes. Add squash and 5 cups chicken broth. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Discard cinnamon.

Working in batches, purée soup in blender. - Or just use your submersible blender if you have one, which makes this incredibly easy and no need to dirty another dish. :) I added a little salt and splenda to taste.

(Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cool slightly. Cover and refrigerate.) Return soup to pot. Season soup with salt and pepper. Bring to simmer, thinning soup with more broth if necessary. Ladle into bowls. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Cookies For A Cause: Ginger Brownies

2009-10-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

I had a busy day of cooking/baking last night with the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers soup swap/Oktoberfest tonight and my husband needing a batch of Halloween Cupcakes for his boss' birthday plus there are hungry coworkers expecting cookies! The charity cookie recipe I chose this week was one that I felt originally sounded on the verge of gross. Ginger Brownies! Doesn't that sound somewhat odd... a peculiar combination? I can't say I've had chocolate and ginger before but these had good reviews and Martha's claim of them being easy to put together also sounded good. This is another recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookies book, which is where most of my Cookies for a Cause recipes are coming from since there are so many delicious looking cookies inside that book! I haven't found a recipe in that book that wasn't also on her website for free so don't worry if you don't have the book.

Most of Martha's brownie recipes call for an 8x8 pan. I guess I like generous portions but that sounds like 4 or 6 brownies to me, so I figured I should double that just to fill a 9x13, and then double it again to make the normal amount I bring in for Cookies for a Cause at work. Then with the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers event, I thought "all that soup and beer, maybe we'll also want something sweet?" and these are ladies with sophisticated palettes, so I felt they deserved another double batch at least. So, I was "sextupling" the recipe!

I calculated out all of the "6 x" ingredient amounts and then thought "having to break this into thirds sounds like a pain plus I'm not sure I have anything that will hold this much" so I decided to do two stages of Ginger Brownies and do a quadruple batch followed by another double batch. I recalculated the quadruple amounts for all ingredients and made a stupid mistake.... Instead of 2/3 * 4 = 8/3, I calculated this to be 4/3 so we were missing some flour. Of course I didn't realize this until I was making batch #2 and low-flour batch #1 was already baking in the oven! Argh!! Oh well, too late. At least the third batch would be right, and I decided to keep it for the MLFBers since they likely have more discerning taste buds compared to my ever-hungry-eat-anything stinky-fish-microwaving coworkers.

Once both batches were out and cooled down, I tried one from the Evil-Not-Enough-Flour Batch.. hmm.. pretty darned fudgy, moist and delicious. I then tried a bite from the normal batch.. they were slightly taller and had a smoother consistency and held together better but pretty much the same flavor, so the first batch was still going to go for charity cookies and it wasn't a total waste, yay!

Now about the strange chocolate/ginger combo - try it, it is delightful! My husband and 2 coworkers hated it but about 25 other people loved it. I just told The Husband he had a simple unsophisticated palette.. I mean.. he doesn't even like peanut butter so I'm not too worried about his opinion. hehe In all seriousness, this is a delicious recipe with a deep dark fudgy chocolate brownie flavor that is highlighted with fresh ginger and wonderful spices. They are quite delicious and if you aren't totally turned off by the idea of ginger/chocolate, I think you will love them like I did.

As far as the charity goes, as usual, 100% of the money collected went to a charity of my choice. Today we raised $31.35 for Forgotten Harvest which is a wonderful charity that collects unused foods from grocery stores and restaurants to donate to food shelters and those in need in Metro Detroit. That brings the amount of money I've raised for charity to a fabulous new total: $353.95! Woo hoo, we're over $350. I also had a few "IOUs" so I know a few more bucks are coming our way.

My coworkers probably never knew they were this generous and I've tried many new wonderful recipes in the mean time so it's a win-win situation. I'll keep baking if they keep donating and I look forward to seeing the progress we'll have made by the end of the year. Thanks for looking!

Chocolate Ginger Brownies
As seen on Martha Stewart's website here.
Makes 16 (or like 6 for a decent size)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for baking dish
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish. Line bottom with parchment paper, allowing 2 inches to hang over 2 sides. Butter parchment; set aside. Melt butter and chocolate together in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat, and stir in remaining ingredients.

Pour batter into prepared dish. Smooth top with a rubber spatula. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes. Lift out, and let cool completely on rack. Cut into sixteen 2-inch squares. Brownies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 4 days.

Daring Cooks' Challenge: Vietnamese Chicken Pho

2009-10-14T13:11:00.000-04:00

The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. I have never actually had real pho (we found out from Jaden that it is really pronounced fuh? - yes you pronounce it like a question.. I still always think "faux" when I see "pho" but I'm working on it). I've been to vietnamese restaurants twice (and I really want to try the new place in Clawson!) - once in Honolulu and once in Maui. Both times I ordered.. well I'm not sure what it is called... but it was awesome.. some kind of big platter with beef and all sorts of veggies and noodles and herbs, plus rice papers which you make little "summer rolls" out of. I just love the vietnamese food that I've tried. I also loved the fried spring rolls served with lettuce-wrap sides and dipping sauce, and also I absolutely loved the iced coffee which came out in a french press to which you add sweetened condensed milk to. How could that not be delicious????

So I was really excited to try pho. I've seen it on all the menus and I never really knew much about it. It turns out that pho is all about the rich broth. Jaden gave us two recipes that we could choose from - one long version for making your own chicken broth, and one short version with store-bought broth. Unfortunately I was already making a penne rustica and chicken chili that night so it was the store-bought broth version for me!

I had to buy some interesting ingredients - fish sauce, which I've purchased before but didn't use much of - whole coriander seeds, and whole star anise. I couldn't find that at Kroger and eventually found a great cheap package in the asian section of Ninos for $1.99. Way better than the $7.00 bottle I saw this morning at VG's. Yay for me! Toasting whole coriander seeds (maybe I will use these again in indian cooking), star anise, and cloves starts you off with this recipe. Then you add the broth, fish sauce, sugar, ginger, and simmer a chicken breast and onion in all of this flavorful goodness. Later, the chicken is shredded and the broth is served at the table with an assortment of embellishments - rice noodles, bean sprouts, cilantro, hoisin, lime, chili sauce, sliced red onion, and peppers.

I hope to make the lengthy version of pho sometime but I was pleasantly surprised by the mixture of spices in the flavorful broth and with the bean sprouts, lime, onions and cilantro, etc. Delicious and thanks to Jaden for helping us with this recipe! I probably would have never tried it and now I know how to at least pronounce it if I were to order it at a restaurant too!

Cookies for a Cause: Brown Butter Toffee Blondies

2009-10-05T13:11:00.001-04:00

We're back with another edition of my one-woman charity bake sale! The recipe I brought in for my coworkers this week was Martha Stewart's Brown Butter Toffee Blondies from her "Cookie" recipe book. Holy moly, these are delicious and rich and well worth trying. I am a huge fan of brown butter and it works perfectly in this blondie recipe. The result was a moist and chewy bar and while some of my coworkers may have scoffed at the "brown butter" (which they had never heard of), it only took one bite to be totally hooked. This is a fabulous recipe!

I am pleased to report that I collected another large amount for my double batch of these cookies - $30.50. The charity I chose was one that is improtant to me as well as one of my coworkers, the United Mitochondrial Diesease Foundation, which is a wonderful cause. My donation was just to make the cookies and 100% of the money I collected from my coworkers went directly to this charity!

So if you are looking for a rich and decadent bar cookie that is relatively easy but not "run-of-the-mill", definitely give this recipe a try. You won't be disappointed!!

Brown Butter Toffee Blondies
From martha stewart's website and her book "Cookies"

Ingredients

Makes about 1 dozen

1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for pan
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups packed light-brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup chopped walnuts (about 4 ounces)
1 cup toffee bits

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper; butter and flour parchment paper.

In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the butter until it turns golden brown; remove from heat, and let cool. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine browned butter and both sugars; stir with a wooden spoon until combined. Attach bowl to mixer; add eggs. Using the paddle attachment, beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add vanilla, and beat to combine. Add flour mixture, walnuts, and toffee bits. Mix until thoroughly combined, and pour into prepared pan.

Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes (do not overbake). Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before turning out of pan onto a cutting board. Peel off parchment paper; cut blondies into 3-inch squares. Blondies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days

Cookies for a Cause: Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2009-10-02T12:55:00.001-04:00

We're back with more cookies for charity! For September 11th, I chose the recipe "Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies" from Martha Stewart's "Cookies" cookbook as the cookies I brought in to raise funds for charity from my coworkers. In honor of the heroes of September 11th, I chose the charity of Tuesday's Children, an organization providing services and programs to the families of 9/11 victims.

Also, I am happy to report that these little sweet cookies raised our highest donation amount yet! For my double batch, I collected $35.42 for Tuesday's Children, which puts our grand total raised at $241.32! As I've said before, 100% of donations for the cookies go directly to the charity of my choice. My donation is the batch of cookies and I'm very excited about the wonderful progress my coworkers and I have made in just a few months! I now have a "Cookie Following" and people stop by throughout the week in attempt to snatch a cookie early or see what I'll be baking for Friday. And heaven forbid I am busy on a Thursday night, as I found bakery-made donuts were "no replacement for homebaked cookies!" While the expectations are high, thanks to Martha Stewart's delicious recipes, I am very excited to be trying a new recipe every week!

As always, I'll keep baking if you keep donating! So far so good! One of my coworkers, Marco, said these banana cookies were the best cookie he's ever had and he has begged me about baking another batch ever since I brought these in. He even called his wife and tried to make me tell her how to make them, so I just forwarded them Martha's link! Anyway, they are quite delicious. I thought "banana bread meets chocolate chip cookie" sounded strange but they are totally yummy and you will love them. Give this recipe a try for something different and delicious. Enjoy!

Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies
From the Martha Stewart Cookie book and her website

Ingredients

Makes about 3 dozen

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup mashed ripe banana (about 1 large)

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped into 1/4-inch chunks

1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (about 2 ounces), toasted

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk together flours, salt, and baking soda in a small bowl; set aside. Put butter and sugars into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low. Add egg and vanilla; mix until combined. Mix in banana. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Stir in oats, chocolate chunks, and walnuts.

Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until golden brown and just set, 12 to 13 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks; let cool completely. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers up to 2 days.

Another Daring Baker Adventure! Vols-au-Vent!

2009-09-28T21:23:00.000-04:00

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Woo hoo! I have never made puff pastry before, so I was super excited. I watched the little video everyone found that had Julia Child and Michel Richard making puff pastry (to be used for something else) and I made my quick dough in the food processor, and I got out my pound of butter, hammered it down into a disc, and wrapped my dough around it. Making a puff pastry means rolling out the butter-wrapped-dough and folding it onto itself, and then rotating the dough disc, rolling it out, and folding it onto itself again.

These are called "turns" and you need to complete 6 turns to complete your puff pastry. Also the butter has to be kept incredibly cold so you have to keep chilling your dough in between turns. All in all, it wasn't too bad of a task and it was fun! I'm glad to have tried it.

Next, for making vols-au-vents. I hadn't heard of these but it turns out they are just puff pastry "cups" to hold a lovely filling, savory or sweet. A classic vols-au-vent filling is a creamy mushroom mixture, like a thick soup, so I decided to do something similar and make a large vols-au-vent and whip up a thick and creamy chicken stew. It was like a chicken pot pie really, and it turned out to be so delicious! The Husband loved this so much, I made it a few more times for him throughout the week. Goodness, we ate a lot of puff pastry this week.

I had a few different shapes of "pastry bowls" - some small, some large, trying out a few of my biscuit cutters. I didn't have any small enough to make super cute little bites so I had to cut those by hand with a sharp knife. I had some leftover scraps of dough so I rolled them out into a rough square and covered them with cinnamon, rolled up each end towards the center, and then sliced them into palmiers. These were baked along with the vols-au-vent and after one bite of a cinnamon palmier, we fell in love and gobbled up all the rest This homeade puff pastry is so delicious!

There were a few other vols-au-vents left over from my first batch of baking, and after the delicious creamy chicken stew and cinny-palmiers, I couldn't leave well enough alone. The Husband already went snooping around and ate the "hats" of the remaining cups so I decided to just make fresh vols-au-vents the next day and use these up. I cut one ripe banana and sauteed it with brown sugar and butter, with a pinch of cinnamon... a quick banana foster! I poured this into the two remaining vols-au-vents and they were devoured shortly there after.

The next day I made a larger vols-au-vent for The Husband for more left over chicken stew and the extras were used for additional palmiers. I also made a few appetizer vols-au-vents, but savory with something besides chicken stew. I used chopped up black forest ham, gruyere cheese, and scallions. These were so delicious freshly baked, dipped in a little bit of dijon mustard.

These were a big hit with The Husband (as expected) and I would certainly do something like this for a party appetizer sometime. I think they would be crowd pleasers!

I also made some fillings for my dessert vols-au-vents for the next day - a pastry cream and some caramel dried apples (that were reconstituted in cider). The next day, I finally got home early enough from work to take advantage of daylight for taking decent photographs. I quick made 4 small square vols-au-vent (and some additional palmiers) and filled one with pastry cream and a raspberry on top, one with pastry cream with our favorite blueberry preserves, and the last one was filled with the caramel apple mixture. I was so excited to try this pastry cream.... then I found out it was basically vanilla pudding. What is that light and airy white cream that fills doughnuts... is that bavarian cream? I think that is what I was hoping for. Maybe next time :)

These dessert vols-au-vent were equally delicious and I decided to just use up the rest of the pastry dough and make a mini strudel with the remaining caramel apples for The Husband, and the rest got topped on a casserole of additional chicken stew (yes three times in one week, but he didn't complain due to the pastry!) which was baked into a delicious pot pie. I actually was being really good this week which means The Husband ate about 90% of the puff pastry batch in a matter of 4 days or so... uh-oh. :) Good thing he runs marathons!

Anyway, these were truly delicious and I had so much fun thinking of different fillings - savory and sweet - to go into these little beauties. Making the puff pastry was a great lesson and I might even make it again sometime (even with the frozen stuff being so readily available). Thank you Steph! Go to Steph's blog for the recipe. :) Oh and sorry for being a day late, I can't believe I forgot yesterday!

Anime Birthday Cake

2009-09-22T20:38:00.005-04:00

One of my fellow Michigan Marching Band horn section members asked me if I could make a surprise birthday cake for her sister's 13th birthday. Her sister loves Japanese culture and especially the anime (japanese animation) show called Death Note, and a character called Lawliet or "L" from that show. She sent me a link to a picture of an L key chain which I printed out and used for modeling the character on the cake from. I don't watch anime but a quick google search showed me that there was also a book with "Death Note" written on it which was also common in the show (if you write some one's name in the book, they apparently die).

With that, I thought I had enough information for my cake design. Chocolate cake was the favorite of her sister, so I went with that and put in my typical raspberry buttercream filling and covered it in white buttercream to set the stage for my decorations.

I wasn't sure how I was going to do the L character, and I first tried "painting with buttercream" - this sounded better in my head than it turned out. As you can see from the picture, it would have been the most frumpy character of all time, and I would've been embarassed giving that to some one! Thankfully I had some fondant that I decided to layer to make each piece of Lawliet, painted each piece separately, and then layered them on top of the cake. This went much better and I was able to cut clean edges with a sharp knife after rolling out the fondant. Any portion that was a different color was cut separately to be layered later. For the black, I used store-bought black frosting - there was no way I was going to get that jet black myself starting with white frosting. The rest of the colors were from gel colors and I used a paintbrush for all of it.

I also made a Death Note book out of fondant and painted it with black frosting, and then piped on (very carefully) "Death Note" in the same font from the actual book. I used gold luster dust to paint the edges of the book to simulate pages.

Lastly, I needed to incorporate my friend's sister's name, Rachel, onto the cake and show that this was a birthday cake somehow. Since she loved Japanese culture, I googled how to write Happy Birthday in Japanese. I was surprised it was 9 characters but after a quick trial run on a paper plate, I thought it looked pretty good and decided to write it on the front of the cake in black icing, and then put Rachel underneath. I also used black frosting as a pearl border on the bottom of the cake to finish it.

I was really pleased with how this turned out, it was much better than I expected and I was really excited about the Japanese lettering as well. It was all a very fun project, thanks Mary for thinking of me for the job!

Pomegranate Cosmopolitan .. or Maybe Pomopolitan?

2009-09-21T16:32:00.006-04:00

A fruity martini recipe with some health benefits!

Pomopolitan

1 small airplane sized bottle of good vodka (or about 1.5 oz)

.5 oz of Grand Marnier (or triple sec for a poor man's version)

4 oz of 100% pomegranate juice

splash of lime

Combine all ingredients into a shaker with ice and pour into a lovely martini glass and enjoy a refreshing and colorful cocktail. Garnish with lime or orange slice to add some pizzazz!