Christina Cooks: Memorial Day Edition
Posted by Gypsy on May 24, 2009
I’m getting a little behind on blog posts, but the timeliness of today’s dessert bumps this post to the top. Yesterday, Andy and I headed up north to Vista to enjoy a Memorial Day barbecue at Kristen and Allan’s place. I was tasked with dessert, as according to Kristin I “make the best desserts.” Before anyone decides to do that thing where they remind me that Memorial Day isn’t just about cookouts and liquor, let me remind you that my family a military family. My friends here are military or dependents. More than most people in this country, we realize how important this day is. But we also like to enjoy our long weekend because, fuck it, we’ve earned it.
Anyway, Kristen’s comment on my desserts put the pressure on to come up with something fun and unique. Only once have I served the same dessert twice and that’s because it was a last minute thing the second time. (It’s a source of shame we’ll not mention again.)
This fun cake was made using just a box of white cake mix, some white frosting, food coloring and sprinkles. I made the cake just like the box told me to, then set aside 1/2 cup of the batter (split into two bowls) and put the rest in a cake pan.
The two bowls of batter were then colored with food coloring, one red and one blue. (Any colors will work, of course, and this would be a great cake to make if you are looking to make it match a school or sport team’s colors.)
The colored batter was this spooned into the pan and swirled slightly with a knife to create that marbled look.
Once cool, I frosted the cake with a thin layer of white frosting. This is called a crumb coat and is used to prevent any crumbs from marring the surface of the cake. I then popped the cake in the freezer for about 20 minutes before putting on a thicker layer of white frosting. I chose to decorate with sprinkles immediately after so they would stick in the moist frosting, but there is also the option of popping it back in the freezer and then adding the sprinkles. Putting the sprinkles onto moist frosting allowed them to stick better, but putting them onto cool frosting may have made the design a little cleaner. It’s really a matter of preference.
And there you have it. According to everyone at the barbecue it was quite yummy. I will add that I tried to get photos of the cake after it was cut to show the marbled colors. Alas, it was eaten way too fast for me to get a decent photo. I guess you could use your imagination. Or make it and see/taste the awesomeness for yourself.
Enjoy!
Christina Cooks: Buffalo chicken strips
Posted by Gypsy on Mar 31, 2009
As anyone from Western New York knows, buffalo chicken wings are one of the best inventions on the planet. Deep friend wings plus a yummy hot sauce plus ranch dressing is a meal made in heaven. Unfortunately, without a deep fryer, chicken wings are a lot harder to make. Instead I made this fun variation that uses boneless chicken breast tenders.
Ingredients:
1 lb boneless chicken breast tenders
1.5 - 2 cups bread crumbs
2 eggs
3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
Frank’s RedHot Buffalo Wing sauce (it’s not too spicy but can be made hotter with tabasco sauce)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat eggs in a bowl. Put bread crumbs into a second bowl. Dip chicken into eggs and then coat with the bread crumbs.
2. Heat EVOO in a pan until it’s about simmering. Cook chicken in pan for two minutes on each side. This won’t cook them completely through. It’s just to create a light breading around the chicken.
3. Place chicken onto cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes in oven.
4. Place on plate, coat with buffalo wing sauce and serve with your favorite dipping sauce.
Edit: So Kristen was bitching that I didn’t have any photos of them eating this awesome meal. So here you are: Allan, Kristen and Andy chomping down on my awesome Buffalo Chicken Strips.
Christina Cooks: A birthday cake for Charles
Posted by Gypsy on Mar 16, 2009
I really wish I could’ve gotten photos of the cake-baking process as it was the craziest thing to happen to my kitchen since we’ve moved in. A checkerboard cake requires two different colors of cake poured into cake pans with a separator nested in them. I chose to use a white cake mix and a strawberry cake mix. To pour the batters is difficult with just one person, so a second person is handy to hold it down and make sure the batters don’t mix on the bottom. This is where Kristen’s help came in handy. Once the batters are poured, the goal is to quickly remove the divider without so the colors don’t swirl together. That part turned out to be the easy part. The pouring not so much and Kristen and I both ended up with cake batter-covered hands. This really wasn’t a bad thing.
Unfortunately, the cooking process negated some of our hard work. The strawberry batter rose a little more than the white, expanding those parts into the white a little. So our perfect checkerboard pattern wasn’t so perfect. Upon reflection, it dawned on me that white batter only uses egg whites rather than the whole eggs, which would prevent it from rising as much.
Regardless, it turned out wonderful. I frosted it with vanilla whipped frosting and topped it with some fresh strawberries. And even thought the insides didn’t look like squares, it was still damn yummy to eat.
Christina Cooks: Asiago Shrimp with angel hair pasta
Posted by Gypsy on Feb 19, 2009
This was one of the first recipes I ever tried when Andy and I moved into the house. I got this recipe from Tastefully Simple’s Web site and it does use one of their fall/winter products which can be ordered here. It is so easy that it’s also the first recipe I ever made that came out perfect on the first try. Total time is about 15 minutes, but most of that is waiting for the water for the pasta to boil. Actually cooking time is about 7 minutes.
Ingredients:
1 lb. of raw shrimp (I use the 31/40 count)
1 packet of Tastefully Simple Go! Go! Asiago Dip Mix
1-1.5 sticks of melted butter
angel hair pasta, prepared (I use whole wheat angel hair)
Directions:
1. Saute shrimp in butter over medium high heat until shrimp is cooked through. It’ll turn pink when it’s done. This takes about 3-5 minutes.
2. Sprinkle with dip mix and toss to coat.
3. Serve over pasta.
Seriously, doesn’t get much easier, or yummier, than that.
