It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Well, really, Christmas is over.  Happy New Year!  We really did celebrate practically 12 days of Christmas – with 12 houseguests, attended 3 parties, hosted another 3 parties, and had another 4 houseguests.

In 7 days we went through the following:

• 24 pounds of prime rib
• 24 croissants and Danish
• 24 spanakopita
• 20 bottles of wine
• 18 slices of Canadian bacon
• 16 cups of flour (I didn’t have time to bake cookies)
• 9 English muffins
• 9 loaves of bread
• 8 pounds of ham
• 6 dozen eggs
• 4 pounds of sausage
• 4 cups of arborio rice
• 4 cups of oatmeal
• 3 pounds of butter
• 2 quarts of heavy cream
• 2 quarts of chicken broth
• 2 pounds of asparagus
• 2 pounds of linguine
• 2 pounds of shrimp
• 2 pounds of ground turkey
• 2 cups of cocoa
• 1.5 boxes of clementines
• 1 quart of plain yogurt

…and 1…pound of peas!

I have to owe my sister a lot of the credit for the cooking, as I caught a cold from the other sister after Christmas and was rather incapacitated for our niece’s 1st birthday party.

The menus (what we made)

Christmas Eve:

Creme brulee with vanilla sugar (we brought to hubby’s uncle’s house, while my sister entertained 10 people back in our townhouse with sausage and peppers, and meatballs)

Christmas Day:

Brunch – Eggs Benedict, fruit salad, local pastries, homemade cinnamon rolls

Dinner – Rosemary prime rib with horseradish sauce, red wine risotto (Giada de Laurentis), salad with pistachios and clementines, glazed carrots, molten chocolate cake with strawberries

Niece’s 1st Birthday/Family Christmas:

Ham & cheddar pretzels, thinly sliced prime rib, glazed ham, shrimp and pea pasta salad…and oh yes, we served a Costco chocolate mousse cake.  Yes we did.

Pictures: Molten chocolate cake, 30% of the giant roast (which I expected to be 15-18 pounds and they gave me 24), perfect prime rib with rosemary, eggs Benedict (my Hollandaise was terrible – or rather, the recipe was), homemade ham & cheddar pretzels

What I learned

• You can poach eggs ahead of time and keep them in ice water – reheat in simmering water for 30 seconds before serving
• It’s worth the extra money ($1.70 per lb) to get a rib roast from the local butcher versus Costco
• Anticipate you will be gifted with lots of wine and cookies over the holidays if you are hosting so you don’t necessarily need to provide your own
• Catching a cold will slow you down – back up reinforcements are necessary!
• If you insist in homemade everything, make things that can be frozen and reheated (i.e. pretzels were baked and then frozen couple of weeks early, cinnamon roll dough and icing were frozen unbaked and later thawed)
• It’s ok if you mix fine china with paper napkins…really
  

Home for the Holidays

Ok, we were actually at 2 homes for Thanksgiving (not to mention 4 homes for Christmas…but that’s the next post).  This will be the last time we travel 1.5 hours between dinner and dessert – we’re just too tired taking dessert for 35 over at 8PM!!

I don’t have any pictures, but we also made mini toast crudites and asparagus wrapped with prosciutto, asiago, and phyllo (Martha Stewart) for hors d’oeuvres.

The dessert rundown:

• Linzer cookies (butter cookies filled with jam that I reduced with some lemon juice)
• Chewy gingerbread men and trees
• Buche de Noel (Yule log) – this one was a chocolate flourless cake filled with whipped cream and topped with ganache – tore pretty easily and mine was very sloppy when cutting
• Chocolate covered strawberries
• Mini pains au chocolats (chocolate croissants) – Epicurious recipe that is simply puff pastry wrapped around a bar of chocolate and glazed with cinnamon sugar (I used turbinado sugar so it was less sweet)

More Good Eats

Homemade Philly cheesesteaks:

The story on this is we had a pack of buffalo short ribs which I had braised perfectly the night before.  I set it out to cool and neither of us remembered to set an alarm to get up and put them back in the fridge!  To make up for it, hubby made cheesesteaks with some awesome steak rolls and thinly sliced steak from the local Italian and farmer’s markets.  Forgiven.

My first cherry pie:

I have been very unsuccessful making double-crust pies.  They tend to tear, and when I make apple pies they sink.  This one came out well though – my first sour cherry pie, fresh picked from the local orchard.  Apparently lattice tops are more difficult than the normal crust, but I found it easier.  Follows my pattern of being able to do difficult things and executing poorly with simple tasks.  Pretty, no?

French toast with fresh peach topping:

Yet another celebration of the local orchard and weekends – yay for summer peaches!  I thickened the sauce with a typical roux of flour and butter.  I think I may have snuck in some brown sugar in too but I can’t remember.  The light is great on our deck this time of day (but boiling hot).

Grilled shrimp skewers with brown rice and swiss chard:

The shrimp was marinated in ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, and other Asian flavors.  We’re still getting used to eating Swiss chard – the first time I didn’t rinse it enough and got the unpleasant sand pieces.  My dad stated this shrimp was “awesome”, a word I don’t think he’s ever used before.  Too bad I forget the recipe. 

Year in Review

Yes, it’s been quite a long time since I’ve updated this blog.  Partly because I keep forgetting about it, partly because I haven’t decorated a cake since January!

We did manage to eat a lot this past year, though.  I’ll be posting quick recaps to get you caught up.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

• Vanilla cupcakes filled with peanut butter frosting, topped with chocolate ganache (and of course more frosting)
• Chocolate covered strawberries (Dove dark makes an awesome melting chocolate)

Triple Chocolate Cookies (1st Birthday Party)

Homemade sausage calzones (no, we didn’t make the sausage)

Foccacia – one with caramelized onions, one with tomato and rosemary

Happy Mother’s Day!  An alternative to chicken cordon bleu: chicken stuffed with spinach, onions and swiss wrapped with bacon

More to come.

The Shower Cake That Could Have Been

So here’s a story for you cake-lovers – I was hired to make a baby shower cake for someone at work as part of a surprise shower.  I had training that week, so I couldn’t go and had to send my delivery boy (aka hubby) in my place.  This shower had been planned for months, and everything was planned to a tee.

When hubby showed up to drop off the cake, what did he discover?  The mother-to-be was out sick for the week!

Tip #1: Cake doesn’t last forever.  I’ll keep a slice in the fridge for about a week (but I have no idea what the FDA thinks is an appropriate number of days).  But a whole, uneaten cake?  Might as well toss it after 2-3, because the colors will start running together.

So, good sports they are, my team decided to make the best of the situation – and ate it.  Apparently it was delicious.  The next week when she was back at work, they showed her a picture and had a Costco substitute (which no one ate because we also had a pre-holiday potluck).  Ah well.

Here’s the vanilla cake with tangy chocolate filling and buttercream icing, as the mother-to-be saw it in pictures (design based on the crib sheets):

Pretty Pretty Princess

I should note that whenever there are ugly cake pictures on here, it’s because hubby wasn’t home to take them.  Any tips on good cake photography?

A coworker asked me to bake a cake for her daughter’s 1st birthday.  Not being a mother myself, I never thought that babies need special cake ingredients – think I grew up on regular sugar and flour and I turned out…fine.  Anyway, she had a recipe for a baby-friendly carrot cake, but all the special ingredients made me nervous that it wouldn’t turn out properly.  In the spirit of fall (this was November), we ended up choosing an apple cake with cream cheese inside and out.

As inspiration, she gave me a napkin with the princess theme.  I love sparkles!

Napkin below:

For the crown, I used royal icing on parchment, then laid it on the side of a pot for curvature.

Tip #1: If you plan to stand something 3D up, make sure you draw the bottom flat!  I decided to curve it at the last minute, so when I went to put it on the cake, the bottom part wouldn’t sit.  Hence the corner attempt.

Tip #2: An object is only as strong as its weakest point.  I put too much pressure on the crown and it cracked!  Oh lord.  I did a quick royal icing repair job, but I wasn’t very happy:

The letters weren’t those storebought candy ones.  Oh no – I didn’t even think of that option until after I did these.  I used more royal icing and use pink sparkles to make it shine:

Tip #3: Make at least 3 times the amount of royal icing decorations you will need.  Even if you’ve done it a thousand times, you don’t want to risk last minute breakage.

The finished product – thanks for asking me to do this, Christine!

Go Phillies GO!

Since today is a lazy Saturday, I decided I need to desperately start catching up on my posts.

Halloween this year coincided with a great Philly victory – the Phillies won the World Series!  In tribute, I carved a pumpkin (it’s not blurry, I was afraid to carve them any straighter for fear of pumpkin implosion):

Makes me happy. 

I carved this with some small dremel bits.

Tip: CARVE OUTSIDE!  And wear clothes you don’t care about, or that can be easily washed.  See exhibit A below, with the pumpkin guts down my front within just a few minutes of carving.

Leaves Are Falling

Work has been getting more hectic recently, but there’s always time for dessert!

To celebrate the start of fall, I made a couple batches of pumpkin cheesecake brownies but they were all eaten before I got any pics. Here’s the recipe and some droolworthy images: http://carascravings.blogspot.com/2007/08/browniebabes-round-3-take-2.html

My first fall cake was what else? About a baby. Got to use my new metal comb-thing! Unfortunately I also bent the needle on my airbrush, 2nd time I’ve ever used it and now it will cost me another $7.50. Sigh. Still learning to use the thing, as cool as the effect was it didn’t exactly look real (except maybe the rose).

Quick Tip: Make sure your icing is thin enough for basketweave!!  It’ll hurt after, oh, the first two sides, and guess what?  You have another two sides to decorate.

What’s inside – lemon poppyseed with raspberry buttercream filling, topped with lemon buttercream.

Babies, Babies Everywhere

One of my sisters is preggers with her first child!  So my hubby and I jet-setted (ok, 757-setted) with a bag filled with favors out to San Fran to throw her and my brother-in-law a coed shower bash (sadly, didn’t have my other fabulously creative sister out there with me).  What do you get when you put 42 adults and 18 kids together? 

Something like that.  I spent 2.5 days in my sister’s kitchen making enough for about 100 people, then had to transport it all 45 minutes away to her friend’s house.  Then hubby manned the grill.  Thanks for doing the dishes, Mom!  The most popular food?  Homemade macaroni and cheese that was meant for the kids.  Good thing I made 2 trays!!!

And, of course, a cake.  Half chocolate and half vanilla, hope you don’t notice the slight crack down the middle of the icing.  Darn cheapo Wilton cake boards!!  Wish I could have had more decorating opportunities, hard to do with my supplies 5,000 miles away.

I’ve Got a Love-ly Bunch of Coconuts, Dodaleedo

I had a sudden craving for coconut cream pie one night.  I am so frustrated by diner coconut cream pie – it is usually dense, flavorless, and too sweet.  After baking one, I found that the key is unsweetened coconut – it was located in our international section.  Give it a nice toasty tan.  Don’t bother with the Baker’s brand stuff.

Here is the Baking Illustrated version:

Here it is after the massacre that is my stomach: