How to throw a Little Foodie dinner party
Oct 4, 2010 General
For Project Food Blog Round #3 (woo hoo!), we were challenged to throw a luxury dinner party. Ha. I would love nothing more than to have an adult dinner party. But where would we get all the baby sitters? No matter. This is a food blog about feeding little foodies. Here’s how.
1. Plan a menu around finger foods in a cuisine you totally know. Make exotic foods seem somewhat normal, like, say, cheese as an option in sushi rolls. And then maybe they will try it. Luxury means nothing to a kid. I mean, they will eat candy corn before they touch your food.
2. Invite some kids. And their parents. Then invite some single people, because it’s a good idea to have a ratio of 4 adults to 1 kid. It’s also a good idea to invite different ages of kids, because older kids are way better at entertaining younger kids than any adult. As you can see, I got it backwards.
3. Invite too many people. Because half of them will say they’re coming, but then won’t be able to come, because they have KIDS, and kids are unpredictable. They might all come down with the most horrible pukey virus every known to man an hour before the party. And then you’ll have to clean up puke instead of going to a party.
4. Cook all day long, running around like a wild woman with no time management skills, make your husband hold the baby, cook during your turn to hold the baby, and tell your daughter to go clean your room. If you’re lucky, she’ll play in there the whole afternoon, but don’t actually expect her to clean anything. 
5. Get out your finest china. 
6. Don’t stress out when everyone shows up more than a half hour late, because they have kids. (see #2). Also DO not clean while you are waiting. You will be happy you didn’t.
7. Serve the kiddies first.
8. Play pass the kiddies. 
9. Don’t worry about the fact that your kid is only eating the rice on the plate. And drinking root beer. It’s a party. And at least it’s the fancy, good kind rice. It’s even sushi rice. Your kid is practically eating sushi. You can brag about it to your friends. 
10. Have lots of toys for the kids to play with so the adults can finally eat. 
11. Serve cupcakes, and even if the food was bad, the kids will only remember the cupcakes. 
11 and a half: Remove wrappers before eating. 
The Recipes:
- Garlic and Sesame Edamame
- Roasted kabocha: Cut into chunks, salt and EVOO, roast at 350 until soft
- Temaki sushi: I highly recommend CHEESE. Even I like it. SPAM is good too.
- Chicken with sesame seeds from Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking
- Gyoza
- Fried Cheese Wontons
- Mochi cupcakes (I just made them cupcakes instead of cake) with the best frosting ever. PW is not messing around here.
Eat your heart out.
Tags: Baby Cook, Baby Sitters, Candy Corn, Cheese, cuisine, Dinner Party, Exotic Foods, Finger Foods, Foodie, Foodies, Going To A Party, Half Hour, how to puke, Kiddies, Project Food, Puke, Root Beer, Stress, Sushi Rolls, Time Management Skills, Wild Woman
The Daring Baker’s August Challenge
Aug 28, 2010 Uncategorized
The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.
I’ve been thinking about trying to make baked alaska cupcakes for a long time but I never had the excuse. I don’t throw
dinner parties and baked alaska must be ‘made to order’ so I just didn’t have the chance. This challenge was my perfect chance!
Browning the butter for the browned butter pancake was a little nerve wracking. It can’t be cooked too much or else it will burn and it can’t be cooked too little or else the flavor won’t be there. The pound cake itself was absolutely delicious- it had a nutty flavor that I have never
tasted before because I’ve never eaten anything with browned butter!
For the ice cream, I decided to make a soy vanilla type. My mom is lactose intolerant but I wanted her to try this dessert because she mentioned baked alaska recently. I also wanted to tweak a soy vanilla ice cream I had made in the past but it was too sweet. I decided to try a different method for making the ice cream which was “by hand” except with the help of a food processor. I’d call this the food processor method. Instead of freezing the ice cream in a pan and stirring it every half hour, I put the custard mixture into the bowl of a food processor with the blade in. I put the whole thing in the freezer and took it out and just turned it on for a minute or two every half hour. It was an interesting new process and it worked well! The food processor broke up the ice crystals quickly and effortlessly. A plus was that I could easily scrape the bowl with a knife or spatula whereas when I use an ice cream machine, the ice cream gets frozen onto the sides of the bowl.
Finally for the meringue I used a double broiler and cooked the whites and sugar over the stove a bit to make sure to kill anything that might potentially be dangerous (salmonella egg recall here recently).
As for the assembly of the dessert, I divided the batter into some muffin tins with liners and some that were greased and floured. Both worked well and easily came out of the pan. After they cooled, I used the cone method to hollow them out. I then scooped ice cream into the pound cake “cupcake” and piped my meringue around it to get the look of piped frosting. I used a mini blow torch (I’ve been looking for a good excuse to use it!) and browned the meringue.
The dessert itself is absolutely amazing. The mixture of the cold and creamy ice cream with the nutty browned butter pound cake and sweet toasty meringue is delicious. The dessert itself is not that difficult to make, just make sure you seal in the ice cream with the meringue or else you’ll melt it! I’m really happy with my baked alaska ‘cupcake’ idea and I intend to try more combinations and flavors in the future. As for the pound cake and ice cream, I will also definitely be making those again too! Absolutely love this challenge!
Brown Butter Pound Cake
19 tablespoons (9.5 oz) (275g) unsalted (sweet) butter
2 cups (200g) sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring) (See “Note” section for cake flour substitution)
1 teaspoon (5g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt
1/2 cup (110g) packed light brown sugar
1/3 (75g) cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/160°C and put a rack in the center. Butter and flour a 9”x9” (23cmx23cm) square pan.
2. Place the butter in a 10” (25cm) skillet over medium heat. Brown the butter until the milk solids are a dark chocolate brown and the butter smells nutty. (Don’t take your eyes off the butter in case it burns.) Pour into a shallow bowl and chill in the freezer until just congealed, 15-30 minutes.
3. Whisk together cake flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Beat the brown butter, light brown sugar, and granulated sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well, and then the vanilla extract.
5. Stir in the flour mixture at low speed until just combined.
6. Scrape the batter into the greased and floured 9”x9” (23cmx23cm) square pan.[Or, cupcake tins that are lined with papers or greased and floured] Smooth the top with a rubber spatula and rap the pan on the counter. Bake until golden brown on top and when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. [about 15-20 minutes for cupcakes]
7. Cool in the pan 10 minutes. Run a knife along the edge and invert right-side-up onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
Soy Vanilla Ice Cream
1/2 Cup Powdered Sugar [Original recipe calls for 1 Cup but it was way too sweet...for my mother's taste =P ]
4 Egg Yolks
1 tsp. cornstarch
2 Cups soy milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1.Put the eggs yolks, sugar, and corn starch into a bowl; whisk the mixture together.
2.Heat the soy milk; slowly pour the hot soy milk into the mixture while continuing to beat.
3.Add the vanilla extract.
4.Gently heat the mixture until it thickens.
5.Let the mixture cool in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours.
6.Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker; make ice cream following the instructions of the machine.
Tags: Baked Alaska, Bakers, Browned Butter, Cupcakes, David Lebovitz, Dinner Parties, Elissa, Food Processor, Freezer, Fridays, Gourmet Magazine, Gracious Hostess, Half Hour, Ice Crystals, Nerve, Nutty Flavor, Petit Fours, Pound Cake, Vanilla Ice, Vanilla Ice Cream
Daring Baker’s Swiss Roll Ice Cream Bomb
Jul 30, 2010 Uncategorized
The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.
This ice cream bomb looks crazy. It looks like a brain. Swirly brainish looking things scare me a lot- its just kind of a thing I have.To make it less brain-ish looking I decided to mold it into the shape of a traditional round cake instead of a dome but it still has that creepy swirly thing going on.
The challenge was to make the swiss roll, two different ice creams, a fudge and then mold everything into a bombe. I also attempted to put a little Mexican twist on mine by making Mexican hot chocolate ice cream and horchata (cinnamon rice milk) ice cream. Instead of fudge, I made some homemade dulce de leche and then I spiced the chocolate swiss roll and filling with some cinnamon.
The recipes that I made up and used for the ice cream turned out to be not as flavorful as I would liked them to have been. The Mexican hot chocolate ice cream was made with Mexican hot chocolate powder, whole milk and eggs with some extra cinnamon and cayenne to kick up the flavor. The horchata ice cream was basically just homemade horchata made with whole milk instead of water and then with some egg yolks added to thicken it up into a custard.
I own an ice cream machine but I wanted to try to make one of the ice creams by hand this time. I made the chocolate in the machine and then used the freezing and stirring every half hour method for the horchata. To my surprise, the method by hand yielded a much fluffier, lighter ice cream than the machine did. This could have been due to the small amount of ice cream that I made (so a lot of it froze to the bowl of the ice cream machine itself instead of being churned).
I used a small stock pot to form the bomb into the shape I wanted. When it came time to cut, the Mexican hot chocolate ice cream was frozen solid! I wasn’t a big fan of the bomb taste-wise because of the way my ice creams turned out but I LOVE the idea and the presentation is pretty neat [for people who aren't scared of swirly things like me]. I’ll definitely be making this again except maybe with some different ice creams and flavor combos.
Swiss roll ice
cream cake
(inspired by the recipe of the same name from the Taste of Home website)
The Swiss rolls-
Preparation time- 10
minutes
Baking time- 10-12 minutes
Rolling and cooling time
- at least 30 minutes
Filling-5-8 minutes
Filling and rolling- 5-10 minutes
Ingredients-
6 medium sized eggs
1 C / 225 gms caster sugar /8 oz+ extra for rolling
6 tblsp / 45gms/ a pinch over 1.5 oz of all purpose (plain) flour + 5 tblsp/40gm /a pinch under 1.5 oz of natural
unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted together
2 tblsp /30ml / 1 fl oz of boiling water
a little oil for brushing the pans
For the filling-
2C / 500 mls/ 16 fl oz of whipping cream
1 vanilla pod, cut into small pieces of about ½ cm (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
5 tblsp / 70gms/2.5oz of caster sugar
Method-
- Pre heat the oven at 200 deg C /400 deg F approximately. Brush the baking pans ( 11 inches by 9 inches ) with a little oil and line with greaseproof baking paper. If you have just one pan, bake one cake and then let the pan cool completely before using it for the next cake.
- In a large mixing bowl, add the eggs and sugar and beat till very thick; when the beaters are lifted, it should leave a trail on the surface for at least 10 seconds.
- Add the flour mixture, in three batches and fold in gently with a spatula. Fold in the water
- Divide the mixture among the two baking pans and spread it out evenly, into the corners of the pans.
- Place a pan in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes or till the centre is springy to the touch.
- Spread a kitchen towel on the counter and sprinkle a little caster sugar over it.
- Turn the cake on to the towel and peel away the baking paper. Trim any crisp edges.
- Starting from one of the shorter sides, start to make a roll with the towel going inside. Cool the wrapped roll on a rack, seam side down
- Repeat the same for the next cake as well.
- Grind together the vanilla pieces and sugar in a food processer till nicely mixed together. If you are using vanilla extract, just grind the sugar on its own and then add the sugar and extract to the cream.
- In a large bowl, add the cream and vanilla-sugar mixture and beat till very thick.
- Divide the cream mixture between the completely cooled cakes.
- Open the rolls and spread the cream mixture, making sure it does not go right to the edges (a border of ½ an inch should be fine).
- Roll the cakes up again, this time without the towel. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge till needed, seam side down.
Assembly-
- Cut the Swiss rolls into 20 equal slices ( approximately 2 cms each ).
- Cover the bottom and sides of the bowl in which you are going to set the dessert with cling film/plastic wrap.
- Arrange two slices at the bottom of the pan, with their seam sides facing each other. Arrange the Swiss roll slices up the bowl, with the seam sides facing away from the bottom, to cover the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and freeze till the slices are firm (at least 30 minutes).
- Soften the vanilla ice cream. Take the bowl out of the freezer, remove the cling film cover and add the ice cream on top of the cake slices. Spread it out to cover the bottom and sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and freeze till firm ( at least 1 hour)
- Add the fudge sauce over the vanilla ice cream, cover and freeze till firm . ( at least an hour)
- Soften the chocolate ice cream and spread it over the fudge sauce. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 4-5 hours till completely set .
- Remove the plastic cover, and place the serving plate on top of the bowl. Turn it upside down and remove the bowl and the plastic lining. If the bowl does not come away easily, wipe the outsides of the bowl with a kitchen towel dampened with hot water. The bowl will come away easily.
Tags: Bakers, Bombe, Cayenne, Chocolate Ice Cream, Chocolate Powder, Cream Cake, Custard, Dulce De Leche, Half Hour, Horchata, Hot Chocolate, Ice Cream Cake Recipe, Mexican Twist, Rice Milk, Small Stock, Stock Pot, Sunita, Swiss Roll, Taste Of Home, Whole Milk
