Meat Day!

On Tuesday Chef Laurie brought in Steak, Top Sirloin, and Pork.  The steak was seared on the highest flame on both sides and then put in the oven for a short period of time.   After it was cooked it was cut into square chunks.  The steak went in the blink of an eye.  The top sirloin was used for a beef stroganoff.  The meat was cut into small pieces and cooked on the stove.  It was combined with sour cream, dill, and pasta.  The pork was the third and final meat.  It was pounded thin and coated with a layer of flour then egg.  It was then covered with bread crumbs and oven fried.  It was so good!  This was one of my favorite weeks!

xoxo,
all of us.

Cupcakes

 

This weekend I decided to make vanilla cupcakes. I also made my absolute favorite frosting, cream cheese frosting. To me, buttercream frosting is too sugary and sweet, but cream cheese frosting is the perfect amount of sweetness with the cream cheese takes the edge off. Just having a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting looked too boring so I decided to add a variety of sprinkles to give them a little bit of color. The cake was deliciously moist and was a thousand times better than any box mix. And the cream cheese went absolutely perfectly with the cake. Overall it was a very successful dessert.

~Elizabeth

Meat Day

One of the meat days that we had was all about fish. The wasabi and tuna was delicious, and the wasabi added a nice kick. I also liked the scallops. When they were cooking they smelled delicious. But my favorite side we made that day was the homemade tortilla chips. They were just ordinary flour tortillas, but baking them in the oven and adding olive oil, salt, paprika, and cumin made them delicious! I was surprised because they were so much better than their store counterparts. This is definitely something that I would make at home!!
xo xo,
Talia, Natalie, Elizabeth

Chicken and Farro

On Friday we tasted chicken and farro. The chicken was delicious and very tasty. It was crispy on the outside from being baked with olive oil but still moist and tender on the inside. The rub of herbs on the outside was very flavorful. The farro had bacon bits and was tossed with olive oil.
~ Talia, Natalie, Elizabeth

Ombre Mini Cakes

I made mini ombre cakes last night. I mostly just wanted to make them look nice but they tasted pretty good as well! I just made a simple white cake batter then separated it into three bowls. I added 10 drops of a blue food coloring in the darkest bowl, 5 drops in the medium bowl, and 1 in the lightest. I wasn't completely satisfied with how the colors looked; I would have liked the lightest color to be even lighter, but it turned out fine. Also, I would have measured the three layers better because one of the layers was much thinner than the others but it wasn't too noticeable. Once the layers were done baking I made a vanilla buttercream frosting for them. Then I leveled out the tops, cut out the cakes with a glass, and stacked them with frosting in between the layers and on top. I would use a bigger frosting nozzle if I did it again. Overall they turned out nice, but it was just a regular cake and I would have liked a little different flavor if I did it again.
I also mashed the extra bits together in layers and made another cake.

Pie

This weekend I was reading my food memoir when I was hit with inspiration and hunger. My food memoir is all about pie, so I really wanted to eat some pie. I was lucky to find a recipe where I had all of the ingredients, and didn't look too hard to make. That recipe was for Cocounut Cream Pie.

I started out with the crust, and that turned out fine. In fact, it ended up being the best part of the pie. The filling not so much. I found out that you have to be really patient and wait until the filling actually cooks before putting it in the crust, and also you need to make sure you don't burn the sugar. I found out that to make a pie you have to have a lot more patience then I did.
~Elizabeth