This Thanksgiving weekend was split between my mom’s on Thursday and my dad’s house on Saturday.  Both were joyous and friendly affairs with lots and LOTS of great food.  So, there will be a separate post for each feast that was had.  I hope you enjpy them both, and without further ado—here’s the first!

My mom has a small kitchen, and her family doesn’t really live too locally, so for Thursday’s affair it was a cozy meal between myself, my mom, and my two sisters.  We did a few things to prep the day before—continuously filling wine glasses as we chopped, sauteed, and baked the hours away.  This made the next day so simple and easy.  Also, we decided that since we did not need to rush a meal to the table to accommodate a slew of guests we’d cook our appetizer, entree, and dessert courses throughout the day.

So, for lunch we toasted our mimosas and had a delicous light start of:

1. Roasted pears with herbed goat cheese wrapped in smoked bacon and served with citrus dressed baby greens

2. Broiled artichokes marinated in a shallot balsamic vinaigrette with homemade aioli

3. Warmed Chaumes cheese with ginger infused marmalade

What a way to start the day!  It was absolutely scrumptious, relatively light, and definitely got two thumbs up from everyone…here is my mom enjoying the best of the artichoke heart!

Following this was a nice, two hour break spent chatting, finishing the bottles of champagne and preparing for the main course! We had…

1. Cornish game hens with an apple cider and smoked bacon glaze

2. Fresh cornbread stuffing with andouille sausage and pan roasted fennel

3. Scratch made sweet potato gnocchi with maple cinnamon browned butter with fried sage and pecans

Look at that delicious plate! Our family’s homemade cranberry relish added the zesty final touch!

Cheers!

…as you can probably guess, this was followed by another lengthy pause, some more wine, and some hefty belly rubbing.  By the time the evening rolled around though, and The Addams Family was rolling credits, we were ready for dessert!

1. Dark chocolate Frangelico mousse with fresh whipped cream

2. Homemade pumpkin pie made with real fresh pumpkin

I was a little overly ambitious with my proportions for dessert, so I didn’t quite finish this plate.  However, as a midnight snack, it tasted just as delicious! 

I hope you enjoy looking into my first Thanksgiving meal.  I certainly had fun cooking with family.  Please message me if you’d like any of the recipes or have any comments!  Many of them can be found easily online, though I did make some modifications to suit our tastes (mostly for excess bacon, herbs, and flavor…in this case flavor = butter).

-Enjoy!

Thanksgiving #1 and #2 pictures coming soon!

-Tiff.

These are the decorated almond sugar cookies from yesterday’s post.

Enjoy!

My famous decorated Almond Sugar Cookies!

I made cookie cutter shapes of diplomas and caps for my class.  It is my last semester, and Tuesday is my last day of class for my dissertation before we get to just work and work and work over our project for the next month.  I thought cookies would be a nice send off for everybody—who doesn’t love a good sugar high at school?

I had some left-over dough, so I also made a few pineapples!  I used Icing I had already made up and saved from last week, so it is a little thinner than I usually like (I think it collected a bit of moisture?), but yummy nonetheless!  I’m going to make some fresh icing for the graduation cookies, so pictures of those will be up in the next couple days.

Enjoy!

Lemon Scented Checkerboard Cookies

Cream together 2 sticks of butter with 1/2 c. of sugar.  Add 1 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. lemon extract, and 1/4 tsp. salt.  Slowly add 2 1/2 c. APF.  The dough will seem quite crumbly.

Turn out onto a work surface and knead until the butter softens and absorbs, creating a workable dough.  It will still pull apart easily.  Divide the dough in half.  Color each half as desired.  I like to add 3 Tbsp of cocoa to one half for the contrast in flavor.  If you don’t want to use food color, this will create a naturally checkered brown and white cookie…but I like colors. :)

Roll out each half into equal sized squares.  Slice into 9 strips each—I used a toothpick to estimate and mark my lines before cutting into my dough.  Alternate colors as shown in the pictures.  I used a beaten egg to brush against the edges to make sure the strips sealed together.  This will give you 2 logs when you have used up all of the strips—one log with brown dominant colors, and one with blue dominant.

Do not worry if your logs are not quite square.  Wrap it in plastic wrap and use the flat sides of your hands to press the log into an even square.  The pattern will still remain in the middle.  Put both logs in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before unwrapping to slice and bake.

Bake on a silpat or non-stick cookie sheet at 350F for 10 minutes—you do not want the cookies to brown on the edges.

When finished they have a nice shortbread texture that disolves nicely and stands up to milk or soy milk. 

NOTE: If you are vegan, this is a fun recipe to try—you can easily substitute soy butter for real butter and a little water instead of egg wash when assembling.

Enjoy!

1st Ever Fondant Cake!

I said I would post this a long time ago, but I have been neglectful about that, so I appologize!  This was a 50th Birthday cake that I was commissioned for by a friend, which I agreed to, without necessarily knowing if I could pull it off or not!  I had never really worked with fondant before, and this cake was to be:

2 tiered, with mickey’s pants represented on the bottom, a pattern with his face on the top, and a hat on top like the ones you get at Disneyland.  The bottom layer is German Chocolate with a pecan coconut filling, and the top layer is carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting.  Unfortunately I do not have pictures of the cut cake (as I heard there were no leftovers!), but this is what I came up with.

I hope you enjoy!

-Tiffy.

I MAKE CAKES OUT OF RAINBOWS!!!

This was my 2nd EVER fondant cake that I made with the left over supplies from my FIRST ever fondant cake (it will be eaten tomorrow at another birthday party, so pictures will be forthcoming for that).

Almond rainbow cake layered with lemon cream cheese pudding and covered in buttercream and fondant decorations.  I had a LOT of fun making this, and although I didn’t have too much time to make sure the cakes were stacked nice and evenly, I think it came out really well and was so happy with the bright colors.  The birthday girl was also pleased, which is really all that matters.

Love love love love love in the kitchen.

Enjoy!

-Tiffy.

I tested this chocolate chip cookie recipe from Alton Brown’s “The Chewy” and substituted good dark chocolate for his semi-sweet chips.  I don’t always trust Food Network recipes—I’ve been unimpressed by their results before, but as for baking science, Alton really knows his stuff!  These were easy, and came out as promised—crisp edges and chewy chewy centers.  His recipe actually calls for bread flour, which probably would result in even more of a chewy texture because of the higher gluten content, but I was very satisfied with just all-purpose flour as well.  I had heard that this recipe was pretty fool proof, and I have to agree! You could easily substitute in different nuts, chocolates, and candies to your liking.  I hope all you hesitant bakers out there give this one a try!

Don’t believe me? Pictures coming soon! The 1st batch were already gobbled up or sent off to other destinations, so I’m going to go for round 2 and post some up soon!

Ingredients:

2 c. chopped dark chocolate (the good stuff!)

2 1/4 c. flour

1 t. of baking soda

2 sticks melted butter

2 tbsp. milk

1 1/2 t. vanilla

1 egg yolk

1 egg

1/4 c. white sugar

1 1/4 c. brown sugar

1 t. kosher salt

Directions:

1. Sift dry ingredients and set aside.

2. Melt butter and beat in sugars until well blended and lightened in color.  Add egg, yolk, vanilla, and milk, and mix thoroughly.  (Be sure the butter is not too hot—you don’t want scrambled eggs!). 

3. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (but do NOT over-mix).  Fold in chocolate chips, and let set in the refrigerator at least an hour.

4. Preheat oven to 375.  Scoop rounded balls onto a greased cookie sheet, leaving more than 2 inches between cookies (they spread out a lot!).  Bake for 15 minutes, rotating the pan once during baking.

Enjoy!

Hand-Squeezed Key Lime Pie with Fresh Blueberry Sour Cream Topping

Recipe to come soon—VERY EASY TO MAKE!  But I had to put up the pictures as soon as I could, because it looks as good as it tastes!

This makes me smile.  Enjoy!

-Tiffy.

Chocolate Crepes with Chocolate Sauce

…Sometimes you just have to.

Enjoy!

-Tiffy.