Cakes and birthdays

37.3 and 37.4 Try 34 new recipes

It was Alex’s birthday this weekend and we celebrated the way we’ve been celebrating things around here lately…quietly and with cake. Because you have to have cake. When we were in Kelowna for spring break, we made my mom a scrumptious lemon cake with lemon curd and when it was my sisters’ birthday a month later J wanted to do the same. But it ended up being a bit busy the day they were coming (two weeks after their birthday because that’s how we roll), so I just made a lemon cake with lemon icing.

My head cake decorator had very specific requirements…this cake was blue and orange (although the final result looked pink) with purple icing (that ended up quite grey)

J was in charge of the decorations and she picked the candles. Apparently my sisters turned 211 this year. I’m not sure where that leaves me since I’m the oldest!

The cake ended up quite pretty looking. My oven almost caused a cake disaster…it wouldn’t be the first time…

For Alex’s birthday, I convinced J we could have a “normal” coloured cake, but she got to pick the flavours. Which I got to veto if the combinations were too strange. She settled on a very delicious sounding chocolate cake with peanut butter icing.

She decorated it herself with Reese’s Pieces that we sent Alex to the store specifically to get…and being the awesome daddy that he is, he was shocked and surprised when we presented him with the cake.

The cake was delicious and, due to close monitoring, my oven did not destroy this cake…but I can guarantee that if I did everything exactly the same way next time, I would end up with either a burnt or a raw cake. I miss my old oven…

I would totally make this combination again. It was a hit. I have a go-to chocolate cake recipe, but after sending Alex for Reese’s Pieces I discovered I didn’t have enough cocoa powder, so my friend Mr. Google helped me find a recipe based on how much cocoa powder I did have. And dear Martha came through again. I loved this cake. And it only took one bowl. And normally I’m not a fan of chocolate cake at all…maybe I have a new go-to? The frosting was fabulous…I might play around with it next time…less butter more peanut butter? We’ll see.

YUM!

A very late birthday post

In which a few pictures are displayed. And I get two recipes closer to completing 101 in 1001 challenge 36.12 and 36.13: Try 50 new recipes

So, a couple of months ago it was my dad's birthday.

He came to Vancouver to see us J (my mom came too).


We invited my cousin and her family over for dinner.


J loved baby C.


She took her clothes off and read/sang C Baby Beluga.


I made cake.


Martha Stewart's Versatile Vanilla Cake to be exact. MMMmmm...so good! My mom used to make us a white cake from the Purity Cookbook and it was scrumptious. Well, this one came close. My mom actually thought it was that recipe. But it wasn't. Because that one had shortening in it. This one has butter and a heck of a lot of eggs.


Sooooooooo good!

And the icing was Billy's Chocolate Buttercream, another Martha Stewart recipe. It was soooooo good. I remembered that icing can be frozen, so I froze half of the icing because, holy crap, I generously filled and iced a cake and still had a ton of icing left. Note to self: halve Martha's buttercream recipes in the future!

34. Make cupcakes with the cupcake kit from Maggie

Remember this? Maggie had a giveaway and I won a super cute cupcake kit. SUPER CUTE.


I didn't forget, I just haven't had time to make cupcakes (or when I have had time, I haven't had enough people around to eat 24 cupcakes!)


So, this weekend I hosted a shower for my cousin Harmony and I figured that would be the perfect time to use the kit.


They were sooooo good! I used Martha Stewart's recipes for the cupcakes and the icing.


Tasty!

Thanks Maggie! Everyone thought these were so cute (and we're a little sad we can't find them north of the 49th)

36.9 and 36.10 Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes with Billy's Vanilla Buttercream

For Harmony's shower, I made Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes with Billy's Vanilla Buttercream. I had thought I'd do half Vanilla and half Billy's Chocolate Buttercream, but as I decided it was enough to make the vanilla and use two colours.

This recipes makes 30 cupcakes and since I was using my cupcake kit from Maggie which had 24 cases and birds, I decided I'd make small cupcakes with the rest of the batter for the little girls at the party (HA! They wanted huge cupcakes, but the little ones definitely didn't go to waste)

J helped me out by licking the batters clean of icing (and then asking for "mo' peeze")

Oh such pretty cupcakes papers!

And the icing was perfect!

I love the birds!

J calls little cupcakes "babycakes" and these little babycakes were perfect! It took a heck of a lot of food colouring to get the icing orange though! See my spider plate peeking through? I got it as a shower gift three years ago and haven't really ever used it...

I'd make these again...the cupcakes and icing together used an entire pound of butter and I think if I made them again, I'd only make half of the icing. I seriously had way too much (and didn't think to freeze the extra until it had made its way into Alex and the garbage...)

YUMMY! Way to go on this recipe Martha!

36.6 Try 50 new recipes - Pumpkin-Swirl Brownies

Oh my. Martha Stewart outdid herself this time!

Any recipe that starts with this:


has got to be great!

I made these the night before we went away for Thanksgiving. These pumpkin-swirl brownies were awesome. We had a very non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner of lasagne and brownies and wow! MMMM...

The were moist and gooey and scrumptious and it's a very good thing that I don't normally keep an entire package of bittersweet chocolate on hand or I might be making these more often...

I was going to take a picture of one of the brownies but they vanished too quickly!

36.2 AND 36.3 Try 50 new recipes - Broccoli Calzones in Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

Alex is working days.

This is good. Mostly. BUT. Well, dinner time sucks. Before J started at her new daycare, when Alex worked days (which means he starts at noon), he would take J to daycare and I would go to work early. I'd leave work early so that I could pick her up. Which meant I'd pick her up around 4:00 or 4:30. And we'd get home no later than 5:00. And because she went in with Alex and not me, she didn't have to get up until 7:00 or 7:30. Not just after six like she is now.

Which means she's tired and cranky and hungry and just wants to play, read and cuddle with Mommy. But if Mommy does that, well, when will we eat???

So, I decided to hunt down some recipes I could make ahead and freeze.

And the first one was Martha's Broccoli Calzones. They require pizza dough, so I used Martha's Whole Wheat Pizza Dough recipe as well.

I stupidly started just before nine on Sunday night. A Sunday night when I really should have been in bed by about 8:30!

I haven't baked anything requiring yeast for a few years, but I still wasn't happy with how much this foamed.

But, since I didn't have any more yeast to start that part again, I said to heck with it and soldiered on. We needed something for dinner for Monday night.

Saute this up a little (more Avtar garlic. That stuff is good!)

Mix up three kinds of cheese (as long as your husband hasn't made a snack of them)

Mix the two together to get this yummy filling.

Oh, and the dough doubled, just like it was supposed to. Maybe the yeast *was* foamy enough...

Make little calzone parcels and freeze or bake (or stick in the fridge for tomorrow. Don't forget to tell your husband not to take them in his lunch. They're not quite done...hello, still raw!)

Toss them in the oven when you get home and spend the next half hour or so playing with your toddler. Your toddler will be thrilled that you're not in the kitchen!

Cheat a bit with the sauce and use your favourite bottled marinara because you just want to spend time with your kid.

Alex and I loved it. J, not so much. She had steamed broccoli and cauliflower and a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. She told me about sixty-eight times "Jocie no like soup!" and "Red soup yuck!" I even served hers in one of those plates with compartments and the sauce wasn't touching the calzone. Oh, and "Yucky white broccoli. Yucky green broccoli. Jocie no want cheese. Yucky."

Oh well. This kid isn't a fan of pizza either. And really, that's all a calzone is - a folded up pizza.

So, the calzones were definitely a grown up hit (I'll try again with J in a few months) - tasty, filling, and with secret vegetable servings for he who eats no green. I'll be making this again - I'm looking for other filling suggestions, so if you have any, please let me know!

Carrot Muffins

My parents came to drop J off ten days ago and brought us some farm fresh produce from Papa Billy's garden. But, we had an over abundance of carrots AND they're coming back later today with promises of more vegetables. The people at my house will only eat so many steamed carrots and carrot soup...So, what to do?


All of the carrots were small like these ones - ranging in size from a small "normal" carrot to the size of a large paperclip. My good friend Martha has a recipe that I decided to try - I figure muffins are good freezing food...I did pull out the food processor though. There was NO WAY I was going to hand grate those dinky (but oh so tasty) little carrots.


The batter came out very thick and I actually added a splash or two of milk because it was just too thick and too dense to manipulate with the spoon. And as I made the first batch, I made lots of mental notes in my head.

The first batch came out of the oven and were yummy, so it was time to make a second batch (seriously, I could probably make four more batches tonight and still have carrots left and that's not taking into account the new carrots I will likely acquire tonight!). I'm a big believer of following a recipe the first time you make it and then tweaking it later (small tweaks are okay - I'm not a huge walnut fan, so I often sub in some pecans and in this recipe I opted for canola oil over butter. Because I'm too lazy to measure and melt butter).


The second time I made my changes - I doubled the spices, added close to 1/4 cup of milk, swapped out 3/4 cup of all purpose flour for whole wheat (which is why the milk is more than the splash I used the first time).

Can you tell which is the first batch and which is the second batch?

OH...if the first batch were yummy, the second batch were heaven! The only other modification I'd make would be to grate the carrots by hand - I think they'd be finer and juicier and better, but these were awesome. They passed the test of my two year old, who asked for more muffins ALL evening, my eight year old nephew, my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law (who had a batch #1 muffin and still thought they were super!). Oh, and of course it passed the Alex test...which can be tricky when the food is "snack" food trying to be healthier!

If I didn't have yogurt, I'd probably use 3/4 cup of milk but sour it first with some fresh orange juice and add some zest to the muffins. That would be yummy!

Special treats

Please excuse all the photos. I dusted my camera off and was amazed at the lovely pictures it took compared to my phone. Must stop using the phone for blog pictures.

We were eating lots of granola bars. Too many really. I'm trying to cut back on things like that. I actually have a recipe for banana oat bars (with chocolate chips - SUPER YUMMY) and a recipe from Rebecca for granola bars and I'd much rather we ate homemade goodies than store bought because, well, at least then I have a bit of control over what's in them.

But it's too hot to turn the oven on now. I thought about alternatives, but I don't think my neighbours would appreciate it much if I decided to use a cardboard box oven in the courtyard. They'd probably call the fire department. So, all recipes with oven involvement are on hold for now.


But we had no granola bars for lunch snacks. Heck, other than fruit, which is awesome, we had no lunch snacks. I need a bit of carbohydrate between meals or I get a migraine. Alex is a male, so he just needs carbohydrates. Preferably lots of them.


I looked through my cookbooks and random recipes and found this in my BOOK (the book is the ruler of our house. I keep meaning to write about it and haven't, but I will, soon. If I remember).


I've made them once before, but they didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. I did note my changes on the recipe, so I decided to try them again.

I looked up 10oz of marshmallows and that's 283.5 grams. HUH? I don't have a kitchen scale (hello Christmas list) but even if I did, that's a whacky amount. After I made them the last time, I decided I'd check out the recipe for Rice Krispie Squares and adjusted the marshmallows and butter to be more like that recipe. Well, actually, a bag of marshmallows has about 4 3/4 cups marshmallows, so I used all of the marshmallows and only reduced the butter by 2 tsp, not one Tbsp.

ready...set...

melting marshmallows

more melted

mmmm gooey marshmallows

I felt like the cranberries were there by accident last time, so I almost doubled the dried fruit (I also added apricots this time to give it some more fun colour). I'd add more dried fruit than this if I make them again...the extra marshmallows and butter would let me!

marshmallows ready to go

stirring

I didn't use Martha's big cookie sheet idea this time. They were way too thin (much thinner than in her picture) and fell apart immediately when you picked them up. I used two 8x8 dishes (I thought one might be enough after the mess last time, but no) but next time I'd probably use a 9x13. Then they'd be a bit thicker, but a bit smaller and I think that's good.


It took way longer than an hour to set. It actually didn't really ever set (I don't remember Rice Krispie Squares having this problem) and I ended up putting them in the fridge. I'm not sure if it's because it's SO STINKING HOT or if it's because I used store brand marshmallows. It did this the last time too. And it was hot then. And I used store brand marshmallows.

I think I'll make these again...just maybe not when it's hot out!

*The one thing that drives me nuts about Martha Stewart's recipes is that none of them come with any kind of nutritional information...I found a calculator here, but if you know of a better one, I'd love to hear about it!