Happy Halloween?

Some of us celebrated Halloween a week LATE because a certain sister (Diane) was sick. The cake was already made of course, hanging out in the freezer, so I just decorated it this past weekend for when we went over to Diane's house to celebrate. It was a wonderful evening. We ate chips, delicious guacamole, and CAKE! We also watched one of my favorite movies: CLUE! So here's the very traditional-looking jack-o-lantern cake that I made:


I should've taken a picture of the middle too after we cut into it, but of course didn't think about bringing my camera. It was a marble cake, and I died the white cake part of it orange. I also added chocolate chips because it didn't look chocolatey enough. It was good! Now I have to wait another year before using that cake pan again. Oh well.

The Tofu Chronicles, Part II -- Boston!

1:46pm - I'm waiting for my rice to come to a boil. My oil is heating up in the wok. Must run!

1:50pm - I'm cooking up the green curry paste and it smells amazing! I added the coconut milk (the rest of the can that I didn't use IN the paste) and then realized if it ends up too spicy I'm out of luck. . . no more coconut milk to cool it down! Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Oh, and I used two chilli peppers of the optional one to three.

1:54pm - I have ten minutes now, phew! The rice is cooking away. The tofu is cooking with the curry paste, coconut milk, and a medium pinch of shredded kaffir lime leaves. . . ?

2:01pm - I'm starving.

2:15 - I must rescue my frozen broccoli from the microwave and check on the already cooking yam, red bell pepper, carrots, and cauliflower!

2:19pm - Added the snow peas.

2:22pm - Pouring a glass of wine that's left over from Jenni's Chocolate and Red Wine Cupcake recipe that I whipped up this morning for a friend's party tonight. Adding the broccoli.

2:27pm - I tried the sauce and luckily it's not too spicy! I did add a little more soy sauce though because it was lacking saltiness -- just a bit.

2:59pm - I'm ready to eat when you are, Jenni!

3:18pm - Eating! Oh my. This is really quite delicious! I think it's still lacking in the saltiness department, but it's okay because it's so flavorful. I'm going to take my plate into the TV room and devour this yumminess while watching yesterday's Barefoot Contessa. More on her tomorrow. . . she's doing a book signing in Natick that I'm going to! :o

The Tofu Chronicles, Part II - Texas.

All times reported herein are in Central Standard Time!

12:02pm - I've begun draining the tofu, it's weird.  I've got it on some paper towels and sandwiched between two cutting boards with some cook books on top.  There is so much water coming out.  Is this what's supposed to happen?!  I might be ruining this before I even really begin.

12:08pm - mmm, lemongrass!  This is also my first experience with this, and wow - it smells amazing.  Almost as good as lemon pledge.  Who knew.  I'm sans food processor, so I've begun putting all my paste in

gredients into a bowl, and will cycle it through the hand-held chopper I

 do have.  

12:18pm - thanks to the gloves I "borrowed" from the whole foods spice section, I will not be having jalepeno hands!  In go the chillies (or chilli!)

12:20pm - "one small onion", mine was large.  I wanted to use only half, but even that seemed like too much.  I didn't use the whole half.  We'll see.

12:36pm  - so many firsts.  I've never used ginger either.  But lemongrass and ginger may be my two new favorite ingredients.  This smells good, and all I've done is chop so far.

12:37pm - my one loose cup of coriander leaves and stems is in, and it's what I call cilantro.

  The last thing to go in the paste...my interpretation of "kaffir lime leaves", which will include some zest and some juice from a kaffir lime.

12:53pm - the gre

en curry paste is made.  I managed to cycle it all through the hand chopper, and then get it all back in at one time for a final spin!  smells good.  I must pause now to run and get some rice (oops!) and make a few other arrangements for the study session happening promptly at 3pm.

1:18pm - we're back.  Rice is on.  Frying pan is heating up.  I am also sans wok, so I'll be using a large frying pan.  I guess this is the Green Curry Tofu without all appropriate kitchen appliances version!!

1:32pm - I'm impressed really, it's an hour and a half (holy god) after I started and I am just not suffering my first cooking induced injury.  I mean, I've used so many knives, gloves, juggled bottles - this is a miracle.  When adding my "kaffir lime leaves" (aka, more zest and juice) to the frying pan I dropped the lime and grated my knuckle.  awesome!  

1:39pm - I heeded Mel's advice, and I stirred completely the paste and coconut milk before adding the tofu (so as 

not to have to stir it too much).  also, I cut my tofu a bit larger than bit sized, in case it began to fall apart it would still be big enough.  We'll see.  ten minutes on.

1:50pm - I've officially added too much stuff already.  I put in my red bell pepper (or one and a half, they were small) and I used eggplant instead of yams.  The frying pan is getting full.  I still have broccoli, snow peas, cauliflower, and baby corn to add.  Maybe I'll remove some of the larger eggplants chunks.  Ten more minutes!

2:01pm - broccoli (is for lovers), cauliflower, snow peas and baby corn added to the mix!  4 or so more minutes...

2:06pm - ten minutes until taste test!

2:18pm - Mmmmm!  This is pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

Today is the day: Green Curry Tofu Interstate Simu-live Blog-off

A recipe has been selected, ingredients acquired, preparations have been made. At 1pm (eastern)/12pm (central) we will both begin making our own Green Curry Tofu dishes.  This is my very first time cooking with Tofu, and I'm very excited!

yes we cake

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the
destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

*Broccoli is for lovers urges everyone to exercise their democratic right to vote today! Click here to find your polling place!

Carrot cake is for lovers

I've discovered a new love: carrot cake! It wasn't a love at first, let me tell you. . .

I made this cake for my friend's husband's birthday. She gave me their "family" recipe that he loves because it's plain and simple. It was very easy to make, however getting it out of the pans was quite the task! So note to self: use parchment paper. I think carrot cake is usually sticky by nature, so Baker's Joy cannot be used by itself. The combination of Baker's Joy and parchment paper is key. I will remember this for next time.

The decoration was a combined idea (Jenni and myself) and I'm proud to say that I discovered that I'm not an idiot and can in fact created a simple shell border (see, on the bottom?) I was using the wrong tip in the past. . . haha. Good job. I'm excited to make another carrot cake so I can separate those carrots on top a little more. I got that idea from some web site. . . not sure where it was now that I think about it. But I just used a medium round tip for the carrot and the leaf tip for the tops. It was really easy! I like easy designs that look hard, don't you? So there you go.

I got to taste some of the cake (that stuck to the pan) and it was good, but I made another carrot cake with a different recipe a few days later that had ALL of the fixings. I put it in the freezer and will frost and decorate it later this week for Michelle. Perhaps I'll post a picture of that one too. But this recipe is DELICIOUS! I didn't use the buttermilk glaze, but I imagine it's fantastic. I also used a different recipe for cream cheese frosting (left over from the cake above). So for this new recipe, I just added raisins to it, a little less than a cup, but I would probably add a whole cup next time. And believe me, there will be a next time, and a time after that, and a time after that, and oh my gosh I love it so much.

Cupcake Fever

It was a friend's quarter-century birthday last week, and she's been begging for carrot cake since I last tried to make it for Easter.  You'll recall that at Easter I wanted to make cupcakes, but I had no cupcake pans (HOW?!) and so I made a bundt cake. After that tragedy I quickly bought some cupcake pans, and this time around I made the cupcakes I wanted.  Thanks to the best birthday present ever, Williams-Sonoma mechanical pastry bag, I used the super-large open star tip and swirled the cream cheese frosting on top for a fancy finish!

There is a story in here, although it's not about the baking.  It's about the cupcake pans.  In March when I discovered I had none I was amazed.  I couldn't believe I didn't have cupcake pans - but I decided maybe they had been my old roommates and were left with her in Boston.  On Monday when I went to bake these cupcakes I opened the under-stove drawer where my pans are, and there were no cupcake pans.  I've been doing some major house reorganization lately, so I checked in the cabinet with other pots and pans and baking sheets.  Not there.  Now, I was sure I had two cupcake pans, but I couldn't find them.  I opened the under-stove drawer one more time, and as I did this I accidentally pushed one cake pan over the back edge and into the scary dark abyss.  As I reached my hand back to get the lost cake pan, I heard it clink against something.  So I did some more digging.  And what did I find there??  FOUR cupcake pans.  The two I bought in March nestled snuggly on top of the two I couldn't find in March.  Apparently, the under-stove drawer is constantly stealing my cupcake pans.  But the good news is, now I can make FORTY-EIGHT cupcakes at once!!