A Few Things

It was Marie's birthday last week and since I'm always looking for opportunities and excuses to make a cake (practice practice practice) I told Marie to leave the birthday cake to me!

We had a fun girls night full of chatter, hot tubing, 40's music, and Doris Day. 

I'm so glad I've become friends with these girls. We always have a good time together.

I was going to write "Happy Birthday Marie" but I didn't want to take the risk of ruining the cake. So I left the open space for all of the candles. 

I was out working in the yard with my mom the other day and we had been working on cutting back some of the bushes, and I just couldn't resist trying out my hand at bush pruning. This bush was already an ugly shape and I tried to work with it to give it a spiral... it doesn't look too awful right? Granted the bottom needs some growing in to do now. I'll keep working on it throughout the summer don't worry.

One last thing, I hiked to the "G" for the first time last night! It's slightly sad that I've lived here almost my whole life and am only now doing this. It was a great hike and had an incredible view of the valley. It was a good evening. 

Stuffed Chicken Breasts Italiano

I'm trying to cook more meals while I'm living at home. I have time, I don't have to pay for the ingredients, and I don't have to cook for just one person. It's a win win situation. Here's what I tried out yesterday.
Stuffed Chicken Breasts Italiano and Bloomin' Onion Bread.

I was slightly uncertain about how things would turn out as I was preparing the main dish. But it was really good actually. And easy.

Stuffed Chicken Breasts Italiano

 4 lg skinless, boneless chicken breasts

salt and pepper to taste

8 oz. container ricotta cheese 

2 T each of chopped ripe olives, Italian parsley, and chopped onion

1/4 tsp. garlic salt

1 can Prego pasta sauce

1 C. shredded mozzarella cheese

1 pkg. (12 oz) fettuccine pasta, cooked and drained

Carefully slit a lengthwise "pocket" in each chicken breast, starting at the thick side, and cutting approximately 3/4 of the way through the width of each breast. Season the inside and outside of each breast with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, combine ricotta cheese with olives, parsley, onion and garlic salt. Place approximately 1/4 C. of this filling into the pocket of each chicken breast. Arrange stuffed chicken breasts in a 9X13 baking pan and cover with pasta sauce. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until chicken is done. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over top; return to oven for 2-3 minutes or until cheese melts. Serve on fettuccine pasta, garnished with sprigs of Italian parsley, if desired. 

So the recipe said it serves 4 but that's only if you each eat one of those huge chicken breasts. I'm going to say it feeds more around 8 people or so. 

The Bloomin' Onion Bread recipe was found here at this site. I'm not really a fan of sourdough bread but this was fantastic. We didn't use poppy seeds and it turned out just fine. The trick though is cutting the bread. It's a pain. Also serving it proves slightly tricky but eventually everyone just rips pieces off for themselves. 

Cake Making

If you don't already know this about me then just understand that sometimes I look at something and decide that I could probably do that if I tried. So I do. Example. Example. Example. Example. Example. Example.
Guess what I've gotten my hands into now?
Cake Decorating.
Yup.

I made my first attempt cake yesterday night/today.

Crumb coating. 

I didn't have the right size of coupler but I didn't realize that until it was already in the bag with frosting... So duck tape came into the rescue to help me with the piping. 

Are you slightly impressed? 

I feel good about this being my first decorative cake. Granted the frosting is kind of messy looking, but this was my very first time piping frosting. 

I found the idea for the decorating here and decided that since those flowers are pretty forgiving, it would be a good first attempt idea.

Frosting recipe was a Buttercream Icing which was really good. But the recipe hardly makes any. Of course I used a ton for the flowers but with one batch it wasn't enough for the filling and crumb coating, let alone adding all the flowers on top.

The cake was a Hersey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake recipe which was really good and moist. I obviously didn't use their chocolate frosting but I think it turned out well in the end.

It was a really fun experiment! I would love to take some classes though, just the basics so I'm not stumbling around like a chicken with its' head cut off. There are so many details!! What kind of cake? What kind of filling? What frosting? Colored? What decorations? If you want the flowers to harden then it's one recipe, if you want them to soften up then it's another. What freaking frosting recipe is good?! What tip to use for piping? Remember how painting is a complete art and science all it's own? Cooking decorative cakes is exactly the same way. There is so much that goes into planning a cake.

Cookie Cups

Great idea yes? I know, that's exactly what I thought. And let's just look how how easy this is. I mean, cookie dough, back of muffin pan, cook, peel off, stick some ice cream in there, done! So my friends and I decided to try it. 

First piece of advice: always start with less. 

I think you'll understand what I mean when you check out the next picture. 

It kind of turned into a ridiculous mess. 

And it didn't come off the pan very well at all. 

So we ate cookie crumbles and ice cream in a normal paper bowl. 

My second piece of advice: do not put on the oven cleaner if you have big chunks of cookie dough sitting in the bottom. 

Yeah, that's what we did. And there were flames inside the oven. And tons of smoke billowing out of the oven sides. I sat there questioning if that was normal. It wasn't. No worries nothing horrible happened. We canceled the oven cleaner and I cleaned it out this morning. No harm done. Next time I'll just try things a little bit differently. 

Wine Bottle

It's amazing how many pictures you can take of a wine bottle. Of course things are always a little more interesting when the cork ends up inside...
Cooking wine, let's just clarify.
And we didn't have a cork screw to open it so... we did what we had to.