Happy June Birthday(s)!

I made a cake, but there's a story behind this cake.

A few months ago a friend of mine went for a job interview (which she eventually got, and then moved millions of miles away for!) and while on this interview she met people who held many roles in her future department. One was the Dean of Science. What a cool job title, I would love to be the Dean of Science. She also interviewed with someone who was the Cake Chair. Hello, Cake Chair?! I didn't know this could be a title, but it's certainly one I want!!

Recently I've been part of a small group of students in my department who have started a new organization, the Psychology Graduate Student Association, whose main goal is to get the large department to mingle and mix in a more social manner than we do now. This is a group that is desperately needed in our department, and something I'm very excited to be a part of. Of course, the first thing I suggested was a monthly birthday parties - I love birthdays, I love parties, I love baking cakes! I figured what else would get everyone out of their offices and chatting with each other, cake. So we decided that the last Friday of every month would be the monthly birthday party for that month. And we started as soon as we could, with June! And, in my mind if no where else, this makes me the Cake Chair!

For the first Monthly Birthday party I wanted to go with a simple (flavor-wise) cake, so that no one was disappointed. I choose Martha's Butter yellow cake, which was delicious (and my new favorite yellow cake recipe). I chose the Dark Chocolate Buttercream from the same book, but I was slightly disappointed. It was really a lot more solid than I expected. I made it the night before, and put it in the fridge, and it was a solid tub of chocolate in the morning. I had to microwave it slightly to even get it spreadable for putting on the cake. And once one the cake, it solidified pretty quickly too. It tasted great, but it was just - not what I expected.

Because they were June birthdays, I decided to decorate it with some piped chocolate butterflies. Which, in reality should have been piped days ahead of time, but I mostly forgot we were starting this and I piped them at 9pm the night before. But the first batch of butterflies were not up to par, so I ran to the store for more chocolate, and piped a replacement batch at midnight.

I used Mel's recipe for decorator's icing, and normally I fight with this so much. But, something happened right this time (maybe I finally got the HEAPING of the shortening measurement right), it was a PERFECT consistency. I also went back to a manual bag and tip for the decorating. I wanted to write on the cake, but cake writing is one of my biggest fears. I think it came out ok. I ran out of room a little, if I had my way it would read Happy JUNE Birthdays. But, I won't be picky.

Sadly, the butterflies didn't make it. The 5 minute walk from my car to school in the morning had them melty and droopy. They looked like sad hurt butterflies to me, but everyone else seemed to think they were "cute" - maybe because they hadn't seen them when they were beautiful!

Happy June Birthdays to all of our BIFL readers.

Vegan Muffins for Running!

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be in New England, and spend the day with Mel (yay!!). And, in true BIFL fashion, we spent the morning baking! Mel helped me adapt her amazing healthy muffin recipe, to exclude the eggs and make them vegan. We used 1/2 a banana per egg (and since we doubled the recipe, we ended up using 2 bananas). We made 2 dozen muffins, so that I could bring them with me on my amazing race (also, here and here, and photos) and share them with the 12 other people on my team.

Mel, I hate to admit it - I forgot to share with all 12. Somehow the bag of muffins remained in our van the whole time. Although, I don't think the van minded. They were a perfect combination of fruity and nutty, and seriously hit the spot after we ended our legs. I know Lisa and I enjoyed our fair share (and probably one or two other peoples fair share as well). Thanks for making them with me, and providing me with all the ingredients. I love it when BIFL can having simultaneous baking IN THE SAME KITCHEN!

HAPPY EASTER!

As most of you know (haha, all two of you), Scott and I spent the past year living in a really SMALL apartment out in the boonies. It had a lot of pluses (cheap, quiet) but it was time for a change. We just moved last Thursday to a larger apartment that will be better for many reasons, so we're really happy! We're all unpacked and it already feels like home. So much like home in fact that we hosted a small Easter gathering today! It was super great! Here's what was on the menu. . .

A delicious Sangria that I've made a few times before. I love the fresh lemon and orange juice. Also, I use Triple Sec instead of Grand Marnier. It's less expensive, you can't tell the difference, and I can use the left-overs for future margaritas. Thanks, Emeril!

My mother-in-law brought her famous Easter Bread. It's not Easter without it! Unfortunately I don't have the recipe, but I do have a picture:


Isn't it pretty? And around the edge of the plate are her yummy Egg Biscuit cookies.

I made a new recipe today too: Baked Asparagus with Balsamic Butter Sauce:


I took a recommendation from some of the reviewers to brown the butter a bit. I also used olive oil instead of cooking spray. It was really good! Definitely a recipe I'll use for another holiday. For everyday though, I prefer my asparagus a little more plain.

I made a chickpea salad too that I wrote about in the post below this that was tasty. Also on the menu was my mom's rice pilaf. You want that recipe? You got it!

Mom's Pilaf:

3 Tbs. butter
1/3 c. orzo
1 c. long grain rice (I use Jasmine, my mom uses Uncle Ben's)
2 1/2 c. vegetable broth (or chicken) -- I use Better Than Bullion in water

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan on medium heat. Add the orzo and cook until golden brown, making sure not to burn it. Add the rice and stir to combine. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir, remove from heat, and enjoy!

Diane made delicious Spinach Beregs, an Armenian appetizer similar to Spanikopita. Buttery, cheesy, yum.

I had a bit of a snafu with my Vidalia Onion Quiche. It's hit or miss really, and Diane has experienced the same thing. Sometimes it comes out soupy (like today!) and sometimes it's fine. Up until today, I thought that using half and half instead of 2% milk was the right choice for a more firm consistency but maybe not, unless I just didn't cook it long enough which is definitely possible. So I won't give you that recipe, though it's DELICIOUS. . . it's just kind of a mess sometimes. I can give you a picture though!


Sure, it LOOKS all innocent, right? OH, and I forgot to mention that I made two of these but one of them was a complete fail. Apparently when I was poking a few holes into the frozen pie shell with a fork (while still partially frozen, before adding the filling, so it wouldn't bubble up while baking) I may have poked a hole in the bottom that went all the way through the tin foil pie plate. . . so all I was left with in that quiche was, well, onions. I'm sure it tastes good, so I saved it. Good thing I put it on a cookie sheet before putting it in the oven!

We finished off the meal with my favorite carrot cake -- which I added 3/4 cup of raisins too because I think in the past that a whole cup is too much. I decorated it with my mother-in-law:


She did the egg and border, I did the writing :)

Wow, how's that for a long post to catch up for lost times?! I just hope I don't take an unintentional hiatus after this. I've really missed being able to host holidays and other food gatherings, so now that we have SPACE to do it I think we'll be hosting more often. You know what that means -- more cooking (and blogging!) YAY!

Catching Up!

Hi, my name is Mel, and I suck at blogging. (Look, Jenni! I'm back!)

Let's rewind a few months. . . I'm always a bit stressed and busy over the winter at work, but now that things are starting to wrap up for the year I'm ready to do some REAL cooking. For the past couple of months, I've gotten into the habit of really easy, fast, cheap meals. For breakfast it has been fruit, toast, maybe cereal (cold, I can't even be bothered with my usual beloved oatmeal!) Lunch has been peanut butter and jelly or spaghetti/ravioli (if I'm teaching a lot and need the fuel), and dinner is either salad, spaghetti (if I didn't have it for lunch!), pizza. . . oh, and if I REALLY want to go crazy, I'll heat up some fake chicken nuggets, make my mom's pilaf (see that recipe on this post), and cook some frozen broccoli or sugar snap peas. Yes, a three-part meal. Shocking, no? I did come up with some great salads though during this whole salad phase. I have rediscovered my love for salad in a bag, namely the Camps Elysee blend from Trader Joes that has mixed greens, radicchio, and shredded CARROTS for only $1.99. . . yeah, who wouldn't love that? So with that mix, I'll add cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, bell pepper, pre-marinated and grilled tofu that just needs to be cubed (easy AND delicious. . . ), honey roasted sliced almonds, and some kind of light dressing. Mmmm!

Here's a salad that Diane and I came up with over-the-phone that I made for Easter today. I cut some cherry tomatoes in half (maybe three packages?), rinsed and pinched the skin off of two small cans of chickpeas (yes, I pinched the skin off -- because I'm crazy), one English cucumber, three scallions, a small handful of shredded carrots, chopped, a small bunch of fresh basil, a smaller bunch of fresh mint, the juice from one lemon (could've used more but that was all I had), a good drizzle of EVOO, kosher salt, and freshly ground pepper. It was delicious! I'm not sure how long a salad like this, pre-dressed, will last though. But hey, it might not last too long anyway!


Okay, time to blog about the rest of Easter. This requires a different post all together! Stay tuned. . .

desperate times...

I've been busy lately. Too busy to talk to most of my friends (Hi, Mel!), too busy to go grocery shopping, too busy to eat three meals a day most days. In addition to being busy, I'm also training for a race at the end of May. It's an interesting kind of race, and I'm sure I'll give you the details of it later, but it posed an interesting problem to me today. I woke up and ran this morning at 8:30am, but I was slated to do another run at 5:30. After my first run I ate some peanut butter toast (among one of my post-run faves!) and got down to work. By about 3:30 I realized I hadn't eaten since the toast. Toast alone isn't generally enough to eat for one day, but certainly not one day when you hope to run a total of 10 miles. Of course, I had no food to speak of in the house, but I knew I must eat something. Something...fuel-y. And so, lasagna rolls were born.

I had half a package of lasagna noodles, some cherry tomatoes, a yellow squash, some grated parmesan cheese, and some fresh basil that we've been growing in the house. I sauteed the squash and tomatoes in olive oil, with a bit of basil. Then I combined the cheese and some more basil in a bowl, added the veggies when they were done. This was my filling. I dropped a few scoops onto a single lasagna noodle and rolled it up. Not surprisingly, they were delicious. And probably not a great idea to eat that 45 minutes before the second run. But, I can't wait for the leftovers!

Cake Pops: A tale of triumph over disaster

This all started last Wednesday when I saw something awesome on the internet. Cake Pops. The idea is simple. Bake a cake. Crumble it up. Mix in frosting. Form it into balls. Put it on a stick. Dip it in chocolate. The result, essentially heaven on a stick. My options were clear. Make the Cake Pops.

Luckily, for me, I was invited to a triple birthday bash over the weekend, what a perfect venue for me to unveil these guys. I should have known, anyone who "experiments" in the kitchen knows that trying something new for a particular event is never going to end well. This would be no different.

I baked Martha's Yellow Butter Cake, which may have ended my quest for a good yellow cake recipe. It was pretty tasty. When it was sufficiently cooled I crumbled it up into a bowl, and put that in the fridge. Then I started in on Martha's Strawberry Swiss Meringue Frosting. I've fought with this particular recipe so many times. It sure requires a LOT of mixing. And this time, I nailed it. The frosting was perfect. And delicious.

I started adding the frosting to the cake, and here's where the fails began. I added too much frosting, so it was a little too gooey. I should have stopped, but I didn't really know until I had gone too far. Unaware of the potential disasters lurking in my future, I rolled the cake/frosting mixture into 1 or 1.5 inch round balls. Then I threw them back in the fridge.

I melted the chocolate in the microwave, following the package instructions, and after putting the candy sticks in the cake balls I was ready to dip. No dice. The balls were so gooey, and began to fall apart in the warmed chocolate. When flipped upright to harden, the chocolatey ball of goo just slid off the stick. I tried a few, and each one was worse than before. So I stopped. With only an hour before the party, I "cleaned up" by putting 40 balls of cake and frosting on cookie sheets in my fridge, and ran out the door.

Two days later, I was trying to figure out what to do with the cake balls when I realized they'd firmed up a lot more. So I tried it again. Success. They are not pretty, I have no idea how anyone made them look like little chicks - mine are clearly lumpy blobs. I guess, you have to start somewhere. You can follow the whole process here (note, there are a lack of pictures of the mess, who knew that it would be resolved and warrant documentation). Without further ado, I introduce you to my first Cake Pops!

and the nominees are...

Mini Raspberry Cheesecakes and Oreo Truffles.

I was invited to an Oscar party last night, and of course needed to bring some Oscar-worthy treats with me. I was disappointed in my execution of the mini-cheesecakes, those are definitely not winning for any type of technical or cinematic category. In my mind, I was making them with a chocolate crust, so they would be Black and White, very elegant. But, the chocolate crust was more light brown, and the cheesecake more very yellow. The whole thing just missed the mark I was aiming for, and while they were good (have you ever met a cheesecake that wasn't??) they just weren't the hit I'd hoped for.

The Oreo truffles looked small and delicate, and tasted AMAZING, a clear front runner in this race. But they weren't without their problems. The truffles were supposed to be dipped in melted chocolate, and I waited questionably too long to do this step. I pulled out my double boiler, dumped in the chocolate, and went to town melting it. It wasn't long after that it turned into one globby clump, took on a life of it's own, and told me that there was no way I was dipping anything into it - its consistency was barely even spreadable. Somehow, I'd managed to mess up the simple step of "melt chocolate". Infuriated, I rushed to the store for more chocolate, and called my kitchen-emergency hotline (thank, Mel!) to discover that, in fact, a ganache recipe she has made clearly states "Do not use chocolate chips". I had, in fact, used chocolate chips. They were on sale and cheaper than the bars that I would have had to buy. Bad move, Jenni. Luckily, I was able to make a game time switch, and got the good stuff. On second chance I melted the chocolate ok (actually, the white chocolate never recovered, but I ran out of time to fight with it.) While, even my visions for the truffles were not quite achieved, their taste made it a moot point.

And, the Oscar goes to....

Oreo Truffles, who are gladly accepting this award on behalf of Meryl Streep and her portrayal of Julia Child!

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**Oreo truffles, totally simple:

Crush up Oreos in a food processor (save 9 crushed cookies aside for later). Combine remaining cookie crumbs, 8oz of cream cheese, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla with a mixer until mixed thoroughly. Roll into small balls and chill in fridge for one hour. Melt 1 pound of chocolate in a double boiler - careful, this part is apparently tricky. I ended up using one bar of milk chocolate and one bar of bittersweet chocolate together, I think it was a good choice. Dip the chilled oreo balls into chocolate and place on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle the remaining cookie crumbs on top. (I ran out of chocolate at one point, and simply rolled the oreo balls in the cookie crumbs for some - these were good too) Return to fridge to chill for one hour, or until you have to go!