29 May
Herbed-Baked Eggs
Posted by Michelle as Breakfast Foods | 20 Comments
Yes, yes, I have joined yet another baking group. This one, Barefoot Bloggers, was started by Tara of Smells Like Home, and is devoted to cooking/baking Ina Garten recipes twice a month. I was drawn to this group for a few reasons:
#1 – I could stand to focus on cooking for a change instead of always baking – variety is the spice of life, no?
#2 – I love Ina Garten.
#3 – My sister bought me Ina’s Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook for Christmas and it has been neglected.
Definitely good reasons. Now on to the food!
Our first recipe was Herbed-Baked Eggs, which I had actually watched Ina make on an episode of Barefoot Contessa. They looked fabulous, and I was looking forward to trying them. Some butter and cream is heated to bubbling under a broiler, and then three eggs are slipped into the gratin dish, covered with a mixture of herbs and Parmesan cheese. What a wonderful dish, and something so quick yet fancy enough to serve to breakfast guests. The eggs need a bit longer than the 5-6 minutes Ina estimates under the broiler, but the taste is just fabulous.
Our next Barefoot Blogger recipe will be Pasta, Pesto, and Peas. Be on the lookout for it in a couple of weeks!
26 May
Buttermilk Pancakes
Posted by Michelle as Breakfast Foods | 15 Comments
My search for the perfect from-scratch pancake has eluded me for some time. Some of the recipes have been way too loaded with butter, and others have resulted in curdled butter when mixing together the melted butter, eggs, and buttermilk. At last, while watching the Food Network late one night, Alton Brown made buttermilk pancakes that had a modest amount of butter (in comparison) and solved the problem of my curdled butter. Apparently mixing the eggs, butter, and milk all together creates a chemical reaction that curdles the butter. By separating the eggs and mixing the egg whites with the buttermilk, and the yolks with the butter separately, each combination is thus stabilized. Problem solved!
The verdict: Love them! The batter is thick and lumpy, which creates fluffy, flavorful pancakes. Will be saving this for my standard pancake recipe from now on!
24 May
Lighter Chicken Parmesan
Posted by Michelle as Poultry | 12 Comments
Not too long ago, after I fell in love with Cook’s Illustrated magazine, I began recording the America’s Test Kitchen show on PBS. I have really enjoyed watching many of the recipes being made, picking up some tips and tricks along the way. An episode that I saved from a couple of months ago featured a lightened up chicken parmesan recipe. The key to this recipe is that the breaded chicken is not fried, but rather the panko breadcrumbs are toasted first, and then the breaded chicken is baked at a high temperature in the oven.
Big thumbs up on this recipe. This had tons of flavor, and the combination of toasted breadcrumbs and parmesan was tasty enough that I kept eating spoonfuls of it before the chicken got prepped. Next time I would probably do more smothering with the sauce and cheese, but this will definitely go into my regular rotation.
21 May
Homemade Pita Bread
Posted by Michelle as Yeast Breads | 43 Comments
I love hummus and I try to keep a batch of it in the fridge so I can snack on it during the week with vegetables. I keep meaning to buy some pita bread to eat with the hummus, but the last two weeks I have forgotten. I thought about it again today and figured I could easily find a recipe online for homemade pita bread. I ended up merging recipes from The Fresh Loaf and my friend Ally at Culinary Infatuation. Not only were these incredibly easy to make, but tasted a thousand times better than any store bought pita I have had before. And watching them puff into saucers while in the oven will make you giddy too 
More about making the pita bread and the recipe after the break…
19 May
Traditional Madeleines
Posted by Michelle as Cookies | 37 Comments
This week’s recipe was chosen by Tara of Smells Like Home. I was so excited to see that Madeleines were chosen, as I have been wanting to try them for some time now. After a quick trip to Williams Sonoma to get my pan, I was all set to whip up these delicate, French tea cookies. I found these to be incredibly easy to make – the batter was a cinch to whip together, then a chill in the fridge and filling the pan mold, and into the oven for a short 11 minutes.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t love these. While the texture was very nice, spongey and light, I am not a fan of lemon so I wasn’t thrilled with the overall taste and my overall feeling was just “eh”. All in all, this is a nice delicate cookie, but I would opt for a muffin, scone or biscotti to pair with my hot beverage of choice. Even though Dorie states that these are best eaten the day that they are made (and even, warm from the oven), I would have to respectfully disagree. I thought they were significantly better after a night’s rest in an airtight container.
18 May
Chicken Fajita Enchiladas
Posted by Michelle as Poultry | 13 Comments
I have seen enchiladas popping up on a number of blogs recently, and have never had them, so I decided to make them for dinner Friday night. I absolutely loved these – they (and any other variations I can think of) will be going into the “regular rotation”.
How to make the enchiladas and recipes after the break.
01 May
Vanilla Cake + Chocolate Hazelnut Filling + Chocolate Frosting =
Posted by Michelle as Layer Cakes | 21 Comments
Happy Birthday to my sister, Lauren!!
After I started taking my cake decorating classes, my sister asked if I would make (and decorate, of course) a cake for her birthday. Of course I said yes! Then she saw the drunk clown cake and demanded that a drunk clown grace the top of her cake. Haha, okay, of course that can be done! Err, so I thought. I was pretty pressed for time yesterday and I didn’t want to chance a clown catastrophe, so instead I gave her a cake of crooked writing and a martini glass. That’s drunk, right?
Oh, and I added polka dots to the sides:
When I asked what flavors she wanted she said a yellow cake, chocolate frosting, and some type of hazelnut-flavored filling. The cake is a classic yellow cake, made using the Fluffy Yellow Cake recipe from Cook’s Illustrated (recipes for the cake, filling, and frosting follow below). I decided to torte the layers for a more “sophisticated” cake, and between them is a very thin layer of chocolate frosting topped with a hazelnut ganache.
I was really happy with this cake except that I would have poured the ganache into the cake and let it set there instead of at room temperature, as it got a little too hard and was nearly impossible to work with between the cake layers. Everyone thought that the flavors of the cake were great, and said it was really rich, so if you want to make something a little less rich, I would suggest not torting the layers and instead going with a traditional 2-layer cake.
