Designer Bakery

Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Basil

2011-09-19T20:14:00.000-07:00

Tonight I let Brian pick what we had for dinner (I owed him one). I actually prefer for him to pick, deciding what to make isn't my favorite thing unless I have a new recipe I want to try. I gave Brian some suggestions and he settled on pasta but requested that we try a new recipe. Brian is a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain, host of No Reservations on the Travel Channel. I watch the show with Brian, and Anthony is usually in some crazy country trying out the local cuisine. Every once in a while he'll do a show where he shows a few recipes of his own, and tonight Brian wanted to try out a pasta recipe from the show.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I'm sure the changes I made are not Anthony approved. The good news is I'm pretty sure he doesn't read my blog and will never find out about the changes I made! The recipe is very simple and gets its flavor from fresh tomatoes. Brian's dad gave us some fresh tomatoes from his garden and I was thrilled to use them for the sauce. He didn't, however, give us 20 tomatoes like the recipe calls for, so I supplemented with stewed tomatoes. (Cue Anthony rolling his eyes.) I think the stewed tomatoes worked out fabulous, I just think the over all flavor probably wasn't as "fresh tomatoes" as it was supposed to be. If you didn't know otherwise, you wouldn't know the difference. Don't be scared off by the boiling and peeling the fresh tomatoes. It is relatively simple and quick, and I quite enjoyed the process.

An important step to this pasta is to mix the spaghetti, cooked just shy of al dente, with the pasta sauce on the stove. Cook over the heat, while mixing to finish cooking the pasta. I liked that better than just pouring the sauce on freshly drained pasta because the sauce just slides off. Cooking the pasta with the sauce made the sauce and the pasta stay together much better. About the process, Anthony says, "...this technique not only coats the pasta evenly with the sauce, but it also introduces a little air into the process making the dish feel lighter and brighter." And who can argue with that.

This is a great little recipe, doesn't even call for onions or garlic. Brian absolutely loved it! We have no left overs. I asked him if he needed the salt and pepper and he said, "it doesn't need it." And if you know Brian, he never says that! This is for sure a make again, and soon. (Even though my doctor said to lay off the starches if I don't want to gain too much baby weight!)

Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Basil
Ingredients

About 20 ripe plum tomatoes (I used 5 fresh tomatoes and 2 cans of stewed tomatoes)
About 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more to finish the dish
Pinch of crushed red pepper
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbs. unsalted butter 1 oz. freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (about half a cup)
6 to 8 fresh basil leaves well washed and dried, stacked and rolled into a cylinder and cut thinly crosswise
1 lb. spaghetti (I used about 3/4 of a pound)

To peel the tomatoes: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Have a large bowl of ice water nearby. Cut a small X on the bottom of each tomato. Ease about 5 tomatoes in the pot and cook. Let boil for about 15 seconds and then promptly move them to the waiting ice water (do this with the remaining tomatoes). Pull off the skin with the tip of a paring knife. If the skin sticks, try a vegetable peeler using a gentle sawing motion. Cut the tomatoes in half and use your finger to flick out the seeds.

To cook the tomatoes: In a wide pan, heat the 1/3 cup of olive oil over medium-high heat until hot. Add the tomatoes, red pepper flakes, and season lightly with the salt and pepper (I always start with a light hand with the salt and pepper because as the tomatoes reduce, the salt will become concentrated).

Let the tomatoes cook for a few minutes to soften. Then, using a potato masher, chop the tomatoes finely. Cook the tomatoes for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tomatoes are tender and the sauce has thickened. Refrigerate for up to 2 days or freeze it for longer storage.

To serve: Bring a large pot of amply salted water to a boil. Cook the spaghetti until just shy of al dente. Reserve a little of the pasta cooking water. Add the pasta to the sauce and cook over medium-high heat, gently tossing the pasta and the sauce together with a couple of wooden spoons and a lot of exaggerated movement (you can even shake the pan) until the pasta is just tender and the sauce, if any oil had separated from it, now looks cohesive (If the sauce seems too thick, add a little pasta liquid to adjust it). Take the pan off the heat and toss the butter, basil and cheese with the pasta in the same manner (the pasta should take on an orange hue) and serve immediately.

Source: Anthony Bourdain: No Reseverations, Travel Channel

Carmel Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

2011-09-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

The temperature has dropped slightly around here, and with every other food blog posting up yummy pumpkin recipes already, I figured it was my turn. Yesterday I tried two new pumpkin recipes. I had to try two because the first one only called for a half a cup of pumpkin, so I just had to use the other left over cup!

The only pumpkin cookies I've made before are your basic pumpkin chocolate chocolate chip cookies. These caught my eye because they were frosted. And unlike most frosting on pumpkin treats, this wasn't cream cheese based. The frosting is caramel flavored, and it is delicious. The frosting definitely makes the cookies. I wanted my frosting to be more than just a glaze, so I added more powdered sugar than the original recipe called for. You can thicken to your liking, just don't skip it! The cookies are a moist, cake like cookie, and the recipe only calls for your basic ingredients.

I ate three of these as soon as they were frosted. And few more that night. I did manage to give some away, and there are just a few left for Brian and I to munch on. I made the mistake of storing them in a ziplock bag and the bag stuck to the frosting and pulled some of it off. I was so sad, that's the best part! But of course, I ate them anyway. I will for sure be making these a part of my must make again pumpkin goodie collection. I'm wondering if next weekend is too soon to whip up another batch! I think not.

Carmel Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:
Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

Frosting
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
Pinch of salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Stir in pumpkin. In a medium bowl, sift together the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, salt and flour. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well. Drop by heaping tablespoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

To make frosting: In a medium saucepan, combine butter, cream, and brown sugar over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture just begins to boil; remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Cool then stir in confectioner's sugar. Spread frosting over cooled cookies.

Source: Let's Dish

Happy Birthday Sugar Cookies

2011-08-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

I made some sugar cookies last night for my friend Stacy's daughters 18th birthday. Her daughter really liked the last cookies I made for them, and of course I was happy to do something fun for the birthday. I enjoyed the colors I used, although being the amateur photographer that I am didn't get the best picture. I took these this morning before I left for work and there wasn't a whole lot of sunlight at 6:45 am, and I didn't have time to mess with it. But the colors were much brighter than they appear. I also love the look of the flat dots on the cookies. This is easily done by adding the dots while the frosting is still wet. Super easy! My piping of numbers could be improved though! I am a little out of practice.

Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan

2011-08-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

Tonight for dinner it was just me and Brian. It was a nice, quiet evening, but this rarely happens on Sunday nights. We usually head up to his parents house or have dinner with my sisters. Today, however, everyone was out of town. We should have invited some friends over for dinner, but with me headed back to school tomorrow, a low key evening was just what I wanted. To make our laid back evening even better I decided to do a slow cooker meal that was easy to prepare, easy to serve and super easy to clean up. I decided to do a chicken parmesan and sauce in the slow cooker. My mom stopped by this morning on her way out of town and I told her of my plan and she told me she did the same thing just a few weeks ago and the result was amazing. I took some tips from her and was very pleased with how it turned out.

I've written the recipe below, but here's a brief run down of what I did and what I would change for next time. I started with a little olive oil in the bottom of the slow cooker and added chicken breasts that I dipped in egg and then in plain bread crumbs mixed with Italian seasoning. I put mozzarella cheese on top of the chicken then added my tomatoes, sauteed onions and garlic, parsley and basil. Lets talk about the chicken. It was super tender and juicy, but of course the breading wasn't crispy at all, so while it did stay on the chicken and added some flavor this could definitely be skipped. Also, adding the cheese on top of the chicken just got mixed up in the sauce and I think would be better added at the end when serving. I left my stewed tomatoes pretty chunky, but if you prefer you could cut them or use a blending method to make them smaller. I used fresh chicken breasts so I could bread them, but another way to do this faster, if skipping the breading, would be to use frozen chicken breasts.

That's about it, Brian said this was for sure a make again, and it was definitely easy enough. Too bad I didn't have any family in town to partake with us. You missed out! (And going along with not turning on my oven I bought Sprinkles cupcakes for dessert! The key lime one is to die for!)

Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan

Ingredients
Chicken breasts -as many as you need
plain bread crumbs mixed with Italian seasoning (If breading chicken)
1 egg, well beaten
2 cans stewed tomatoes
2 cans stewed tomatoes, Italian style
1 can diced tomatoes with peppers and onions (or Italian, not Mexican!)
1 yellow onion diced and sauteed
4 cloves of garlic, diced and sauteed with onion
2 Tablespoons parsley
2 Tablespoons basil
1 box thin spaghetti

Directions
Drizzle olive oil over bottom of slow cooker. If breading chicken, thaw and using two different bowls dip chicken first in beaten egg and then in plain bread crumbs. Place on bottom of slow cooker. Open all cans of tomatoes and pour on top of chicken. Add onions and garlic, parsley and basil. Stir gently.

Cook time: on high 3-4 hours, on low 6-7. (More cooking time may be required if using frozen chicken.)

Serve chicken and sauce over spaghetti (or pasta of your choice).

Asian Noodle Salad

2011-08-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

This week I went to a Summer Salad Soirée and I wanted to bring a salad that was new to me and my friends. I was feeling like maybe a pasta salad, something with noodles and vegetables. I had been wanted to make an Asian salad, I just needed to find a dressing. So I searched around and ended up using the dressing from Pioneer Woman's Asian Noodle Salad. I included a lot of the same vegetables as she did, but in fewer quantities. I had read a lot of her comments and everyone said the salad made a ton! I wasn't looking for quite that much so I cut back on my vegetables and left some of hers out. You could definitely add more of whatever you like and less of what you don't. There are very few vegetables I think wouldn't be good in this salad. I tried to think of the most colorful ones! My produce department didn't have orange bell peppers, so I used green instead. I cut the original dressing recipe in half because, like I said, I didn't want to make mass amounts of salad. Double what I listed below for more, but I had plenty of dressing to generously coat the salad. A quick tip on the ginger for the dressing: to peel the ginger, just scrape it with a spoon. The skin comes right off. I used my Microplane to grate the ginger, super easy! In the end I thought it was a delightful, light, perfect summer salad. This is the kind of salad my mom would love, so I'll have to make it for her next time she's in town! Enjoy.

Asian Noodle Salad

Salad Ingredients:
1 package Linguine Noodles, Cooked, Rinsed, And Cooled
1 cup sliced purple cabbage
1 whole red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 whole yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
1 whole green bell pepper, sliced thin
1/2 bag bean sprouts
3 whole green onions
1 whole cucumber, peeled and sliced
Handful of pea pods
1/2 bunch chopped cilantro

Dressing Ingredients:
1 whole lime, juiced
4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Sesame Oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons fresh grated ginger
1 large clove garlic, chopped
chopped cilantro, to taste

Mix salad ingredients together. Wish dressing ingredients together and pour over salad. Mix well with tongs. Note: Dressing will keep for up to three days in fridge before serving, without cilantro.

Source: Adapted from Pioneer Woman

It's been a while...

2011-08-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

After months and months of not blogging, I'm not sure there is anyone reading this. But that's ok. I think my mom still loves me. I do have a bit of an excuse as to why I haven't blogged in the past four months. I'm pregnant. And long about April my first trimester sickness started to kick in and the last think I wanted to do was cook. Nothing sounded good to me and the thought of handling raw meats or dealing with fragrant onions or spices was enough to make me head for the bathroom! So my poor husband was on his own for a few months, but did an excellent job in taking care of me. As I started to get over that portion of the pregnancy summer hit. I was done teaching school and feeling well enough to be out and about. My cooking always declines a bit in the summer. Our little apartment gets so hot when I turn on the oven, we stick to very basic dinners.

I'm now 25 weeks pregnant, with a little baby boy, feeling great and so ready to get back in the kitchen. I hate that my summer ends in three weeks, but I won't be waiting until then to start cooking again. And with the cooking will hopefully come a few blog posts a couple of times a week.

So to get started again, I'll post about homemade brownies. Friday was my father-in-laws birthday, and he doesn't like cake. I know, seems like a crime not to like cake, but I told him I'd make him a non-cake birthday treat. Brian said his dad loves brownies, so I was searching around for some fancy brownie recipes when Brian said he really just likes chocolate. I came across a recipe on Annie's Eats that she adapted from the Baking Illustrated cookbook. I'll admit that I haven't made too many batches of brownies from scratch. Brian loves the Ghirardelli box mix you can buy at Costco that we almost always have on hand. And for how quick, easy and good they are, you really can't beat them. But these homemade ones were almost as quick and the deep, rich chocolate flavor was out of this world. The texture was very soft, but not too cake like. I prefer my brownies chewy, and these definitely were. I also loved that little bit of flakiness on the top.

I used semisweet chocolate chips for the semisweet chocolate, it was easy and what I had on hand. I found I had a bag of milk chocolate chips and thought it would be fun to mix up the chocolate combination next time. And there will be a next time. I loved that the recipe didn't call for anything too special, I didn't have to go to the store before I made these. I love that. And my father-in-law loved them too.

Triple Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients:
5 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into quarters
3 tbsp. cocoa powder
3 large eggs
1¼ cups (8¾ oz.) sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. salt
1 cup (5 oz.) all-purpose flour

Directions:
Place an oven rack in lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 350° F. Line an 8-inch square baking dish with foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray; set aside.

In a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter, stirring occasionally until smooth. Whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth. Set aside to cool.

In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt; whisk until combined, about 15 seconds. Whisk in the warm chocolate mixture until incorporated. Then stir in the flour with a wooden spoon until just combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and spread with a spatula to make an even layer. Bake until slightly puffed and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a small amount of sticky crumbs clinging to it, 35-40 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.

Remove the brownies from the pan using the foil and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into squares as desired. Store in an air-tight container.

Source: Annie's Eats

Newport Harbor Baseball Cookies

2011-04-10T18:26:00.000-07:00

This past week I had the opportunity to make some baseball sugar cookies for my friend, Stacy. I work with her, and her son plays on the Newport Harbor baseball team. Stacy was hosting the team dinner before the game this week and asked if I'd make some cookies for dessert. I was more than happy to help her out, and since I had already made baseball cookies once before, I was excited to improve them. She wanted a bigger cookie, I used Ateco 3.5 inch round cutter, so I thought I'd dress them up with a little blue anchor in between the laces, Newport Harbors logo.

It always seems that when I know I'm making sugar cookies I plan out in my head what days I'm going to do what so I don't end up making the dough, baking the cookies, making all the frosting and frosting them all in the same day. On Tuesday night I decided that I was going to make the anchors piped on wax paper like I did these, because it worked out so well last time. I also thought this to be a time saver, as I wouldn't have to wait as long for the frosting to dry before applying them. Well, I must have had some beginners luck with those O's, because I couldn't get one anchor off the wax paper without them breaking. There goes my plan ahead plan. So Wednesday night I bribed my sisters with dinner to have them come help me assess what the problem was. Turns out the process was fine, I had just made the anchors too thin. Brittany actually ended up piping the new, thicker, anchors while I piped the outline and Mikken filled in the centers.

After the white frosting had dried a bit, I piped on the red laces. The next morning I got up early and applied the anchors, which peeled off perfectly. I just used a small paint brush and applied a small amount of water to the cookie where the anchor would go.

Anchor crisis aside, I think they turned out cute. I hope the team liked them! Thanks again Stacy!

Buttermilk Syrup

2011-04-05T18:04:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday I had the chance to host my family for Sunday breakfast. Our weekend breakfast tradition is generally waffles, but I decided to go out on a limb this time and try something new. My fabulous friend Sherry has this amazing buttermilk syrup recipe that I just had to share with my family. I knew they would love it, and love it they did. They couldn’t get enough of it. It’s a cinch to make and is so much better than anything bottled you can get.

photo credit: williams-sonoma

I served the syrup over aebleskivers, (or ebelskivers) which are a cute, little, sphere shaped Danish pancakes. I must admit that I didn’t make these. It not because I didn’t want to, but more because I didn’t have the right equipment. I don’t one of these (see above) special aebleskiever making pans. I see them in the Williams-Sonoma catalog and have wanted to try them for quite some time. Alas, this was not that time. So, taking yet another idea from fabulous Sherry, I headed over to Trader Joe’s and picked up a bag of, dare I say, frozen aebleskievers. Frozen or not, these babies were delicious! The best part is you can cook a ton in the oven at the same time, about ten minutes total, and they don’t get cold waiting for the others to cook. Just sprinkle with powdered sugar and top with this buttermilk syrup and you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven. If you’d like to make your own, get your self a pan, and then check out the variety of recipes Willams-Sonoma has for making aebleskievers. Enjoy!

Buttermilk Syrup

1 cube butter
1/2 cup buttermilk (low or reduced fat works also)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Bring above ingredients to a boil and make sure sugar is dissolved.

Add 1/2 tsp baking soda and continue stirring.
(Adding baking soda will double the amount of syrup by foaming and might spill over onto the stove. Use a pan is that double the size you think you would need to avoid a mess!)

Left overs will keep in fridge for a couple weeks.

Oregon Ducks Cupcakes

2011-03-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

The same weekend I made all those wedding cupcakes I was asked by another friend at work to make cupcakes for her son's baseball team party. I asked if there was a theme and she said their team was the Oregon Ducks and their colors were yellow and green. Apparently all the teams in the league are named after colleges. I took that and ran with it. I searched out the Oregon Ducks logo on the internet and liked the simple "O" they used. The night before, when I was waiting for the wedding cookies to dry, I came across a video that showed how to pipe royal icing onto wax paper, that could then be used to top cakes or cupcakes. That was in the back of my mind, and since I'm not that great at freehanding logos just yet, I thought this would work out perfectly for the Oregon O.

I printed out some Os and taped them to the table. I took wax paper and placed it over the top. As I finished one O, I would move the wax paper around and pipe several Os on the same paper.

First, trace the shape, as if piping the outside of a cookie.

Then fill the shape in. I used the same consistency of royal icing to pipe as I did to fill. My frosting is on the thicker side, I using the ten second rule to gauge. I wanted to make sure my lines would hold.

These needed to dry overnight, just like royal icing on a cookie would. The next morning I frosted the cupcakes and placed the O on top of the wet frosting. I thought they turned out fantastic! The best part was, a guy friend walked in and said, "Oh, Oregon cupcakes, cool." They were recognizable, mission accomplished! I love this little cheating way of getting the logo to match almost exactly. I will definitely use this technique in the future. Even if I do get a little better at free handing, I thought the royal icing decorations were so fun as cupcake toppers.

Just a few notes on the actual cupcakes. I used Barefoot Contessa coconut cupcakes for the cake, just without the coconut. It was the perfect white cake. For the frosting I used a new buttercream frosting recipe I found on Food Network. I loved it! These was the perfect combination of frosting and cake.

Sweet and Sticky Sesame Chicken

2011-03-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Since chicken and rice seems to be our no brainer week night go to meal, I decided to try a new recipe, just to keep things interesting. I came across a restaurant recipe make over on Hungry Girl. The recipe was based on an average sesame chicken dish you could order at a Chinese restaurant. What I loved about this recipe is that chicken was crispy, without frying it! Dipping the chicken in egg and then flour, then baking it made for a crispy, crunchy outside. The sauce was sweet, but not too sweet. When I make this again I will probably double the sauce. There was enough sauce to generously coat the chicken, but I do love my sauces, and I would have liked more to put on the rice. I made just a few adjustments from the original recipe. The ingredients I used are below, click the link for the original. I love a healthy, quick, week night meal. Hungry Girl has a few more recipe make overs that I'd can't wait to try.

Ingredients:
10 oz. raw boneless skinless lean chicken breast, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup flour, divided
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp. cornstarch
2 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tbsp. seasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp. ketchup
1/2 tbsp. lite/low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
1/2 tsp. crushed garlic
1 tsp. sesame seeds
2 tbsp. thinly sliced scallions
Optional: crushed red pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray and set aside.

Place chicken in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and cover with egg substitute. Toss to coat and set aside.

Place 2 tbsp. flour in another bowl. Use a fork to transfer half of the chicken to the flour bowl, allowing excess egg substitute to drain back into the egg bowl. Thoroughly coat chicken with flour, and then transfer to the baking sheet. Wipe the bowl clean, and then repeat with remaining flour and chicken.

Bake chicken in the oven until fully cooked, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, to make the sauce, combine broth with cornstarch in a small nonstick pot and stir to dissolve. Add syrup, vinegar, ketchup, soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic. Mix well and bring to medium heat on the stove. Stirring often, cook until thick enough to coat a spoon, 2 - 3 minutes. Set aside.

Place cooked chicken in a bowl, top with sauce, and toss to coat. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and scallions. If you like, add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.
MAKES 2 SERVINGS

Source: Hungry Girl

Wedding Cake Sugar Cookies: Round Two

2011-03-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

Two days in a row! Can you believe it? This is just a quick post of some pictures of the cookies I made to go along with the cupcakes of yesterdays post. My friend, Patty, saw a version of these cookies in a post I did last summer and asked if I'd make some similar for her sisters wedding reception, along with the cupcakes. I'm always grateful for the opportunity to improve on a project. This time around I opted for the same design on each cookie. I thought that would look better on display. I picked this simple, but, classic cake design. I made these Friday night and the cupcakes Saturday morning. Brian was out of town for the weekend, so my sisters came over and we made a night of it!

We had a good system going. I would pipe around the outside, then Mikken would fill the inside of the cookie with frosting using a squeeze bottle. (As show above, although my brother Jeff dug that cookie out of our graveyard and had Mikk frost it for him.)

After the fill frosting was in Brittany would complete the fill by dragging the frosting to the corners with a toothpick. Thanks girls for all you help! And Jeff too- I didn't have any cookies left over!

After the frosting set I piped on the cake decorations. I still find making the frosting the right consistency for piping a bit of a challenge. But it all seemed to work out in the end.

One of the hardest things about this project was figuring out how to pack everything up so it could be picked up and transported to LA. To pack the cookies I went to my local Dippity Doughnut shop and asked if I could buy some of their flat bakery boxes. The cute little lady working there was a bit stumped because she didn't know how much to charge me. After about 15 minutes of her scrounging around in the back looking for receipts to see how much she paid, she sold them to me for 50 cents a box. She did tell me that the more I bought, the cheaper they would be! (I'll remember that for next time.) So I bought my four boxes and a cake doughnut with white frosting and sprinkles and I was out the door. The boxes worked great for packing, just remember to keep the flaps on the outside of the box. I chopped off the sides of a few of the cakes before I figured that out. It was a late night, but all turned out well. Thanks again Patty! I had so much fun.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2011-03-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

As a kind friend pointed out to me the other day, it's been a month since I blogged. I couldn't believe it. Not to make excuses, but after those coconut cupcakes I skipped the country and took a little Eurpoean vacation. (Lot of food blog posts to come.) Then I came back and got sick, tis the season, and then work and life got in the way. But the good news is I was cooking and baking the whole time.

I had every intention of blogging last weekend, but I got a little tied up with these red velvet cupcakes. A friend that I teach with had asked me to make red velvet cupcakes and wedding cake sugar cookies for her sisters cocktail wedding reception. I was beyond excited to take on the challenge.

When you start a big project, make sure you have all your ingredients and plan a head. I ended up running out of red die after my first batch so I made an emergency run to the store only to find that they only had generic brands of die. The first time I made a red velvet cake I could taste the die in it, tasted like chemicals. I wanted to use the same brand I had tested this round with, McCormick's; I couldn't taste it at all. Anyway, I went to a second store to get it and forgot that I also needed oil, so I run back into the second store for a second time, only to realize that I left my wallet in the car. I go get it, and get back in line for a third time. Moral of the story: plan a head (a little better than I did).

I enjoyed that this project gave me an excuse to learn how to pipe frosting on cupcakes, instead of just frosting with a spatula by hand. I bought the Ateco 6-piece pastry tube set and did a few practice tries before I took to the actual cakes.

After the practice tries, it still took me a few to get it perfect. I held the large pastry tube in in my right hand, and used my left hand to guide it while I worked counter clockwise. (I'm right handed.) I still had a few kinks to work out. Here are a few of my early mistakes.

The bald cupcake: I thought I was close to the edge on these, but turns out I wasn't. They look bald, and skimpy on the frosting.

The lopsided cupcake: As I tried to fix the first problem, I ended up with this one, a little too much frosting on one side. I tried to get closer to the edge, but turns out, only on one side.

The last problem I came across was this little beauty, where the frosting didn't quite meet.

After much practice, I managed to get the perfect swirl atop these lovely red velvet cup cakes.

Now just a few notes on the actual cupcakes. As I researched out and found a few recipes I wanted to try, I found a lot of talk about using butter verses oil in the recipe. As you can see above, mine were a little oily, as I went the oil route in the recipe. But I found the oil recipes to be much more moist than the butter recipes, and no one likes dry cake. I did double up on the cupcake liners, and cooled them on a paper towel on top of my cooling rack. By the time I packaged them up they weren't greasy on the bottom at all. But do note that the cake its self wasn't oily to the taste, just moist and delicious! The recipe I ended up using comes from Cake Man Raven. He was featured on a Throwdown episode and I found his recipe again on the blog The Way the Cookie Crumbles, who does a great comparison of other red velvet recipes. This recipe was by far the easiest to make, very simple and straight forward.


Hand frosted

Red Velvet Cupcakes
Yields 24 cupcakes
Ingredients:
2 1/2 c. cake flour
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 TBSP cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 c. buttermilk
2 TBSP (1 oz.) red food coloring
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. white distilled vinegar

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners. In a medium bowl, combine the cake flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt; whisk to blend. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the eggs, vegetable oil, buttermilk, food coloring, vanilla and vinegar. Beat on medium speed until well blended. Mix in the dry ingredients on low speed and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared liners. Bake, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 18 minutes. Let cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cream Cheese Frosting:
For the frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Directions:
To make the frosting, combine the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium-high speed until well combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until totally incorporated, increase the speed and then beat until smooth. Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.
(Note: I used a lot more frosting when I used the piping bag than when I hand frosted. You may want to double or make a batch and a half.)

Source: Cake Man Raven, adapted from Annies Eats, and The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Coconut Cupcakes

2011-02-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

Working my way through the original Barefoot Contessa Cookbook let me to these little lovelies last weekend. And as hard as I tried to give all of them away, Brian and I were still left with a dozen. So we decided to exercise a little self control and not eat them all in one day. Yeah, that didn't happen. They maybe lasted until Monday. Brian would eat one for breakfast, then we'd each have one in our lunch, for an afternoon snack, and then for dessert. If I haven't mentioned it before, I love, love, love Brian's sweet tooth. He is so fun to bake for, and loves all my treats. Anyway, I mention all of this as a round about way of saying that these cupcakes are a. mazing. The use of the almond extract, that I've never used in cakes before, took these babies over the top, and gave them that little something extra. And, still wanting use up the extra buttermilk I had from two cakes ago, makes the cupcakes very moist. I got about 28 or so cupcakes from one batch, using regular size muffin tin. But I only used half a batch of frosting. I actually use this frosting for my coconut cake, and knew how much it made. So I cut it in half and had plenty to top the cakes with. Also, note that she uses extra large eggs in this recipe. Ina seems to be the only one using extra large eggs in baking, but I didn't doubt her, and went ahead and got the larger ones for this recipe. Loved the cupcakes. Love Ina.

I gave these away as a thank you. How cute do they look in this box?

I wrapped these up as pre-Valentine's Day treats!

Coconut Cupcakes
Ingredients:
3/4 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
2 cups of sugar
5 extra large eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons pur almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
14 ounces sweetened, shredded coconut
Cream Cheese Icing (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes
With mixer running on low, add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl after each addition.
Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well
In separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In three parts, alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk to the batter, beginning and ending with the dry. Mix until just combined.
Fold in 7 ounces of coconut.
Line a muffin pan with paper liners.
Fill each cup to the top with batter
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the tops are brown and toothpick comes out clean.
Allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes.
Remove to a baking rack and cool completely.
Frost with cream cheese frosting and sprinkle (or dip) in remaining coconut.

Cream Cheese Icing
(This is the half recipe, for more just double)
8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
3/4 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
3/4 pound confectioners' sugar, sifted

In bowl of an electric mixer, blend together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and almond extracts.
Add the confectioners' sugar and mix until smooth

Source: The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

Dark Chocolate Frosting

2011-02-03T19:58:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I tried a new chocolate frosting recipe. I have been doing some cupcake research for a upcoming wedding I'm baking for. In doing so, I stopped by our local cupcake bakery, Sprinkles. If you haven't been there, or heard of them, it's probably because they don't have a location in your city, yet. Sprinkles is the original cupcake bakery, and you may have seen owner, Candace Nelson, as a judge on Cupcake Wars. We've had our Newport Beach location for quite a while, but I usually only go there with out of town visitors. We buy a ton of different flavors and then taste test all of them. Their cupcakes are delicious, and they have so many flavors to choose from. The cupcakes are moist and the frosting is so creamy and full of flavor. But my favorite part is the simplicity in which they are frosted and decorated, the whole store, really. It's modern, sophisticated, simple and cute. Anyway, point of my story is that I went to google to see if I could find any of her recipes online, and I did. She did a few videos and lent a few recipes for Oprah.com. I tried out the dark chocolate frosting and loved it. (She didn't give any recipes for chocolate cake though, sad.) The frosting calls for sour cream, so I'm not sure how long you should let them sit out, but we were eating them a few days later and lived to tell about it. I made a half a batch of frosting, and had enough to generously frost 24 cupcakes, probably more. I thought the frosting, on top of Ina's chocolate cake, tasted pretty close to a Sprinkles original.

Sprinkles Dark Chocolate Frosting

Chocolate Buttercream Cake (or Cupcakes)

2011-02-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

Making this recipe happened for two reasons. The first, and most common reason I make anything, I've been wanting to try this recipe. And two, I still had quite a bit of the German chocolate cake frosting that I thought I'd try on another variety of chocolate cake.

As I sit her on my computer and look and a ton of different blogs and cooking websites searching for new recipes to try, across the room sit my lonely cookbooks, just longing to have their pages flipped through. I have made a point of collecting some good books, but find that I barely look at them. So as a small goal, I want to try to cook out of them more often and then share the recipes with you. Here's the first one. This recipe comes from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, and while she has many different cookbooks, this is the original one. I have seen Ina make this cake in a tiered form on her show, and you can find the recipe online here. I was comparing that recipe with the one in the cook book, and it looks like she just doubled the recipe to make the larger cake.

I really liked this recipe. I actually don't have a ton of chocolate go to cakes, so was glad this one worked out. I made the recipe as written except omitted the coffee. I know the coffee just gives a depth of flavor, but I don't have coffee around, so I just omitted it. I decided to put them in cupcake form, just for fun, and topped them with the left over frosting, and some new chocolate frosting (recipe to come). The recipe makes an even 24 cupcakes. Next time I think I will try this out in cake form.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
The Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients
1 3/4 all-purpose flour
1 cup good cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 extra large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanila extract
1 cup buttermilk at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream at room temperature
2 tablespoons brewed coffee

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together flour cocoa, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, on high speed, about 5 minutes
Combine the buttermilk, sour cream, and coffee (if using) in separate bowl.
On low speed, add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture alternately in thirds, beginning with the buttermilk mixture and ending with the flour mixture.
Mix the batter only until blended.

Pour batter into two 8-inch, butter and floured, round cake pans, or 24 cupcakes.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.
Cool for 10 minutes on a rack. Remove from pans to finish cooling

German Chocolate Cake, Round Two

2011-01-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday Brian. Yesterday was my amazing husbands birthday. He's younger than me by about three months, so I like it when we're the same age again. Last year I made him a German Chocolate Cake that was a huge hit and had requests for round two. I think I had a bit of beginners luck last year when I made it, it went off without a hitch. This year, while the end result was great, I had a bit of a time getting there. Last year I made the frosting the day before, and I would strongly recommend doing that. It's a lot to do in two hours I had. The cake wasn't going to be ready in time so Brian sent out a text message to his friends that included the words, "cake emergency" to let them know we would be running a little late. I had a hard time getting the frosting to thicken this time, but just a note, it definitely thickens up once you add the pecans and coconut. And my cakes took much longer to cook than last time. And while I was making it I realized I was missing some of the ingredients, so the birthday boy went to the store not once, but twice for me. He even cleaned up the house, for the guests, while I was destroying the kitchen. All in all it turned out to be a fun birthday, with just enough cake left over for the birthday boy to eat for breakfast this morning. Click the link below to go to my original post and recipe on German Chocolate Cake.
German Chocolate Cake Post

Margherita Pizza

2011-01-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

I've been doing good on the cooking lately, not so good on the blogging. But here's a quick post on a meal from last week. Brian and I became a fan of making pizza at home once I got these handy little cast iron skillets from my mom for Christmas a few years back. Turns out they were a screaming deal at a Mervyn's going out of business sale, and she probably got them for about $5.00. They only came in a set of two, and I wanted at least four, so I did a search and found them online at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I bought an extra set, and we've enjoyed pizza night ever since. (Although, I just checked and they don't have them at Bed, Bath and Beyond any more, but I found them here, on Amazon.) These pans make the best pizza crust, and we've made a variety of kinds too. Some times it's clean out the fridge and use whatever toppings we have, and then sometimes we get fancy.

Last week was a fancy pizza of sorts, but another Cooking Light inspired recipe. I found this recipe for margherita pizza and Brian agreed it sounded good. Our favorite pizza to go out and get is BJ's, half BBQ chicken, half sweet pig. On both of those pizzas they put stewed tomatoes, so good. So for our margherita pizza I substituted the plum tomatoes for Italian stewed tomatoes. I also put some of the tomato juice on the crust along with the olive oil and garlic.

For the crust, the recipe calls for any old refrigerator pizza dough, might I suggest Trader Joe's pizza dough. It's super cheap and really good. (I have a recipe for home made dough, but that can be another post.) I even store the dough in the freezer and just let it thaw out the day I'm going to use it. Works like a charm. These pizzas were really good. I liked them more than I thought I would since they don't call for any sauce. Pretty healthy too!

Cooking Light-Margherita Pizza

Spinach and Sun-dried Tomato Pasta

2011-01-18T22:31:00.000-08:00

I came across this recipe on the Tasty Kitchen site, realized that I had just about everything I needed to make this, and so I did. I enjoy the Tasty Kitchen site, but there are so many recipes on there that not many of them have reviews. So other than the recipe itself, there isn't a lot of feedback. That being said, I was very pleased with these results!

A few of my changes, none really on purpose, just me not wanting to go to the store! I thought I had Cannellini beans, turns out I have about five cans of pinto beans in my cupboard. Who knew? My mom advised me against substituting pinto beans, so I went with out. After having tasted the pasta, I don't think I'd add the beans in next time. I also used frozen spinach instead of fresh, it's what I had on hand. I'm sure the fresh would have tasted a bit more, shall I say fresh? But the frozen sure was easy. Also, next time I think I would use red pepper flakes instead of cayenne pepper. I think the flavor of the red pepper flakes is a better compliment to the pasta than the cayenne pepper. Lastly, I added a little more olive oil once I had the noodles in there and about 1/2 cup of the pasta water. I wanted to make sure every piece of penne was coated with flavor. The lemon flavor was a nice touch. The taste reminded me a little bit of my lemon chicken pasta recipe, one of my favorites.

Penne with Spinach and Sun-dried Tomatoes

Chicken Tamale Casserole

2011-01-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my cooking light theme this week, I made another recipe I found on cookinglight.com. (Never mind that I made chocolate cookies just for me tonight, and am eating them as I type this!) The site had a whole section on easy recipes using chicken breasts. I had to stop printing recipes after a while, there were so many I wanted to cook. This recipe caught my eye because of the corn muffin crust. It had green chilies and cream corn mixed in. I absolutely love those little corn cakes that you get at Mexican restaurants.

I decided to cut the recipe in half since it was just me and Brian eating it, but we definitely would have enjoyed the full pan for leftovers. The recipe cut in half nicely and fit into a 9x9 pan. I followed the recipe pretty closely except when it came to the chicken and the sauce. The recipe doesn't specify how to cook your chicken, so I roasted boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the oven. I seasoned them with cayenne pepper, garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper. They turned out so moist! For a short cut you could always use a precooked rotisserie chicken. (The Costco ones are such a deal!) Also, the recipe calls for two cups of shredded chicken for the full recipe, and I probably used that much in my half a recipe. I roasted three chicken breasts. For the sauce, I covered the corn muffin crust, as directed, but added more after I placed the chicken on top. To me, it seemed like it would be a little dry, so I poured additional sauce over the chicken until the sauce sat on top of the crust. It was just the right amount of sauce! I just used canned Old El Paso enchilada sauce. I think green sauce would be great variation too.

I will definitely be making this again. I still have the other half of my ingredients, so I'll be making it again soon. It is delicious topped with sour cream! Click the link for the entire recipe and nutritional information.

Chicken Tamale Casserole Recipe

Slow Cooker Char Siu Pork Roast

2011-01-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

As I have been checking in on all the blogs I follow this past week, it seems everyone is all about the new year, new resolutions, new diet, etc. I am about a week late with my happy new year post, but here it is. Getting back into my daily routine has been much harder than I anticipated. I can't, for the life of me, get out of bed in the morning. Brian has to kick me and remind me that I have to leave in ten minutes or I'll be late! I don't know what it is, I'm just so tired these days. And just to crush any rumors for those of you who think like my mother, no, I'm not pregnant! (She asks me that every time I mention I have a symptom that could be linked to pregnancy.) Last week was a busy one so I hardly cooked at all. We played host to three of Brian's friends visiting from out of town. I offered to cook, but we ended up going out to eat. So this week, I vowed to cook everyday!

I did make a little resolution to eat a little healthier this year, and if I happen to lose weight in the process then so be it! As much as I love cooking with butter, I thought I'd search out some healthy, week night recipes. I came upon the Cooking Light website and found quite a few recipes that would be perfect. Their recipes list nutrition information for every recipe, I loved that. We tried out the first recipe tonight and it was a success. Not only was it on the healthy side, it was a slow cooker recipe! I love those, I put it together the night before, Brian turns it on in the morning, I turn it off when I get home, and we eat an hour or two later. Little clean up and super delicious meals.

We love stir fry, and we usually do it with chicken, so I thought this pork would be a great way to change it up. The thing about this recipe is that it called for a few things I didn't have and didn't want to spend money on because I didn't know if I'd use them again, or enough to make it worth the purchase. So I googled how to substitute them and and used whatever I had on hand. I'm sure my version might be different from what the actual recipe should taste like, but we weren't complaining or missing any flavor.

The first substitute I made was for hoisin sauce. I actually meant to buy this, but kind of forgot, so google time. I found out that hoisin is an integral part of Chinese cooking and is the basis for a lot of their flavors. The flavor is combination of sweet, salty and spicy. This is the substitute I found:

5 tablespoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoon light soy sauce
½ tablespoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon white pepper powder
2 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoon hot chili sauce
1½ teaspoon honey
3 tablespoon peanut butter

Of course I didn't have all of these either, so I just mixed together what I did have and added it to the sauce. I didn't have light soy sauce, white pepper powder or hot chili sauce. I did substitute in chili powder for the hot chili sauce though, and I think it added the same amount of heat. Click on the link to find other substitutes.

The second substitute I had to make was for 5 spice. I wasn't sure exactly what 5 spice was, turns out it's not named for five spices used in it, but for its five flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, and salty. The recipe only calls for 1/2 tsp, so I figured it couldn't be that big of a deal to substitute. I used cayenne, salt, cinnamon & ground cloves, equal parts of all, and added it to the marinade.

Now don't let all my substitutions, or new ingredients, throw you off, this really is easy peasy, and it turns out a very moist pork roast that just fell apart when I picked it up. I served it over rice with the extra sauce and a combination of vegetables I stir fried in the sauce. You can use any veggies you'd like, but I used red peppers, onions, snow peas, water chestnuts, mushrooms, and bean sprouts. I am linking to the original Cooking Light recipe, and also rewriting the recipe, below, with my substitutions. Here's to a year of mixing in the healthier fair with all my sweet treats, I think my waist line will thank me.

Cooking Light Char Sui Pork Roast

Slow Cooker Char Siu Pork Roast:

Ingredients

1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons ketchup
4 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic
2 teaspoons grated peeled fresh ginger
2 teaspoon dark sesame oil
2 pounds boneless Boston butt pork roast, trimmed
1/2 cup fat-free, less-sodium vegetable broth

Preparation

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, EXCEPT vegetable broth, stirring well with a whisk. Place in a large zip-top plastic bag. Add pork to bag; seal. Marinate in refrigerator at least 2 hours, turning occasionally. (Or overnight)

Place pork and marinade in an electric slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.

Remove pork from slow cooker using a slotted spoon; place on a cutting board or work surface. Cover with aluminum foil; keep warm.

Add broth to sauce in slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 30 minutes or until sauce thickens. Shred pork with 2 forks; serve with sauce.

Cheesecake

2011-01-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Today is my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday Dad. I didn't get to see him today, as everyone went back home and got back to work today. But with my whole family here this weekend we got to celebrate on Saturday night with a homemade dinner of pasta and lasagna with cheesecake for dessert, Dad's favorite. My mom and I finally had a chance to get in the kitchen together this holiday, and had a great time preparing everything. This cheesecake recipe is not your traditional cheesecake, it's not baked. It has a softer, lighter texture than most, which I like, you can eat more! My mom has been making this for years.

It has a buttery, graham cracker crust. My mom has found that the easiest way to make the crust is to press it into the pan using the bottom of a measuring cup. She's got a big two cup measuring cup that works great. We usually just crush the graham crackers in a ziplock bag with a rolling pin, but a food processor works great too. This is a seriously delicious cheesecake. So delicious, in fact, that I couldn't get any pictures of the individual pieces because everyone ate them too fast!

{Happy Birthday Dad! Isn't he handsome?}

Debby's Cheesecake
Crust:
2 packs of graham crackers (about 15 crackers) -crushed
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 sticks of butter-melted
mix together and press into 9 x 13 inch pan on all sides

Mix:
2- 8oz packages of cream cheese
1 cup sugar

In separate bowl, mix:
2 packs of Dream Whip, as directed on box

Mix Dream Whip and cream cheese together and spread into crust.
Chill until set, (we like over night best!) Top with 1 can of cherries

Christmas Ornaments

2010-12-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

Crate and Barrel, 2010

When my mom started having her children she started a tradition to buy us a new Christmas ornament each year. When we were younger we would usually just pick out the ornament we liked the best. But as we got older and started having hobbies and went on exciting trips we would collect ornaments that had to do with those hobbies and from our travels. As her children got older and weren't getting married, our Christmas tree was very crowded, with each child having 20 plus ornaments on the tree, with my youngest brother, Jeff, having his tiny hand print and poem front and center. When I did finally get married last year, I had 30 ornaments to take and decorate my own tree with. Each year, as I carefully unwrap and hang each ornament on the tree I am reminded of each story and memory that goes with it. Our ornament boxes are decorated with quotes, and memories of the goings on that year. Decorating my Christmas tree, either with my family or my husband, is my favorite Christmas tradition. This little trip down memory lane is worthy of this blog post because this year I got my first cooking ornament! I thought it was about time. I got these cute ones from Crate and Barrel and gave one to my mom.

Homemade Williams-Sonoma, 2010

I also had this little decoration from my birthday present from Brian. He bought it and had it wrapped at Willams-Sonoma. I cut the green ribbon from the package, tied it to the decoration and instant ornament! I hope you all had a very merry Christmas. Mine sure was fabulous.
Here are a few highlights from my tree:

Gondola from Italy, 2007

Big Bird, 1981, Tucan from Costa Rica 2010

Wedding Bride and Groom, 2009

Hand painted from Puerto Rico honeymoon, 2009

First ornament I bought Brian, 2008

Ballet slippers, 1988

Christmas Star Sugar Cookies

2010-12-26T14:20:00.000-08:00

The other day my husband, Brian, was talking about his best friends mom's sugar cookies and how she used the soft, creamy frosting and they were his favorite cookies growing up. He mentioned that I was always using the "hard" frosting, and while they looked pretty, they weren't as tasty as the soft frosting. Now I can't have my husband dreaming about someone elses cookies, or be shown up by some childhood cookie dream, so for my Christmas cookie platter I decided to put the royal icing and fancy cookie decorating aside and use plain old frosting and sprinkles to top my Christmas star sugar cookies, all in hopes to win my husband back!

I think my plan worked, and I will admit I do love the soft frosting better than the royal icing, as far as taste goes, but there is no comparison with the decorating. It's impossible to decorate a cookie with non royal icing as well as with royal icing. Note the photos, my cookies have looked better. So you must choose. Taste or looks, and for a husband who prefers taste to looks I was glad I could make him a Christmas cookie that I hoped rivaled those of his childhood dreams.

Sugar Cookie Frosting
1 pound box powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup heaving whipping cream
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Food coloring

(Add more cream to thin, or powdered sugar to thicken.)

Butter Toffee

2010-12-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

As it is two days before Christmas, I should be sitting on my couch writing this by the glow of my tree, Hallmark Christmas movies playing it the background and the house smelling of every kind of Christmas goodies. Notice I said should, not am. Instead, I'm sitting at my kitchen table, which is piled with junk, listening to a loud carpet cleaner and smelling the strong stench of cleaners that are trying to undo the musty smell coming from my wet, soggy carpets. Crazy, right? Turns out, not only do Southern Californians not know how to deal with the rain, but apparently my house wasn't build for it either. We've had a week of straight rain, and it all decided to somehow get under our house, through cracks in the cement, and soak our carpet and pads, creating a nice moldy/musty smell. I'm not surprised, as this same thing happened last year, but I'm quite mad that my landlord didn't fix it all the way last year. Anyway, hopefully it will all be taken care of by today, temporary fix anyway, and Brian and I can have a cozy Christmas morning here.

{Thanks Eduardo for helping me with this mess!}

Now that I got that out of my system, on to the butter toffee. I did a majority of my Christmas baking on Monday, before my house was torn apart. I was for sure making caramel, but thought why not give toffee a chance too? After all I already kind of did it once when I was experimenting with caramel, and this recipe made it look super easy. It totally was a no brainer. As long as you have a candy thermometer that works (see caramel post for my sad story) and a strong hand to stir with I'm sure you can make this work. I actually made this right before the caramel, and my thermometer managed to stay attached to the pot.

This is called butter toffee, I'm assuming, because of the 16 ounces of butter it calls for. That's four cubes! And the only other ingredients are water and sugar. The recipe is written in weight, and because I don't have a food scale (I know! Shame on me!) I did some research and some calculations to figure out how to measure using measuring cups and spoons. My toffee turned out amazing, so I'm thinking these measurements worked out just fine. (Listed below)

For the chocolate I used the Wilton baking chips, my go to chocolate. I would have loved to use some good quality candy making chocolate, but I already had these, so I figured I'd just use them and they worked out great. And they are so easy to melt, you don't really have to temper them. But they key to melting these is to not let them melt entirely in the microwave. Take them out every ten seconds or so and stir, and then remove them when there are still chunks of chocolate. Continue to stir and the hot chocolate will melt the rest of it. That way you don't get white, streaky chocolate. It tastes the same, just doesn't look so pretty.

I poured the toffee onto parchment paper in a cookie sheet. I had enough to do one full sheet and maybe half of another. I couldn't spread it as thin as the recipe says to because I didn't know it would fill the pan so much. But it didn't matter. One pan I put chocolate on the top and bottom, and the other just on the top. And I topped some of it with chopped walnuts.

Everyone I've given this too has loved it. I'm putting the rest of the toffee on my cookie platters for Christmas day dessert. It's going to look really pretty!

Butter Toffee Recipe from Pioneer Woman

Butter Toffee Recipe
(My measurements based on measuring cups and spoons, not weight)
4 cubes of butter,
2 cups + 4 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
1/4 cup + 1/8 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 bags Wilton baking chips, dark chocolate

*Necessary Equipment: Candy Thermometer*
Combine butter, sugar, water, and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
Cook over moderate heat, stirring gently, until candy thermometer registers 298 degrees.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla until well combined.
Pour the mixture onto a silicone baking mat or good parchment paper. Use a heatproof rubber spatula or offset spatula to spread quickly before the toffee sets. Spread thin.
Allow toffee to cool completely. Blot to remove excess oil from the surface. Coat surface with half of the melted chocolate and immediately sprinkle with topping.
When chocolate has totally set, carefully flip over (it’s okay if it falls apart a bit) and coat other side with the rest of the chocolate. Sprinkle on topping.
Allow to set, then break into bite-size pieces.
Store in an airtight container.

Caramel

2010-12-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

{Sprinkled with sea salt}

Homemade caramel is so tasty. Quite a few years back, when I was still in college I was introduced to this recipe around the holidays and took it home to my mom and had her help me make it. It's not that I think making candy is hard, but it was my first time, plus I love making stuff with Mom. The first time we made it we ended up cooking the candy mixture too long and instead of soft, chewy caramels, we got hard, crunchy toffee. Although not what we were going for, it sure was tasty. We knew we were on to something, we just needed to try again. We didn't get around to trying again until the next year. We over compensated a bit too much for the toffee texture of the previous year, and went for the soft ball texture. Turns out that is not what we wanted either. The caramel would hold it's shape as long as it was cold and in the fridge, but as soon as it reached room temperature it was oozing all over the plate. But once again, it tasted amazing, despite the lack of firm texture. (We should have dipped apples in it!) I had even dipped some of the caramels in chocolate while they were cool, but once they warmed up they broke through the chocolate shell and came oozing out!

It's been about three or four years since that last caramel incident, and I consider myself much more experienced in the kitchen now, so I thought it time to try again. With my mom out sailing the Florida Keys right now, I was on my own. So I did some research on what temperature to cook caramel to, was it soft ball or hard ball? No one really said, but I thought I had a handle on things and took my new Sunbeam candy thermometer out of the packaging. The thermometer came with a little case that had suggested temperatures for cooking candy to the different stages. And then, there it was, not hard ball or soft ball, but right in between, firm ball. The answer to my past two caramel let downs. Firm ball is between 240-250 degrees F. I was beyond thrilled at my new discovery and loving my new thermometer.

So off I went, stirring the sugar, Karo syrup and cream until my hand went numb. All the while carefully watching my thermometer making sure to get it at the right temperature. I decided, after reading a few blogs, I would stop cooking at 248 degrees. I had to keep wiping condensation off the thermometer so I could, again, make sure not to miss my rising temperature reaching the perfect cooking point. While I was stirring away my aunt called, so I pick up and start talking, and stirring, and then all of a sudden my, no longer favorite, candy thermometer broke loose from the clip holding it to the pan, and the clip and thermometer fell into the pot of boiling sugary syrup. After a few seconds of trying to figure out what to do, I quickly got off the phone, dug some tongs out of the drawer and fished out the thermometer and clip. But now what? The thermometer was covered in an almost caramel substance that was starting to harden and I couldn't see the temperature. So I get a paper towel and try to wipe it off, but the paper just starts to stick to the sticky, almost caramel covered thermometer. (This is so something that would happen to me.) I did manage to take the pot of caramel off the hot stove so it didn't burn while I was dealing with all this. So finally, I managed to get the thermometer cleaned to where I could read it, although it was difficult because the caramel was so hot! I put the pot back on the stove and cooked it to what I think was 248 degrees.

I'm not sure if the interruption in cooking did anything to the caramel, but this year it actually turned out. I cut it, left it a room temperature, dipped it in chocolate, wrapped it in wax papers and it managed to keep its shape. It's still on the softer side of caramel and perhaps it will just take more tries to get it 100% right. But no matter what the texture has been, this recipe always produces a very tasty caramel.

Caramel Recipe
In a large pot mix:
2 cups sugar
1 cube butter
1 3/4 Cup karo Syrup
1 cup heavy cream
Turn heat to low until butter is melted. Then turn up heat to boil.
When mixture boils add:
1 cup heavy cream
Continue to boil until mixture reached firm ball stage around 248-250 degrees F.
Take off heat and add:
1 teaspoon vanilla

Have a Tupperware or glass pan buttered or lined with parchment paper, you can butter the parchment paper too, pour mixture into pan to cool. (I put mine in the frigde)
To serve cut into squares, use a knife or buttered pizza cutter. You can sprinkle with sea salt, wrap in wax paper or dip in chocolate

{A little bit of caramel oozed out, but they didn't break the shells}

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

2010-12-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

I think these are the only sugar cookies I'm going to get to this season. Which is ok because they turned out so cute. I did have a ton of other ideas I wanted to try, but they will have to wait until next year. I made these for a friend who requested ten treat bags to pass out to his neighbors. Isn't he sweet? I loved the white cookies with the red ribbon and tag. I hope he and his neighbors like them. Making them was a little bit of a process though because I was having some trouble getting the frosting to the right consistency. If you can do that, the piping and decorating is so much easier. I finally settled for a consistency that would work, but it was still a little runnier than I would have liked. I need to work on that skill. After I got the frosting figured out, I tried something new with these. I outlined the cookie, did maybe five or six, and then went back and filled them in while the outline was still wet. By filling them in while wet you don't get the border around the outside of the cookie, which I have decided I like better. I still used a thicker frosting to pipe and a thinner frosting to flood.

Another thing I loved about making these cookies is that they are white. I love not having to color frosting. Not having to mess with that makes these cookies all the more my favorite. Snowflakes are all different and imperfect, so I took that approach with these. They didn't need to be perfect, just sweet, snowy and white. I so wish it snowed in my part of California. Well, maybe just for Christmas!

Sugar Cookies Recipe

Royal Icing

Chocolate-Coconut Cheesecake Squares

2010-12-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I went to a cookie exchange. I enjoy a good cookie exchange for a couple of reason. First, you get a variety of cookies to give out, or enjoy yourself, without having to make a bunch of different recipes. But what I really like most is just trying everyone's different cookie recipes. It takes the guess work out of debating whether or not you should make a recipe yourself. You taste it and then you know. This year we voted on the best cookie. (Had I know that before going I might have thought a little bit more about what cookie to bring!) The winner was these tasty little chocolate-coconut cheesecake squares. They got my vote, they were seriously so good. They reminded me of the chocolate coconut fudge bars I made this summer, but the cheesecake put these over the top! I will caution that they are very rich, so heed the advice to cut them into one inch squares. When I brought mine home and refrigerated them I liked them better cold, but room temperature is fine. Even though I haven't made these, yet, I have tasted them and totally approve, so I wanted to share them with you for your holiday baking. They are on the top of my to bake list, and with my two week vacation just starting, I have a good feeling I'll get to them. Enjoy.

Chocolate-Coconut Cheesecake Squares

Apple Cream Cheese Danish

2010-12-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning is usually the big pastry holiday in our house, but this Thanksgiving I decided to make my own pastry. Last year my mom made too big of a breakfast and a lot of us remember not being as hungry for the main feast as we would have liked. I came across this blog post on Annies Eats and I knew it was time for me to try my first pastry. She adapted the recipe from Baking Illustrated and her step by step instructions make it look really easy. But it doesn't only look easy, it really was easy! It does take a while though, I started it the day before, but I repeat, it is easy. To make the dough you have to fold, and turn, and kneed in butter, and refrigerate and do it all over again a few times. So it does take some advanced planning, like I said, I did it the day before I wanted to cook it. But all that time is so worth it. This was delicious. I made two. Well actually I made one and Garrett made one. But that still wasn't enough to feed our big breakfast crew. The cream cheese was a great addition to the apple filling, but I did make part of it with just apples. Our favorite Christmas pastry is pineapple cream cheese, and I can't wait to make this again and try that and other fillings. I'm posting my pictures below of how to assemble the danish after the dough is made, but visit Annie's site for great step by step instructions for the whole process.

Apple Cream Cheese Danish

How to Cut and De-Seed a Pomegranate

2010-12-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

Pomegranates are very interesting little fruits. Well, I guess they're not too little, but their delicious seeds you eat are pretty little. The first time I saw someone eating a pomegranate, that I can remember, was in my high school biology class and this girl was making the hugest mess. I'm not sure we were even allowed to eat in class, but she had this weird fruit all wrapped up in this paper towel and her hands were dyed red. I could not figure out what she was eating, and it didn't look very easy to do. Fast forward to a few Christmases ago, when my brother Garrett was on this pomegranate kick. Not sure where he learned how to properly de-seed the fruit, but he clearly had a better handle on it biology girl. Every Christmas since we've had a bowl of pomegranate seeds around the house for the holidays. (Pomegranate season is from September to February.) This past Thanksgiving I had Garrett show me exactly how to de-seed a pomegranate while I took pictures. And now I'm showing you so you won't be in the dark any more about how to eat this tasty little fruit.

Before you get started, know that pomegranate juice stains, so you might want to put on an apron. Also, use a plastic cutting board if you don't want to risk staining your wood ones.

Step 1: Cut the top off the pomegranate, also called the crown.

Step 2: Score the rind in several places around the fruit. Make sure not to cut all the way through.

Step 3: Submerge the pomegranate in a bowl of water. Using both hands, break the pomegranate apart. If you soak it for five minutes or so it will be easier to break apart, but we didn't soak ours. By doing this step under water you don't have to worry about the juice squirting and staining.

Step 4: While under water, use your hand to separate the seeds from the membrane. The seeds will sink to the bottom and the rind will float to the top. Once all the seeds have been removed, scoop out the rind and drain the seeds into a collander.

That's it! They are ready to eat. These little seeds are a perfect combo of sweet and tart, very juicy, and have tons of flavor! You can store them in an air tight container in the refrigerator for up to two days.

Cookie Tins

2010-12-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

I have been passing out some Christmas goodies this past week and wanted to share a quick idea for using a tin. I bought some tins at the end of the season last year and was excited to fill them with a variety of cookies. I think I mentioned that I went to a cookie exchange last week and I came home with seven dozen different cookies. I started to pile them into the tin, but I didn't think they looked very pretty and I thought the cookies might all get broken. I so made a little divider out of card stock! I just cut a long strip and folded it in the shape of an x. I then had four neat little sections to divide my cookies into. I lined the tin with parchment paper first, placed in the divider and loaded it up with goodies. Just a thought! Happy goodie giving.

Christmas Party Favors

2010-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

My super talented sister, Brittany, had a client who was throwing a Christmas party. She asked Brittany to do the flower arrangements. She (I don't even know her name) also asked Brittany if I would be interested in making some party favors with my "best cookie" for her guests. She must have found my blog through Brittany's and thought I'd do an ok job. I was so excited. Any time someone pays me to bake for them I just think how I wish this was my full time job. Although I'm happy to report that me and my 175 eighth graders are getting along pretty well these days. For the party favors I put four orange coconut cookies, dipped in chocolate in a clear bag and tied them up with a gold bow, to match the color scheme of the party. I finished them off with a simple happy holidays tag. I hope they were well received. I had such a fun time doing them. I just got an order for 10 more holiday goodie bags. I just love baking this time of year!

Snickedoodles

2010-12-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

How is it already December 10th? My last post was about Thanksgiving! I always wonder how time flies but when I'm back at school the weeks take forever to end! So tonight I was taking pictures off my camera and realized how much baking I've done in the past two weeks. Apparently I was too busy baking to blog about it. But there is such fun holiday baking going on right now I want to share mine. I've had such a great time looking at the pictures everyone else has posted.

Last Saturday Brian left me for a whole six days to attend a MLB job fair in Orlando. Usually it's me leaving him home alone, so I always make him a treat before I go. But this time he was leaving me, but I wanted to make him a treat for his long plane ride. He had been talking about these snickerdoodles his mom use to make and she would roll them in candy canes for the holidays. So I emailed my mother in law, got her recipe and whipped up a batch for him to take on his trip.

Whole ball rolled in candy canes

Only the top with candy canes

This was the first time I'd made snickerdoodles, and do I dare admit that I'd never used cream of tartar for anything before? So that was new, but these turned out great. The only issue I had was actually rolling them in the crushed candy canes. The first batch I didn't spray the pan and I rolled the whole ball of dough in the crushed candy canes. That was bad news. Not only did the cookies stick, but the candy canes melted and then hardened on the pan. They tasted good, but they were definitely not pretty by the time I scraped them off the pan. I kept asking Brian if I was doing it right, but he said he hadn't had them since he was a kid, so I had to figure out a plan B. I decided to spray the pan with Pam, always a good move, I supposed I could have also used parchment paper, but I was out. And then my genius move was to only roll, or press the top of the cookie in the candy canes, therefore less melting and sticking on the bottom of the cookie. That worked like a champ. (For some reason I didn't take a picture of the finished product, sorry. I think the first ones were so ugly that I forgot!)

The next day I was attending a cookie exchange and decided to make regular snickerdoodles. Since this recipe was new to me I wanted to try out the original way. The recipe says to use one cup of shortening, but for my second batch I only had 1/2 a cup, so I did half shortening and half butter. I noticed that the dough was softer, but overall taste was the safe. So you can pick. Each batch made about three and a half dozen, which was great for me since I needed seven dozen for the exchange. These were great cookies, soft, and easy to make. As long as you know you need that cream of tartar stuff, you should have everything else on hand! Thank Kathleen for sharing another great recipe.

Snickerdoodles
1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups flour

Cream shortening and sugar: add eggs and vanilla.. Add sifted dry ingredients gradually. Roll into balls the size of a small walnut. Roll in mixture of 2 Tablespoons sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon. Bake 8 to 10 minutes at 400 degrees until brown but soft.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-30T21:56:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving really is my favorite holiday. Even more than Christmas, well, it's different. Thanksgiving is a fall holiday and I love fall, the colors, the baking, everything, and it's the beginning of the holiday season. We always had Thanksgiving with my moms side of the family, until my grandma passed away about ten years ago. (She was the best grandma, seriously. She could bake circles around me and my mom.) My mom then took over making the turkey and we celebrate with just our immediate family, with the occasional boyfriend or girlfriend sprinkled in over the years. We hang out, bake a lot, eat even more, play Rock Band, go to the movies, and fight the boys in the house to let us girls watch those cheesy Hallmark ones on TV. This year we were plus two husbands, and three step kids but no potential loves for my younger siblings. That's ok though, because they were completely distracted by the delicious turkey and sides. My mom is so funny. Every year she thinks the turkey isn't going to turn out, or not be cooked enough, or too dry, or that she won't get the side dishes done. And then she freaks out about the pie crusts. But every year it all turns out. In fact this year the pies were the best ever! My dad is the one actually in charge of cooking the turkey and deciding when it's done, and he and my brothers carve it up all beautiful for us. I'm kind of rambling, and I'm not posting a recipe since Thanksgiving has already passed. (I'll add them early next year when we're all ready to do this again.) But I wanted to share some pictures of my Thanksgiving and say thanks to my mom for always putting on the most amazing Thanksgiving meal. I'm glad I could help out this year and learn some more of her tricks of the trade. I've got to work on perfecting my rolls! I'm pretty sure she made three batches during the four days we were home. And I'm also pretty sure Brian at two of those batches! Love you mom!

Stiles Family Thanksgiving Menu: (recipes coming)
Turkey (Stuffed)
Stuffing
Sweet potatoes (candied and regular)
Mashed potatoes
Gravey
Green bean casserole
Cranberry sauce
Rolls
Yellow jello
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Pecan pie

Thanksgiving Sugar Cookies

2010-11-26T00:09:00.000-08:00

With all the craziness in the kitchen today we actually had a moment or two to sit down and decorate some sugar cookies. My dad and two brothers did most of them with me. Brittany and the little kiddies did a few at the end. Just some pictures of what we came up with.

We had quite a few turkeys. We experimented with different designs on the feathers. Here is one using the technique I used with the fall leaves, dragging with a toothpick while frosting is still wet.

I was so excited about this next turkey cookie cutter. I got it at Crate and Barrel. But it didn't work out too great. The little ankles on the turkeys were too skinny and wouldn't come out of the cookie cutter without breaking. (You can see this one is missing a foot!) Then when I tried to get them off the pan once they were cooked their heads and feathers broke off. Maybe I just needed a bigger spatula, but anyway, this the only one we managed to salvage. My brother, Jeff, decorated this one.

Here is the other turkey cookie cutter I had. Not as cute, but much easier to make.

We made more leaves.

And then Brittany came in at the last minute and made the most beautiful leaf of all. She outlined, and then used the fill colors without borders. Red, then orange, and then yellow in the center. The way the colors started to run together made for the most amazing leaf effect. I'll definitely be doing this next year.

We saved a few cookies for my neices and nephews to decorate. For being five and seven they were pretty good with the outlining. Austin was into outlining everything only and then giving it an eyeball. He even gave the turkey without a head an eyeball. Ali liked outlining one color and then inside with another color until the cookie was all colored in. I think in a few years I'll have to recruit these two to work for me.

Turkey with no head! He didn't care.

Sugar Cookie Recipe
Royal Icing Recipe

Lasagna

2010-11-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

Growing up I loved my moms lasagna. And up until yesterday it was the lasagna I made. She started making this back in the day when we were kids and ate Prego out of the jar like it was the best thing we'd ever eaten. Hence, the lasagna is made by mixing Prego, cottage cheese and hamburger together and layering it between lasagna noodles and topping with mozzarella cheese. Don't get me wrong, it is a delicious recipe. But I had been wanting to try a more sophisticated versions of lasagna and figured my few blog readers deserved that. I had the best time creating, it's not often I just go off and create my own recipe.

I started with my pasta sauce, half a recipe. I used one onion and four or five cloves of garlic that I minced really fine in one of those mini chopper things. I didn't want chunky onions in my lasagna like I do in my pasta sauce. I cooked those in a bit of olive oil, saving a tablespoon out to cook with the pound and a half of hamburger.

To the onions and garlic I added two cans of Italian stewed tomatoes and one can of whole tomatoes. I chopped up the tomatoes a bit so they weren't quite as whole. I used the mini chopper and use the scissors to cut a few more in the pan. Mean while I cooked the hamburger and onions until no longer pink, and then trained it of all the grease. (My freshman year of college this boy offered to make me and my roommates lasagna and he did not drain the hamburger grease and our lasagna was swimming in grease. Not good, so we'll drain the grease.) I added the hamburger to the tomatoes and added two tablespoons of basil and parsley and 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes. Also about two tablespoons of honey. The only thing Brian and I thought could be improved is maybe a little bit saucier. Next time I think I'll add a can of tomato sauce too.

I simmered the mixture for about 45 minutes while I cooked the noodles and mixed up the cheese mix. I combined 30 ounces of ricotta with about 1/2 cup parmesan cheese and 1/2 cup cooked spinach. I was looking at recipes online and a lot of them put a beaten egg or two in the cheese mixture, so I added one of those. I'm sure it would be fine without. Probably some sort of binding agent.

Now it's time to layer. I used a baking dish a little larger than a 9 x 13. Start with a little sauce on the bottom, then lay down your noodles, then half the cheese mixture, then half the meat sauce mixture, and then a layer of mozzarella cheese and repeat. It is a nice hardly pan full of deliciousness. Cook it about 45 minutes, when you can see the sauce boiling in the pan. The important part about cooking lasagna, I've learned, is to let it sit about 20 minutes. If you don't, when you try to serve it, it's a big ol mess. The sauce slips out from between the noodles, it's not pretty.

So there you have it. My new and improved lasagna recipe. The old one served me well for so many years, thanks mom. It really was the inspiration for my new recipe!

Lasagna
In sauce pan:
saute:
1 onion, finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, minced
Add:
2 cans of stewed tomatoes, Italian style
I can of whole tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
2 Tablespoons parsley
2 Tablespoons basil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt
Simmer for 45 minutes

In frying pan, brown 1.5 pounds of hamburger with a few onions, add to tomato sauce

In bowl combine:
30 oz. ricotta cheese
1/2 parmesan cheese
1/2 cooked (or defrosted frozen) spinach
pinch of salt
1 beaten egg

Boil 10 oz. lasagna noodles

1 pound of mozzarella cheese, shredded or in slices

Layer pasta:
put a small amount of red sauce on the bottom of the pan. Layer the noodles across the pan, put one half of the ricotta mixture on top, spread around. Next layer one half of the meat and sauce mixture. Next, make a layer of mozzarella cheese. Repeat all layers.

Cook at 350 for 45 minutes until bubbly. Optional: (Turn on broiler at end to brown the top.) Let stand 20 minutes before serving.

Pumpkin Cream Pie

2010-11-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

Last week Garrett and I started watching the Throwdown Thanksgiving episode with Bobby Flay vs. Pioneer Woman. While watching it I was browsing through her site looking for a dessert to make for a dinner party, we were attending on Sunday, and I came across her version of Pumpkin Pie. It's a pumpkin pie of sorts made with pudding and whipped cream in a graham cracker crust, and it is amazing.

On The Pioneer Woman site she gives her beautifully photographed step by step instructions, so I'll just let you go there to check it out. But you start with vanilla cook and serve pudding and make it with half and half and heavy whipping cream, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves. (I omitted the cloves because I didn't have any. We didn't miss them.) You cook the pudding until it thickens then add in pumpkin puree. I could have stopped right here and ate this as a pumpkin pudding. It was so delicious. I had to stop myself if I wanted to have any left to put in the actual pie. To the pudding mixture you add whipping cream that has been whipped up with brown sugar, hence the name pumpkin cream pie. You place all this in your crust and chill, chill, chill. It definitely needs to be cold.

This dessert went over very well at the dinner party. I didn't leave with any leftovers. I was a little sad about that, so tonight I was feeding a few people dinner and Brian and I both decided that we would be more than ok eating pumpkin cream pie again for dessert. So I whipped up another one this morning. On round two, when I went to the store I couldn't find the small pack of pudding, so I used the bigger box. I used a little eighth grade math and set up a few proportions to adjust the cream, half and half and pumpkin to account for a larger amount of pudding. It turned out just as good as the first. I might consider using the larger box instead, it filled the pie crust a little better.

Another difference between making round one and round two was the length of time I cooked the crust. The first time I cooked it for eight minutes and the crust was very crumbly when I tried to serve it. So round two I cooked it for ten minutes and the crust was very hard to cut making it equally hard to serve. So take your pick, I think I prefer the softer crust to the harder. But do note that they tasted exactly the same.

Brian and I are finishing the Throwdown episode as I type this, so I don't know if Pioneer Woman won, but I'd be willing to bet if she used this pie as her dessert she would have it in the bag!

Pumpkin Cream Pie

Fall Leaf Sugar Cookies

2010-11-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made these sugar cookies to give away today. I bought a bunch of fall cookie cutters was dying to try them out. I ended up only using leaf cookie cutters, I'll save the acorns, squirrel and turkey for another day. I used a new decorating technique to make the leaves look like they are changing colors. The bright, colorful leaves are my favorite thing about fall. To make the leaves, use royal icing, pipe the outside and flood the inside. While the inside is still wet dot or swirl another color on top. Take a tooth pick and swirl the two colors together. You can use this technique to create all kinds of beautiful designs on cookies. I thought these fall cookies turned out great! Check back later in the week to see my turkey sugar cookies.

Pumpkin Sheet Cake

2010-11-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

Only a week left until Thanksgiving and already fall is out of the stores. I hate that. I went shopping for fall decor yesterday and all that was left was the cheesy clearanced items, most of them left over from Halloween. Christmas has taken over. Now don't get me wrong, I love Christmas. So much. But there is a time and a place. And time is the day after thanksgiving, starting at 12:01. (Have you seen those people who camp out at Best Buy? It's a family tradition to dry by.) I'm totally rambling, but my point is, I thought I'd try and get in a few more fall recipes before all the Christmas baking takes over, because they are different.

There a million recipes out there for a pumpkin type bread/cake and a frosting involving cream cheese goodness. This is another one of those that I have fallen in love with. I made it last night for a girls Bunco night I hosted, and it was a huge hit. I love this recipe because it makes a ton, sheet pans are big! I'm sure it would work just fine in a 9 x 13 pan too. It's a good, quick, no special ingredients needed kind of recipe. It calls for oil, which I think makes the cake extra moist. If you're looking for a last minute recipe to feed the family in town, whip this up.

Pumpkin Bars

Mix these ingredients:
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 cup oil
15 oz. can pumpkin

In separate bowl mix these ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda

Mix together. Pour into sheet pan. (Or 9x 13)

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes (Adjust cooking time for other pans)

Frosting:
4 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
3 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

How Easy Is That?

2010-11-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

A few posts back I mentioned that I was going to a book signing with Ina Garten, thee Barefoot Contessa at Willams Sonoma South Coast Plaza! She just released a new cook book "How Easy Is That?". If you watch her show you know that's a common catch phrase she uses. The signing was the day after my birthday and I looking forward to the signing more. I heard about it from my new and fabulous friend Michelle. She told me it was on Friday the 12th and I thrilled because I didn't have school that day. A while back I found out about a Giada signing, but couldn't justify taking a day off of work for it. So thank you furlough days.

Michelle had the inside scoop on book signings since this wasn't her first one. She works at Crate and Barrel and they hosted the previously mentioned Giada book signing. She also went to Williams Sonoma to check out the Bobby Flay signing, just to get a peek at him. That's when she saw how out of control the lines were! Michelle suggested we get there at 8 am, when the store opened to hand out the pre-ordered books. That was a great plan! We knew we were going to have to wait in line until the signing started at noon, but at least we'd get to wait inside the mall. We were in the first line, maybe about 40 people back. We sat on the floor next to Saks Fifth Ave, made friends with the people around us, ate the pumpkin treats the Williams Sonoma workers kept bringing around, and read through all the cookbooks we had purchased. We had such a great time talking all things Ina. My Mom kept saying she hoped Jeffrey, Ina's husband, was going to be there! No such luck. Then we dared her to ask Ina why Jeffrey didn't come. Good times! While we were waiting in side, having a fabulous time, the rest of the last comers were waiting outside in a line that went past two department stores and around the corner. And this is Orange County, is was kind of hot out there! Rumor had it though, if you were in line by 2 pm she would sign your book. The signing was supposed to be from noon to two.

The signing started at 11:45 am, Ina was very prompt. The line moved fast. You could take pictures but she wasn't going to pose for any. As we got closer I snapped a few of her signing other peoples books. When it was your turn they had workers taking your camera and would get a picture of her signing your book. I turned around when she took mine, but I have like a million chins in that picture, so I'm not posting it! But we got a few others. We all were deciding what we would say to her, I ended up just telling her thanks for coming and my mom was like, "we love you!" She was friendly, but didn't have time to chat. I had her sign two books, then my mom had her sign one, then Brittany came and had her sign one. The workers moved us right along after three books were signed and we kind of held up the line trying to figure out what happened to the fourth. Ina tapped the table and said laughing, "Come on ladies, pay attention." That's quite typical of us, to hold up a line of 2,000 people. Ina talked just like she does on her show. She looked really pretty, much better than on TV, and she looked smaller too. While in line we were talking about what color of shirt she would be wearing. She had a blue button up on all three of the different cookbooks we had. At the signing she wore a black button up with black pants.

I'm kind of amazed I have so much to say about a five second encounter with Ina, but it was so fun. I would do it again in a heartbeat. However, I wouldn't wait in a four hour line for just anyone. Ina is special. So classy. While in line we read an article in the Costco Connection magazine about her. In it she talks about how she gets asked to expand her "brand" beyond food to accessories, furniture even clothes. She said, "I wear the same thing everyday, you don't want me to do your line of clothing." But that's what I love about Ina, she's all about the food, keeping it real, but sophisticated, and getting back to the basics.

Oak Glen Apple Farms

2010-11-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

My birthday was on Thursday! First just a big thank you for everyone that wished me a happy birthday and made my day so special. I love that my birthday is the same day as Veteran's Day because as a school teacher we get that day off each year. This year, because it was on a Thursday was also got Friday off! Who doesn't love a four day weekend? I wanted to spend my birthday doing something I don't usually get to do. So I looked around at little day trips and decided I wanted to go see beautiful fall leaves and do some fall activities.

EnterOak Glen, a little town up by Yucaipa, CA located up in the San Bernardino Mountains, about an hour away. There are a bunch of different apple farms there where you can pick your own apples and enjoy all kids of apples desserts. So my mom, older sister and I headed out to spend the day enjoying a fall that we don't really get in Orange County. The funny thing was, that we got there we completely forgot that it might be cold. My sister, Mikken, had on a skirt and t-shirt, and was pretty cold in the 57 degree weather. I was loving it. I love fall, I miss fall. All the leaves weren't quite as red as I would have liked. Most were more green turning yellow, but some were beautiful.

When we got there we checked out a few farms and decided where to eat. We settled on Rileys' at Los Rios Rancho and ate at their BBQ and Bakery. I had an amazing pulled pork sandwich while Mom and Mikken had deli turkey sandwiches with potato salad. Mom got hot apple cider which was a nice treat on our cold fall day. I loved Los Rios Rancho. We browsed around their cute store, bought apple butter and fresh baked bread, and tasted all kinds of apples picked fresh from their orchard. I would have been fun to pick our own apples, but it was a little late in the season and they didn't have a ton left on the trees.

Next we drove back to first farm we passed on the way in, can't remember it's name. (It's the one with Apple Annie's country restaurant.) We went into the bakery and bought a slice of apple pie, an apple empanada and an apple burrito. We didn't eat it all ourselves though, we took the goodies home to share. We also got hot apple pie mini doughnuts. I had read all about these apple cider mini doughnuts, but we weren't at the right stand. These doughnuts were good, but tasted very fried, I only ate one but my dad and the boys loved them. I found out that the real mini doughnuts I wanted were located at Snow-Line Orchard. These are the famous ones. Oh well, that gives me a reason to go back next year.

If you have kids there are tons of fun little activities to do. There are hay rides, petting zoos, pumpkin patches, and you can press your own cider. We could have stayed up there much longer than the three hours we did. There is so much to do and see and eat! It was definitely a great way to spend my birthday. I can't wait to go back next year.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-11-10T19:52:00.000-08:00

With all the baked goodies I've posted here, I have yet to put up a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Chocolate chip cookies are by far my favorite cookie, grew up on these things. Instead of sharing the mom's old classic chocolate chip recipe, I'm posting the new and improved recipe that she found, tweaked and is getting rave reviews on from everyone. (I'll share the classic later.) I made these the other week for Brian's friends birthday. I was racking my brain trying to think of something new and creative to make for him. But apparently he doesn't like new and exciting, just plain and simple. So I called up mom, got the new, must have recipe, and gave it a go. And guess what? I got rave reviews too. I loved that these cookies had a little crunch around the outside, and they have lots of brown sugar which gives them a slightly different, but delicious taste that the classic cookies don't have. Mom and I thought these cookies looked a little more professional than your average chocolate chip cookie, hers more so than mine pictured here. And I made them much bigger than usual, about 4 inches in diameter. The recipe calls for four kinds of chocolate, which Mom says is delicious, but I made mine with plain old semi sweet chips, still delicious. So if you'd like to try a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, I'd start with this one. I thought they looked cute boxed up too!

Debby's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cream:
½ c, butter flavored shortening
½ c. butter softened
1 c. packed brown sugar
¾ c. sugar

Add:
2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each is added

Add:
2 tsp. vanilla and beat

Combine in a separate bowl:
2 ½ c. flour
1 t. soda
1/8 t.salt

Add:
Flour mixture gradually to the creamed mixture.

Stir in:
1 c. miniature semisweet choc. chips
1 c. milk choc. chips
1 c. vanilla or white chips
¾ c. English toffee bits or almond brickle chips
½ c. chopped peacans (opt.)

Drop by tablespoons 3 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake 350 for 10-12 min. or until lightly browned

Easy Sticky Buns

2010-11-09T22:09:00.001-08:00

Every year on my younger sister Brittany's birthday I surprise her with a birthday breakfast baked good. Something like cinnamon rolls, or blueberry muffins. This year I thought I'd use her birthday as an excuse to try out a Barefoot Contessa recipe I've had printed out forever. (Plus I'm going to her book signing on Friday at South Coast Plaza on Friday, so I thought I'd brush up on her stuff! I am so excited, but more on that Friday.)

The recipe I tried was for sticky buns that I thought looked like a quick and easy way to make cinnamon rolls using puff pastry. This was my first time working with puff pastry and I must say I'm a huge fan. That stuff is amazing. I actually tried to make this recipe a few months ago, but when I got home from the store I had bought phyllo dough instead of puff pastry, needless to say I didn't make the recipe. I loved the texture of the sticky buns. They aren't as doughy as a cinnamon roll, more like a pastry, makes sense, right? They have the same ooey gooey center as a cinnamon roll, made with butter, cinnamon and brown sugar. These took all of about ten minutes to prepare and taste best warm. The brown sugar turns into a hard caramel when they cool, but still a tasty treat. I had a few the next morning and they were just a good cold! I made some with nuts and some with out. I preferred the ones with nuts. I used walnuts instead of pecans, like the recipe calls for, and I omitted the raisins. While I do love natures candy, I don't enjoy them in my cinnamon rolls!

All in all I think the birthday girl was pleased with her breakfast goodies. And I know she enjoyed her cake, same one as last year!

Easy Sticky Buns Recipe

Pumpkin Dessert

2010-11-07T15:41:00.001-08:00

Last weekend was Halloween and I felt like I was baking all weekend. Probably because I was. But no complaints here. Last Friday Brian and I went to a couples Halloween party and I had to bring a dessert. I knew it would be something pumpkin, tis the season, but I wasn't sure which one until my mom reminded me of the Muncy School pumpkin dessert. Muncy is my mom's school and a teacher at her school, Cindy, gets requests to make it each year. My mom got the recipe and made this for us a few times and I loved it. I already had the recipe, but I hadn't made it myself yet. This is one of those pumpkin desserts that is more like pumpkin pie, not like cakes or cookies. It has a crust made with a cake mix, a crunchy topping and in between is pure pumpkin bliss. I got tons of complements on this dessert. We like it super cold straight from the fridge, and I think a little whipped cream would send this already delicious dessert over the top. I had some left over after the Friday night party and I wanted to serve it up for my dinner guests on Sunday, but I didn't want to put out a half eaten pan of dessert. So I cut pieces and put them in cupcake liners and put them on a cake plate. That worked out great. It was a super easy way to cut it up before hand and make it presentable. Add this one to your recipes under pumpkin desserts, for sure!

Pumpkin Dessert

Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix
1 cube cold butter
29 oz can pumpkin
12 oz evaporated milk
3 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 cup sugar
chopped walnuts (or nut of choice)

Directions:
Cut cold butter into yellow cake mix with pastry cutter or knives. Save out one cup. Press remaining mix into the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan.

Mix:
can of pumpkin
evaporated milk
eggs

In a new bowl mix:
brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
cinnamon
ginger
cloves
(or 2 tsp of pumpkin spice)

Mix pumpkin mixture with sugars and pour over crust.

Take 1/4 cup sugar and mix it with the 1 cup of reserved cake mix. Sprinkle over top. Sprinkle about 1 cup chopped nuts over top.

Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

Onesie Cookies

2010-11-07T15:00:00.001-08:00

Back in July our dear friends Ryan and Heather had two beautiful twin boys born into this world, Drew and Dylan. They are the most precious things I've ever seen and they pretty much make me want to have a few of my own. On Saturday they had a baby blessing for the boys and we were invited. As a little gift for them I made them some onesie baby sugar cookies. I had bought the cookie cutter here back in July when the boys were born, with the intention of making them when I went to see them for the first time, but I never had the time. Anyway, this weekend was better late than never, and I was thrilled with how cute they turned out.

To save time I piped and flooded the cookies with white frosting so I didn't have to thin a lot of different colors. Then I made four different colors, blue, green, yellow and a tan, and used them to decorate the cookies the next morning after the frosting had dried. I got creative and each cookie was different. I did a I heart Mom and Dad, two with the letter D, and my favorite was a yellow outline with a yellow duck on it.

Once again I learned the lesson that the key to easy decorating is in the frosting. If you have the right consistency of piping frosting you'll have a much easier time and much better results. I had to mix the green twice, and I still didn't have it right. First it was too thin, and then it was too thick. I made it work, but it was definitely harder to use. I'll keep working on perfecting that skill. Below are the links to my sugar cookie recipe, and a royal icing question and answer tutorial blog post that is super helpful.

Sugar Cookie Recipe
Royal Icing Tutorial from Bake at 350 Blog

Nutty Sweet Potato Soup

2010-10-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

Since I get my love of cooking from my mom and we love to cook together, I have been trying to get her to be a guest blogger on here. She is always cooking up new recipes and then giving me her review of them. Tonight she emailed me some pictures and a recipe for a sweet potato soup. It looks delicious and I 100% trust her taste. So I'm posting her review of the recipe and her pictures. I have no doubt it's every bit as good as she says. Plus, this will be a nice change from all the sweet recipes I've been blogging. Thanks Mom. Wish I was home to taste it!

From Mom:
I made this incredible sweet potato soup. It's cheap to make and very tasty. The soup has a slight heat from the cayenne pepper. I never tasted the peanut butter but your dad said he did, but only in the first bite. I cut recipe right in half and it made plenty of soup for us two for dinner. This was better than any pumpkin soup I've tasted but I'm wondering if we can't make pumpkin soup with these same ingredients or tweak them a bit. I'll have to think about it.

Mom also mentioned that she would cut back the cayenne pepper a bit if you don't like your soups too spicy and maybe the peanut butter to 1/4 a cup.

**UPDATE NOTE: 10/30/10 I made this soup today! I can't have a recipe on my blog that I haven't tried. I took moms advice and cut back the cayenne pepper to 1/4 tsp. It was still plenty spicy. And then the 1/4 cut of peanut butter was just fine. It still has a nice depth of nutty flavor, but didn't taste like peanut butter. I also made this today for a Halloween/Harvest dinner tomorrow, along with this soup. I made it and will reheat it tomorrow. Should work out and be very tasty.

The Recipe is from Ellie Krieger, of Food Network, but I can't get the link to work in this post. So here is the recipe:

Nutty Sweet Potato Soup:

Makes 6, 1 1/2 Cup servings
Ingredients

1 tablespoon canola oil
* 1 large onion, diced (about 2 cups)
* 1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and diced (about 1 cup)
* 2 medium carrots, diced (about 1 cup)
* 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 clove garlic, minced (about 1 teaspoon)
* 1 teaspoon peeled and grated fresh ginger
* 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed (2 cups)
* 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
* 1 (14.5-ounce) can no salt added diced tomatoes, with their juices
* 2/3 cup creamy natural peanut butter
* 2 teaspoons honey
* 1/2 cup chopped scallion greens (about 3 scallions)

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over a medium-high heat. Add the onions, bell pepper and carrots and cook, stirring until the vegetables soften, about 5 minutes. Add the cayenne, black pepper, garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute more. Stir in the sweet potato, broth, and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

*Puree the soup in the pot using an immersion blender or in a regular blender in 2 batches and return the soup to the pot. Add the peanut butter and honey and stir, over low heat, until the peanut butter melts. Serve warm, garnished with the scallions.

*When blending hot liquids: Remove liquid from the heat and allow to cool for at least 5 minutes. Transfer liquid to a blender or food processor and fill it no more than halfway. If using a blender, release one corner of the lid. This prevents the vacuum effect that creates heat explosions. Place a towel over the top of the machine, pulse a few times then process on high speed until smooth.

Per Serving:
Calories 290; Total Fat 18g (Sat Fat 3.5g, Mono Fat 9g, Poly Fat 5g); Protein 14g; Carb 23g; Fiber 5g; Cholesterol 0mg; Sodium 260mg

Pumpkin Waffles

2010-10-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

This time of year Sunday waffles turn into pumpkin waffles. Last week I fed the whole family Sunday pumpkin waffles, such a good breakfast. Brian and my sister, Mikken, request these the most, and I am always happy to whip up a batch. (When I'm not using the mix from Williams Sonoma.) A couple of years ago I went searching for a pumpkin waffle recipe and found this one on the Better Homes and Garden recipe. I think I tried out a few others I found, but ended up liking this one the rest, and the family agrees it's a keeper. I'm sure glad I printed this recipe out because I haven't been able to find it online lately. Using my new print friendly button you should be able to print it out no problem. These should definitely make an appearance on your next breakfast table.

Pumpkin Waffles
Makes: 16 (4 inch) waffles
Cook: per waffle iron directions

Ingredients
2 Cups flour (can use whole wheat)
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1/4 Teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 Teaspoon ground ginger
1 3/4 Cup milk
1 Cup canned pumpkin
2 eggs -separated
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 Teaspoon orange peel (optional - I don't use it)

Directions:
1.In a large bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, and ginger; set aside

2. In a medium bowl, combine milk, pumpkin, egg yolks, butter and orange peel, if using. Add pumpkin mixture all at once to flour mixture; stir just until combined (batter should be lumpy).

3. In small bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer on high until stiff peaks form. Gently fold beaten egg whites into pumpkin mixture, leaving a few puffs of egg white.

4. Heat a lightly greased waffle iron, pour batter onto iron and bake according to manufacturer's directions.

Nutrition Info: (if you like this kind of stuff)
Per 1 4- inch waffle: Calories 225, Total Fat (g) 6, Saturated Fat (g) 3, Cholesterol (mg) 66, Sodium (mg) 436.

Introducing: Print Friendly Button

2010-10-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

I was thinking how easy it was for me to print off recipes from other blogs and recipe sites and how perhaps it's not so easy to print my recipes (if anyone out there is making them). So I started to do some research to see how I could get my own print friendly button for my site and I came across a few different ways to do it. Nothing I found was exactly what I wanted, but will have to do for now. I use to consider myself a bit of a computer wiz and felt very smart/special when my dad would call me up with computer application questions and I could totally help him. But apparently technology has continued to move forward while I have been in the kitchen and I'm not the wiz I once was, and my Dad doesn't call quite so often. Anywho, what I wanted the button to do was just allow you to print the recipe, and not the sometimes long intro I write before it. However, that's not going to happen, not this week anyway. (I'll keep searching for a way, leave a comment if you know how, please.)

This print friendly button, found at the very end of the blog post, will allow you to print the full blog text and pictures. Once you click the print friendly button a new little window will open and show you what is going to print. There is a box in the top right hand corner that says "remove images." Click that and it won't print the pictures, and you can highlight other text and delete it and end up just printing the recipe. Is all this easier that just highlighting the recipe and copy and pasting it into Word? Probably not. But I thought it made my blog seem more legit!

Thanks to these peeps for helping me figure it out. And my little bro.

Frost on the Pumpkin Cake

2010-10-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

A few years ago my dear friend Kimberly was living abroad in Bahrain and emailed me a recipe for the best pumpkin cake she'd ever had. She had gone to a church activity and went through a bit of work to try and track down the woman who made the pumpkin cake. Turns out the woman had come from Saudi, where apparently the pumpkin cake is amazing! Kimberly emailed me the recipe and my mom made it for my 30th birthday and it made my day. I made it again just this weekend and once again it got rave reviews. It is a very moist cake, but not dense, quite fluffy. And the cream cheese frosting puts it over the top. The recipe makes a 9 x 13 pan, and you get nice, thick pieces. Add this to your pumpkin recipes today, and thanks Kimberly!

Frost on the Pumpkin Cake

Combine and Mix well:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil

Add:
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Mix Well.

Add:
1 15 oz. can pumpkin
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix well
Pour into a 9 x 13 greased and floured pan.
Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes or until test done.

Frost with the following when completely cool.
Mix together until smooth:
1 (8 oz.) cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
1 lb. powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

Banana Bread

2010-10-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that today is the first time I have made my mom's banana bread. Whenever I have old, sweet, but yucky looking bananas I usually use them to make banana bars! But I got a text message from my mom Saturday morning saying that she had made banana bread, pumpkin bread and harvest loaf for my little brother Jeff to eat and then take some back to other brother Garrett when he came home to visit this weekend.(Apparently she couldn't sleep the other night and was baking bread at 2 am!) There was a change of plans and Jeff came to Orange County instead, so she asked if I would make him all those breads to eat and take back to Gar. Of course I would. Cooking for my little brothers is one thing I absolutely love to do. (Maybe one of these days they'll find wives who will bake for them, but until then I'm happy to fill in.)

Due to mom's request, my weekend was full of baking! I love this banana bread recipe. It's comes from Grandma Payne, my mom's mom, she was the queen of baking! I think as long as your follow the recipe, and don't mix the batter too much, the bread should turn out. It was my first time and they tasted just like moms. And this quick bread recipe can be adapted for other flavors too. The pumpkin bread I made, per mom's request, was this same recipe with pumpkin instead of bananas. (Post coming.) As my mom said, this recipe is fool proof. When my mom makes this for us, she has to make a mini loaf per child and husband. I can polish one of these off in no time flat. (Ate three pieces just while writing this.) Spread some butter on each slice. The outsides get a little toasty, the end pieces are my favorite. Heaven! Great for breakfast, or a sweet afternoon snack. Happy Baking!

Banana Bread

350 degree oven 40 - 45 minutes for 5 small loaves

Ingredients
• 1 cup butter (room temperature) = 2 cubes
• 1 ½ cups white sugar
• 2 eggs (room temperature)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cup flour
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp soda
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 4 extra ripe bananas, 7 – 8 inches long, (1 ½ - 1 ¾ cups)
• ¼ c 2% milk (room temp)

1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Add eggs one at a time, vanilla, and beat until creamy.
3. In a separate bowl combine flour, soda, and salt and wisk.
4. In a separate bowl mash up the bananas.
5. Chop the nuts.
6. Add alternating into the butter mixture but don’ t over mix:
• Flour mixture
• Milk
• Bananas
• Flour mixture
• Milk
• Bananas
• Flour mixture

7. Gently stir in nuts.
8. Generously coat 5 small loaf pans with cooking spray.
9. Spread batter evenly into loaf pans.
10. Bake 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.
11. Let pans rest for 5 min. Gently remove loaves by tapping the bottom of the pans.

Pumpkin Brownies

2010-10-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

These brownies are probably Brian's favorite fall treat, that I make. (He is sitting by me right now finishing off the pan!) I found this recipe a couple of years ago on Martha Stewart site and he requests them year round. (I only make them during pumpkin season though.) I love these too, because who doesn't love brownies and pumpkin swirled together? I just made these with my mom yesterday. It's a great two person recipe. One person can make the chocolate batter and one can do the pumpkin part. The recipe is easy though, so don't worry if you don't have a kitchen helper. These brownies will be your new fall favorite, full of pumpkin and delicious.

Pumpkin Brownies Recipe

Pumpkin Spice Cake Balls

2010-10-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

My first pumpkin creation of the season, and I'm not sure what took me so long. This is a new recipe. I got it from the blog Bake at 350. Last fall Brian and I were in the Godiva store and we bought some pumpkin patch truffles (pictured above). They are this delicious, creamy pumpkin spice inside and milk chocolate outside. They were to die for. So when I came across this recipe, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could recreate something close to the Godiva truffles.

You start with a doctored up vanilla cake mix by adding pumpkin and spices. Make the cake, and crumble it it. Then mix in cream cheese frosting. (She suggests using store bought frosting, but I made my own.) Roll them into balls and freeze until hard. Then dip them in chocolate and wait for the to harden. I made sure to use a lot frosting and they were super moist inside. These were a huge hit with everyone at dinner last night. And today Brian was eating the undipped ones right out of the freezer. I'd say my first attempt at cake balls was success, but I may still swing by Godiva again this year.

Pumpkin Spice Cake Balls Recipe

Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 8 oz. package of cream cheese
1 stick of butter
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Cream the cream cheese and butter, add the sugar. Beat about 5 minutes until fluffy. Add vanilla. (I used all of this frosting to the cake balls)

Jack O' Lantern Sugar Cookies

2010-10-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

At school this week I got Booed! It's a cute little way to pass goodies and treats around during the Halloween season. Someone gives you treats and a Boo sign with a poem explaining that you should pick two people to pass treats and the Booing on to. I had seen this in a magazine or on a blog somewhere and wanted to start it with friends, and when I got it at work I was reminded of it. (For more on Booing visit click here.) I needed to pass the boo on, so I had to make treats. Monday night I set out to make my first Halloween treats of the season.

My pumpkin cookie cutter is pretty big, I wasn't prepared for how much frosting it would take to fill these babies! But it made for a great space for putting on the faces. The cookies really came to life with the faces. As Brian said, "pumpkins are fall, but jack o' lanterns are Halloween." So true! I read some posts on making black icing, since it was my first time. A few things to remember, it's going to dry a lot darker than it looks, so you can aim for a charcoal color. If you make it a day ahead it will darken up a bit, and then more when it drys. I would have liked the orange to be brighter and less pasteley, but I got a bit impatient with the coloring. Also, the gel food colorings are supposed to work better, and I was using the liquid drops for the orange. The completed cookies turned out pretty good though! I'm definitely going to be making some more sugar cookies with other Halloween designs.

Sugar Cookie Recipe
Black Icing blog reference
Halloween Sugar Cookie Ideas

Stacked Enchiladas

2010-10-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

This recipe comes from my Grandma Stiles, introduced to us by my aunt Sue. It wasn't that many years ago when Sue made these for us at my parents house. All of us kids asked my mom why she didn't have this recipe and why she never made it before. Since then we have added this to our rotated recipes. This is one of Brian's favorite recipes. Although he likes it with flour tortillas instead of corn, but I tell him it's not a flour tortilla recipe. Aunt Sue would not approve, she didn't even like us changing the recipe to include putting sour cream on top. While I don't endorse the flour tortillas (they are good, but just too much for this recipe) the sour cream is a must!

The sauce is easy to make, and will be very watery, it's a thin sauce. That is a good thing because the sauce runs all over your plate, so good. I usually double the recipe if I'm making it for five or more people. You don't want to run out of sauce.

For sauce, in pot:
Saute 1 yellow onion
Add:
2- 8 oz cans tomato sauce
2 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
2 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs chili powder
3 Cups water

Fry up 1 lb. of hamburger with onion flakes
Warm up corn tortillas-put a tiny bit of oil on each one place in plastic bag warm in microwave

To assemble:
Put a little sauce on plate
Put down one corn tortilla, top with hamburger, lettuce, cheese, and sauce.
Place another tortillas on top and repeat as many times as you can handle. Usually a three stacker is good. You can top with sour cream, or add it in the layers. These are really filling once they are all stacked up, so be prepared!

Panini

2010-09-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

For a quick meal tonight, and another beat the heat dinner, Brian and I whipped up some paninis. I went to Trader Joe's and got our favorite sourdough bread and some good meats and cheeses. We tried out havarti cheese, I've heard it's good and melts like a dream, and that it does. You can really put anything on a panini that you'd like. I use to get a panini at The Corner Bakery that had dejion mustard, ham, tomatoes, and Swiss cheese. I used that as my inspiration tonight. I switched up the Swiss for havarti, used ham and turkey and also added grilled onion and spinach. Brian added sun dried tomatoes to his also. The result was a very tasty treat. Filling too, good source of protein and veggies! So go create paninis and let me know what delicious combinations you come up with.

Russian Chicken

2010-09-27T21:30:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure how the weather is in your part of the country, but the heat wave in Orange County continues on. It was 105 in Costa Mesa today. We do not have air conditioning in our little apartment, which usually isn't a problem because we get a nice coastal breeze. Today, there was no coastal breeze to be found. So because of this little situation I present to you a slow cooker meal that won't heat your kitchen up, if you can handle eating warm food. (Brian and I had Subway tonight, then I spent the rest of the evening in a movie theater and now I'm eating frozen yogurt while I type this up! Brian braved the heat at an Angles game.)

My sister asked me if this Russian chicken recipe was considered a "semi-homemade" recipe, and yes, it totally is. While I didn't get the recipe from Sandra Lee I'm pretty sure she would love it. But this semi-homemade dish is really delicious. I love how the chicken, after being in the slow cooker, just falls apart. And the sauce is sweet, love that! Serve it over rice, that you cook in the rice cooker so as to not heat up the kitchen, and you are good to go. Quick, easy, and keeps the kitchen cool.

Serves 4-6 (Depending on how much sauce you like):
4-6 chicken breasts
1 16 oz. bottle Russian Dressing
1 packet dry onion soup mix (I used Lipton)
1 10 oz. jar apricot preserves/jam

Combine First sauce ingredients in a bowl
Season Chicken with salt and pepper and place in the bottom of slow cooker
Pour mixture over Chicken
Cook on Low for 6-8 Hours (or on High for 3-4 hours)

On a not so hot day this recipe can also be made in the oven, follow steps exactly except place chicken in a casserole dish and bake at 350 for one hour

Serve over rice

Fajita Marinade

2010-09-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Today, or this weekend rather, has been unusually hot here in Orange County. It was hotter today than I think it's been all summer. Anyway, I had to take little brother Jeff to the airport tonight, but promised him I'd make him dinner before we left. So in the heat I wanted to whip up something fast so didn't have to be in the hot kitchen longer than necessary. For me that of course means chicken and rice of some sort, or clean out the fridge fajitas/burritos. Today the fajitas won out. I wanted to do a new seasoning for the fajitas, so I searched out some options on Tasty Kitchen. The first one that came up looked good, so I gave it a try. The actual recipe is supposed to be used for a marinade, but I just made the sauce and poured it on top and cooked it for a while. (I'll link to the actual recipe below and you can try it her way too if you'd like.)

For my fajitas I added a bit of olive oil to a pan and cooked 1 red onion and 1 green pepper until softened. Then I added one can of chicken (did not grocery shop this weekend due to my bronchitis)and some fresh corn from the cob. Mixed up the marinade and poured it over the top and simmered for about 15 minutes. Served up in the ready made, but bake at home tortillas with salsa and sour cream. Huge hit. Brian said the smell was so strong it woke him from his nap, not necessarily a bad thing. Little brother was not only satisfied but impressed with how fast the meal came together. For sure going to use this one in the week night meal rotation. Keeper!

Fajitas Marinade:
2 whole Limes, Juiced
¼ cups Tequila (optional)
¼ cups Olive Oil
¼ cups Chopped Fresh Cilantro Or Parsley
1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 cloves Garlic, Minced (optional)
½ teaspoons Dried Oregano
1 teaspoon Cumin

Original Recipe on Tasty Kitchen

Pineapple Zucchini Cake

2010-09-26T00:09:00.001-07:00

Our generous friends Jennifer and Andy, who gave us the tomatoes to make salsa, also gave us a very large zucchini they grew in their garden. They are currently remodeling their house and do not have a kitchen. So I thought I'd put my kitchen and their zucchinis to good use and whipped up a zucchini cake. I started searching around for zucchini recipes and was amazed at how many recipes there were for sweet treats made with zucchini. And most of them incorporated some kind of cream cheese frosting, which is a total bonus in my book. I found a lot of good looking recipes on the Tasty Kitchen Blog, and one endorsed by The Pioneer Woman, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I followed the recipe almost as written except I used vegetable oil instead of canola oil, it's just what I had on hand. I think I might add some nuts next time, and there will be a next time. I cut the recipe for the frosting in half, I just wanted a thin layer, and half a recipe was more than enough. As she suggested I put some pineapple juice in the frosting, it was a great addition! Definitely add this recipe to your zucchini collection.

Pineapple Zucchini Cake Recipe
Pioneer Woman step by step instructions

Pancake Soufflé (The Puffy Pancakes)

2010-09-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

The other Sunday when Brian and I were making up our second batch of Spiced Pecan Waffles my brothers Garrett and Jeff were having breakfast with us. Garrett likes to cook too and he had seen a pancake soufflé made on an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, and decided to whip one up. Gar likes to call it the puffy pancake because it's basically pancake batter with whipped egg whites. He took a basic pancake batter recipe, and added a few extras like vanilla and nutmeg, plus the beaten egg whites. The result was a heavenly, cloudlike pancake, with a toasty outside and soft center, topped off with fruit, powdered sugar and syrup.

Here's how you make it:
Recipe for 4 pancakes

Turn on broiler

separate 4 eggs
combine egg yokes with:
1 cup milk
4 Tablespoons melted butter
1/2 Teaspoon vanilla
1/4 Teaspoon nutmeg
Add:
1 cup flour, stir until just combined

Whip the 4 egg whites until peaks are stiff, but not dry. Gently fold into batter, do not over mix.

Melt a pad of butter in an 8 inch pan over medium heat. Once melted add 3/4 to 1 cup of batter.

Cook for about 2-3 minutes. At this point the batter will begin to set and you can add fruit. If you add fruit at the beginning it will fall to the bottom. Cook for a few more minutes until golden brown on the bottom and moves freely in the pan.

Transfer to broiler to brown the top and finish cooking, about a minute or so. (Keep an eye on it.)

Slide out onto a plate, garnish with powdered sugar and/or maple syrup.

I can't say enough good things about these delicious little babies! Garrett is sitting here with me as I write this and I'm pretty sure we'll be making them again tomorrow for Sunday breakfast.
[Update: We did make these again for breakfast today but we used my small cast iron skillets, about 7 inches. Garrett thought the cast iron cooked more evenly. They were smaller, so a better size, but just as delicious!]

Salted Double Chocolate Cookies

2010-09-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

While I wasn't baking during the week this past month, I was still oohing and ahhing over delicious looking blog posts and making mental notes of what I wanted to make when I did find the time. While I was reading a favorite blog on mine, Annie's Eats, I came across these chocolate cookies that looked delicious. I love chocolate cookies and I'm always looking for new recipes. While I was reading her blog, I also found out that she just finished medical school and manages to blog everyday. So I should be able to manage by little school teaching job and blog at the same time!

Anyway, these cookies are very chocolaty. But the added salt makes them a good combination of sweet and salty. I love those treats! I did run into a bit of trouble with the recipe though. I made it as is, and the batter was very runny. I read a few comments and people said they let it sit for a while and the dough thickened. That didn't seem to happen to mine, so I added about 1/3 of a cup more flour, to equal one cup total.

Before the extra flour, the dough looked more like cake batter, even after I let it sit. See how it's very runny?

When I used my cookie scoop and put the dough on the cookie sheet, it spread out. These cookies would have been really flat with chocolate chips sticking up.

After the flour the dough thickened up quite a bit and started to resemble actual cookie dough. They cooked up great, and longer they sat, the better they became. Great second day cookies. So if you love chocolaty chocolate cookies give these a try. Here is the link to the Annie's Eats recipe and also the Martha Stewart recipe it was adapted from.

Salted Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Martha's Original Recipe

Spiced Pecan Pumpkin Waffles

2010-09-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

I dare say it's been a while since I posted. I'm sure I've lost most of my readers, but do come back! It's been a long start to the new school year, and I've been working some long days. Because of that I've been cooking just the basics on during the week and trying to bake on the weekend. Last week I finally managed to make a couple of things, but this week turns out I got got bronchitis. I guess I'm lucky I made it four weeks without those students getting me sick. So, I've been in bed for a few days, and my DVR is cleaned off so now it's time to update the blog with what's been going on in my kitchen.

On Labor Day Brian was so cute! He wanted to take me to Williams Sonoma to get some new kitchen stuff. I love going there in the fall. They have all their fun seasonal goods in, and it smell amazing in there. They were sampling their spiced pecan pumpkin waffle mix. It was so good. Tasted exactly like fall. All the flavors of cinnamon, pumpkin, nutmeg, and the candied pecans put those waffles over the top. The real maple syrup only added to the rich flavors.

Brian insisted we buy the mix, so we did. And for the past two Sundays we have made them for breakfast. The mix makes only two batches, and we got five waffles out of each batch. It was worth the money. So do yourself a favor and visit your local Willams Sonoma and pick up a mix, and enjoy looking and all their fun fall merchandise. I'll probably go back to making my own pumpkin waffles from scratch, but I'll definitely be adding in some candied pecans.

Meals on Wheels: OC Foodie Fest

2010-09-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

While visiting The Lime Truck a week or so ago (post coming) I picked up a flier for the OC Foodie Fest. It was last Saturday and was the ultimate foodie destination. In the parking lot of the Honda Center was Orange Counties first gourmet food truck event. There was a $15 entrance fee and the money went to support charities. We checked the list of trucks that would be in attendance and there were so many that we recognized and were thrilled that they would all be in one location! We had been contemplating driving to LA to try some of the trucks, but now we didn't have to.

I'm totally hooked on Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race ! If you've watched it, then you know a lot of the trucks are from the LA area. From the show The Nom Nom Truck, Crepes Bonaparte, and Nana Queens were going to be at the fest! Since the Nom Nom Truck is pretty much dominating the show I was dying to try one of their Banh Mi sandwiches. Garrett came with me and Brian, and he had seen the Don Chow truck on an episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, and they were also going to be at the fest.

We pay to get in and are welcomed to a large parking lot full of food trucks and...lines. Lots and lots of lines. Long ones too. Our plan was to divide and conquer. Right when we walked in we spotted Don Chows and the Nom Nom truck. Gar heads to Don Chows and I make way to the fast growing Nom Nom line. Brian wandered off to see what else there was.

Don Chow Tacos is Chinese Mexican fusion cuisine. They say their "Chino-meets-Latino" fusion blends the best of both flavors. For the Food Fest they had a fixed menu of three tacos for $6. I honestly can't remember what three tacos we had, but they were delicious, and a nice combination of flavors. Definitely a visit again truck.

The Nom Nom Truck totally deserves to be winning every week on The Great Food Truck Race. After waiting an hour in line we got our turn. But while I was at the back of this very long line, a Foodie Fest worker came along and gave me Angles tickets for that nights game! Nom Nom had only Banh Mi”, or Vietnamese Sandwiches on their menu (they usually have a variety of other items) in chicken, pork or tofu. Sad though, when we got up their they had no pork, and I had heard that was their best. Not to worry though, their chicken was delicious. The sandwich was on a soft bread with a crusty outside, a creamy mayo type spread, vegetables and the most delicious chicken. I did have to pick of the jalapenos though. I'm kind of a light weight when it comes to spice. We ordered up three 12 inchers and we all finished every single bite. I even got my picture taken with the girl that does all the selling, but Gar's Droid phone failed to capture my moment! It was such a fun truck to visit and the two girls running it are lots of fun.

Brian ended up going to a pizza truck, called the Slice Truck, mainly because the line was short. But what wasn't short was the time it took to make the pizza. He was waiting for his order just as long as we were in line. And while the pizza was good, a nice thin crust cheesey pizza, I don't think it was worth the wait. In my opinion, a pizza truck isn't the way to go. It's not a fast food!

After that we walked around looking for a few other trucks to try. We had been there for so long already, and were tired and hot from standing in line. There was a bakery truck I wanted to try, but again a long line and a baked good didn't sound nearly as good as some of the ice cream trucks that were there. We saw the Nanna Queens truck and the Crepes truck. I was glad Nanna Queens had propane to cook their wings this time, (see episode 1) but didn't need to wait in line for any. And turns out the Crepes Bonaparte truck is based in Orange County, so we figured we could go anytime and not have to stand in that line!

We eventually decided to get dessert at the Cool Haus ice cream sandwich truck. It was your basic pick your cookie, and pick your ice cream dessert. Again, long line, and it wasn't moving. They kept closing the window and wouldn't take orders for like 10 minutes. Then I saw the girl get out of the truck with a container of liquid, walk over the the port-a-potty, dump the liquid and then rinse the container at the portable hand washing station. She headed back to the truck and I instantly wondered if that container would be touching anything that would touch my ice cream and cookies. Kind of a big turn off. And the window kept closing and the line didn't move, so after about 30 minutes we called it a day. No ice cream sandwiches.

Overall thoughts on the OC Foodie Fest: All the great trucks in one place-good. Long lines because of that-bad. What did my $15 get me? A chance to stand in really long lines, and I guess donate to charity. I don't feel the need to go to the second annual OC Foodie Fest. I would rather make the drive to LA and hit up my favorite food trucks with less lines. And you can only eat so much food at a fest! But I am glad we went, it was a really fun afternoon, and I definitely had some great food!

(Of all the days to forget my real camera. Thanks iPhone for getting the job done.)

Tourist in My Town: Pipeline

2010-08-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Another summer day bike ride took me and Garrett on a ride up and down Newport Beach. That is my favorite beach cruising spot. It has a nice paved sidewalk with beautiful sand and beach on one side and a variety of beach house on the other. As we drive by I tend to look at the houses just as much as I look at the beach. I like to pick out which ones I like and choose parts of each to build my dream beach house! It's been rather hot here lately, so as Gar and I were cruising around we felt the need for some refreshment.

My favorite beach food shack is Pipeline. It's located at the end of the Newport Pier, across the sidewalk from a nice grassy area. There is a small parking lot near, and quite a few other shops and restaurants around. Pipeline has a large menu with hot food, snacks, and a lot of cold treats. My favorite is the Hawaiian snow cone. It's a nice icey treat with vanilla ice cream at the bottom. As soon as I get it I start digging for the ice cream. I love the way the ice cream gets all mixed in with the cherry juice. Delicious. So if you're down that way and need a nice summer treat, stop on in.

Meals on Wheels: Kogi Truck

2010-08-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Last week was my last full week of freedom before I had to return to the classroom to prepare for my new wave of students. I was trying to fill up everyday with something fun and exciting to do, and I wanted to fit in a few things that are a little harder to do when you work Monday through Friday 8-5. Ok, I only work until 3, but still. Gourmet food trucks seem to be all the rage right now in LA and Orange County, so we've been making a list and last week checked off a few. It's a really fun eating experience, and a cheaper way to try out new gourmet food.

The first truck we hit up was the Kogi Truck. Brittany and Garrett put this one on the list. We found it in a business park on a Saturday afternoon. There was a warehouse sale going on and there were people everywhere. Kogi's tag line is, "Korean BBQ-To-Go," and that might have been the first time I ever had Korean food, BBQ or otherwise. Spicy Pork Tacos, Kimchi Quesadillas and Short Rib Sliders are just a few of the menu items you can get for a very moderate price, ranging from $2-$7.

I tried a short rib taco, a chicken taco, and the short rib sliders. (The portions are smaller, so you can try a lot!) The tacos were a delicious gourmet Korean twist on a traditional Mexican staple. The barbecued meat was amazing,and topped with slaw and veggies that I'm still dreaming about. And nice and sauce and juices were dripping down my hand as I ate. I loved it! You know how I hate dry food! The sliders were equally delicious, but I think I prefer the texture of the corn tortillas over the soft bun. The chicken tacos were my absolute favorite, if I had to pick. But I love, love, love this truck!

You wouldn't have to ask me twice to visit the Kogi truck again. In fact we almost went yesterday. Kogi has four trucks, three in LA areas and on in Orange County. They are in different locations every day for lunch and late night dinners. Check out their website here, or follow them on Twitter for location updates. (I don't do twitter, so you're on your own to find them there.)

Note: Sorry for the blurry pictures, the iPhone was all I had with me. You can check out additional pictures on their website.

Salsa!

2010-08-22T14:02:00.001-07:00

About a week ago our wonderful friends Andy and Jennifer gave us a huge bag of perfectly red and delicious homegrown tomatoes. I can't even remember the last time I saw tomatoes that looked anything close to these in the grocery store. (Note to self: grow your own garden next year.) I intended to create a wonderful dinner using these beauties, but, confession, I haven't been cooking too much dinner these days. My sister invited us over for taco salad last week and I thought, Yes! I can make salsa with my lovely tomatoes. Now, another confession, I've never actually made salsa before, but I had my brother, who spent two years in Mexico, show me the ropes.

The ingredients for the salsa are simple. Garrett said that the food he ate in Mexico wasn't at all glamorous, and keeping it simple is what the people in his areas were all about. So while I diced up about 6-8 tomatoes (I honestly didn't count), Gar was busy dicing an onion, finely chopping up a jalapeno, about a fourth of the pepper. We also minced up one clove of garlic, and a bunch of cilantro. We mixed that all together, and poured out a little bit of the juice, so we could add the juice of a half a lime. (These tomatoes were particularly juicy.) Add a little salt and pepper to taste and we had the most delicious salsa I've ever had. We topped our taco salad and burritos with it and the salsa made all the difference. I didn't even use a salad dressing!

I think this is a fool proof salsa recipe, but I must admit, I think most of the flavor came the homegrown tomatoes. So make sure your tomatoes are red, juicy and full of fresh flavor.

Garrett's Salsa
(All amounts can be adjusted to taste)
6-8 tomatoes, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
1/4 jalapeno, small dice
1 clove garlic, small dice
1 bunch cilantro (a little less than one bunch)
juice of 1/2 lime
salt and pepper

Costa Rica

2010-08-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

On the 5th of July me, my sister Brittany and four other girls headed off on a little adventure vacation to Costa Rica. None of us had been there before but we were all super excited. We had the best time. We went to four different cities, and drove our rental Begos from town to town. The roads were not paved for the most part and had tons of pot holes. So needless to say, the ride was not smooth. We saw volcanoes, rain forests and tons of insects in them. We went horse back riding, zip lining, and river rafting. On the last day we made it over the the coast. One of our main goals was to see monkeys and we finally had our chance in Manuel Antonio, where the jungle meets the beach. It was beautiful. We also saw a sloth climbing down a tree. Have you ever seen one of those? They are crazy slow moving. Look like they are battery operated. By far the most interesting animal I've ever seen move.

While I love traveling, I always get a little concerned about the food I'll be eating. I love to seek out good restaurants, but Costa Rica wasn't really a food vacation. Their food is influenced by a lot of other countries, and every restaurant had pizza and hamburgers on the menu, but we thought we'd stick to the traditional dishes. The food wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything I'm dying to have again. I quickly grew tired of the food, as most meals were the same thing.

Each hotel gave us free breakfast, which was nice. It usually consisted of a buffet with fruit, rice, beans, eggs, breakfast meat, and pancakes, juices from interesting fruits, and sometimes tortillas. I wasn't all about the meat in Costa Rica, I had a fear of getting sick, so my daily breakfast was usually rice, beans, and a few fruits. I had pancakes one day, not too bad. But the eggs didn't look right, I avoided them!

The national dish of Costa Rica is called Casado. Casado is a typical Costa Rican meal consisting of rice, black beans, plantains, salad, a tortilla, and an entree of choice that may include chicken, beef, pork, or fish. We ordered this the first few places we went for dinner, and it we liked it. The best dish we had was the lunch we had provided by the river rafting tour. We all had Casado, and I got the fish. That was the first meat I had down there, and it was really good. This was also the first time we had tortillas.

One dinner I didn't really like was when I ordered the tortilla with cheese. When my meal came I was super surprised when my tortillas came out with this weird, unmelted cheese on them. I figured tortillas and cheese meant quesadilla, not the case. This was a low point in the food for me. I asked the server to melt my cheese for me, which he did. But super dry tortilla and cheese, not my favorite.

I ordered a taquito for a snack once and it came with lettuce, mayonaise and a weird katchup sauce on top. No like.

Another thing I didn't love about their food was that they didn't seem to be into sweets.By about the fourth day I couldn't take it any more. I needed a treat! We managed to find an ice cream place in the third city we were in. They had every flavor imaginable. They were all written in Spanish, so after asking what about five flavors were the lady just read them all off. I got a basic chocolate cone, and it was delicious. It was a little more icey than creamy, but it was still a treat.

The second time we found treats was on day six, we found this cute little bakery. I was so excited! We go in, and obviously it's a bakery in Costa Rica, but they had cookies, brownies, croissants, etc. I got a brownie and the other girls got cookies. All were good, but not nearly as sweet as the treats I'm use to. Still wanting more snacks and treats, we stop at the cheese factory later that day and get an ice cream cone. The ice cream was made there and much better than the first cone we had. Those cheese factories make some good ice cream. (Brittany and I were reminded of the ice cream we had at the Tillamook Cheese factory in Oregon. So good.)

By the last stop on our trip we were ready for our American food and we found pizza and pasta restaurant owned by an American. We thought that was a pretty good choice. The pizza was thin crust and they had a lot of really good combination of toppings.
In a nutshell, the trip to Costa Rica was definitely better than the food in Costa Rica. No one got sick, there were plenty of rice and beans to go around, and if you're craving food from home, you should be able to find it.

Tourist in my Town: Balboa Bakery

2010-08-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

I live in a major tourist destination city. And sometimes, mostly in the summer, I want to do all those touristy things people come from far away to do. One our favorites is riding our bikes to the beach. My parents spent a majority of the summer here with us and we tried to go on bike rides whenever we could. The other day we took a morning ride down PCH to Balboa Island, took the ferry across the bay to the Balboa Peninsula. My Dad and I had been dying to get back to the Balboa Bakery for their amazing breakfast croissants and tasty doughnuts. We first had them while we were waiting to board the Catalina Express, to head to Catalina Island for the day. The Balboa Bakery is just south of the ferry drop at 301 Main Street.

We met some friends there, who also rode their bikes over, and we ordered our breakfast goodies. I usually like breakfast sandwiches, with ham and cheese and egg, but at a lot of places the egg seems fake. Like at most bagel places, they throw this little plastic thing in the microwave and in 30 seconds you have a rubbery, yellow substance that might resemble eggs. But at the Balboa Bakery their eggs are real, and cooked to perfection. The croissants and warm, soft and buttery, and the swiss cheese is melted over the ham (or whatever meat you choose). These breakfast croissants are big, you could easily be full with just a half, but you could will probably want to eat the whole thing, they are so delicious. You can eat inside, but the view and scenery is so nice outside. There are a few tables and benches so you can take it all in.

So if you live in the neighborhood, or happen to be here on vacation, check this place out. So fun and charming, and good food. I love being a tourist in my own town!

Vintage Baseball Party: Favors

2010-08-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

All summer long I have been trying to perfect my sugar cookie and decorating skills. So for Brian's party I decided to make baseball and bat cookies as party favors. I put them in the cellophane bags, but since he's not really a ribbon kind of guy, I made a thank you tag out of paper and stapled it to the top. I loved them. Plus they tasted and looked great too.

Before I started this cookie project I searched the internet for ideas and tips on how to make this a little easier. Best tip I found, hands down, was to roll out your dough, while still soft, between two pieces of parchment paper. It makes no sense to refrigerate your dough until hard, and then try to roll out this huge lump of dough. Which actually won't roll out until it softens up again, but by then it's too soft to to actually cut out the cookies. (Which is exactly what happened when I tried to make the wedding cake cookies.) I also bought some Evendough bands to put on the end of my rolling pin so that my dough would roll out evenly. Using these was so much easier than just eyeballing it myself. And since the dough was soft, I just applied a lot of pressure and the dough rolled out evenly. And without having to cover my counter with countless cups of flour, this system made it so much cleaner too!

I would roll out multiple sheets of dough and put them in the freezer. Within 20-30 minutes they were hard enough to cut out. Peal back the top sheet of parchment paper, dip your cookie cutter in flour and cut away. The colder the dough, the crisper the edges of your cookies will come out. Any left over scraps easily mix into each other because they don't have the excess flour on them. This was, seriously, the best system. Easier, faster, cleaner! I could make cookies all day at this rate.

My Dad happened to be in town again and was more than happy to help me with the cookies. He took the bats, while I had to pipe perfect circles around the baseballs. Not an easy task. I found that if you hold the piping bag a few inches above the cookies you actually have a better chance of getting the frosting where you want it to go. If you look closely, my circles are far from perfect. But once we put on the baseball stitching you could hardly tell.

For great video how tos on making royal icing, outlining and flooding sugar cookies visit www.universityofcookie.com I found them super helpful, and it's nice to watch someone on video!

Vintage Baseball Party: Food

2010-08-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post a few more pictures of the fun party we had for Brian and tell a little about the food I served. This is, after all, a food blog! Because I was so busy doing all the decorations, and I had to haul everything up to his parents house 30 minutes away, I decided that I would not do the food myself. I also knew, that despite the fact that I was doing a baseball theme, I would not be serving hot dogs. When I first thought of doing this party months ago I thought it would be fun to get Mil Jugos, the Venezuelan restaurant Brian loves, to cater. Brian loves the food and the country and I knew he would love sharing that with all his friends. I thought for a second that people might not like it, but the food is pretty mild. I ordered chicken and beef arepas, a variety of empanadas, and rice and beans. Everyone loved it. You top it off with their special sauces and it is a sure treat!

For dessert I thought simple cupcakes and homemade chocolate ice cream would do the trick. I wanted to decorate the cupcakes somehow to incorporate them into our theme. We did these the morning of the party, so didn't have time to do anything too elaborate. My mom was helping me with the cupcake project and she said that when we were little and she would make cupcakes for our birthdays, long before they were popular, and she would put stickers on toothpicks and stick them in the top of the cupcake. We always had the best birthday parties! We ran with that idea and I cut out little pennate flags and mom hot glued them to toothpicks. I think they turned out darling!

I tried out two new recipes for the cupcake frosting. The vanilla buttercream frosting recipe came from the book More From Magnolia. It is recipes from Magnolia Bakery in New York. I was there on one of my trips and the line for their treats was out the door and around the corner. (Pictured below) Definitely worth the wait! I found the recipe online here . It tasted great, I didn't adjust the recipe at all. However, it says for two dozen cupcakes, and I only used about half for my two dozen. I used a generous amount too! I kept the frosting in the fridge for a week and used the rest of the frosting to frost birthday cupcakes for a friend. Worked perfect!

Besides cupcake toppers, mom's other job was finding a chocolate frosting recipe. She finally decided to just use the one of the back of the Hershey's cocoa box. We did, and it was delicious. We used quite a bit more powdered sugar than it calls for so the frosting would be thicker. We kept adding the sifted powdered sugar until the frosting was a lighter color of brown. (Sifting will help with the lumps.) But if you add to much the frosting loses it shine. We found that the perfect consistency will ribbon off the back of a spoon, in nice, thick strands. I'm posting the recipe as is on the box, add at least a cup or two more of sugar to thicken. Delicious.
Hershey's Chocolate Chocolate Frosting:
1/2 Cup butter
2/3 Cup Hershey's cocoa
1/3 Cup milk
1 Tsp vanilla
3 Cups powdered sugar
Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to spreading consistency. Add more milk if needed, stir in vanilla. (Makes about 2 Cups)

Vintage Baseball Graduation Party

2010-08-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a week because I've been so busy planning and executing a graduation party for Brian. It was this past Saturday and it turned out every bit as fabulous as I had imagined. I picked the vintage baseball theme because Brian graduated with his masters in Sport Management and baseball is his favorite! Me and my party planning sisters can take all the credit for the original decorations because when we Google searched vintage baseball parties for ideas and all we came up with were parties for five year olds. We made invitations, signs, and center pieces. It was a backyard afternoon party, so it was a bit warm. But that's ok, it felt just like a day baseball game.

For the center pieces Brittany had the idea to decoupage pots with vintage baseball pictures. We picked up the pots at our local Goodwill. We didn't have any vintage baseball pictures, so I found some on Google images, printed them out in black ink on cream paper. The same prints were used to make the signs. We made pennant flags with a variety of paper, sticking to our color scheme of navy blue, deep red, and cream. Navy blue table cloths, red Gerber Daises, and mason jars filled with peanuts in their shells and red vines finished the center pieces.

Cinnamon Roll Thank You

2010-08-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

Brian took a week off of work last week to finish up his masters thesis. He presented it on Saturday, and he is officially done! We are so excited. To say thank you to a couple of coworkers and his boss for giving him time off and picking up the slack at work he wanted to make cinnamon rolls. He said that is one of the best things I make. (Thanks love) He helped me whip up a batch last night, and they turned our ooey, gooey, and delicious.

Last week I organized all my boxes, ribbon, paper, cards, etc, because it was a mess, which made it super helpful when I was deciding how to package up the cinnamon rolls. Brian was happy to put them on a paper plate and cover them with saran wrap, but I told him no way! I put four rolls on a thin piece of cardboard, wrapped them up in parchment paper and tied them with a piece of yarn. I had Brian write "Thank You" on a sticky tag that I affixed to the yarn. This all worked out and looked great, but I was surprised to find out that scotch tape does not stick to parchment paper. I had planned to wrap them up like a present, using tape to attach the lose ends, but that was not working. So I just tucked it all under and used the yarn to hold it all together. Simple, easy, and looked great.

Steak Sandwiches

2010-07-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a perfect summer day. I spent the afternoon at the beach with my parents, Brittany and friends Erin and Kelli. The sun was actually out today, something we've been missing here in Orange County lately. It's wasn't too hot or too cold. And I think I even got a little color on my way too white for this late in the summer skin, without getting burned. After the beach we headed to the pool and hot tub, a perfect way to rinse all the sunblock off our faces and SPF 4 tanning oil off our legs. While at the pool we decided to make dinner and thought that nothing says perfect summer dinner like corn on the cob and watermelon. And so to go along with that Britt suggested steak sandwiches, something I made a few times last summer, and we loved.

Tonight's sandwiches were even better than we remembered. We made a few changes from the first go around. I got the recipe from the Barefoot Contessa, and it instructs you to cook the steak in a pan on the stove, which I did the first time. But tonight my mom and dad barbecued the steak and it was so much more tender. When you cook the steak in the pan, you then remove the meat and saute your onions in the juices. Since we did it on the barbecue I added a little olive oil to a pan and the poured in the juices that were on the plate of the finished steak. This makes the onions have amazing flavor, don't skip this step. Dad sliced the steak into thin pieces, last time I did thicker slices. The thinner slices were easier make the sandwiches with and way easier to eat. I make the sandwiches on the country French rolls from Trader Joe's. Top these little lovelies off with the dijon mustard, mayo, and sour cream spread, and a little arugula and you have one tasty summer sandwich. A perfect way to finish off the perfect summer day.

Steak Sandwiches Recipe

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

2010-07-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was feeding a group of nine and there is nothing worse than having everyone come over and have my house stuffy and hot from turning the oven on. So crockpot recipes to the rescue. I have always been a fan of pulled pork sandwiches and the pork just falls apart after cooking for about five hours in the slow cooker. I came up with this recipe, it's pretty much a no brainer, anyone could do it, but the result is a major crowd pleaser. (I told them all to comment on this post so you would believe me.) I had two guests that ate two whole sandwiches. I was a little disappointed I didn't have any leftovers. But here's the best part of the story. I get a weekly email from a friend from church who summarizes all the weekly grocery store ads and sends them out to everyone. (This is super helpful, thanks Lonnie!) So because I knew I needed a pork roast I quickly scanned the email and found out that our local Mexican market, El Metate, had pork butt roast on sale for $.97. lb! Super bargain. So I headed over there, got a 4.5lb roast, plenty to make at least 10 sandwiches. While there I saw they had white corn on the cob 5 for $1.00! I walked out of there with my roast and 10 ears of corn for about $6.50! It was my lucky day. I mention this story because I don't usually get this lucky shopping, but also to remind you that pork roasts aren't very expensive, and this is a great, easy, and cheap way to feed quite a few people. You can also use pork shoulder. Try these today and thank me tomorrow!

Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Place in crockpot:
pork roast, salt and pepper both sides
1 yellow onion, chopped
barbeque sauce, enough to cover roast, (I use Sweet Baby Rays Hickory Honey, just use your favorite one.)
Cook on high for 5 hours

Take roast out of crokpot and place in bowl. The pork should just fall apart and will shred easily with a fork. As I shred it I pull out the big chunks of fat. Add more BBQ sauce or juice left over from cooking to moisten up meat. I also make sure to get the onions out of the juice and add it back to the meat.

Use any kind of sandwich rolls, I'm still looking for some that I love. Place pork and, for me, more BBQ sauce, on roll and enjoy.

Lawry's Lemon Pepper Marinade

2010-07-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

So I thought I'd spend a blog post giving a major shout out to my husband for cooking his mother a fabulous birthday dinner last Sunday. As I previously mentioned, I was a little worn out from wedding cookie duty to think about a big meal. So Brian planned the menu, went to the store and made the dinner all by himself! He decided to barbeque chicken that he marinaded overnight with Lawry's Lemon Pepper Marinade. He had asked me to buy that in the past, but I never did. I should have though! The chicken was amazing. And cooked to perfection because he used a meat thermometer to test the chicken. Because he didn't cut them open, like I always do, the chicken stayed juicy. To compliment the chicken he bought veggies for a salad, bread and made rice. Thanks love for being the best husband ever!

Strawberry Shortcake Cake

2010-07-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday was my mother-in-law Kathleen's birthday. I was a little burnt out from all the cookie baking to do anything fancy for her birthday dinner. So Brian volunteered to make her a it and all I had to do was make a cake. So I wanted it to be something special, since it was her birthday and all! I had a cake recipe I found on Pioneer Woman that I had wanted to make, and this was the perfect occasion.

The cake is an 8 inch round, sliced in half (I did not do good on the slicing part) and filled with two layers of sweetened strawberries and iced with a cream cheese frosting. This is a real treat, looks impressive and has amazing flavor. I made the frosting and kept it at room temperature until it was time to frost, but that made the frosting too runny. It could have been due to the fact that it was another warm day in my kitchen. Next time I might put it in the fridge for a few minutes to firm it up. It was a little tricky to ice over the strawberries. It was messy at first, but it all turned out perfect.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake Recipe