Food Contest

I've decided to enter my first-ever food contest! I entered my Loaded 2-Potato Leek Soup to betterrecipes.com's weekly contest, which is affiliated with Better Homes & Gardens magazine. Grand prize is $250. The prize would be nice, but I'm honestly just doing it to get my feet wet. I've discovered tons of contests online and have been flirting with the idea of entering items into the Iowa State Fair this year which, I believe, has the largest food competition category of all the states. Here's a link to the recipe/contest.

Lady Baltimore Cake v2 & v3

I made another attempt at the Lady Baltimore cake about a week and a half ago - It was delicious but I FORGOT THE BAKING POWDER! It ended up being more of a shortcake, so I called it the "Shorty Baltimore" LOL! It tasted quite good, just very dense. I went to the dollar store and got three 8" round pans, but only used two. Also, this time I used a real double boiler that I got from my mom. The 7-minute icing really only took about 7 minutes. The only issue is that the icing seemed a little gooey, akin to marshmallow creme.

Today I decided to try version 3. I used a whole wheat pastry flour instead of the all-purpose variety and I made three 8" round layers. The cake stuck to the pan and was crumbly. Maybe it was the whole wheat flour? Maybe I cooked it too long? I baked it the same amount of time I did for the "Shorty" that was only 2 layers, so maybe the thinner batter just cooked faster and the grainy whole wheat flour wasn't cooperating. The icing turned out okay. I used a 7-minute Icing recipe from the Joy of Cooking this time, which was basically the same as the previous recipe I used only it had one more egg white. I chopped the nuts and raisins super fine and by hand, but the icing was still kind of gooey. I revisited the instructions in JOY after already icing the cake and realized that I was supposed to continue beating the icing, once removed from the heat, until it reached room temperature. I'm sure that process would help with the texture a bit.

Next time I think I'll nail this sucker as long as I remember all the ingredients and all the steps. It's definitely a learning process and the science of baking is a little more difficult that I originally imagined. I hope to have this cake perfected by June 12 so that I may take it to our family reunion potluck dinner!

Strawberry Stuffed French Toast

In the Easter post, I had forgotten to mention the fabulous brunch of Strawberry Stuffed French Toast!!! I basically followed this recipe, but of course made some slight changes. Instead of using Texas toast, I found a Blueberry Streusel loaf made by Franz, a regional bread company. The slices used were much smaller than the ones called for in the recipe so I ended up only using two eggs and a splash of milk for "frenching." Also, I made a strawberry syrup similar to what the recipe shows but I used a mixture of dark Karo syrup and maple flavored syrup. The guys thought it was a success and raved about it all day! Here are a couple pictures of the finished product taken just before I sunk my teeth in!

Easter Dinner

I just realized that I haven't posted anything on this blog for quite a long time, and I have made a lot of great stuff over the past months. My creative habits had moved from crafty to culinary over the winter mostly because I couldn't safely sand and polish resin creations inside. With the weather warming up I'm excited to get back into resin casting, but let me tell you a little about my recent kitchen fun.

This Easter I decided to create a delicious feast using recipes from the magazine Saveur that I recently subscribed to. They have some great articles about ingredients and methods used in all styles of cooking and a huge online database of recipes. On their website I found a Pineapple Chipotle Glazed Ham recipe and immediately decided that's what I would make. It was absolutely fantastic and the only thing that I changed was the size of ham used. Here's the recipe.

I took some photos of my finished product but haven't uploaded them yet, so here's a picture from the Saveur website. ;-)



My side dishes consisted of wild rice with asparagus, ginger-honey glazed baby carrots and a smokey cheddar potato casserole. The potato casserole was based off of one that my friend, Tyler, suggested we have at Thanksgiving this last year. His original recipe called for a pint of sour cream and 1/2 c of butter and was DEADLY. I modified it a bit and came up with a great comfort casserole that, of all the dishes, was the only one completely finished up by the end of the meal.

Smokey Sharp Cheddar Potato Casserole

2 lb bag of frozen hash browns, thawed
8oz of plain non-fat yogurt
1 can cream of chicken soup (it probably wouldn't hurt to use the low sodium type)
1/2 c onion, chopped
6-8 oz smokey cheddar cheese, sliced or grated

mix the yogurt, soup, and onions in a bowl. grease crock pot. layer 1/2 of hash browns in crock. pour 1/2 of yogurt/soup mix. layer 1/2 of cheese. repeat layers. cook on low about 4 hours.
-or-
mix all ingredients, except half of the cheese, in large bowl. pour into greased 9x13 baking dish, and bake at 350 for about 30 mins. cover with remaining cheese and return to oven for another 30 minutes.

For dessert, I used another recipe from Saveur magazine. It was from an article about cardamom, which is one of my favorite spices.
Once again, a picture from their site...and click here for the recipe.



These little babies are an explosion of flavor! The pound of butter used mixed with the abundance of ginger and cardamom make for a rich little treat, but I'm in love with them.

First thing's first: PIE!!!

From the moment that I decided to create this blog, a mere 6-7 hours ago, I've been contemplating what would be the optimal first post. Today I didn't have to actually work much, so I planned on cooking a bit. Wenk had purchased a few mangoes the other day with the sole intention of convincing me to make a pie. A month or so ago, there was a huge sale on the aromatic bulbs and I had decided to use them in lieu of peaches in a traditional 2-crust southen dessert favorite. Wenk loved it but soon after eating it talked to his mom and realized that a cold mango pie, made to imitate his great aunt k's cold-peach pie would be wonderful. He knows me well enough to know that if he gets the ingredients and throws an idea at me that I'll eventually whip something up. Well, I didn't get the recipe for that but found a good and healthy looking recipe to follow for my cold mango strawberry pie. Fresh peach and yogurt no-bake pie

I really wanted to make my own graham cracker crust with some cinnamon grahams that have been occupying my pantry but soon realized that I had lent out all my pie pans to our friend Carrie, who recently did her non-fiction thesis reading which included a piece on searching for authentic pies and of course featured several pies at the reception. So the crust was store bought sadly enough, but ended up being delicious. I substituted 3 decently sized mangoes for the peaches and used a 6oz container of strawberry flavored yogurt from Tillamook (yum!) for the yogurt/sour cream option. While mixing the vanilla into the yogurt I couldn't stop myself from adding some powdered ginger, which ended up amounting to probably 1.5 tsp.

On a less healthy note, Wenk has also been craving tater tot casserole. I've pretty much stopped making anything that calls for a condensed cream of mushroom soup, but decided it wouldn't hurt to make it since it's kind of a comfort food. I used cousin Erika's traditional recipe, 1lb gr. beef/2 cans green beans/2 cans cr. of mushroom soup/tots, but substituted the gr beef for some elk. Wenk had a baseball/bbq get-together the other night and a buddy brought elk burgers.

There were a couple of well seasoned ones left over so I just crumbled them into the mix. Yay comfort food! Great first post, me!