Days of Christmas: Holy Cannoli!

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! I hope 2011 brings you many blessings and much joy.

Between cooking dinner with my mother in law and running out to take pictures of the last sunset for the year, I have spent the afternoon learning to make cannoli from the recipe my mother in law's Aunt Mary gave her.  Aunt Mary was from Sicily, and quite the chef. When my in law's had moved into their first house, Aunt Mary came for a 5 day visit and went through 25 pounds of flour making pizza crusts, pasta and gnocchi to fill up their chest freezer.

Days of Christmas: A Chocolate family tradition

My Mom was a crazy baking lady for the holidays when we were kids. Lots and lots of cookies. A lot of work for a working of of 3, I still don't know quite how she did it. Lucky for her, she got three kids who don't mind being in the kitchen and cooking or baking. So as we grew up, we helped out.

Cookies, tamales, candy, we helped with it all. Yup, I said tamales. 2 years we did them. We should do them again, there isn't anything like homemade tamales.

I digress.

Pears become a cake.

I brought this on myself really. I bought pears at Costco earlier in the week. The season of pears is here and they are a favorite of both myself and my husband. Then I went to the farmer's market...and bought more, locally grown pears.

So, with a bushel of pears in the house, I set out to find something to do with them.

Enter cake.

I don't think anyone who knows me is surprised that I love cake, I also love fruit with my cake, take for example pineapple upside down cake. Last week, I found a recipe for an apple upside down cake and knew a quick substitution of pears for the apples was in order.

Dessert last night...

Quick and easy dessert last night. Figs with goat cheese warmed in the oven at 375 for 15 minutes, then topped with a drizzle of honey. I am so excited figs are coming back into season, they are excellent with cheese and wine which are two of my most favorite things. Last nights wine was Ventana 2008 Orange Muscat.

Peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate, oh my!

A trifecta. Holy trinity. Darn good stuff.

Oh, how I love some oatmeal in my cookies. Peanut butter too. Chocolate chips, of course.

I have two special folks in my life that have birthdays this week, my grandmother turned 87, my best friend turns 30.

As such, I am a cheater, cheater, pastry eater.

Do you like chocolate?

I do.

How about pastry?

Me too.

What is your opinion on a combo of the two for breakfast?

I concur.

Want to know what I do when I want chocolate croissants? And don't feel like driving around to find them?

1 sheet of puff pastry, cut into equal pieces of your chosen size (I myself made 8).

1 bar of bittersweet chocolate broken into equal sized pieces.

Egg wash.

Wrap up chocolate with pastry, fold ends over, brush with egg wash, bake until toasty in 350 degree oven.

Add some powdered sugar if you would like.

Nom.

Deep fried goodness.

We moved into our house about 5 months after we were married.

As we planned, married, honeymooned, house hunted, packed and moved there was one thing my husband really wanted: A deep fryer.

And lo and behold, with a suggestion from his loving wife to her parents, for our first Christmas in our new home, he got one.

I would like to preface the following with this: We don't fry a lot.

This weekend, we had friends over for a game day/afternoon and we fried. We were plotting what could be fried. We ended up being to full to try deep frying pickles, but they were there. Next time.

Boards, Oregon, and a dessert to celebrate

This morning, I drove myself to a testing center and sat in front of a computer for an hour and twenty minutes to prove myself capable to practice as a midwife. 175 questions later, I walked out as a Certified Nurse Midwife, thank goodness for instant results! I don't know that I could have handled a longer wait, studying over the last two days especially has been nerve wracking.

4 flavors of candy and a wedding

My sister joined the ranks of the happily wedded yesterday, many blessings for her new family! And of course, with weddings comes all the planning and preparations, from the venue to the dress to the seating chart and favors. I know she is very happy to say it is all done and went off without a hitch.

I am a little tired today, okay, really I am exhausted, but I wanted to show off what fews pictures I have of our candy making last week.

A "wild" weekend

My husband's family was in town this weekend to spend time at the San Diego Zoo and the Birch Aquarium in celebration of our niece's third birthday! Because of work, the Hubs and I didn't get to go to the Zoo on Friday with everyone, but we were able to make it to the Aquarium on Saturday.

Frozen yogurt of the raspberry variety.

I love, love, love summer. Not always the heat of summer, but certainly the fruit. I had snagged some awesome raspberries at Henry's last week and come Friday I decided on frozen yogurt to use some of them.
This was our dessert the other night after we had the horseradish marinated beef. I followed the instructions here at Food in my Beard, except for the making of the yogurt. I am ambitious, but only to a point on a Friday that is my lone day off for the week. Sometime soon I would like to try making my own yogurt, it just wasn't this day.

I started by allowing a 32 ounce container of fat free unflavored yogurt to strain in my mesh strainer lined with coffee filters.


I think I easily drained a cup of liquid off this container of yogurt.


For the raspberries, I simmered those with about a 1/4 sugar and a splash of water until they were soft. The raspberries themselves were so sweet, I only used enough sugar to sweeten the yogurt some. I got them into the fridge to cool while the yogurt completely strained.

Once both were cold/drained, I combined them and got them into my ice cream freezer.

The yogurt was really quite thick after draining and the raspberries had such a great flavor that it was delicious without freezing.


I let the Kitchen Aide do its thing for about 20 minutes, then froze the yogurt for another 45 minutes or so before scooping it up and serving.


It was a smooth, creamy, yummy end to our dinner. Next time I will and a splash of some alcohol like vodka to keep it somewhat soft. The leftovers in the freezing now are rock hard, making them hard to enjoy, unfortunately. But it was an effort worth repeating, next up strawberries.

Lemons, lemons, and more lemons.

When we were looking at houses last year, we saw quite a few with a variety of stuff in the backyard. Some had lemon trees, a couple had avocado trees, one even had a very overgrown fig tree.

The house we finally had an offer accepted on had what we thought were a lemon and a lime tree. Turns out they are both lemon trees, and we have more lemons then I ever imagined I would. And I am hurriedly finding ways to use them.

One thing I was introduced to by my father in law in Limoncello. It's a very popular thing now, I've stumbled it all over the interwebs. Heck, even Danny Devito got in on it and has his own brand.

My father in law loves the stuff, so we are taking advantage of that and making some for him for his birthday. I got it started on Tuesday.

It's really easy, well, at least so far it is. I zested 8 lemons and dumped a bottle of Everclear (151 proof) over them, the set it into the dark of our bar to marinate away.



Here is our before, and after from the other day. The alcohol is taking on a fab yellow hue and lemony smell. It still needs about 40 more days of stewing time, which will actually put us beyond my father in law's birthday, but I think he will understand.

The other thing I've done with lemons lately was make a cake for the husband's birthday. This was another Epicurious recipe and I went with lemon since I had 8 lemons sitting in my fridge with no zest. Unfortunately, I only left myself with a few hours to put this cake together, so I didn't make my own lemon curd. I used half store bought, half made by my mother in law.


Whipping the egg whites didn't take long at all and the cake came together easily. My only issue was the bake time. I set my timer for 15 minutes and when I checked at 14 minutes, the cake was done, likely a little over done. I might actually increase the amount of batter as well, the cakes are meant to be thin, but I really thought they were too thin, I wouldn't double the recipe, but likely would make 1 1/2 recipes for the batter. I wanted a little more height to the whole cake.

I did follow a recommendation left by one of the recipe reviewers and after letting the layers cool some, I popped them in the freezer for about 15 minutes to left them firm up a bit and make it a little easier to slice the layers in half.

I used the homemade lemon curd in the frosting/filling and the store bought in between the layers. I also used a jar of raspberry preserves I had in the fridge between two of the layers for a little variety. The raspberry was a great addition, and the frosting? To die for. I love mascarpone anyway; adding lemon curd and sweetened whip cream took it over the top. It is great on it's own. Or with the addition of a spoon. For the eating.

The end result was delicious, my husband loved it.
I don't have piping bags, so my frosting has a rough look to it, but no one held it against me.
I will be making it again, next time with my own lemon curd, I have some lemons to spare.