Strawberry Almond Streudel

My mother in law and I have a great relationship! We have become close friends over the last year of living near each other. I count on her for help with Lily and to just hang out many times. I believe she counts on me for the same type of friendship I've grown to cherish from her. We go shopping together, we watch movies together, we make menus together, we have even been known to go on morning walks together. I am so lucky to have this woman in my life. She seems to feel the same about me. Until I step into her kitchen that is...

My dear mother in law is what I call a "clean freak." Some call her "anal." Others call her obsessive. Whatever description or adjective she is given, it doesn't change the fact that she loves her house clean, neat, and orderly at all times. This is why, when I (the infernal clutz that I am) walk into her kitchen, I hear the sharp intake of breath coming from her because she knows what is coming....a mess.

I am by no means a clean, neat, or orderly cook. In general I tend to leave things lying about the house because I forget about them. However, I take my mess making skills seriously when I'm in the kitchen. I will stir sauce in a pot and slop some over the side. I drop cheese on the floor when making an omelet. And don't get me started on bread crumbs! It takes sheer talent to make the type of kitchen messes I am able to produce.

So naturally, when I told her about this "treat" I wanted to make for the family, I heard the weariness in her voice when she slowly said "oookkkkaaaayyy." I saw the look of pure horror in her eyes when she glanced from me, to her immaculate kitchen, then back to me.

Fortunately for me, the things I make are always delicious. So she ends up forgiving me and my disorderly technique of culinary artistry when she takes that first heavenly bite of whatever it is I've prepared that day...of course, she can't take that bite until she has successfully decontaminated her kitchen. (The poor thing literally follows me around with a rag in one hand and a towel in the other).

Well, my luck did not fail me when I prepared this amazing strawberry almond streudel. Looking at the blogs it was derived from, I've seen it called a coffee cake and a braid. But I find it to be more like a streudel. This recipe can be either a brunch/breakfast treat or a sweet ending to a great meal. Many options are available to modify this recipe to your own taste buds, just look in the jelly/preserve aisle at your favorite grocery store. I enjoy strawberry (of course) so that's the direction I took. Enjoy!

Strawberry Almond Streudel

Recipe adapted from Willow Bird Baking 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3 ounces best quality cream cheese
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup strawberry preserves (or your favorite flavor)

 Icing:

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 tablespoons sliced almonds (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. In large bowl mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk until thoroughly mixed. 
2. Cut butter and cream cheese into flour mixture using a pastry blender, knife.
3. Gently blend in the milk and almond extract.
4. Turn dough onto slightly floured surface and knead VERY LIGHTLY, about 4 or 5 strokes. (NOTE: Do not overwork the dough or things will go terribly wrong. The dough will still look a bit rough but that's the way it's supposed to be.)
5. On a sheet of waxed paper, roll dough into an 8-inch by 12-inch rectangle.
6. Turn dough onto lightly greased baking sheet and remove waxed paper.
7. Lengthwise, mark dough into thirds. Spread preserves down center of dough, leaving about a 1/2 inch between the marks on each side and the preserves.
8. Make 2 3/4 inch diagonal marks about 1 inch apart along both of the long sides of the dough. (Do not cut into the jam filled center.)  Fold the diagonal strips of dough from one side, then the other, in a rotating manner, over the preserves.
9. Bake for about 12-15 minutes until dough is cooked through and top is a golden brown.
10. Mix the icing by sifting the powdered sugar into a small glass bowl, add the milk, vanilla, and almond extract and mix until icing is smooth and runny. Drizzle over the top of the streudel and top with almond slices before icing sets. Serve and enjoy.

Tomato Soup at Sunset

A friend of mine recently had lap band surgery and has been on clear liquids for the last three weeks. Finally she was able to eat slightly more solid food. So I made her some homemade tomato soup. I don't have any pictures of the step by step instruction but I can tell you that this soup was souper good! LOL!

All the ingredients were fresh and ripe. I had never made homemade tomato soup before but it was surprisingly easy and it turned out delicious.

I served mine with a dollop of ricotta cheese, some fresh ground pepper and I crushed a few Ritz crackers onto the top (which I don't have a picture of).

While I was making the soup, Little Butt was eating dinner and talking to me. The next thing I know, I look over and...

The poor thing had fallen asleep eating dinner. I had to pick her up and go lay her down on the couch where she took a good nap. What a good little helper she was!

Anyway. Here's the recipe. I got it from a Good Housekeeping Soups & Stews cookbook:

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon butter or margarine
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 stalk celery, finely chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
• garlic clove, crushed with garlic press
• 2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
• 4 pounds ripe tomatoes, cut into pieces
• 1 can (14 to 14 1/2 ounces) chicken broth (I used low sodium broth)
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 cup water
• snipped chives (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt butter in 5-quart Dutch oven over low heat. Add onion, celery, and carrot and cook until tender (about 10 minutes). Stir in garlic and thyme and cook for an additional minute.
2. Add tomatoes, broth, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and water; heat until boiling over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, about 45 minutes. Tomatoes will break up and mixture will thicken slightly. Remove from heat and discard bay leaf.
3. Spoon 1/3 of mixture into blender and puree until smooth. Place in separate bowl and repeat with the rest of mixture 1/3 at a time. 
4. Soup can be refrigerated and served cold or placed back in Dutch oven to reheat and serve hot. Sprinkle with chives immediately before serving, if desired.

Each serving (1 cup): About 80 calories, 3g protein, 13g carbohydrate, 3g total fat (2g saturated), 4mg cholesterol, 405g sodium (unless you use low sodium broth).

Scentsy, cake truffles, and more...

My friend Wendy hosted a Scentsy party. So naturally, there being an event and all, I decided I would make a cake. I had posted that I was going to make a Banana Bourbon layer cake but I decided I wanted to try something a little more "advanced" with cake decorating instead. I decided to try my hand at Bakerella's cake truffle ball gift box for the party. I had saved scraps from my Up cake and the St. Patrick's Day Chocolate Stout Cake. I also bought a box mix of red velvet cake and ended up making two little cakes with a bunch of cake truffle balls. They are a lot harder than they look and some are pretty ugly but I'm happy with my first attempt at this gorgeous cake idea.

This was the second cake I made, after getting all the kinks out. Although, I tore the fondant when I tried to stuff the top with too many truffles.

My sad little first, trial and error cake.

That's a lot of cake! (sorry about the crappy pix quality)

Truffles were covered with either a vanilla candy or milk chocolate coating. Toppings were candy sprinkles, coconut flakes, and praline crunch. Delicious!


Now for the random kid pix:

Lily butt "smiling" for the camera!

Her friends show up in the most random places.

She told me "thank you" after I took this pix.

KAF Chocolate Stout Cake

I received a Tweet from King Arthur Flour on St. Patrick's day about this chocolate stout cake so naturally I had to make it!


It was incredibly rich and dense and the pieces definitely need to be cut into thin slices but this is definitely a cake I will be making again in the future.


If you choose to make this cake, make sure you have a tall glass of milk close at hand!

Oscar 2010 party Up cake

Last night we had an Oscar party at my friend Wendy's house. She hosts this party every year. The menu is always themed toward the movies that were nominated. Naturally I took it upon myself to make an "Up" themed cake for the party. It was a chocolate cake (from a box mix) because Kevin loves chocolate. I made a buttercream frosting for the cake and balloons. The house is made out of fondant. This was my first time working with fondant. I guess it came out okay, though I wish the house looked a bit better.

O and I went on a date night on Friday. It was really nice. We started at BJ's where we had some beer and decent food. I realized when my meal came and I took the first bite that I am becoming a bit of a foodie. I was incredibly disappointed in the meal that I once thought was amazing. It was bland and I sat there telling O everything I could do to make the food better. Some simple salt and pepper increased the taste by a long shot even! Oh well. After dinner we went to Mavericks to hang out with O's aunt and uncle and watch a cover band. We had a great time and ended up rolling in at around 4am.


The next day O had to go to the storage unit and try to uncover the boxes of his clothes so he could have something to wear. While he was gone I decided to make a cake! I'm actually really excited about how it turned out. I wanted to do something to commemorate the Race for the Cure we did this year so I made my own stencil then decorated a cake!


I'm so excited with the way it turned out! It was a white cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting. We actually haven't cut into it yet because it is too pretty.

Other than that...O left for NY this morning. And in true Manna and Otty fashion the alarm was set for Monday-Friday so of course it didn't go off this morning and O's dad woke us up an hour late. Therefore, we had to run around and rush and it was just crazy. But that tends to be how we (unintentionally) roll. LOL!

Okay...I'm off to watch Julie & Julia....again!

Fitness, Shoes and Cake!

Today was another one of those good/bad days. It had some good...it had some bad.

Got up this morning and made my cake for tonight's class. My stepmom had bought me a "decadent carrot cake" to make this time. It's a boxed cake but it comes with a pouch of carrots and raisins that you add into the cake mix.

After my cake was done I helped my stepmom make hers and I went to jump on the treadmill. One of my challenges from my JM buddy for this week is to do 21 miles of walking/jogging. I was able to get in 4.5 miles yesterday and 4.5 miles today. I only have 5 days to fit in all these miles because I'm leaving on Friday evening.

While I was on the treadmill my newest pair of ShoeDazzle shoes came! They are super cute and the first pair of flats I've ordered from them.

After my workout and shower we got a phone call from the cake decorating instructor letting us know our cake class was canceled because of flash flood and tornado warnings. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed. I am especially disheartened because they've moved the final class to Monday and I'm leaving Friday. The instructor is going to stay after class with me and give me my certificate of completion on Thursday though. I'm a self learner anyway so I'm sure I'll be fine.

My stepmom and I sat around kind of sad for a while. We decided we would go ahead and exchange gifts tonight. We also started talking about the carrot cake I had sitting on the stove. My stepmom mentioned that we should go get some cream cheese frosting and just have the cake tonight and make another one before Thursday's class. Well, I jumped on the computer and looked up a recipe and made home made cream cheese frosting. I also had some leftover spiced nuts from my holiday care packages and we decided to decorate the cake with those.

Here's how it turned out:


I didn't try any of the cake but my dad said it was good.

We did our gift exchange this evening. I gave my dad some Denver Broncos stuff, my stepmom a professional cake decorating book, and my stepbro a Visa giftcard. Lily received a huge dollhouse that is bigger than her and a snowman snow globe that plays music. They gave me a 20 piece set of cake decorating tips, a creme brulee torch, and 8 ramekins. I'm so excited to make an oatmeal creme brulee I found the recipe for a while back. My parental units even thought of Otty and his gift is sitting wrapped over there by the fire place. I know what it is and I'm very excited and jealous about it but I can't post it here because I never know if he'll read this or not.

So here I am now, wide awake. I should be doing some exercises because I have a bunch I need to do. I'm supposed to at least do 8 minutes of lunges (each leg) and 100 donkey kicks today. Let's not talk about all the rest of the stuff. So far I've done 8 minutes of lunges total (4 on each leg) and 75 donkey kicks. I'll knock out the donkey kicks easily but the lunges are another story. I'll get them done. Don't worry.

Wilton Cake Class #2

My cake class on Thursday was really fun but getting there was the problem!

I decided to bake all my xmas gifts this year AND join a cake decorating class at the same time. The class is 4 sessions. The first class is purely instruction. However, the next 3 classes are 'hands on' so we have to bring a pre-frosted cake to those 3 classes. No big deal right? Well this class, instead of being the normal 4 weeks long, is jammed into 2 weeks because of the holidays. That means that when we got home Tuesday night after we bought all our stuff, we needed to have a cake baked and frosted by Thursday's class. Of course we procrastinated until Thursday because I was baking so many xmas goodies. The frosting took a while to make. The cake wasn't baked evenly and I had trouble cutting it. Also, there was a lip around the edge of the cake that made sure I had to cut half of it off to level the top. Blah!

Then there was the frosting. I achieved wonderful consistency for the frosting but I decided to color it blue, which took longer. My pressure isn't that great so I had trouble squeezing the frosting out of the bag for the sides. Then, we had to color tons of icing for the class in different colors. It took me half an hour to get the frosting even slightly red (and a whole 1/2 oz container of coloring). However, for my hard work, everyone in class kept exclaiming how great our red was and some people even had bright pink instead of red. I felt extremely accomplished then.

My stepmom and I, by the time we were done with our cakes and the frosting, ended up snapping at each other because we were so tired and frustrated and only had an hour to shower and get ready before we had to run out the door to make it to class.

We got to class and learned how to pipe icing and do lines and stars and script. We even started practicing our rose bases. We found out when we got there that we were missing a ton of stuff but luckily I'm pretty talkative and some ladies shared their stuff with us. Anyway. Our first project was a rainbow cake. Though you can't really tell that my frosting is blue, here is my sad little first cake that I've ever decorated:

Cranberry Macadamia Biscotti

I made these cranberry macadamia biscotti that I got from the Joy of Baking website.



Ingredients:

2/3 cup (135 grams) granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups (245 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (60 grams) shelled, unsalted pistachios, coarsely chopped (I used macadamia nuts, I didn't get the red and green but I prefer macadamia to pistachio)

1/2 cup (75 grams) dried cranberries or cherries (after the first batch I felt that 1/2 cup was not enough and I added a 1/4 cup more)

Directions:


With electric/hand mixer, beat sugar and eggs on high until pale, thick, and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Be careful not to accidentally turn on the hand mixer when pulling it out of the mix because it tends to splatter the walls. Beat in vanilla extract. In separate bowl whisk together baking powder, salt, and flour. Add to egg mixture. Fold in nuts and cranberries.


Transfer dough onto parchment lined baking sheet and form into a log. Dough is sticky, dampening hands helps. Log should be about 12 inches (30 cm) long and 3 1/2 inches (9 cm) wide.


Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes. Dough should be firm. Let cool on wire rack for about 10 minutes.


Reduce oven temp to 325 degrees F. Cut into 3/4 inch (2 cm) slices. Place biscotti cut side down on baking sheet and cook for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven, flip over, and cook for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool and serve!