Wedding Reception Tea

Remember that wedding cake tasting we did? This afternoon tea was for that couple. Instead of the one cake, we catered an afternoon tea wedding reception for 30 people. For this afternoon tea, we served tea sandwiches and assorted desserts.

Thanksgivukkah

As I'm sure you heard, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapped this year (on the 28th of November), a rare occurrence that (apparently) complicated things for American Jews who had to have celebrations two nights in a row. Since I'm currently studying in the UK, I had class on Thursday until 6:00pm, so no chance of a proper Thanksgiving regardless of the timing of Hanukkah. So we combined both celebrations and pushed them until Saturday so that our British family (who had to work Friday) could come over, enjoy the day, celebrate Hanukkah and, of course, eat lots of turkey.

Fresh Currant Scones, take 2

After my success with my fresh currant scone recipe I decided to try a new scone recipe that calls for fresh fruit. It is one of the few recipes from the FCI's pastry cookbook that we didn't learn in class, so I've been wanting to try it out. I used fresh currants in them although the recipe doesn't specifically call for them.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving a.k.a eat-as-much-as-you-can-because-calories-can't-possibly-count-on-a-national-holiday day!

Ok, not really, but still, I love Thanksgiving because it's really a holiday about food (and giving thanks, obviously).

So we always make turkey with excellent stuffing (my mom makes it with apples, apricots, celery, onions, mushrooms, and italian sausage), gravy, cranberry sauce (jellied and, this year, real cranberry sauce too), mashed potatoes, veg, and some sort of roll. The last few years I've made biscuits. This year I did the same. I used a recipe I found on the food network website for the Neely's buttermilk biscuits (it's the same recipe I used last year). I think they were slightly better this year.
       

I also made apple pie with crumble topping for dessert. The recipe was from the William-Sonoma Pie and Tart cookbook. It was very easy and really good! The only problem--if you can call it that--is that the recipe made enough apple filling for two pies. Well the pie crust I made was enough for two pies (or one double crust pie) so I just rolled out a second crust, made extra crumble mixture, and voilà two pies for almost no more effort than one! I just served it with some vanilla ice cream. A simple, delicious dessert that's perfect after a rather large meal.

Lemon Loaf

This was really quite nice. The lemon-y flavor came from lemon zest, lemon glaze, and lemon pieces mixed into the batter. I have to say the lemon pieces were quite unexpected, I've never seen them in a lemon loaf recipe before, It was tart yet sweet, tender and moist yet not too crumbly, yum!

Buttermilk Biscuits

    

This is the last belated Thanksgiving post, I promise. 

I found the recipe on the food network website (as it turns out I now have 2 or 3 buttermilk biscuit recipes from the 9 new cookbooks I got for Chanukah, ah well.)  I'm actually glad I had to search for this recipe, because oh wow they were good!  They were relatively simple to make and they came out perfectly.  They were buttery and flakey and tender and soooo good with cranberry jelly and turkey on them!   

Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake with Vanilla Custard Sauce

I made this last weekend to bring to a, for lack of a better word, dinner party (but is only 4 people a party?).  The cake was from Nigella Lawson's cookbook, Feast.  The custard sauce was from her cookbook entitled How to be a Domestic Goddess.  The cake was excellently moist and chocolaty.  I was going to serve it as a whole cake, but I changed my mind and cut it into cubes.  Because I did that, I really needed to serve it with something.  So, I made the custard sauce, which is just to say creme anglaise.  I just served it with some fresh strawberries.  YUM!

What is great about this is it travels well.  I put the cake cubes in one tupperware and the custard in another.   And brought a pint of strawberries.  Just serve in three separate bowls and let everyone take what they want.

P.S. Sorry, I completely forgot to take a picture!

P.P.S. Don't listen to Nigella about using plastic wrap to line the pan...use parchment instead.  The plastic melted a bit (I know she says it won't, mine did, perhaps the plastic wrap she uses is more heat resistant than mine.)  It was a nightmare to clean off my lovely loaf pan.

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

This is an amazing cake! It is from Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. As she describes it, it is rather like a chocolate version of gingerbread, dense and moist and aromatic and amazingly flavorful. I think that pretty much sums it up. That all said, I don’t make this very often because it is a bit of a pain to make. You have to add the dry ingredients a tablespoon at a time alternating with boiling water. It really isn’t hard to do, but it’s tedious.  I got over that tonight though, because I know that once I take one bite of this delicious cake it will all be all worth it. This is great served with vanilla ice cream, fresh berries and white chocolate sauce or just plain (which is what I usually do).

P.S. I'm sorry I haven't written for a while, I started the second semester of my junior year of college last week and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  But I've managed to crawl out from under them and I'll be posting plenty more soon.

Biscuits

I made these biscuits for Thanksgiving dinner, but I've been so busy writing papers since then that I am only just posting them...sorry!

Anyway, they were really good buttermilk biscuits.  They were particularly yummy with cranberry jelly, turkey and mashed potatoes layered on it.  I love Thanksgiving food!

Interestingly they aren't baked in the oven but are actually cooked on the stove in a skillet.  Ideally it should be a cast iron pan of some sort, but I had to make do with a normal pan.