Tiramisu for my 30-ish Birthday 

If you are frequent reader of my blog, you know that in the Spring my husband and I visited Italy. The food there was nothing short of extraordinary. For my Birthday this year I wanted to make Tiramisu, but to my surprise most authentic Italian recipes for Tiramisu include raw eggs. Raw eggs make me inherently nervous, I'm sure I consumed plenty in Italy in the desserts there, but as I've talked to you about before; food standards in the United States are FAR different than food standards in other countries. 

On my mission to locate a recipe for Tiramisu that was by an actual real live Italian Chef, I decided I would go to a resource, Twitter. I knew it was HIGHLY unlikely that she would respond, but I wrote to the source of the recipe I wanted to use (found at this link) Giada de Laurentiis. Surprisingly, within less than 2 hours of writing her, she responded! This extraordinarily talented Chef who is busy with a million things and has over 350,000 followers on Twitter wrote back to me! Here's what she said and I did what she said.

The link to her Raspberry Tiramisu can be found here. The only way that I deviated from this and the original recipe is the heavy cream in place of the raw egg yolks - I did not add vanilla. I found  the finished filling came out delicious and I have to say I felt a little safer eating it.

Below are the ingredients displayed that I used to create my masterpiece. I chose to purchase pre-made lady fingers for my first attempt at Tiramisu - next time I think I will try making them. I was in a bit of a hurry when taking the photo because of my excitement so I failed to include in the picture the bottle of rum (what Giada recommends) and Sugar. I only show the box of Nespresso capsules that I used to brew the strong espresso. If you notice, I used the "Roma" variation. I seem to think it's the most Italian of the bunch!

Instead of my beloved kitchen aid mixer I chose to use a hand mixer for the heavy cream/sugar combination because the instructions specifically state soft peaks for the heavy cream. In my opinion, it is a fine line between soft peaks and firm peaks so I personally found it easier to do it the "old fashion" hand mixer way stopping several times to see if I had made it to soft peak status. If you really wanted to go old school you could use a whisk, which would be an arm workout to the extreme!  

The combination of marscapone and the heavy cream whipped with sugar was truly heavenly. I couldn't help but notice that it was missing the yellow hue that the Tiramisu in Italy had - egg yolks - I'm sure there were egg yolks! But this tasted excellent and pretty darn close! It's amazing to me when replicating Italian dishes how simple the ingredients for (most of them) truly are!

The naked Tiramisu is displayed before you. I put it in the fridge and let it "set" overnight.

Before heading to my Mom's house for my Birthday celebration with my husband, family and of course my nephew Asher I dusted the Tiramisu with Valrhona Cocoa Powder and I shaved a Lindt 70% Cacao Chocolate bar (with a vegetable peeler) for the top. The finished product looks pretty darn yummy if I do say so myself. You will notice that I used a smaller dish than Giada recommends, I personally like a thicker cream layer and knew I would accomplish this with a smaller dish.

I had some trouble cutting it and it sort of fell apart, below is the best picture I could get. If you notice, the Tiramisu was served on Handy Manny Plates! Handy Manny is a cartoon here in America and is my nephews favorite so my Birthday Dinner and Dessert were served on matching Handy Manny plates. There were even Handy Manny napkins! I felt pretty special!

Note: Asher, my nephew, did not get to eat the Tiramisu because of the coffee and liquor content but he did say it looked pretty. He had another dessert.

National Creamsicle Day!
August is a FUN month of National Food Holidays!

I have been enjoying the National food holidays during the month of August. Most recently National S'Mores Day brought back fond memories of childhood. Now with today being National Creamsicle Day I think back to days of hearing the Ice Cream truck outside playing it's music in our neighborhood and running outside as fast as I could to catch up to the truck and get an ice cream. As a child of the 80's I remember one of my favorites was the Pac-Man Ice Cream which had a gum ball as it's "eye!" Another close favorite was the Creamsicle.

Creamsicles are a frozen popsicle with a vanilla ice cream center covered with a orange flavored ice. Truly yummy, especially for orange lovers!

I wanted to capture that flavor of creamsicle in a baked product and I chose a cupcake. While I will not tell you the recipe because I created it myself, it is a tender delicious vanilla flavored cake topped with an orange buttercream. I used a fresh organic valencia orange for a little bit of it's zest and of course it's delicious juice to make a truly decadent orange frosting. I added a touch of orange gel food coloring and a garnished the cupcakes with little edible round sprinkles. I love an understated garnish on cupcakes. I'm not much for fondant and other stuff like that which is probably because I can't stand the flavor of it! 

Below are some pictures that I hope you will enjoy of the finished cupcakes. A friend of ours came to the house tonight and he gave these cupcakes his stamp of approval! 

I think these would be a fun cupcake for fall as well! Perhaps a little bit of orange flavor could be added to the cupcake base itself for an all orange cupcake. 

The inside of the cupcake is so moist and and not overwhelming in vanilla flavor, just a base cake that any flavor could be added to. Essentially a blank canvas of a cupcake if you will. 

HAPPY CREAMSICLE DAY! It's not too late to celebrate! 

Homemade Pizza - Round 3
Whatever blows your hair back!

There are few things in the World of cooking that really get me going, blow my hair back so to speak. Pizza is one of them. If you have read my previous blogs regarding at home Pizza making attempts I promise not to bore you with a repeat of what I've talked about before.

This particular occassion in Pizza making follows the same recipe for the dough that I used in attempt number 2 but this time I made my own sauce. As you know by now I follow lots of food blogs and draw my inspiration from several of them. The recipe for sauce came from Serious Eats which we last spoke about when I made the homemade tagalongs. To say this pizza sauce is a revelation is not giving it enough credit. It is truly amazing. The only change I made from the original recipe found at this link are as follows; I did not add sugar because I used San Marzano tomatoes that I feel are sweet enough on their own and I let it go "slow and low" for about 2 hours instead of the recommended 1 hour. I feel that the sauce I ended up with was so delicious I could have eaten it with a spoon straight from the pot itself. 

Displayed below are the ingredients I used to make the sauce. I promise, if you spend the extra money to purchase a 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes you will thank me!

I have found when making sauces for anything Italian it is so easy to cross the line between not enough onion and too much onion. One of the many things I loved about this particular recipe is that you cut the onion in half, put it in the pot, let it cook down with the sauce and then ultimately take the onion out at the end. What you are left with is truly the perfect level of onioniness (yeah, not sure that's a word) that even people who swear they won't eat anything that's touched an onion will love this sauce.  

A perfect picture of the sauce is below. I had already put it in the tupperware container before I realized I hadn't yet taken a picture. I also took a close up to try to show you the perfect texture of this sauce - not too watery! I hate sauce when it's too watery.

The dough, as I told you before is the same recipe I used before but here is the dough in it's raw form. I put it in the refrigerator immediately when I was done making it as I suggested previously. It did just fine!

This time, I  did what a "home pizza maker" community online suggests which is to allow the pizza stone to heat with the oven at 500 degrees for roughly 30 minutes before putting the pizza pan directly on top of the stone itself. The theory behind this is that the air in the oven may very well be at the temperature you want it to be at but the stone takes a little longer to heat all the way through. With the goal being a crispier crust this time I believe the longer heating of the oven helped me to achieve my goal.

Once again, I seasoned up the pizza dough pretty nicely

Topped with homemade tomato sauce and buffalo mozzarella and a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Fresh basil is standing by to be put on the pizza straight out of the oven.

Finished pizza! Ooohhh La La! I think this is the best looking one of the bunch. Pizza is crispy but still not all the way there. Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever get exactly where I want it to be because I don't have a wood burning oven - maybe some day!

Tastes good too! Even the husband loved it! Not Italy, but close.

Until next time my friends...

S'Mores! 

No campfire necessary! 

National S'Mores Day is TODAY!!!! I will go ahead and say that in my opinion S'Mores are an American Institution! Sort of like Apple Pie! Generally a kids indulgence that adults love just as much. Throwbacks to memories of childhood will dance in most adults heads when they indulge in the fun of making and consuming S'Mores!  

Generally for most children, S'Mores were reserved for times when you they were camping or at least in close proximity to a campfire!  If you were lucky like me, your parents let you make s'mores at home when the fireplace was on. Ahh, those were the days when fireplaces were real wood and not these gas logs that you see now-a-days! Any thought I have of s'mores is ooey, gooey, slightly messy and sinfully delicious!

The recipe I've chosen to showcase S'Mores is a bar type cookie! It is another Shauna G original recipe therefore I am not going to share the recipe, but I plan to show you the steps along the way!  

Look at the cookie bar base dough! Yummy and graham cracker-y!

You notice I've lined my baking dish with parchment paper for ease in cutting the finished bar cookie later on. I've put a layer of dough down and loaded up some marshmallows cut in half, immediately followed by a bunch of one of my favorite ingredients lately - mini chocolate chips! There are many recipes similar to this on the net, but none quite like mine, I assure you!

Then I put another layer of cookie dough on top of the marshmallow and mini chocolate chips and baked it off! The finished baked product is displayed below. Little volcanos of marshmallows and chocolate chips appeared in the middle of cooking, but hey that's okay! 

 

I let the cookies cool for about an hour or so until I couldn't stand it any longer and cut into them.

S'Mores truly captured in a bar cookie which equals a less messy form! While the marshmallows in the middle became melty and you can't really see them the taste was still there! The more they cooled off the more present the flavor of graham crackers was. Here's another picture of the yumminess!

The good news? They are gone as of today? I took half to work and my husband took the other half. If these were around my house I would be in trouble because I would practically bury my face in the pan until they were gone! 

Zucchini Muffins
(Couldn't think of a clever sub title this time)

As most of my readers know by now, I follow a lot of food blogs and hope some day that I can some day be like a select few of them. With that being said, I would like to tell you about my food revelation this weekend! 

Monday, August 8th is National Zucchini Day! Who knew that in the United States we not only have National Holidays like Labor Day we also have the lesser known, lesser celebrated food holidays?! One almost every day of each and every month and some months are dedicated to certain ingredients. Such as August is Peach Month? Did you know that? Me neither, well at least I didn't know until recently! 

So, for Zucchini Day, I decided I wanted to make something and participate in some small way in this cool holiday! Most often people use Zucchini as a savory ingredient, but I enjoy using savory ingredients in sweet baked items when I can. 

The recipe that I used is a Zucchini Bread/Loaf recipe but it also states that you can make it into muffins, which is what I did. There are two different ways to use zucchini, skin on or skin off. I am more of the skin off type in a sweet recipe. I certainly recommend, as I have in the past, using Organic Zucchini and as many organic ingredients as possible when cooking or baking. As I've been trying to convince my picky eater husband, in this particular recipe, you can't detect the taste of Zucchini. Zucchini is the type of vegetable, even when used in savory recipes takes on the flavors of the other ingredients in the dish, by itself it doesn't really have much flavor.

The finished product of these muffins is a bread like muffin that is sweet with a bit of spice. I finally got my husband to try it to his exclaim "why does it taste like cinnamon?", of course my response was, "you don't taste zucchini do you?" and he said no and that he liked them. Score one for me! My husband actually ate something with zucchini in it. If you only knew how big of an accomplishment this is for me!  

The original recipe is from a food blogger who I follow. Her site can be found here and the link for the recipe is here.

Ingredients for the recipe are displayed below. The Zucchini, once again is Organic. I was a little over excited when purchasing the Zucchini at Whole Foods Market so as usual bought too much. It is possible that later on this week I will be trying a new recipe with Zucchini because this beautiful vegetable simply cannot go to waste!

Muffins just going into the oven, the batter is sweet but not overwhelmingly so!

Baked muffins, the scent is of cinnamon and nutmeg which smells amazing and fills the house with a "Thanksgiving" like aroma! 

Hanging out on a cooling rack, I couldn't resist trying one a few minutes out of the oven. Even scalding hot, it was delicious!

A cut in half muffin. You can see that the muffins are slightly dense but they are incredibly moist. 

I highly recommend this recipe. The only change I might make if I make it again is to add another 1/2 cup of nuts making it one full cup of nuts. Of course I like nuts in recipes, but if you aren't a huge nut fan you could conceivably remove them from the recipe entirely and I think they would be just as good!

Later on this week? National S'More Day! Woo Hoo! I'm loving the food holidays!

Second Attempt at Homemade Pizza

As the Wonder Pets would say "This is SERIOUS!" (replacing the R with a W of course!)  

Ever since my first "round" with homemade pizza dough I have been scouring the webiverse (web and universe combined) for the perfect blend of ingredients to make a not so doughy homemade pizza dough. I have searched, searched and searched some more and I finally found a way to do it! The problem is, I can only tell you the base of the recipe and not really the measurements of the spices I added. I'll just tell you add whatever spices you like to taste. 

Below are the ingredients that I used for the base of the dough.

3/4 cup warm water

1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast

Sprinkling of a bit of white sugar to activate yeast (if needed)

2 cups AP Flour

1 teaspoon salt (I used sea salt)

2-3 Tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)

My mix-in's were:

White pepper

Garlic Powder

Honey (very little - gives the slightest hint of sweetness to the dough but not overpowering) 

Unfortunately I can't tell you how much of the above listed spices/ingredients I put in there because I didn't measure them, I'm notorious, when cooking for sprinkling stuff in my hand and when it looks right turning my hand over and plopping it into the mix. With ingredients like salt though I'm much more careful because it's way too easy to over-salt a dish. I'm of the contention that I'd rather add salt little by little than add too much. Sadly I've added too much salt to a dish before and completely ruined what might have been the best pasta sauce ever!

Directions for making this dough the Shauna G way are as follows:

3/4 cup warm water -  mixed with 1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast - sprinkle in a bit of white sugar if the yeast doesn't bubble and do it's thing. Give the mixture a good stir and let it hang out for about 5 minutes. Bubbles = good!

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment combine the flour and salt. Once that's combined and your yeasty mixture has been hanging out for a while, go ahead and pour that in and turn the mixer back on medium speed. Slowly, while the mixer is running, drizzle in the EVOO until it's sticky but not overly so.

Pull the dough out of the bowl and knead it for about 1-2 minutes, not much longer than that, you just want to make sure all of the ingredients and spices you added are fully integrated into the dough.  

At this point you will have a beautiful looking ball of dough that you will need to place in a well oiled bowl (once again, EVOO). STOP! It's not going to rise immediately, it may not ever rise. I know this because I threw out the first batch of dough because it didn't rise after hanging out at room temperature for over an hour, I was convinced I had done something wrong - into the trash it went! I read further about the combination with this little amount of yeast and it just doesn't rise quickly. Once you're done making the dough just go ahead and put it in the refrigerator at this point (well covered) and wait until the next day to make it. Wanna hear something crazy? Mine rose in the refrigerator overnight. Who the heck knew that could even happen? If you would like to use the dough on the same day you make it, I'd advise letting it rest for about an hour or two prior to using it - who knows, if you aren't impatient like me, it might just rise!

As usual, I always forget a step in the photo process - maybe I'm not the greatest food blogger, but at least I'm trying right? Right! There is no picture of the dough as a ball. I think that my loving husband can vouch for me from the mess he witnessed in the kitchen that the dough was indeed homemade. You're just going to have to trust me on this one.

Here's a photo of the dough spread out onto a greased (using EVOO) 9x13 jelly roll pan.

How did I cook it, well, that's the coolest part! I went ahead got the dough ready. Then I put my pizza stone in the oven on the lowest rack possible making room so that I could put the pan on top of the pizza stone. I pre-heated the oven to 500 and waited and waited and it seems like it took forever for the oven to reach temperature. I might as well have cooked it outside in the 110 degree heat. I wish I was kidding! Dallas heat this year is B-R-U-T-A-L!!! 

While I was waiting for the oven to reach the appropriate temperature, I decorated the dough, if you will, with a sprinkling of sea salt, white pepper and a little bit more garlic powder (okay, maybe I got a little heavy handed with the garlic powder). Then I drizzled on some more EVOO and using my hands spread it all around and made everything nice and pretty. Here it is!

I bet that I could have baked the dough at that point and it would have been a yummy foccacia type bread, but no, I wasn't done yet! 

So the oven is FINALLY pre-heated. I went ahead and cut up the fresh buffallo mozzarella and fresh basil. I won't lie to you, I did use store bought tomato sauce this time just because I think part of my downfall last time was that I was over ambitious by making the sauce. Next time I will try making the sauce again.

Another picture I forgot to take is of the pizza going into the oven but here it is when it's out. A tip that I learned from other people about pizza. Do not sprinkle on the fresh basil until the pizza comes out of the oven, which is what I did. The completed product looked and smelled super yummy!

I will say it was MUCH better than my first attempt. I think in this case (as with a lot of things) the third time making homemade pizza dough will be the charm. Next time the plan will be to have the oven preheated with the pizza stone in there just as I did this time, but put the dough in the oven by itself (with no toppings) for about 3-5 minutes to let the bottom begin to crisp. Then quickly add toppings, put it back in the oven and let it finish cooking for about 13-16 minutes (depending upon how brown the cheese is getting). I think a crispier crust would make this even more PERFECT! Don't get me wrong, the dough was completely cooked this time, it just would have been nice had it been a little crispier. Ahhh, dreams of Italy are in my head. As Jack said in LOST "We have to go back!!!"