Birthday Yeah!

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!!
Today is my 27th 'B'day, Yeah! This is the birthday cake I made for my friend Misty and I's birthday party. It is cake on the cover of Alice Medrich's book "Bittersweet." This is the third time I've made this cake and it is getting easier each time. That said, this is a time consuming recipe but the results are very yummy and impressive.

Easter!

Ah! I have taken a while to post. Work has gotten busy and I decided to paint my kitchen. The kitchen is only half done and it seems like it might stay like that for the time being. Back to food. I abked the Lemon Sables, or shortbread cookies, from Greenspan's "Baking From My Home to Yours." This was my second time making them and they turned out awesome and were very easy. A great stand by recipe and you can store the dough in rolls in the freezer and take them out to bake when you need them. Too Cool. I also made the super easy yeast rolls from the Betty Crocker cookbook. As always a big hit and very simple. Yum Yum.

To Souffle or not to Souffle?

I made my first Souffle today. Well, these are souffles that you allow to fall so they aren't so special for height. They taste wonderful though. They are Fallen Chocolate Souffle with Chocolate Bavarian Cream with Carmel sauce from The Royal Chef, Darren McGrady, www.theroyalchef.com. These taste like gooey brownies with yumminess. The thing I thought funny was that there are port soaked prunes in the souffles. I thought they would taste funny, but they are very good and you would have no idea they were prunes.

Red!

cake 2
Originally uploaded by WendiLeigh.

In honor of Valentine's day I decide to try my hand at the reddest dessert around. Red Velvet Cake with cream cheese frosting. The cake is from the Lee Brother's cookbook I got for Christmas. It turned out beautiful, but the flavor was lacking somewhat. The cake was rich and flavoriful but it was dry. I will try it again, but add some oil and liquid to make it moister. I did ace the cream cheese frosting for the first time.

ginger snaps!

These are the Sugar Topped Molasses Spice cookies in Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking From My Home to Yours." They are great giant ginger snaps. At first when they were hot I loved them and then when they got cool they were very, very crisp. I didn't like how hard they were. Now I seem to keep snacking on them. They really are good and spicy and better than the store bought ginger snaps I seem to enjoy. Next time I might make them smaller so they are more snacky. They would also be good dipping cookies.

lemon creme

I made this on Christmas day. Actually I made the parts a couple of days in advance and just baked the crust and put it together on Christmas. This is the Lemon Creme Tart from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking from My Home to Yours." I love this thing and I mean it. It is the best tart/lemon pie I've ever tasted. The white stuff on top is whipped Creme Fraiche with a pinch of sugar added. It's a nice touch to the lemon. I will definately make this again but next time I'll bake it in the approraite 9" tart pan versus the 11" one I made it in so the filling comes up to the top.

Lemon Sables

I made the traditional french sable recipe from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking From My Home to Yours, but at lemon zest. They are a yummy, buttery, shortbread cookie. I like them because they aren't too sweet, the sugar on the outside edge add enough sweet but do not over power the richness of the cookie. They were easy to make and I will definately do it again. They remind me of those danish butter cookies you get in tins around Christmas, the ones with pretzel shaped cookies dipped in clear decorater's sugar, yum yum.

Truffles galore!

These are some of the 100+truffles I made for Christmas gifts this year. I got the recipe from Carole Bloom, cookbook author, teacher, and more, during a cooking class I took. The same class as the peanut brittle. She made the Chinese five spice truffles for us in class and gave us the recipe for it. I took that recipe split it in half and made three different flavors using the same basic idea as the original recipe. I made 5 spice, orange, and mint truffles. My favorite is the orange, I used the fresh zest of an orange that I steeped with the cream and a couple teaspoons of grand marnier over the chocolate. I also really like the 5 spice which are different but addictive. I used 70 percent Schrafen Berger chocolate which is my go to chocolate. The recipe says it makes 60 truffles but each half recipe of mine made 35-45 truffles. I guess I made mine on the small side but I kinda like it that way because they are that rich.

peanut brittle

I made peanut brittle last night. It was the first time I have tried and after I burnt the first batch of sugar, which made the whole house smell like toasted marshmellows, I succeeded. The recipe was from cookbook author Carole Bloom. I took a class with her at the cooking school in town and she made them. Hers was the best brittle I ever had so I had to try and make it for Christmas. She dipped hers in chocolate, which I might do, but I liked it plain. It was an easy recipe to follow and except for my burning sugar, it came out perfectly. I liked the fact that I didn't need to use a candy themometer. I should have some more of her recipes up in a few days. Yum yum.

Me write good

Here is a long over do photo of the cake I made for my sister-in-law's birthday in September. It is the same cake I made and wrote about last spring, a recipe from Alice Medrich. It tasted and looked just as wonderful the second time around. I really am posting this so that my brother can see that I do have decent penmanship when I use frosting.

Gram's best

I found this recipe for Chicken Pot Pie in an issue of Saveur magazine, my favorite zine. The recipe said it was really chicken n' dumplings and they were right. The recipe, which requires you make your own stock, is easy to follow and very very yummy. The thing that is really cool is that they taste just like how I remember Great Gram's, my great grandmother, chicken n' dumplings tasted. We have been trying to recreate her amazing dish without any luck since she died. I was excited when I saw the recipe and thought I might have found something to compare to hers and I was right. It is just like I remember hers. I make it all the time and the leftovers are quite yummy reheated or cold.

fall food fun

This week feels like fall finally. I am making lots of yummy fall things curtesy of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I am making many different things from the October issue. Yesterday I made the apple cider seltzer. It was good but a little sweet I think I might put in more seltzer water next time. Today I made the yummy desert from one of the menus, apple three ways. It consists of a baked apple, apple cake and apple ginger snow. I photographed like they did but my favorite is the second one. It is very yummy. I wil definately hang onto the apple cake recipe, yum, yum, yum. The apple ginger snow is very light and good too. It is basically lightly sweetened egg whites whipped with apple sauce folded in. So I learned how to make apple sauce yeah. The tastey part is the maple syrup you drizzle over the top, the real stuff.

cupcakes

I made fun cupcakes today! Yeah! They are yummy. I used the recipe for fast fudge cake in Alice Medrich's Chocolate holidays book. The cake is awesome, very moist, chocolatey, and easy to make. I think this will be my fool proof cake recipe from now on. It took me 5 maybe 10 minutes max to make the batter and only 20 minutes to cook the cupcakes. The other cool part is that I had everything to make the cake in the pantry and most people would have it too. Very delicious, almost brownie like but not as heavy. Then I made the frosting, which was another winner. I got the buttercream recipe from the CIA Baking at Home cookbook. I made the regular buttercream and the mocha buttercream. Both of them are very yummy and taste amazing. I love the recipe because you don't have to make a sugar syrup and then add it to the butter while its creaming. I always get a mess that way and nothing edible. This recipe was fast and easy and you cream the butter and then added powdered sugar. It's well worth making and the recipe will also be my standard frosting recipe from now on. Now I need to work on my decorating skills. Yum Yum.

Fun tourist shots!

These are fun photos from my trip up north this summer with my folks. I personally think went all the way to Montana to she the giant penguin, but the offical story is to see the parks, teton, yellowstone, glacier, and Banff. I also like the shot of my dad "the Exhibit," but my money shot is of the lake in Glacier. I took it on 120 also but it's not the same becuase by the time I got the camera out of the car, my dad had moved the car down the road to the bathroom, the water had ripples on it. Never leave the car without all needed gear.

hmmm

I just wanted to say I was big when I was little.

I made a real pie!

I did it. I mean I really did it. I made a real pie. Yes, it was not pie soup, but real old fashioned blueberry pie. This time I mixed the berries with sugar, cinnamon and lots of flour. It was awesome. The crustt was very flaky and the inside was good and juicy and held it's shape like pie should. Now I think I can do it. It is a step in the right direction.

Biscuits!!!

Yeah, I love biscuits. These were good ones, too. I tried the buttermilk biscuit recipe in the CIA book and they were great. The best part were they were flaky. I folded the dough as I rolled it and I think that is why there were distinct layers in the dough. The cool part was that you could pull off layer by layer of the biscuit. yum yum yummy. I will make them again.

Muffins!!

Muffins make me happy. And the blueberry muffins in the CIA book make me very happy. They were easy to make and they are some of the best all around blueberry muffins I've ever had. Rick, my husband, liked them but thought they were a little too sweet and too light. I think poo poo on him. They are awesome and yummy in my tummy.

pie

I can not make Pie. But, in the next few weeks I am determined to learn how. I decided to make a blackberry pie using the crust recipe in the CIA book. Well the crust was good, but I have another crust recipe I like a tad bit more. The bad thing was that like usual I had pie soup. Way too much liquid. I even added cornstarch to thicken it. It didn't work. The thing, pie I mean, was ok if you can drain it first. I did look nice. Stay tuned for more pie making atempts.

Blackberries!!!

I love pick your own berries. This past week I went up towards Fredricksburg, Texas and picked blackberries. It was fun, but HOT!!! The sad thing is the farm that I pick at, like other farms in the area, was hit with terrible weather and doesn't have a single peach on their trees. Peaches of course are their main crop. But, they had yummy blackberries. They are the coolest people and gave me some of their surplus squash and cucumbers.