Let them eat cake!

Or, in the words of Donkey "What about cake?  Everybody loves cake!"

Just because an item has "cake" in its name does not mean it is something you would want to eat.  A cake of soap is on no one's list of favorite foods (especially if as a child you had a problem with back-talking and were frequently invited to literally wash your mouth out...).  Ditto the urinal cake, yellow cake uranium, and suet cakes.  But then there is the diaper cake, which has the redeeming quality of being adorable, which none of those other pseudo-cakes have:

My recent relocation was largely influenced by one of my friends, because a) she lives in the Dallas area; b) had an extra bedroom I could live in; and c) kept telling me I should move to Dallas and go to pastry school, and after endless repetition, any idea starts to sound like a good one.  For the purposes of this blog she has decided she would like to go by the name "Roommate."  And now that that has been explained, I can continue with the story.

This weekend, Roommate was hosting a baby shower for her cousin's wife.  Or, if we are being technical, which I am sure Roommate would appreciate as it makes things more entertaining, the shower was for her cousin's stepson's wife, or her step-second cousin-in-law.  Either way, Roommate loves her family, and she loves the idea of crafty things and baking things, even though she does not particularly care for the actual crafting and baking.  In her own words, she does not have the patience for making craft projects (at least, not by herself) and she cannot stand the way flour feels on her hands.  And this is where I come in, because as it just so happens, I enjoy doing all of those things.

Because Roommate's cousin and his wife decided not to find out the sex of their baby until it is born, most of their showers are planned for after the baby is born so they don't end up with a year's supply of gender-neutral outfits.  However, one thing that you can never have enough of and can get in either gender-neutral or gender-specific varieties is diapers.  So it was decided that Roommate would be hosting a diaper party (or as they call it down here, a diaper pounding), making a diaper cake, and serving cupcakes and punch.  In the end, we made the diaper cake together, I made the cupcakes and frosting, and Roommate helped me frost them, and everything was a major success.

Once again, we have Pinterest to thank for all of our inspirations.  Because of the baby gender surprise situation, the nursery colors were yellow, green, and orange, with giraffes and polka dots.  After looking for diaper cakes on Pinterest, I came across this Giraffe Safari Cake:

It is pretty cute on its own, but it is from a website that sells premade diaper cakes, so we decided to use it as our inspiration and then search for a diaper cake tutorial.  The tutorial from Hammer & Thread seemed to be pretty easy to follow, and their cakes were adorable (see the first picture) so that was the one we went with.  I am not going to repost the directions, but I will say that it is most definitely a two-person project, and you will want to use either wired ribbon (as they suggest) or ribbon that is patterned on both sides, because using a non-wired ribbon that has a pattern on one side and is white on the other side made making bows much more difficult than necessary.  Our diaper cake received the appropriate amount of oohs and aahs:

You may notice that the giraffe wood cutout is the exact same as the one used in the inspiration diaper cake.  It (plus the snake and zebra) came from Hobby Lobby, as did the ribbons, the stuffed giraffe and letter D (baby's last name) cake topper, the fabric covering the base, and the monkey and banana buttons used in the center of the bows.  The lion and elephant are rattles from IKEA.  The diapers are newborn (white) and size 1 (polka-dots) from Target.  Roommate suggested to mommy-to-be that she get some basic shadow box frames and cute scrapbook paper and use the wood cutout animals as nursery decoration (see, she likes the idea of crafts), and mommy-to-be loved that idea.

When we were planning the shower, it was mentioned that daddy-to-be wanted to come also.  It has been suggested by people who know him that he was maybe feeling a little left out, so we decided not only could he come, but that he should get a gift too, especially after we saw a Daddy Doody Kit on Pinterest:

And our version:

The D (stamped with "Daddy Doody Kit") was left over from the diaper cake (sold as a 2 pack, we painted them orange).  In the bucket, we included a pair of gloves, a pair of safety glasses, face masks, a pair of tongs (for removal), the leftover diapers from the cake, a package of wipes, diaper rash ointment, baby wash, baby washcloths (in their colors even!), the only package of onesies Target had that were distinctly unisex (black-and-white striped, white with black stars, and white with "just arrived" embroidered on it), and a bib that says "I love Daddy."  Other than the D and the ribbon bow, everything came from either Target or Lowes.  

For the shower itself, we had chocolate and white cupcakes (75 total...) frosted with vanilla buttercream, some of which we colored yellow, orange, and green.  Both types of cupcakes were excellent and equally well-liked.  There are no making-of pictures, and the recipes were followed exactly, so I will just give you the links to the recipes and this picture of the table:

Chocolate Cupcakes - without the raspberry preserves and whipped ganache - not the world's most intensely chocolate and overly rich cupcakes as advertised, and the lack of eggs concerned me until they were baked and eaten (the lack of eggs is okay), but very good

White Cupcakes  - fluffy, almost like angel food cake - the batter seemed overly sweet, but the cupcakes after baking were excellent

Vanilla Buttercream - "tastes like homemade frosting" - nothing special, but the flavor was good and it was very easy to make and decorate with.

Like Lamb and Tuna Fish

There are certain combinations of foods that just belong together, especially in our minds.  What goes with spaghetti?  Meatballs.  Peanut butter? Jelly.  Milk?  Cookies.  And so on and so forth.  And even though we all know that you can have spaghetti with out meatballs, peanut butter without jelly, and milk without cookies, that connection still exists in our minds.

I have a great, no awesome, no amazing, group of friends from college, and even though we are slowly spreading around the country and even around the globe, we try to get together a few times a year.  Our most reason get-together was a few days before Christmas for our secret Santa gift exchange.  Because of its central location, we decided to congregate at my parents' house.  This left me in charge of food preparation for our dinner, which was fine by me, except for the responsibility of menu planning,  I love cooking and baking, but sometimes I panic when making new things for people, because if they don't like what I've made, it's all there is and then we're stuck with it.  This may sound irrational, but that's the way it is.  However, in the end, we came up with a plan for soup and salad.  After scouring the internet/looking at foodgawker, I found two recipes that sounded wonderful: Roasted Tomato Soup and Loaded Baked Potato Soup.  The instant I found the tomato soup recipe, my brain started saying "And grilled cheese sandwiches!  No wait, MINI grilled cheese sandwiches!"  The meal was a huge success, especially my mom's brilliant idea to serve the soups in mason jars.  This was made necessary by the fact that there were ten people total eating soup for dinner that night, and two different types soups were available, and we had a total of five bowls in the house.  Unfortunately, no pictures exist from that night.  While we may be an amazing group of people, we tend to not be so great at photo-documenting.  Fortunately, all food prepared that night was so delicious I have no objections to making it again.

For the Roasted Tomato Soup, the main thing that stood out to me was the "roasted" aspect.  Oftentimes, tomato soup ends up being essentially a thinned-out smoothed-out version of tomato sauce, and while tomato sauce is delicious, if I want tomato sauce, I'll have pasta, not soup.  But the roasting changes the flavor of the tomatoes and makes it non-saucy.  To roast the tomatoes, you slice them in half, remove the stem, toss some garlic around them, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and roast until caramelized.  

And after reading the directions, I decided to add some roasted red peppers along with the roasted tomatoes (wow, two entries, two roasted red pepper recipes...).  I roasted the peppers and tomatoes separately, because I was making a pan full of peppers too, but you could of course do them at the same time, as long as you remember to rotate the peppers.  The other changes I made from the original recipe were to swap out the cayenne pepper for berbere spice (an Ethiopian spice mixture that I love), and to use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.  I have a friend who is vegetarian which is what necessitated the swap, and after making it for a second time with chicken stock, I definitely prefer the vegetable stock version.

While the tomatoes roast, go ahead with the rest of the of the recipe, chopping onions and carrots, sauteing them in butter along with the spices.  Once the tomatoes are done, add the stock, the herbs, and the roasted peppers, tomatoes, and garlic.  Simmer away until the liquid has reduced by 1/3.  You can use the other end of a wooden spoon to measure, or you can eyeball it based on the residue left on the sides of your pot:

Once it has reduced, remove the herb stems, then blend until smooth.  For this, I highly recommend a handheld immersion blender.  I bought a $15 one, and even though it can only be used for one minute at a time (it has to rest for another minute before using it again) it is the best $15 I have spent.  The immersion blender is so much easier to use than the old technique of transferring some of the hot soup to a blender or food processor and blending a little bit at a time.  Seriously, if you like homemade soup, go get an immersion blender!  After blending, stir in the cream, then stir in the remaining broth to get the desired consistency (I used all the broth both times I have made this).  And then, voila, eat your soup!  And don't forget the mini grilled cheese sandwiches!

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup  

Adapted from Joylicious

2 red bell peppers

2 pounds fresh tomatoes

7 cloves garlic, peeled

1/2 c extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

4 T butter

1 medium onion, diced

2 carrots (or a handful of mini carrots), diced

1 tsp berbere spice

1 quart stock

7 sprigs of thyme leaves

3/4 c heavy cream

1. Roast the red peppers.  I prefer Ina Garten's method.
2. Preheat the oven to 450.
3. Wash, core, and cut the tomatoes in half.  Spread the tomatoes, cut sides up, and garlic cloves onto a baking sheet lined with foil.  Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt pepper.  Roast 20-30 min until caramelized.
4. Remove tomatoes from oven, set aside.  In a large pot, melt the butter at medium high heat.  Once it is bubbling, reduce the heat to medium low add the onion, carrot, and spice.  Saute until onions are translucent and soft.  Add 3/4 of the chicken stock, the thyme sprigs, and roasted peppers, tomatoes, and garlic.  Turn heat to high, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15-20 min or until liquid has reduced by a third.
5. Remove the soup from heat.  Use an immersion blender to puree the soup until smooth.  Return soup to low heat, add cream and remaining stock.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve!  

To make mini grilled cheese sandwiches, you will need a baguette, butter, and shredded cheese (I used a combination of gouda and mild cheddar, and it was delicious).  Slice the baguette into 1/2 inch slices, butter one side of each slice, and plop half of them, buttered side down, onto a heated griddle or saute pan.  Top with shredded cheese and the remaining bread slices, buttered side up.  Flip the sandwich over, and once the second side is golden brown, serve!  We ended up using 3 sandwiches per person.

The verdict: 

Absolutely delicious.  I prefer the soup made with the vegetable stock, but I still wiped my bowl clean!  And while my photography skills are still minor league at best, the white dishes do help.  But I definitely recommend this soup!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

I am a thief.  Not a diamonds-and-cars thief (which would be a little bit awesome), but an ideas thief.  Other people come up with brilliant ideas, and I steal them.  However, unlike diamonds-and-cars thieves, I admit my thievery and give credit to those who deserve it.  For example, this blog.  I stole the idea from my friend Kelly, who recently started a food blog (the name of this blog was also Kelly's idea, although it was in reference to a bakery, not a blog).  Of course, starting a food blog was not an original idea by Kelly, but it was a good idea, and since her good idea is how I got this idea, she is the one who gets the credit.

Two of my favorite ideas to steal are ideas for food and ideas for crafty things.  I have recently been aided in this by Pinterest, one of the most addictive websites ever created.  Yesterday while searching Pinterest for an idea for dinner, I came across a pin for the Easiest Pasta and Broccoli Recipe, and it looked and sounded amazing:

After a quick trip to the grocery store, I was ready to go.  Now, a trip to the grocery store is normally no big deal, but I just moved to a brand-new, great-big city from my small-city hometown, so a trip to the grocery store by myself is noteworthy.  Yes, I did have the assistance of a GPS, but the grocery store in question is actually too new for the GPS to be aware of, so again, noteworthy accomplishment.  Be amazed!

Even though I steal ideas, I do have a modicum of my own creative juices and like to make the stolen idea my own.  Easiest Pasta and Broccoli Recipe therefore became the recipe I now present for your viewing (and perhaps eating) pleasure.

Pasta with Broccoli, Roasted Red Bell Pepper, and Chicken
adapted from Skinnytaste

2 red bell peppers (next time I'll use 3)
Chicken breasts
16oz box whole wheat pasta, uncooked (I used penne)
2 heads broccoli, cut into florets (approx. 7 cups)
5 cloves minced garlic
5oz container of shredded cheese (I used a combo of Parmesan, Romano, and Asiago)
2 T olive oil, divided
Salt and fresh cracked black pepper, to taste

1.  Roast the red bell peppers.  Look up instructions online.  Based on personal experience, I recommend doing it in the oven instead of on the stove top.  Once they're roasted and have cooled, peel the skins, remove the core, and cut into whatever size pieces you like, and set aside.
2.  Cook the chicken breasts.  I used 5 smallish ones, and forgot to measure how much there was after it was chopped (hey, I'm new to this keeping track of what I'm doing thing...).  I seasoned them using dried Italian Seasoning, sea salt, and fresh cracked black pepper.  Once the chicken is cooked and cooled, chop it into cubes, and set aside.
3.  While the chicken is cooking, put the water on to boil, and chop the broccoli.  Once the water is boiling, dump in the pasta and broccoli, and cook according to the directions on the package.  Once the noodles are done, siphon off 1 cup of the cooking water, then drain the pasta and broccoli.
4.  Return the pot to the stove, add 1 T olive oil.  Heat the oil over high heat, add the garlic and cook until golden.  (At this point, definitely do not make a rookie mistake and walk away from the stove - my garlic burned in about 2 seconds and had to be thrown out...)
5.  Once the garlic is cooked (and not burnt), turn the heat to low and add the pasta and broccoli back to the pot.  Stir in the cubed chicken and roasted bell pepper.  Add the remaining 1T olive oil, the reserved cooking water, the shredded cheese, and salt and pepper to taste; mix well.
6.  Eat!

The Verdict:
Other than the garlic snafu, this was delicious and easy to make (although the additions of the chicken and bell pepper do make it more time-intensive than the original recipe's 15 minutes, it is still very doable for weeknight meal).  Also, I may need to take a photography class.  I either forgot to take pictures of the cooking process or the ones I took were not worth showing to other people.  I really do not care for the final picture either, but you can't not have a picture of the final product...