Happy Fastnacht Day....

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or Strove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi gras... also know as homemade doughnut day in my family.

  

 

I don't know what today means to you, maybe parades, floats, costumes, beads, overindulgence, or quite possibly it's just another Tuesday, but for me it's Fastnacht Day. In my world that means eating homemade fried dough! I come from a Pennsylvania Dutch background and we celebrate the day before Ash Wednesday with doughnuts, preferably homemade. The traditional Fastnacht Day doughnut is made with a potato dough. Although they are delicious, I broke a little with tradition this time and added a little New Orleans twist this year and made beignets. I visited New Orleans a few weeks ago and stopped by Cafe du Monde for beignets. I've been craving them ever since. So what better excuse  to make beignets then Fastnacht Day?!

Beignets

(printable copy)

Makes about 2 dozen.

Ingredients:
1 Envelope active dry yeast
3/4 cup very warm water (110 degrees F)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup evaporated milk
3 1/2 - 3 3/4 cups flour
1/8 cup shortening
Vegetable oil for frying
Powdered sugar for topping the hot beignets

Method:
Combine the yeast, water, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook (You could also make this in a food processor.) Let this sit until yeast blooms (gets frothy), about 5 minutes.

Add the salt, egg, and evaporated milk. Mix on low speed, add half of the flour until it starts to come together, then add the shortening. When the shortening is incorporated start adding the remaining flour, a little at a time until most of it is incorporated.  Turn the dough onto a floured work surface. Knead the dough adding just enough flour as necessary to make a non-sticky, smooth dough.

Place the dough into a large oiled bowl, loosely cover and let rise. You can make it in the dough in evening let it rise overnight in the refrigerator.
After the dough has doubled in bulk, punch it down and turn it onto a floured surface and roll out into a rectangle that is about 1/2" thick. With a sharp knife or pizza cutter, working at a diagonal to the rectangle, cut into 2" wide strips. Now cut into diamond shapes by making diagonal cuts in the opposite direction. Place the beignets on a floured baking sheet to let rise about 40 minutes in a warm place.

When the beignets have risen, heat 2-3 inches of vegetable oil in a large pot with high sides to 350-360 degrees. Place 2-4 beignets into the hot oil at a time, being careful not to smash or deflate them. When they are golden brown, flip them over until golden brown on the other side, about 1 minute per side. They go pretty quickly so start checking them right after they go into the oil. Remove to paper towel lined plates to drain.

I thought these were even better than Cafe du Monde.

 Serve hot topped with lots of powdered sugar and a pipping hot Cafe au Lait.
You'll swear your in New Orleans!

I'm afraid that Fat Tuesday may lead to Tight Pant Wednesday!

It's Strawberry Mousse...

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not moose. Hubs and I visited Alaska this past summer and found out that many dishes we had contained moose. This recipe does not contain moose but it is mousse.
Oh and it's also not the kind you of mousse you might put in your hair for added volume. This mousse is the creamy dreamy dessert kind of mousse. Hopefully that clears up any mousse/moose confusion!

Sorry for the silliness, I couldn't resist. Anyway this mousse is good eaten on its own but it really makes a fabulous filling for cakes and cupcakes. I used it for the filling in a chocolate cake. I had some leftover so I filled some chocolate cupcakes. I frosted the cake and the cupcakes with this frosting.
This cake has all the flavors of a chocolate dipped strawberry, in cake form. Delicious! 

Strawberry Mousse
(Printable recipe)

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and cut in half
1 packet unflavored gelatin
1/3 cup cold water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 cups heavy cream, chilled

Method:
Puree the strawberries in the food processor. Strain the strawberries through a mesh strainer. (you could skip this step if you don't mind seeds in your mousse.) Add sugar and lemon juice.

Sprinkle gelatin over the cold water to let it bloom for five minutes. Melt the gelatin in the microwave.*
Stir the gelatin into the strawberry puree and let it thicken for a few minutes.
Whip the heavy cream until medium stiff peaks form.
Gently fold the whipped cream into the puree with a rubber spatula until well incorporated. If using for a cake filling, refrigerate the mousse for 2 hours up to overnight before using.

*Note: (This is the method I use to dissolve gelatin.) To dissolve granular gelatin in a microwave: Combine 1 envelope unflavored granular gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water in a heat-proof bowl. Let sit until gelatin is softened. Microwave, uncovered, at 100 percent power, at 10 second intervals, for a total of approximately 45 seconds; check it in between each interval. Watch the gelatin mixture carefully because you don't want it to boil, otherwise it must be discarded because it will have lost its binding properties,

Make a dam around the cake with frosting. This will keep the mousse from getting loose...

no mousse on the loose!

This mousse is so easy and delicious you"ll want to make it all the time. I used fresh strawberries in mine but you could use thawed frozen berries if fresh berries are out of season.

Low Fat Blueberry Oat Loaf Cake

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I've written several posts about my love affair with oatmeal and my continuing efforts to get more oats in my diet. So of course when I came across this recipe, I immediately bookmarked it. Not only does this cake have oatmeal in it but blueberries, yogurt, and cinnamon too. Because the cake contains no oil or butter, it's a fairly low fat dessert. That makes it health food, right?? Great for Heart Health month!

Low Fat Blueberry Oat Loaf Cake
Source: Diana Rattray, About.com Guide (slightly adapted)
printable recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup low fat vanilla yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
cinnamon sugar for topping

Preparation:
Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9x5x3-inch loaf pan.
Combine the blueberries with flour, oats, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and sugar.
In another bowl, whisk yogurt with lemon juice; whisk in the milk and eggs. Pour yogurt mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until blended. Spoon into the prepared pan; sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture (about 3 teaspoons sugar to 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.). Bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The oats give the cake a dense but very moist texture, more like the texture of muffin or quick bread than a cake, but very tasty. The recipe is quick and easy to prepare and so versatile as well. Throw in some chopped nuts and a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg.  Shredded coconut would be delicious too. Use your imagination!

Strawberry Panna Cotta

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Panna Cotta is on of my favorite desserts, so when I saw this recipe for strawberry panna cotta, I had to give it a try. Strawberries and panna cotta sounded like the perfect combo. Not only is it a wonderful dessert, but it's pink too!  What better to celebrate Valentine's day with your sweetheart with than a creamy, delicious, pink panna cotta.
Panna cotta can be placed in ramekins and unmolded, or for an even simpler but elegant presentation, simply pour the mixture into a martini glasses or other glassware. 
Strawberry Panna  Cotta
(Printable recipe) 
source: Gourmet  | May 2002
Ingredients:
3 cups sliced strawberries (1 pound)
1 3/4 cups well-shaken low-fat buttermilk
6 tablespoons sugar* (or more according to taste)
2 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin, from less than 2 (1/4-oz) envelopes
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup heavy cream

Method:
Blend strawberries, buttermilk, and sugar in a blender until very smooth, then pour through a very fine sieve into a medium bowl, pressing hard on solids. Discard solids.
Sprinkle gelatin over milk in a small bowl and let stand 1 minute to soften. Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and add gelatin mixture, stirring until dissolved. Whisk cream mixture into strawberry purée and pour into molds or glasses. Chill, covered, until firm, at least 8 hours.To unmold, dip molds in a small bowl of hot water 2 or 3 seconds, then invert panna cottas onto dessert plates and remove molds. If you don't want to unmold the panna cotta, just serve if you them in whatever you chilled them in.
I topped mine with a little bit of whipped cream and shaved chocolate.
 * Note: I added 2 extra tablespoons of sugar. I tasted the base and it was a little too tart for my taste.

My sweetie pie is still in Iraq, so I guess I'll have to make it again when he gets home.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Celebrate World Nutella day with Nutella Truffles

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We all have our favorite days of the year, be it Christmas, Thanksgiving, your birthday, whatever. Well February 5th would have to be would have to high on my list. Want to know why? It just so happens to be World Nutella Day! Yes that's right an entire day set aside to celebrate Nutella and all the wonderful ways you can use it. I usually just stick a spoon in the jar and eat it straight from the spoon, but in honor of World Nutella day, I thought I'd put in a little more effort. Although these are a little more effort that just licking Nutella from a spoon, these truffles are super easy and sooo delicious.

Two of my favorite bloggers Sara of Ms. Adventures in Italy and Michelle of Bleeding Espresso came up with the idea for World Nutella Day 5 years ago. Check out their blogs for more mouthwatering Nutella recipes. Happy World Nutella Day!!

Nutella Truffles
Printable recipe


1 (12-oz.) package semisweet chocolate morsels
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup Nutella
3/4 cup finely chopped, toasted hazelnuts
Wax paper or parchment paper
Method: 
Microwave first 3 ingredients in a medium-size microwave-safe bowl at HIGH 1 to 1 1/2 minutes or until melted and smooth, stirring at 30-second intervals. Let cool 10 minutes.
Beat chocolate mixture at medium speed with an electric mixer 1 to 2 minutes or until whipped and smooth. Cover and chill 2 hours or until firm.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread chopped hazelnuts on a baking sheet and toast in oven for about 5 minutes or until the nuts start to turn a golden brown. Keep a close eye on the nuts because they will burn quickly. Remove from oven and allow them to cool completely.
Shape chocolate mixture into 1-inch balls, using a small ice-cream scoop. Roll in chopped toasted hazelnuts. If chocolate mixture becomes too soft to shape, refrigerate until firm. Place on wax/parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Chill 1 hour before serving. Truffles can be stored up to 5 days in an airtight container.

Easy Hello Kitty Cake

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Hello world. I know I've been slacking in the blogging department. Yet another reason not to make New Years resolutions. I made a sort of resolution at the beginning of the month to have a schedule for posting to my blog. I don't know what happened but it seems like as soon as I'd made the plan, my whole life conspired against me being able to actually stick to the plan. I won't go into the long list of things that have kept me from posting but I will tell you that I've been making lots of cakes. A baby shower cake, a Tinkerbell cake, Spongebob cupcakes, I even got a weird request for a mountain dew cake. It's been a busy couple of weeks!
This particular cake was for a friends 6 year old daughter. My friend called and asked if I could make a Hello Kitty cake for her daughters birthday. She said that her daughter wanted the cake to be in the shape of Hello Kitty's head and the cake to be "pink velvet cake." She's a girl that knows what she likes!
This was my first Hello Kitty head cake. I hadn't really planned on sharing it here but as I was making it, I thought it was an easy fun cake that almost anyone could do and I decided to post it. It's great for a beginner cake decorator.
So here's a Hello Kitty cake tutorial, of sorts.

Materials

1 half sheet cake (you could also use a 9x13 inch cake)
3 cups of basic white buttercream frosting. (I used butter not shortening)
Fondant for bow, whiskers, eyes, and nose.

Make or buy cake. Wrap well and freeze the cake overnight. It's much easier to carve the cake while it's frozen. Freezing the cake also helps decrease the crumbs, which is very helpful when you go to frost the cake.
My cake was a basic vanilla cake dyed pink, aka pink velvet cake. If you want to go really simple, you could buy an plain, unfrosted half sheet cake from a bakery. I made my own frosting but you could use canned frosting as well.
Hello Kitty's head is pretty easy to cut out freehand. It's just an oval with ears. I didn't use a template but if you want one you can go here and download this one. You need Adobe Reader installed in your computer to download it. Or you could just Google Hello Kitty coloring pages and print the page. You may need to blow-up the picture to get the size you want for your cake.

If using a template, pin the template to the cake with toothpicks and carve around the template. I cut the corners off on the bottom of my cake. On the top of the cake I cut off a little less leaving room to cut out ears. Then I just carved off any edges that kept the cake from being oval shaped.

sorry this picture isn't very good, but I hope you get the general idea!

Frost the cake. You may need to do a thin coat of icing as a crumb coat and refrigerate the cake for about an hour. This will keep the crumbs from showing through when you put the rest of the frosting on the cake. I have never tried this with canned frosting so I don't know if it works well or not.

Decorating:
I used fondant to make the bow, whiskers, eyes and nose, on my cake. If you don't want to buy fondant, you could use fruit roll-ups for the bow, jelly beans for the eyes and nose, and licorice for the whiskers.

For the bow: Pinch off a small piece of fondant. Add  food gel coloring in desired color and knead until the color is incorporated into the fondant. Roll out fondant out to about 1/4 inch thickness. I used a small heart cookie cutter and a small oval cutter. I cut out 2 hearts and put the points of the heart together and put the oval over the points to form the center of the bow.
If you don't want to use fondant, you could cut a bow the same way out of fruit leather and get a similar effect.

I painted my bow with edible glitter!

I made my whiskers out of gum paste dyed black that I put into a clay extruder gun to make long ropes. You also could roll black fondant into ropes by hand and let them dry overnight, or just use pieces licorice.

I cut the eyes and nose from small pieces of fondant but jelly beans would make a good substitution.
Place the bow, eyes, nose and whiskers on the cake. When I finished my cake I realized I should have put the eyes a lower but changing them at that point would have messed up the top of the cake.
I finished off the cake with a boarder of frosting around the bottom edge. This step is optional. Leave it off if you don't feel comfortable using a piping bag.
 This Hello Kitty cake is a pretty easy, very fun project that would be great to do with the kids. The good news is, even if it isn't perfect at least you can eat your mistakes!

Lime Cornmeal Cookies

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Looking back over the last couple of years on my blog, I noticed a trend. I seem to start the new year with some lemon based dessert/baked item. I'm not sure why but I crave citrus this time of the year. It is a refreshing change from the rich, decadent desserts that pervade the holiday season. With the New Year, I get a feeling of fresh start, or a new beginning. So maybe that's why I find citrus so appealing this time of the year. 

What seems fresher than lemons, possibly only lime! That's partially what drew me to this recipe. The other reason I wanted to make these cookies is because I'd never a cookie with cornmeal as an ingredient. In the spirit of New Years, this year I want to challenge myself to bake and cook things I've never tried before. That's about as close as I'm getting to a resolution. 

Lime Cornmeal Cookies
source: Southern Living, Jan 2011 (adapted)
 (Printable recipe)
 Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup plain yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tablespoon lime zest
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Wax or parchment paper

Optional sugar mix for rolling: 
1/4 crystallized cup sugar
1 tablespoon lime zest

Method:
Combine flour and cornmeal. Beat butter and sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and next 3 ingredients, beating until blended. Gradually add flour mixture, beating just until blended after each addition. Cover and chill dough 1 hour. Shape dough into a 12-inch log using wax paper. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and chill 8 hours.

If using, stir crystallized sugar and zest together, Spread on a piece of parchment paper or on your work surface, Unwrap the cookie log and roll log in the sugar mixture. Try to coat the log evenly, pressing lightly to help sugar to adhere.

 Preheat oven to 375°. Using a sharp knife, cut log into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes or until set. Transfer to wire racks; cool completely.

When I tasted these cookies, I thought they were pretty good. They had a nice subtle lime flavor, but  I wanted to kick that up a little more so I decided to add a lime glaze. I think it made these cookies even better.
The glaze on these cookies is a totally optional addition...well maybe for you, for me it's mandatory!

Lime Glaze
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
2-3 tablespoons lime juice
zest from one lime
In a bowl, stir confectioners sugar and lime juice together. Stir until smooth. If the mixture is too thick, thin out by adding more lime juice, a teaspoon at a time until you get a glaze like consistency. Stir in lime zest
Place cookies on a baking rack over a baking sheet, to catch any drips. Drizzle on about a teaspoon of the glaze on the cookies. Wait about 5 minutes for the glaze to set-up slightly.