dinner without the digicam

Spaghetti Squash with Mushroom, Shallot, Meat Tomato Sauce

Microwave the spaghetti squash, 1 min.
Cut in half lengthwise. Place cut sides down in dish with 1/2C water. Microwave for 12 minutes, until fork tender.
Careful when removing! HOT!! Carefully run fork through the "meat" to get your spaghetti. EASY!

For sauce, I cheated and used store bought. But made it my own by adding my favorite stuff: mushrooms.
I sauteed 1 diced shallot with 4 sliced button mushrooms, then added to the sauce, and let simmer until the squash was ready.

always celebrate with delishness food

Anniversaries, of any kind, are relatively rare for me... so of course, I try to celebrate them when they come around. And so... out to eat we go!

Catal Restaurant @ Downtown Disney

[Forgot to take a picture]
Starter: Butcher Plate - Shaved Serrano, Coppa Ham, Spanish Chorizo, Olives, Caper Berries, and Grilled Bread


Entree for moi: Boneless Braised Short Ribs with Fontina Mac and Cheese and Mushroom-Black Truffle Escabeche


Entree for him: Slow Rendered Duck Breast with Sweet Potato, Parsnip Fondue, Licorice, and Toasted Almonds


Dessert: Caramel Chocolate Mousse Torte (with some ice cream and crunchies I can't recall from the menu)

Overall, yummy! I wasn't blown away by the Butcher Plate, but it caught our eye, so we gave it a try. Our entrees were delish. Dessert was not as phenomenal I would have hope. But that's ok! Still good!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Recipe taken from the Williams Sonoma Baking Book...

Flourless Chocolate Cake


Easy to follow with simple ingredients recipe.
There is a bittersweet chocolate glaze that is poured and spread over the cooled cake, but I didn't make it this time.
My only caution is to wrap your springform pan in aluminum foil, just in case it leaks (like mine).


I did like the crust that formed on top - the crunch and the visual - but the recipe calls for the cake to be inverted so I went with that.

penguins!!

i love the winter time b/c that is when all the penguin goodies come out to play in masses. and i am gifted some of them!

Sunshine Lemon Cake with Lemon Glaze

Easy New Years baking... from a box! (again.)

Lemon Glaze
1/3 C Lemon Juice
1/2 C Granulated Sugar
Heat in small sauce pan over medium heat (5 min.) until sugar is melted. Let cool for glaze to thicken slightly. Brush or drizzle over cooled cake.
Lemon juice can also be substituted with orange juice or lime juice.

Homemade Samoas

One of my many favorite girl scout cookies... Samoas!

Recipe from Baking Bites: Homemade Samoas

THIS IS AN AWESOME RECIPE!! Everything went off without a hitch.

Notes:
Instead of using the microwave I used stove top for the caramel and the chocolate.
When warming the caramel-coconut mixture on the stove top, the longer it sits the darker and tougher the caramel will get.
I should have made larger center holes... or omitted them completely since I ended up covering it with the topping.
I should have piped thicker drizzles of chocolate.
My minor personal issues were with melting chocolate (of course), and dumping in all 3 cups of coconut into the caramel at once (which probably led to the not quite so spreadable topping). Next time, mix caramel & toasted coconut until just coated and spreadable on cookies.

And to finish the "egg" project:
ta-da! After an overnight stay in the slow cooker, these tea eggs are ready to be consumed!

After Christmas baking

Got this awesome new book for Xmas right as I was flying home...

... so I got the chance to go through each page on the flight. And I decided to try:

Absolute Best Brownies with Dried Cherries

... except it was a failure. (damn brownies from scratch!!!!)
So, once I re-try this recipe, I'll be sure to post!

And since a "from scratch" recipe failed, I of course defaulted to a box mix to bake.
Thus, I baked up some sugar cookies and decorated them. Here's to after Christmas baking!

I got the icing recipe from Baking Bites. Since I didn't want/need a massive amount of icing, I quartered the recipe - the proportion I used is shown here:

Simple Colored Icing from Baking Bites
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
food coloring

Mix all sugar, milk and vanilla until smooth and to desired consistency. Add more milk/sugar as desired for the right consistency to ice cookies. I used plain white on some cookies, then added a drop of blue, then when I was ready to do some green, added in a couple drops of yellow. I mixed all colors in one bowl since I'm too unwilling to use excess dishes.

Baking Bites also had an awesome recipe for Homemade Samoas Cookies that I will be baking in the next day or so! YAY! and YUMMM!!

Also, I had the chance to "make" Chinese Tea Eggs!

Simply boil eggs with the flavor and tea packets. Crack the shells after 20 min (or so). Then continue to let simmer for flavor to penetrate through. I've transferred my eggs to a slow cooker and am letting them stew overnight. Stay tuned for the final product!