Menu Plan Monday: April 17

Last week's menu plan was one of those rare plans where I made everything I said I was going to make, when I said I was going to make it. It doesn't happen very often where nothing changes, I'm not running late or forget to take something out to defrost.

I'll try to do better next week. (Yes, I'm kidding!)

Sunday: Prime rib chili with tortilla chips and fixins (based on Tyler Florence's recipe found on page 60 of Dinner at My Place)

Monday: crispy baked chicken with mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (I'm trying out a frozen potato product for mashed potatoes, which I will blog about later.)

Tuesday: blueberry cake french toast with bacon (I'm skipping the crumble topping and am not doing the "icing" I initially saw served on this.)

Wednesday: broccoli stuffed chicken breast with noodles and peas

Thursday: Hubby cooking pasta

Friday: Rib eye steak in whiskey cream sauce (from Pioneer Woman, recipe in her cookbook)

And that's the plan for this week, being submitted to Menu Plan Monday.

Fun with cupcakes

Need sugar?

Try this.

It's a Toblerone-Topped Caramel Cheesecake, recipe from Kraft Canada.

I'd link the recipe, but I can't seem to navigate the Kraft website. It has changed a fair bit since I last browsed it and I'm not impressed. (Can someone please explain to me why you HAVE to have a Facebook account to do anything anymore?)

**Note** I finally found the recipe link on the website, but following it led to an error page, so still no recipe.

Birthday Cake for my "little guy"

Been quite awhile since I've blogged - no particular reason, no enthusiasm or desire to blog.

Still cooking and baking, though, and occasionally remembering to take pictures.

Last month my oldest child turned 12 and requested a 4 tiered cake of any flavor for his birthday. I was disinclined to make 4 tiers for a 12 year old, so he got 4 layers instead, alternating vanilla and chocolate with a white chocolate buttercream. His birthday gift from us had been a fish tank and some fish, so it seemed only appropriate to give him a fish themed cake (when his request for a fondant cake was "surprise me".)

One of my boys only likes to eat the fondant and icing, the other likes to eat the cake, but not the fondant, so between the two of them, they can eat a piece of cake. Fortunately we had family and friends to share this with.

Happy Birthday to meeeeeee!

It's my birthday today!

Yes, I made my own cake. I like to make my own cake - then I get exactly what I want, and this year, this is what I decided to make: White Chocolate Strawberry Meringue Cake, from Tish Boyle's Cake Book.

This cake is fun to make, and can be made in stages (I made the meringue last night and let it sit in the oven all night long.)

It was grown-up elegant, but still childishly yummy, with the soft, sweet meringue, and the subtle white chocolate cream. Fresh, local strawberries give it a bit of healthfulness, but there is no denying that this is a sweet "cake."

I found a few recipes for other types of cakes I'd have liked today, so maybe I will have to turn this into a birthday week? Cake and presents every day for a week - what fun that would be!

If you were to make your own birthday cake, what type would it be?

I Hearts Cooking Club: Mark Bittman Edition, Movie Night

A quickie for me today, running late for what I'd like to do this morning but did not want to miss this week's posting for I Hearts Cooking Club, where we are cooking up Mark Bittman. Theme for this week is Movie Night, which leaves a very broad interpretation.

Sure popcorn or candy is traditional (and if I'd had time, I would have made some homemade peanut brittle from HTCE, but I didn't), but who says you have to be stuck with traditional snacks for movie night?


Lately our little family has been gathering around and watching Doctor Who together, fresh from the pvr, which is as close to movie night as we can manage.

For a fun "snack" or fancy dessert, try a chocolate souffle, with creme anglaise (vanilla custard sauce.) A little prep work in advance, pop it in the oven while eating dinner, and it is good to go when you want to snuggle down on the couch for a good night of traveling through space in a tiny blue box.

Leftovers, while not as fluffy, work well in a lunch box the next day.

Or skip the souffle and just drink the custard with a straw, right out of the pot.

Both these recipes can be found in How to Cook Everything, on pages 673 for the custard, and 674 for the souffle.

Now to find my shoes and head out to the farmer's market! Ack! Where did I put my camera!?!

Foodie Fans of the Pioneer Woman: Make this cake

Ree's Chocolate Sheet Cake, found on pages 218, 19 and 20. A lovely chocolate cake with chocolate icing, plenty for a crowd.


I must have made this cake a good half dozen times before I ever got a picture of it. It isn't a picturesque cake, nothing fancy, but people dive into it and it's hard to take a pretty picture of something that people are inhaling.


The only reason I didn't have to fight off my kids to get this picture is because I hid my slice and then I waited until they were busy with their own pieces. My kids are pretty good about letting me get pictures of food items, either mine or their own, but when there is chocolate cake, with a decadent, gooey icing, why tempt them?


I like it when the theme for Food Fans of the Pioneer Woman is any recipe. Makes it easier for me to justify making yet another dessert as my submission.

Thanks Deb and Muneba for this selection.

And thank you Ree, Pioneer Woman, for a great cake recipe that will be make many, many more times for my family and friends.

Happy Birthday Mom

My mother's birthday is within days of Christmas. Not the best time of the year to have a birthday, being so close to a holiday.

For years my Grandparents made sure my mother always had a good birthday, and that she always received at least one gift, along with having a special dinner.

This year, however, they aren't well, and I knew that if I didn't do something, my mother would not get her traditional dinner of Hawaiian spare ribs and rice.


Now it isn't my fault my mother chose to have prime rib instead of spare ribs. Can you blame her?


I did, however, make her the cake she has had for years: an angel food cake, layered, with a lightened custard, served with strawberries.

I've watched my grandmother make this cake for years, so I knew what to do, but still made a few modifications. My grandmother always bought the angel food cake, I made mine from scratch. My grandmother used Birds Eye Custard powder, lightened up with whipped heavy cream, I made a pastry cream, with lots of vanilla bean seeds in it, lightened up with whipped heavy cream.

My mother would have been happy if I'd have just given her the cream and a spoon.


It isn't fancy. Actually, when put together, it isn't even pretty. But it sure tastes good.

We had to cut our visit to my mother short (I'm sick as can be, still, and really not looking forward to trying to work tomorrow,) but at least we were there long enough to carry on some of the birthday tradition.

Custard Cake

1 angel food cake (store bought is fine, if you don't want to make your own), cut into three layers
1 recipe for custard, below, cooled
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp sugar
Sliced fruit of your choice (my family has always used frozen strawberries, defrosted with a touch of sugar, as well as canned, sliced peaches in light syrup, though I admit I skipped that this year.)

Whip the heavy cream with the sugar and vanilla until it is light and fluffy, being careful not to over whip. Fold the cream into the custard, until well mixed.

Place the bottom layer of cake on a large platter, one that will contain the custard that will fall off the sides of the cake. Spoon 1/4 of the custard on top of the cake, spreading slightly. Repeat with the next two layers. Use the last 1/4 of the custard to try and "ice" the sides of the cake.

If there is any left over, place it in the middle hole of the angel food cake.

Or use your fingers to lick the bowl clean.

To serve, put a slice of cake on a plate or in a bowl, and top with your choice of fruit.

"Custard"
(I know, it's pastry cream, but my grandmother calls it her custard for her banana cream pies, and who am I to argue with her about it?)

1/4 cup corn starch
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk, scalded
3 slightly beaten egg yolks
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp vanilla (or the seeds of one vanilla bean)

Mix corn starch, sugar and salt together in a medium pot. Gradually add milk. Cook over medium low heat, stirring constantly, until all the sugar and cornstarch has been dissolved and the milk is hot.

Add a ladle full of hot milk into the eggs, whisking constantly to temper the eggs. Whisk the egg mixture back into the hot milk in the pot. Continue to cook for approximately 5 minutes, still stirring, until the mixture is thick and smooth.

Remove from the heat and add in the butter and the vanilla, whisking well to incorporate.

Allow to cool to room temperature.

To use for banana cream pie, pour into a pre baked pie shell that has been lined with slices of banana, then top with slightly sweetened whipped cream.

At every wedding...

A little sun should shine.

Even if it is made of tissue paper and tape.

It was a lovely wedding, small but elegant, and a good start to the life of the newlyweds.


Guess which one I'm related to? (Hint - not the one who made this as their cake topper.)

If you said the guy with the hat, you are correct!


That's my cousin, affectionately known to his nieces as "Uncle Germ", and his lovely new wife. Instead of buying a card and putting in some money, or finding out what they'd registered for, my cousin and his lovely bride got a cake. A very big cake. With lots of chocolate involved.


This was my first wedding cake, so I admit I was nervous. The bride wanted chocolate icing and the outside to have a corrugated look to it, something I was not sure how to do. I consulted with a few baking friends, even checked with one of my favorite baking supply stores (who also make wedding cakes) and no one knew how to get the look the bride wanted. Then I came across some cookies and they give the cake the look she wanted. How luck was that?


My invitation to the wedding was yellow with white polka dots on it, and had white daisies on it, so that is the flower I chose for accenting the cake.


I'm sure some of my family members thought I would cringe at the site of all my hard work being cut up and placed out for people to help themselves to, but really, to me, that is one of the best things to see. It is very satisfying to see people enjoying my work, going back for a second piece, licking the icing off the spoon to get every last bit.


Lemon is one of my cousin's favorite flavors, so they had lemons throughout, decorating and accenting. I especially loved how all the place cards had a little bit of lemon trivia on the back of them. This one was especially appropriate to me.

Best wishes to the new bride and groom! May your life together be filled with happiness, your love for each other see you through the rough patches, and you always have lemons for lemonade.

What do you get....

When you combine 4 pounds of butter, 1 pound of shortening, a dozen eggs, half a pound of chocolate, alot of flour, cocoa and icing sugar, plus ten boxes of Cadbury Milk Chocolate Fingers?

My cousin's wedding cake, that's what!

The wedding is tomorrow, which means no pictures for you yet, but I'll be back to my blog and computer in a few days and will put up some pictures then.

Have a nice weekend!

Happy 37th Birthday to Peabody

If you are a food blogger, you aren't asking who Peabody is right now. You know. You've been to her site and drooled over the pictures. You learned very quickly to not be eating or drinking while reading her posts, unless you like cleaning things up or are interested in buying a new computer.

How about if you aren't a food blogger? Well, have you ever heard of Refund Muffins? Those are Peabody's muffins.

What? You've never heard of Refund Muffins?

Oh my goodness. (Quick, follow the link and go read about them! Remember the warning about food or drink while reading her blog.)

Better now? Good.

Well, last week (yes, I know I'm late,) was Peabody's 37th birthday, which Elle proposed we help her celebrate in true food blogging fashion - by cooking for her! The twist was that we were to cook a recipe of Peabody's, from her blog.

Sure, I could have made Refund Muffins. It would likely have made my kids happy, but I wanted something different, something summery, even if we aren't really experiencing summer conditions. I wanted ice cream.


To heck with the lack of summer, I made ice cream, and really good ice cream. Homemade ice cream that made use of a local fruit and was still smooth and creamy and fabulous 4 days after I froze it (we got side tracked by other events and desserts, how else would ice cream stay in my freezer for so long?)

Raspberry Honey Ice Cream

by Peabody

1 quart raspberries
1/3 cup raspberry honey(or any honey will do, I use a regular honey)
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half and half (I didn't have any, so used half regular milk and half heavy cream in its place)
1 tsp lemon juice
1- 1 ½ cups sugar(depending on how sweet your berries are)
3 egg yolks
¼ tsp salt

Add the yolks,sugar and honey to a medium-size bowl. Whisk together and then set aside.
Using a double boiler over medium-low heat, add the half and half, cream, raspberries and salt. Regularly whisk the mixture, heating until the temperature reaches approximately 145F. The mixture should begin to turn purple.
Once the cream mixture has reached the desired temperature, slowly add about half of the mixture to the eggs and sugar while whisking vigorously. This will prevent the eggs from curdling. Once the eggs and cream have been thoroughly integrated, pour back the egg mix into the remaining cream.
Whisk constantly and slowly as the mix rises in temperature. Once the temperature has reached 165-170F — or when the mix evenly coats th

e back of a spoon — remove from heat and add the lime juice and vanilla. Whisk them in completely and run through a sieve to remove any raspberries seeds. Move to a new container to cool. The mix can be placed in the freezer for 2 to 3 hours or, preferably, into the refrigerator overnight.
Churn according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. After churning, place in freezer to firm up. I recommend placing a seal of plastic wrap tight against the ice cream after making it to prevent a skin from forming on the ice cream’s surface. Serve once firm enough.

While Peabody's variation for serving this ice cream, in a cream soda float, sounded amazing, I made mine a bit more grown up and served it on slices of grilled lemon yogurt cake instead. It made a lovely dessert, simple and elegant, out of what was basically cake and ice cream. Cause you can't have a birthday without cake and ice cream, can you?

Happy Birthday Peabody! I hope 37 is everything you hoped it would be!

Happy Birthday Aerodactyl!

Today was our nephew's first birthday, and turned into a beautiful day to have a birthday party on.

To celebrate, we were invited over to his house for a little birthday dinner, with cake, which I made for him.


Mommy had requested a barnyard theme for his cake, which I was more than happy to make for both of them.

For anyone who makes cakes - can you please, please tell me how I can get a white, marshmallow frosting to be barn red? I used an entire bottle of red coloring, plus some burgundy (with some copper thrown in to de-pink things a bit), and still could not get the frosting red. I finally used some edible red glitter, but really wanted a deep red frosting.


Our Aerodactyl (his nickname, since he used to make dinosaur like squawking noises alot,) is a very happy boy. He is also a boy just like his cousin, my youngest, who likes his food and likes alot of it.


And like any little boy, he likes to play with his food before he eats it. I will have to remember this for next year, and get him some playdough for his birthday, so he can mush and mush and mush.

He was quite happy with his cake, which he ate as well as played with.

Happy 1st Birthday little Aerodactyl!

The night I nearly "failed" dinner.

And dessert too, believe it or not.

So not that long ago, I decided to try making cabbage rolls from scratch. I started with a recipe posted on Cream Puff's site, but did not have a helpful friend who'd made them a million times before along to walk me through it.

It took some time, and I was frustrated through alot of it, but I ended up with something resembling cabbage rolls (and then later went back and relooked at the pictures with the recipe and said, "Aaaaah, so that's what I was supposed to do!")

Either way, no one really liked the outcome. Sorry Cream Puff. I messed them up.

But I thought I was redeeming myself after dinner by providing a lovely cake for dessert.

A golden cake, with a lemon curd swiss buttercream on it, with fresh strawberries in between the layers. The lemon curd was mighty tasty on it's own, and lemon always goes well with fresh strawberries.

Beside's, who gets a slice of a homemade, two layer cake on on Monday? Seriously, who gets this kind of dessert?

At the end of the meal, my youngest decided to "grade" me and assign marks to my efforts.

Cabbage Rolls = D (nearly failing, just barely passing.)

Cake = C (Okay it was a bit dry, needed a syrup of some kind, and the lemon did not jump out, but still, it was a cake!)

His brother disagreed slightly, he felt the cake was a bit closer to a B, more like a B-, and that the filling of the cabbage rolls was okay, so it was more of a C, less of a D.

Either way, marks I would not be very happy to see on my children's report card.


Do you think this means my children are a bit spoiled when it comes to food? Or that they have high expectations?

Daring Bakers: Feeling uninspired

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

I admit it, I was totally unmotivated and uninspired by this months' challenge of cheesecake. Nothing personal to either Jenny or Abbey, but I was bored. I've made many cheesecakes before and sometimes I have a problem, but usually if I do it is because I sped through it or forgot it in the oven.

I didn't do either of those things for this recipe. I simply threw it together the night before company was coming and then sliced it and served it.

Until today I hadn't even taken a picture of it. That is very unlike me.

Oh I admit, when Jenny said we could be creative, I did think of an idea or two that was creative, but required time. Something I have not had much of lately, so my ideas will have to wait.

I kept pretty close to the written recipe for this, using chocolate cookie crumbs instead of graham for my base because I had those on hand. I did not use a liquere, or the lemon, and did use a fresh vanilla bean. For my three packages of cream cheese, I used one light cream cheese and two regular (I like it better with light, not because of fat or calories, but because light has more of a tang to it, which I happen to enjoy.)

No tang, no vanilla flavor. Hoo hum, that's about it for me, though my youngest suddenly has become a fan, and my guests loved the mellow flavors and the creaminess of the cake.

Can you see the vanilla beans in this? I should have had a big hit of vanilla from each bite!

I've seen a few pictures of other people's cheesecakes and I applaud them for their creativity. I guess inspiration just didn't hit me this time.

Oh well.

On to next month's challenge, on to my Daring Cooks' challenge and on to the Daring Kitchen to see the other cheesecakes for this month!

I'm away, please, have some more cake

I'm off to Montreal today right after I finish working, going with a girlfriend to bring our sons to compete in the ITF Canadian National Tae Kwon-Do Championships. Neither of our boys is a black belt, yet, so they can't qualify for the worlds, but they are going to compete and they will get valuable experience here.

(And, hey, if you happen to be in Montreal, please come by to cheer on the competitors and keep an eye out in the Ontario section for the group from Trigger's Taekwon-Do, in our black and red jakets. Stop by and say hi!)

While I'm gone, falling further and further behind this week on reading all my fellow bloggers, please enjoy a completely different slice of cake than yesterday's TFF Carrot Cake. This is a slice of Inside-Out German Chocolate Cake, the recipe I found from my buddy Kelly over at Sass and Veracity, and it tasted much, much better than it looks. As I told my brother-in-law when I presented it to him for a belated birthday celebration, the looks of the cake were in no way a reflection of how we felt about him, I was justing having an off day when it came to cake assembly.

POM Wonderful and a giveaway!

You'd have to be very new to the food blogging world to have not noticed an abundance of little snowmen bottles popping up lately. Those adorable little bottles hold POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice and I was fortunate to be one of those bloggers asked to try it out.

I love trying out new products, or old ones I've never had before, and my family has been very tolerant of all my little "experiments" lately, even helpful with some items. So when I came in with a snowman bottle of POM and said I was baking a cake with it, they were all ready to dive in and try the results, POM Velvet cake with a cream cheese frosting and a generous sprinkling of pomegranate arils. (Did you know that the lovely fruit from inside that ugly ball you see in the stores are not seeds but arils? Well now you do!)

Some of the other posts I've read reviewing the POM juice have gone on about how they loved the juice straight and were drinking it so fast they couldn't make anything with it.

I wish I could say the same. I can't. I tried, I really did.

As much as I love to eat the arils (three of the four of us do), I do not like the juice at all.

It is a good thing you don't have to like the juice to bake and cook with it though, cause this cake was good! The rich creaminess of the frosting balanced out the denseness of the cake, which wasn't overly rich but had a nice dense texture and crumb to it. Taking a bite with a bit of cake, a bit of frosting and an aril or two was a delight, the three different textures and flavors mingling together so well.

I liked the results so much I decided to continue on with my little "experiments" and make a few more things! I'll post about them some more over the next few days, but for now, let's get to that giveaway!

I have two, count them up, two coupons left for a snowman bottle of POM Wonderful juice, which also comes in other flavors other than straight pomegranate. So that's two potential winners!

How can you win? Easy, easy, easy....

• Be a Canadian resident, as these coupons are good only in Canada.
• Leave me a comment below telling me what you think you would make with your POM juice. It can be a drink, a dessert or anything. (If you make a mess, though, you have to clean it.) Be sure to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.
  
• Post a link on your own blog about this, letting me know at allthingsedible (at) hotmail (dot) com, and you will get two chances to win!

I'll randomly pick a winner on April 18th, so be sure to check back to see if you've won.

Happy Easter!

Some quick cakes for you today, to keep you busy.

I made both of these for a friend, at her request, sorta. She asked for a cake for her new nephew's first Easter, and was expecting a bunny. She ended up with two cakes instead.

Yes, that silly shape up top is a bunny, an Easter Bunny! He is wearing a naked tie and is naked for a reason. This chocolate, marshmallow frosted cake is for the big brother! The bunny is naked because he came with a bag of goodies, including some licorice whiskers and colorful jelly beans, so that big brother can decorate the bunny himself.

This is what I actually made for her new nephew. Again the flavors are chocolate and marshmallow, double marshmallow this time. I used the marshmallow frosting from the bunny as my crumb coat and to adhere the fondant, which I made from scratch. A marshmallow fondant. I'd never made fondant before, but it had been on my "to try" list for quite awhile, so I was happy for the excuse to try it.


This was a good learning experience for me, all around. I still need to take some fondant classes, and practice, practice, practice, but was pretty pleased with how things worked out in the end. The fondant was not difficult to make at all, but I have to remember the next time I make and work with it to wear an apron! My shirt was covered with icing sugar and cornstarch and changed from a very vibrant red to a light pink in color by the time I was done!

My friend was thrilled with the cakes, at least visually. Her family plans to eat them today, so I hope they taste good as well.

The Easter Bunny left a little treasure hunt for my boys here last night, and my youngest son is still wandering around trying to find little chocolate eggs. The Bunny left more "treats" than chocolate but there are enough little egg "droppings" that both he and his brother are happy.

I hope you and your family have a lovely, sunny Spring day.