My First Easter Dinner!

This is completely un-cookie related, but I thought I'd share that yesterday I cooked my first Easter dinner!  Normally we go to my in-laws with the whole extended family for a potluck-style dinner, but this year my husband and I decided to just do Easter dinner with our own little family. 

For appetizers, I tried a new recipe for deviled eggs from Cook's Country magazine,

and The Pioneer Woman's Avocado Crab Dip.  Avocados, cream cheese, crab, how could it go wrong?

And then there was dinner.  I made spiral glazed ham with maple-orange glaze (from America's Test Kitchen), cheesy potatoes, green beans with creamy mushrooms and shallots (from Martha Stewart Living), and soft and chewy rolls (from Cook's Country). 

I know the potatoes look like weird scrambled eggs in the picture, but they were delicious.  I don't usually cook with processed foods, but this casserole has cream of mushroom soup and velveeta "cheese", and it's so good!  This was my first every try at ham, and it turned out perfectly.  Of course, with just my husband, toddler, and I, we now have ham coming out of our ears!

For dessert I made butterbeer cake from Sugarcrafter, which was also very yummy.  Sorry, I didn't get a picture of that one. 

It was obviously much more work than the usual potluck dinner, but it was so much fun getting to create a menu full of our favorite foods!

And here are a couple of pictures from an Easter egg hunt at our church on Saturday.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!

Easter Cookies (Again)

One of the moms at my son's preschool program ordered these cookies for Easter. 



Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award

Jill from Dulce Dough has awarded me with the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award!  Thank you so much, Jill!  The achiever in me was so excited to get an award!   When I originally started this blog, I wasn't so sure that anybody would actually be reading it, except maybe my husband.  And I currently have 17 people following my little blog, which is about 16 more than I expected.  And now I have an award!  Thanks, Jill!

And I'll be working on an Easter order over the next couple of days, so I'll post pictures soon!

Welcome Cookies

This weekend I had an order for a welcome basket for a new tenant in an office building.  So I made a basket with half of the cookies as keys and half as a simplified version of the company's logo.

I didn't take a picture of the basket because I'm truly awful at wrapping things, which is definitely something I need to work on since it's nice to wrap cookies all prettily.  I'm told they liked it though.

(Can you guess the logo?)

Macarons with Espresso Ganache and Raspberry Cream Cheese Filling (Sanity Sunday)

This was my second try at macarons, and it went so much more smoothly!  I chose to make the basic macaron again, and I made two fillings, espresso ganache and raspberry cream cheese.  This ganache recipe made a much thicker, more substantial filling, so I didn't have the problem I had last time.  And the new food processor made grinding the almonds so much easier!  (On a side note, I LOVE my new food processor!  It works a thousand times better than my old one.  I need to find more things I can process now...)    Anyway, the macarons turned out exactly as I'd hoped.  None of them cracked (I had a few do that last time), and they all formed perfect and even little feet.  And they're so pretty! 

Perfect, right?  I'm so proud of myself!  (FYI, there are dark specks on the macarons because I used some almond meal I bought before I got the new food processor, and they apparently leave the skins on the almonds before they grind them.)

Creme Brulee

My husband and I have always loved creme brulee.  When I first started learning how to cook, we decided to try to make it ourselves, but it proved more difficult than expected.  We probably went through 5 or 6 recipes.  Many of them didn't set up properly, some weren't sweet enough and some were too sweet.  Then my baby's honorary grandparents made us creme brulee that was perfect, and they were sweet enough to share the recipe with us.  We've made it many times and it has always turned out perfectly. And it's actually easier than a lot of the recipes we tried.  You don't have to slowly heat the custard until it's thick enough like many recipes call for.

Anyway, I started aging 5 egg whites to make some more macarons this weekend, and when my husband saw the egg yolks in a container, he had the brilliant idea of making creme brulee, and since I knew it would be a huge deposit in his EBA (emotional bank account, for those of you who haven't been through 7 Habits training), I thought I'd give in.

And I thought I'd share the recipe.  I've altered it a little bit based on little tips I've picked up from the first 5 recipes I tried.

Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee
1 vanilla bean

2½ cups heavy cream

8 egg yolks

¼ cup superfine sugar, plus 3 tablespoons for topping

Slit the vanilla bean lengthwise and put it in a saucepan.  Pour the cream into the pan, then bring almost to a boil over medium heat.  Take off the heat and allow to stand for 15 minutes for the vanilla flavor to develop.

Lift the vanilla bean out of the cream and holding it against the side of the saucepan, scrape the black seeds into the cream.  Discard the bean casing.

Use a whisk to mix together the egg yolks and ¼ cup sugar in a medium bowl.  Reheat the cream, then gradually whisk it into the eggs and sugar, whisking constantly.  Strain the mixture through a sieve into a 4-cup measuring cup.

Place a kitchen towel on the bottom of a roasting pan (to keep the ramekins from sliding).  Place 6 ovenproof ramekins or custard cups (the shallow ramekins work best) in the roasting pan and divide the custard evenly between them.  Pour hot water around the dishes to come halfway up the sides, then bake in preheated oven at 350°F for 20-25 minutes, until the custards are just set with a slight softness at the center.  (Shake the pan just a little bit, and the centers should just barely wobble.)

Leave the dishes to cool in the water, then lift them out as soon as they’re cool enough to touch without burning yourself.  Chill in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours.  Before serving, sprinkle the tops with remaining sugar.  Caramelize using a blowtorch, then allow to cool for a couple of minutes and serve.

*I used 1 tablespoon of vanilla bean paste instead of the vanilla bean this time and we couldn't tell a difference.

And I forgot to mention in the macarons post that I had a bit of a difficulty with grinding the almonds because, well, my food processor sucks.  It wouldn't grind the almonds fine enough, and you have to push the button so hard constantly for it to keep running that my fingers hurt and I had to have my husband grind them for a little while.  And they still weren't ground enough, so I had to put the almonds and powdered sugar into my magic bullet in several batches.  In the end, it took me twenty minutes to do something that should have taken me 2 or 3.  I wouldn't say I had a meltdown or anything, but I was extremely frustrated.  So my loving husband not only allowed me to, but told me to order a new food processor.  So I searched for America's Test Kitchen's top rated food processor and now I have an awesome food processor! 

And my little boy really loves it too.  Well, the box anyway.  He's in a bit of a climbing stage right now.  Anyway, here she is.  Isn't she pretty?

So macarons are going to go much smoother this weekend! 

Now I have to go figure out where to store it.  And my kopykake (which is still hanging out on our kitchen table). 

Easter Cookies (Sanity Sunday)

Yesterday I chose to spend my baking time trying out a lot of the Easter cookie cutters I've bought but never used.  I only started this cookie obsession last Fourth of July, so this was my first shot at Easter cookies.  I found this cute sort of wonky flower shape at Target.  Cute, right?

I cannot for the life of me keep my flower centers from sinking in, even when I use thicker icing.  Oh well.  I think I'm now beyond trying to fix it and calling it intentional. 

And I think I saw this design on Sugarbelle, but I can't remember.  I got lazy with the orange and tried to use a toothpick (I had heard this tip from other cookiers) since I needed so little orange.  So the beaks look awful, but next time, when it's for an order, I'll pipe it on properly.

My animals all have blue eyes because, again, I was lazy and didn't want to make and bag black icing.  It works, right?

And it might surprise some, but I don't think the Easter bunny actually has anything to do with the real reason for Easter.

Macarons! (Sanity Sunday)

Ok, so I wasn't originally going to post this, but I changed my mind after tasting them this morning.  Macarons have been very popular in the food blog world for awhile now, but I've never made them before.  Actually, to be honest, I had never actually eaten one.  I even went to Paris for my honeymoon 5 years ago, but back then I didn't really know how to cook, and I had never even heard of macarons. 

Anyway, I bought the book Mad About Macarons and it just came in the mail last week.  So I chose to make a basic macaron with a sort of chocolate-caramel ganache filling.  I was pretty nervous because they have a reputation as being tricky to make, and I also have a fear of overbeating egg whites (I'm scared of whipping cream too).  The macaron itself actually went really well.  They turned out perfectly, with the little feet and everything!  The ganache itself didn't go as well.  It was way too runny, even after refrigerating for several hours, and it just kind of wanted to spill off the sides of the macaron, even when I decreased the amount of filling.  Hence my plan not to post these.  But then I ate one this morning (the recipe says to refrigerate for 24 hours before eating, but I'm a rebel).  And they are really good.  Again, I've never actually had one before, so I have nothing to compare it to, but it was just as described in the book, soft on the inside with a little bit of a crunch on the outside.  So here they are, ugly, but delicious. 

Try not to look at the ganache remains on the top of the macaron and on the plate.  Like I said, I wasn't planning on posting these, so they all went into the container without much care, and this one was the prettiest one I could find.  But I think it's good to show you guys that it's ok when things don't go perfectly, especially if they're still delicious.  I'm just proud of myself that the macaron part (the tricky part) came out right.  I'll definitely try this again, with a different filling of course.

Even the baby liked them.  Most of the books say to keep babies away from nuts until they turn two.  But my baby came over begging for the deliciousness I was eating and I gave him a bite without thinking about it.  Then my husband brought to my attention the fact that there are nuts in it, but he just turned two, so it's ok, right?   Which is funny because I used to be the one who was on top of all those things and my husband was the laid-back one.  But he didn't have an allergic reaction, so phew!