The macaron (and Zac) and I part 4

Zac's mom was so sweet and signed us up for a french macaron making class at Orson Gygi in Salt lake City and it was so much fun! If you are a cooking/food/kitchen/gadget fanatic like I am, a walk through the Gygi supply store would be a dream come true! It really is amazing and packed with everything and anything your kitchen could possibly need.

After indulging me with a walk through the store we went to the class. Our teacher was the sweetest lady ever and we learned tons of great tips for making macarons in Utah with the high altitude. I am SO excited to make them again since its been a few months since my last at home macaron making experience.

After a demo from the instructor we were set free to make our own batches and fillings. I was a little intimidated at first especially since it uses a sugar syrup that needed to be cooked to the soft ball stage, but they came out great! Zac and I made yellow colored macarons. I wish we could have made a lemon curd cream filling but we ended up filling ours with a vanilla bean buttercream which was still delish.

These were so yummy: crisp shell, pretty ruffled feet and soft chewy on the inside with insanely good cream fillings. To die for.

The awesome recipe packet

The setup that convinced me that I need a giant marble island in our kitchen in the future (many, many, many years from now)

The macarons! 

 Fresh out of the oven

These daddio piping bags are amazing 

the selection we got to take home: white chocolate papaya, chocolate with chocolate ganache, pecan with cinnamon chocolate ganache, raspberry buttercream and vanilla bean

Can't even begin to express how reassuring it is to go to bed knowing I have a stash of macarons in the freezer

On our drive home we talked about how much fun we had. Zac was mostly excited about the apron he got to keep and I went on forever talking about how much I wanted our teacher's job. Seriously. I would love to teach cooking classes all day! Halfway through our drive home a sushi craving came on and it was a strong one too. Since it was already 5:30 and we knew a wait at a restaurants would be ridiculous we settled for costa vida...but I could not stop thinking about sushi! So we had a very Japanese themed Sunday dinner tonight. There was just no denying the craving. 

I think my wrapping is starting to get better...ish :)

Happy Sunday!

Honey Apple Bundt Cake

Two Saturdays ago, Zac's sister gave me a glass cake stand/party platter/trifle dish/punch bowl. Which basically means it's awesome and I am trying to find every excuse to use it. This past Saturday I came home with a box full apples from an event at my internship and I have been trying to use apples in everything.

I actually had to wash and clean all 250 apples that were for the event...it took forever!



So I had a cake platter...and tons of apples. Clearly, the only solution was to make a Honey Apple Bundt Cake. This recipe I found is amazing. The cake was super moist and the fresh apples made it even better.

I did make some adjustments:
*1/2 cup white plus 1/2 cup light brown sugar in place of 1 cup white sugar.
*Used 1/2 a cup of honey instead of 3/4 cup.
*I sifted all the dry ingredients together.
*I diced my apples instead of shredded them. Makes for great texture. (In my opinion at least).
*I made my own honey cream cheese frosting consisting of 2/3 cup of cream cheese (room temp and fat free), 1/3 cup sour cream (light), 1/2 cup confectioners sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 1T of honey. (This is my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe that has come after many trial and errors...consistency is really great).

I  actually realized the recipe asked for shredded apples a little too late (shh!), but I really like the texture of the diced apples.

When I took the cake out of the oven and flipped it over, I couldn't help but think of the Red Velvet Nothing Bundt Cake my Aunt brought for her son's B-day Dinner last summer at Cheesecake Factory and the cream cheese frosting that made it so good...So I made some too and draped it all over the cake and it was gooood. Definitely an inspired choice.

 We loved it, and it looks absolutely delicious. Definitely something I would make again.

Happy Honey Apple Bundt Cake Day Indeed :)

Oh...and tonight, I made a break through with Zac and quinoa! He normally really dislikes it, but he utterly enjoyed my quinoa topped with sauteed mushrooms and brown butter. Greatest. Feeling. Ever.

Mission Organization and Nigellissima Mishaps

When it was only 8:53am this morning and before I made it to school I had spent at least 30 minutes of my morning looking for my cellphone, my laptop charger, my wallet, my deodorant, and my jacket. I am not sure how it all started but ever since Zac and I moved to our apartment in Springville, a terrible curse of not-being-able-to-find-anything-we-need-at-the-moment fell upon us and we spend a considerable amount of our day just looking for stuff...everday! Last night it was my pizza cutter which is still M.I.A. How do you lose a pizza cutter? I always kept it in the same place! AHH! It really is driving me crazy.

So...I have decided I am going to Organize EVERYTHING. I was really inspired by MPMK and will be probably utilizing most of their tips and pointers. 

Zac and I will be moving this July and I want to go through ALL of our stuff, de-clutter, trash/donate/sell what I can, organize, and label everything.

High hopes that this will all be done, but once I am graduated in April I will have some solid time to contribute to this major project. It's gonna happen.

...

One of my birthday presents from Zac was Nigella's new cookbook Nigellissima. It came out last year in Europe but Zac had to pre-order it since it didn't get released in the U.S. until February. Her book looks great. Very rustic and as always, simple and straight forward.

I tried her yogurt pot cake and it was terrible! It was starchy and every bite was painful to endure. After beginning to think my admiration for Nigella needed to be in serious check, I decided to look at the recipe again and realized that I TOTALLY botched it. I doubled the recipe's flour content and used cornstarch instead of flour, and forgot the milk. Hallelujah! Nigella didn't fail me, It was all a big mistake. So I tried again and it was indeed as delightful as the goddess herself professed. This time I powdered it and drizzled it with Martha Stewart's lemon glaze off of her Glazed Lemon Pound cake recipe and it was divine!

I had a bit of an accident transferring it to my new cake stand (thanks to an awesome birthday present from my SIL)..hence the giant rifts. 

 Cupcakes from the Cocoa Bean...The Key-Lime one was crazy good...tasted just like pie!

the BYU vs. Gonzaga game

Truly Madly Deeply

I meant to post this yesterday, but it was a long and busy day so here it is, a day late.

Valentine's Day of 2011 was three days after my first date with Zac. While we didn't exchange valentines, he did tell me to check this video out. (The video must be viewed to understand anything else that follows). Zac thought it was funny and a good video to watch in the spirit of the day. When I first watched it I thought he was clearly just being blunt about how he felt, but according to him he had never watched the last 10 seconds or so of the video and totally missed the message it was getting across...I'm sticking to my version of the story and that's probably the story that I will tell the kiddos in the future. 

We watch this video every year over Little Caesar's pizza and Martinellis, which is, my very favorite way to spend Valentine's Day. 

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Zac and I celebrated Chinese New Year a day early this year and had lunch at the Four Seasons Hotpot in Provo. We heard about the place from Zac's colleague in one of the Chemistry labs he works in and were told that this place is authentic and indeed it was. We loved it!

We ordered The Xiao Long Bao and Shui Jiao dumplings which were delicious (we called in about two hours in advance since they make everything from scratch) and shared a hotpot. It was our first time and I was so excited to try everything that we ended up with SO much food. I would definitely suggest going for one or the other (dumplings or hotpot) not both.

If you have never had a hotpot before the concept is very simple.

Step 1: Choose your broth--we chose half miso, half spicy Szechwan. Your broth is brought to you and placed on a gas burner or electric burner to keep it nice and hot.
Step 2: Choose your veggies, seafood, meats, noodles, etc. We had tons of crab, prawns, mussels, cabbage, broccoli, bean sprouts, tofu, pork, chicken and mushrooms.
Step 3: Drop everything in the hotpot, mix with chopsticks (this step, according to the sweet lady that showed us how to do it, is vital).
Step 4: Allow hotpot to come to a full boil and cook to desired doneness.
Step 5: Devour with chopsticks, spicy garlic, and peanut sauce.

 Getting the first bite...I believe it was fish

Sauces and appetizers 

 These were the Shui Jiao dumplings with pork and cilantro. The wrapping was so thin and wonderful!

The veggies were excellent in the spicy broth

Happy Chinese New Year! Don't forget to eat noodles tomorrow...it will bring you good luck :) 

Chocolate Cake

When we were dating Zac claimed he preferred pie over cake for his birthday. Last year, however, when I told him I was making him pie he confessed that what he really wanted was chocolate cake and  so I made him one and the result was delicious. This year I made Ron Ben Israel's chocolate cake. He is suppose to be the king of cake and so I had very, very, very high expectations for his recipe. To his credit, the cake did not disappoint! He is in fact, a sweet genius! The cake is moist, decadent, and intensely chocolaty (I have not tasted a complete slice but have been nibbling here and there for some quality control). This batter was also the runniest batter I have ever worked with but just have faith it is suppose to be very, very soupy!

I think Zac will be very happy with the turn out of the cake and I am super excited for him to have it on Monday. He is turning 25 years old! That is a quarter of a century! 

Ingredients

Runny batter

cooling

6 layers of cake, frosted with chocolate mousse in between each layer

made pretty with big milk chocolate curls

My Adjustments

*I got his recipe from food network's website. He does not add the two cups of water the recipe calls for in the directions in the ingredients list, and thankfully I did not skip over reading the directions like I usually do and was able to catch it. 

*I also used cake flour instead of regular all purpose flour. Make sure to use 1cup+1T of cake flour for every cup of all purpose flour you are replacing. Cake flour is much finer and so need a little more of it to get the right proportion of dry to wet ingredients.

*I also used a combination of light brown and castor sugar (2 cups of each). 

*This recipe calls for 2 cups coffee that can be replaced with 2 cups of very strong postum (you can do any barely/wheat drink, or even just hot water --just avoid hot chocolate or anything of that nature because it will only make the cake sweeter).

*I filled the layers with Nigella's chocolate mousse. 

*I also did not use his ganache recipe but instead used Ree Drummond's. 

The result? Chocolate cake goodness! 

 tall and beautiful!

New Year, New Obsessions

I am not sure if it is because it is the beginning of a new year, or if I am just recently realizing some new interests but lately I have been crazy about a few things.

Here's that list:

1. Sewing...dresses and skirts. My mother is a compulsive seamstress. I think she secretly has plans to sew an entire wardrobe for her future grandchildren (though she may have already started) and has lured me into the world of sewing by getting me a sewing machine this past Christmas. The results are mediocre but certainly wearable.

One of the projects I am working on (and also the first pattern I am using)

2. Processing...anything and everything in the food processor Zac's parents got me for Christmas. I am not sure what it is, but everything seems to taste better when it comes from the processor. Pizza doughs, crepes, marinades, smoothies, everything!

2. Pita Bread. I am not sure where this came from, Zac is known to devour an entire package with a tub of red pepper humus, but my obsession with pita mainly rests with cucumbers, feta, the occasional spread of garlic--must be garlic--humus and tahini, and pizza toppings. Is it bad that I have been clipping and searching for Pita Bread coupons and stalking sales so that I can buy a ton and stash it in the freezer?

3. Chocolate covered ju-jus. This one is very new. My boss had a meeting for the employees at the bookstore and brought some for the group to share. I have consumed at least half a pound a day for the past...8. Good thing they are a seasonal treat and I can plan on avoiding them after Valentines Day.

The very last JU-JU...minus the stash I have in the pantry...and in the glove box in the car...and in a sterilized piggy bank I may or may not have made Zac think is filled with my food splurge savings.

4. Carmallow Popcorn. This time last year I was obsessed with caramel popcorn. This time I am obsessed with Carmallow. It's honestly one of the most addicting treats ever and basically consists of brown sugar, butter, marshmallows and popcorn. I am a sucker for rice crispy treats and figured combining the two could only be a match made in heaven. My BIL gave me a microwavable popcorn popper bowl last year (one of the greatest inventions ever) and it has made my Carmallow addictions so much easier to appease. I made some for the primary kiddos last Sunday for our FST (fourth sunday treat) and I think they are hooked on it. The only person I know who is not the biggest fan is Zac. But then again, I think he is just in denial.

Popcorn caramel goodness that takes but moments to make

I am hoping these obsessions fade pretty soon because I am finding myself spending more and more time at the gym to compensate for the calories. Until then I am keeping a log of these recipes and keeping them in my little black recipe book so I can rekindle them in the future.


Heres one of those recipes.

When I miss a gyro from NY rub:

1/2 teaspoon of Cumin
1 Tablespoon of fresh thyme (plucked from sprigs)
1 garlic clove
3 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespon pesto (I make my own then freeze it but store bought stuff is good as long as it comes refrigerated...I have yet to find a bottled version that isn't super separated)
Handful of italian parsley
1/4 of a shallot
S&P to taste
Juice from 1/2 a lemon

Blitz in the processor (or blender, mortar and pestle, or if you are brave and don't mind having the smell of garlic in your hands for what may seem like days,  by hand)
slather over chicken/pork loin/lamb

Your marinating meat should look something like these very lucky pork loins...shining with olive oil and covered with green savory goodness

Allow to marinade for at least 30 minutes
Cook meat on very hot skillet, no need for oil, until brown and perfect for stuffing into PITA BREAD ( I only ever use my cast iron skillet to cook meats and it works great here)
I usually add a slather of sour cream that's been doctored up with some tahini, tomatoes, boston lettuce, and cucumbers. Stuffed pita heaven!