Wedding Shower Continued

Ok, so after a brief pause (and several requests for more of the shower recipes) I'm back with another one. I wish that I could say that this one was all my brainchild, because it's DELICIOUS. But really it's mostly based on this recipe over at Epicurious (one of my favorit go-to recipe sites).

There are two things that I love about this dish: 1. the flavors and textures come together amazingly well, 2. it is easy to make many of the components ahead of time and pull them together right before serving. The latter point means that this is a great recipe for large parties where you don't want to be cooking as your guests arrive (which I often am). It's also really scalable, so making it for 4 people or 30 people is all about the same.

I've included the make-ahead steps below so that you can see how I prepared for the shower. Also, here are some shots of everything that I packed up:

Butternut Squash Israeli Couscous Salad

Serves 12

Adapted from Epicurious

4 lemons, thinly sliced

2 whole lemons

3 lb butternut squash (I usually get about 2 large ones and just use the straight portion for this)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large onion, diced small

1 1/2 cups Israeli couscous (available in bulk section of Whole foods)

1 cup flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

1 cup pine nuts

2 days ahead:

• Prepare butternut squash: Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Cut long end off of each squash. Peel with a vegetable peeler. Cut long end in half, then slice each 1/4 of squash into 1/4 inch thick slices. Then chop opposite way in 1/4 inch slices to create a 1/4 inch dice. Toss diced squash with 1 tbsp olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet (or two) and cook in oven for 15 minutes, until just soft (not brown). Remove from oven and let cool. Package in a large tupperware.
• Toast pine nuts: Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat. Place pine nuts in preheated pan and toast pine nuts until just starting to brown and you can smell them toasting (about 5 minutes). Let cool and package in a ziploc bag.
  

1 day ahead:

• Sautee onion: Preheat a skillet with 1/2 tbsp olive oil. Stir diced onion in and sautee until soft. Let cool and package in a ziploc bag
• Chop parsley and package
• Cook Israeli Couscous: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Place coucous in boiling water and boil for 10 minutes, until soft. Drain. Spread on a large cookie sheet to separate grains and let cool. Once cool, toss with 1 tbsp olive oil and store in a large plastic bag.
• Roast lemons: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line cookie sheet with tinfoil and place thinly sliced lemons in a single layer. Spray lightly with olive oil. Roast lemons until beginning to brown around the edges. About 25 minutes. Once coooled, slice roasted skin away from flesh (avoiding particularly browned parts) and finely chope the skin. Store in a small baggie.

Day of:

• Toss together pine nuts, couscous, butternut squash, parsley, lemon peel, and onion in a large bowl. Squeeze juice of 2 lemons and pour 1 1/2 tbsp (or more) of olive oil over the top. Stir well and serve cold.

The Story of the Ugly Cake - Daring Bakers July

This story started, as all good things should, with a very tasty sounding cake. It had a lovely light nut sponge cake base, alcohol infused simple syrup, drizzled chocolate, and light but buttery frosting. Sigh. It should have turned out as a beautiful cake.

But there were two forks in the road. And I took the one less traveled. I, as a naive second time Daring Baker, decided that even this insanely complicated sounding recipe was no match for my magical wand of healthiness. I could tackle this one too! I would use some natural agave as sweetening, replace the white cake flour with no gluten oat flour, make "buttercream" using frozen coconut oil, and use a natural apricot jam.

All was going swimmingly in cake baking land. My filbert gateu was coming together beautifully - not even a hint of trouble from the agave and oat flour. I stuck that baby in the oven and filled the apartment with the delicious aromas of a hard earned cake.

And then I found out why it's the road less traveled...

(See more broken cake in background)

Oh. And this was just the beginning. Nevermind that my cake had crumbled...probably because I took the low-gluten content of cake flour and subsituted no gluten oat flour. I should've thought of that. Oh yes, but the real downfall what that I didn't fully read the directions for subsituting agave (posted by the lovely folks over at Madhava).

I hate directions...they really ought to have considered direction haters like me when they wrote these. I mean I listened to the liquid reduction directions - that was a simple enough calculation. But then I got distracted and forgot that there was a second part of the instructions which told me that I should reduce the temperature by 25 degrees. Note for next time - those folks know what they're talking about. Because not only did my cake fall apart, but it was slightly burnt even before the recommended time had been reached.

Ok, that won't stop me, I thought. I'll save it! So I made a mini-cake. Because while I may have little experience, I'm a Daring Baker dammit, the blogroll says so, and this small setback wasn't going tobe the end.

So I cut out the salvagable cake pieces and stuck that in the freezer to wait while I spent a few days constructing the rest.

In a flash of genius I decided that there would be no butter in my buttercream. I used this lovely sounding recipe from the ingenious Elana over at Elana's Pantry. I subsituted hazelnut milk for the coconut milk to stick with the theme. And honestly, the frosting turned out GREAT considering that it was so natural and pure. But I let it sit in the freezer too long, and then out of the freezer too long, and by that point buttercream it was not (Please note that she didn't claim that it would be, but I still thought I would give it a shot).


To go with the frosting I had planned to do hazelnut pralines made with brown rice syrup. It never hardened...was more like a hazelnut brown rice syrup taffy. At this point I was getting tired...

I threw together the other pieces -

• Simple syrup made with agave - CHECK
  
• Apricot syrup made with a natural jam - CHECK
  
• Chocolate ganache made with soy creamer - CHECK

But honestly, by the time I got around to putting the darn thing together I was so exhausted from all of the steps and discouraged by the way things were going, I made what I consider the vital error. I got lazy! And apparently, cakes DO NOT LIKE that. So when I decided not to trim the edges of my cake and halfheartedly cut it into three layers, it got mad.

It got so mad that it dared me to brush on more simple syrup than I knew it needed, it refused to let the ganache harden, and it melted my poor healthy frosting. And this, my friends, was the result....

So as you can probably tell, I'm not even giving you the recipe for this one. If you're going to spend your time on this cake, do it the right way. The way the experts did it. Because quite honestly, everyone elses looked quite wonderful. Unlike my goopy, overly sweet mess.

See the work of a real expert (and our host of the month) over at Chris' blog Melle Cotte

But don't worry, this isn't all for naught. I'm ready for a new challenge next month. And I'm going to apply everything I learned. And though I still plan to try out the healthy stuff, you better believe that I'm going to read those darn directions :)

Filbert Gateau with "Buttercream" - July Daring Bakers

Hi guys. I know that some of you are checking out all of the beautiful creations by the Daring Bakers this month and drooling.

Well I owe you an explanation...


...I really do.

But I just don't have the energy right now to explain everything that didn't go right. So for tonight, I suggest you go to this site and check out other people's creations.

More on mine tomorrow :)

A Day (and Meal) for a Celebration

I am thrilled to be able to share that my good friend, Arwyn, is getting married this fall. She is such a wonderful and loving friend and she deserves all of the happiness in the world!

Being me, the best way that I know to celebrate and express such a thing is with food. So for the occasion of her wedding shower, her mom gave me the honor of preparing the food. I couldn't have been more thrilled! Almost immediately I came up with a list of dishes that incorporated some of her favorite things: goat cheese, butternut squash, thai peanut sauce, and salmon to name a few. Below is the menu that her mom and I ended up deciding on:

• Strawberry, maple walnut, and goat cheese salad with champagne vinaigrette


• Smoked salmon wraps with cream cheese and capers in whole wheat tortillas


• Cheese plate


• Veggie Plate


• Israeli Couscous and Butternut Squash Salad


• Thai Chicken Peanut Cakes

Here's what the spread looked like all put together

And here's Arwyn and I after the party

I for one am super tired tonight. After a long week of working, doing food prep, hanging out with Arwyn, cooking, and then seeing Dark Night last night (so good), I am pooped. So for now, I'm just going to share the first recipe on the list. Look for more to details and recipes come in the next couple days!

Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad
Serves 10-12

2 1/2 cups Maple Walnuts (see below)
8 oz crumbled goat cheese
2 lbs strawberries, cleaned and sliced
3 large bags mixed greens (the pre-packaged ones like you find at Trader Joe's)
Double recipe of Champagne Vinagrette - just double the ingredients and follow the directions for the dressing in this recipe at Epicurious - I made this 1 day ahead of time.

Maple Walnuts
(Make up to 5 days ahead of time)

2 1/2 cups raw walnut halves
1 tbsp butter
2/3 cup pure maple syrup

Heat large skillet over medium heat. Spread walnuts in skillet in a single layer. Toast walnuts, shaking every so often, for about 5 minutes or so. You'll start smelling the toastiness of the walnuts once they're ready. Be sure not to burn.

Remove walnuts to a plate. Add butter and maple syrup into pan. Allow them to melt together and start simmering for about 2 minutes until the mixture starts to look a little thicker. Remove from heat and add walnuts back into pan. Stir thoroughly to coat all walnuts with the syrup mixture.

Remove coated walnuts to a tinfoil lined baking sheet. Spread out in a single layer and let cool until dry, about 1-2 hours. Then add dry walnuts into salad or store in a large ziploc until you're ready for the salad. Try not to eat them all before then ;)

Salad

Pour greens into a large serving bowl. Add in strawberries, walnuts, and goat cheese. Cover with prepared dressing (I used about 3/4 of it). Stir thoroughly and serve.