Stuffed French Toast

Cream cheese and strawberry jam stuffed french toast topped with fresh strawberries

(recipe from Minimally Invasive)

This is what I made for breakfast one morning for a hungry group of nine at the beach house. D and I went out to pick up some missing ingredients, including the star of the show Challah bread, but the first supermarket that we went to had no Challah bread to offer! So we went across the street to the brand new Harris Teeter to try our luck. Oh, were we lucky. They had exactly two fresh loaves of Challah bread about to come out of the oven, so we wandered the aisles for a bit while the bakers prepared the steaming hot loaves for us. How heavenly it smelled during the car ride back... well, the blessing of fresh bread turned out to be a bit of a curse as well when it came time to make the french toast. Soaking the slices of Challah in the egg mixture made it soggy as hell. Cooking the french toast made the outside nice and golden brown, but when I cut a piece open, a soggy mess of cream cheese, jam, and bread. So, in a last ditch effort, I popped them in the oven to try to dry them out. Either it worked, which I'm pretty sure it did (at least for the piece I ate) or I was in very very polite company =) Lesson learned: let the Challah bread dry out a bit before making this recipe for soggy-free french toast!

Spaghetti Hot Dog Squids

I saw this awesome idea posted on Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn, and had to try it.

Before cooking...

Ready to eat!

Can't go wrong with spaghetti and hot dogs. I was worried that the part of the spaghetti that were inside the hot dogs wouldn't be cooked thoroughly, and they didn't, but it was okay since it was cooked enough that there wasn't any what would have been very unpleasant crunchiness. It was fun to eat them like this... and practical, too, since you can just spear a piece of hot dog with the fork and a perfect portion of noodles comes with it.

Next time, I would like to try them with sausages, as suggested by a friend.

Mmm... steak.

I was in Maryland the past couple of days with D visiting his family. I offered to make dinner on Thursday evening; it's always such a pleasure to cook for everyone, and this is what we ate:

Dry-rubbed rib-eye steaks *drools* 

(recipe from Well Fed blog)

D handled the actual grilling part and some picture taking.

This is the mixture of spices for the rub: ancho chili powder, ground cumin, dried coriander, cayenne pepper, dry mustard, dried oregano, salt, and pepper. I also added a shake of garlic powder, just as an extra boost.

(This photo also by D)

Rice with yellow bell peppers and green onions (recipe from Masa Assassin). I used jasmine rice instead of long grain rice, which worked just as well.

My plate: steak, avocado, fresh salsa, rice, grilled corn and grilled peppers.

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

Chocolate lime cheesecake (recipe from Nigella)

I used 250g of Trader Joe's Chocolate Cats cookies (no, they aren't cookies for cats, just cat shaped) for the base, and increased the amount of butter to 90g... this way, I got TWO cheesecakes (18cm and 20cm) instead of just one :D

Happy Cake

Well, that's not actually what this recipe is called... but D pointed out that it had a big smiling face, so now it's happy cake. And if you eat it, you will be happy, too. I just love how yogurt makes it extra moist.

French style orange yogurt cake from Baking Cottage blog

Guinness Cake and Cupcakes

I made this cake for my friend Eamae's birthday near the end of May (yeah, I know, slow with the postings, I'm working on it). I wanted to make a cake with Guinness in it because one of my good memories of Eamae was when we met up in Boston over winter break and stopped by a bar in Central Square for a drink: he had a Guinness, but I can't remember what my own drink was. I tried a sip of his, and, for once, didn't make a face of distaste (FYI - I like beer, I just don't like drinking it). And I love the elegant colors, which translate over to cake and frosting very well. If I make this again, I would like to try serving it in some pint glasses - fool anyone? Since there was a lot of batter left over, I made a batch of cupcakes to bring to work. Recipe from Nigella Lawson.

Rosemary + Apricot

Rosemary shortbread cookies with apricot filling

(recipe from Tartlette)

This is the first time I've made cookies with herbs... and I must say I quite like the taste! The cornmeal gave it a nice "rougher" texture so that they weren't too wimpy or delicate. One thing I didn't expect when making these cookies was how inconsistent the heart shapes turned out: some were thinner, some wider, some were just outright asymmetrical, which gave me quite a challenge just trying to match them up for sandwiching. My guess is that both the rolling of the dough and transferring them to the baking sheet gives the cookie a "grain" so when they are baking, each one will have a tendency to stretch out in its own direction. Next time, I will try just leaving the cutouts as they are on the Silpat and removing the scraps to see if that improves anything.