The Craftland opening party is on Friday and I’ve decided to make these brightly decorated petite fours for the festivities. I plan to make the cake tomorrow or Tuesday and keep in the fridge until Friday morning when I’ll cut the little shapes and frost.
I really enjoy diner food when we take road trips. Unfortunately most of the diners along the New York State thruway have disappeared given all the rest stops along the way. So we made it to Lee, MA last night without finding any tasty stops so decided to stop and see what this Main St. town had to offer.
Instead of fries or meatloaf we found Salmon Run Fish House. I had the tasty baby clams in white wine, garlic and butter sauce and a lobster salad. Lance had the fried whole belly clams which were the perfect blend of sweet and salty. My only complaint was that we were so hungry that we ate our warm bread instantly and I didn’t have any left to dip into the delicious clam sauce.
We made a quick trip to Rochester for Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, chicken, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, artichokes and rice stuffing. And then there was dessert - pie, cakes and cookies…
Grandma’s sugar cookie recipe, icing by me:
Cream in mixer:
1 C softened butter
1 ½ C sugar
4 eggs
4 tblsp cream
2 tspn vanilla or lemon ( I use lemon)
Slowly add
5 C flour
1 tspn salt
½ tspn baking soda
Chill dough for several hours. Roll out to approx 1/8 ” and cutout. Bake at 400 for 6 - 8 minutes.
Lance passed along this link for bacon salt. I do think it would be a tasty addition to fries — it’s even vegetarian!
The new cookie cutters have arrived and I’m making this sugar cookie recipe from Alton Brown. I’ll probably also make the royal icing recipe, too. I usually just do a simple glaze, but I need a heavier consistency for decorating the fine veins in the oak leaf, and detail in the squirrel.
These are currently my favorite chocolate bars — the Ritter Sport whole hazelnut bars, either in milk or dark chocolate. And they are often on sale at Target!
A quick day trip to NY for a meeting meant I only had time for one meal. I decided to finally stop at Pomme Frites. Just frites sauce on mine. They were quite tasty and perfect, I only wish I was hungrier. But I had a super-early meeting and my body never really woke up. I could barely eat half the cone!
On my next NY trip I’ll bring my appetite and get through the entire cone.
I spent yesterday in the kitchen. I attempted to make my own Hostess cupcakes, but had a few issues.
1. I don’t think I whipped the egg whites for the buttercream long enough before adding the sugar-syrup. And then I think I rushed adding the butter to the too-warm mixture. I stuck the mixing bowl, with about half of the butter added, to an ice bath and then continued to add butter after the mixture was cool. The icing then seemed to be fine and I filled the center of the cupcakes and stored the rest of the vanilla buttercream in the refrigerator.
On to the ganache to coat the cupcakes—I added the chopped chocolate to slightly warm cream, began to stir the mixture and then it separated! I did some quick research and found that if I added a little bit of cold cream and beat the mixture it would re-form. It did and I poured the ganache over the tops of the cupcakes.
After the ganache cooled I took the vanilla buttercream out to pipe little swirls on top of the cupcakes. Guess what, after bringing the buttercream to room temperature, it too separated. I tried putting it in the mixer and even adding a touch of cream – in the end it looked liked cottage cheese.
Btw, the picture is that of the cupcakes (tops sliced off for flatness) filled with cream, awaiting the ganache.
At the mall today and we decided to stop at the Johnny Rockets in the food court for a quick lunch. I ordered the veggie cheeseburger with no mayo or mustard. My burger came–with mustard. So second burger was made to spec, but I wasn’t thrilled with the burger. They basically only warmed it on the grill, so there wasn’t that crisply crust on the outside. Maybe I should have just gotten my usual grilled cheese and tomato.
We often eat lunch at the Green Papaya. Yesterday it was veggies in Thai red curry. I was a bit disappointed that I only got one piece of eggplant–my favorite veggie of this medley. And yes, I always pick out the peppers!