Birthday Cupcakes

Hellen and I spent part of the afternoon decorating cupcakes for Lulu to take to school tomorrow on her birthday. Her actual birthday celebrations are somewhat up in the air due to my mother's uncertain travel plans (she has jury duty on Aug 16th, but she doesn't know if she'll get picked to serve on a jury or not). Hopefully they will get figured out soon b/c we're saving the present-opening extravaganza (and I mean that literally) for when she gets here.

In the meantime, I wanted Lulu to have a little something to help celebrate on the actual day. Last August when we visited the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, I picked up a book called Hello, Cupcake! and I've been wanting to make these ever since.

This morning, I baked the cupcakes so that they'd be nice and cool by the time Hellen came over. I followed the book's recommendation and piped the cake batter into the cups and I'm really pleased with how smoothly they turned out!

Lesson?  Don't mess with a cup already filled with batter (see left tray, lower right for exhibit)

I don't think mine have ever turned out this nicely before!

Then, I assembled my mise en place. Every good pastry chef would argue that you have to have your mise!

Anthony Bourdain has taught me well....always have your mise!

After lunch, the actual cupcake decorating began. Hellen tackled most of the lady bugs while I smeared green frosting on. Then, we made yellow and orange frosting and both starting piping sunflower petals on the oreo cookies.

With both of us working on it, we were done pretty quickly and even had enough frosting and M&Ms leftover to decorate the remaining oreo cookies:

To harden up the frosting a bit, I stuck them in the fridge. So, when you open our fridge, you can't help but smile!  Hellen took two home for her and Derek and we walked a cupcake and an oreo down the street to the Beards to cheer up Melissa and treat Baby J.

The expression of surprise and joy on Lulu's face when we got home this afternoon was totally worth it. Now, the challenge is to keep her from trying to eat them (and getting them to school in one piece!) before tomorrow....

New Mexican Tomato Tart

I really wanted a tomato tart yesterday for dinner, but I didn't want the same ol', same old.  So, I tweaked a recipe to add blue cornmeal, Chimayo powder, ground cumin, and fresh oregano from the garden.  I liked that the original recipe only used 2 Tb butter and 2 Tb olive oil, too.  The tart dough smelled SO delicious, especially when we baked it!  There was a nice level of heat without being overpowering and it just smelled like Taos.  We topped the tart crust with a thin schmear of Dijion mustard, thinly sliced Vidalias, some lardons of bacon, and tomatoes from the garden (we can't remember which heirloom variety we planted!).  Then Gropius put together a mixture of grated cheese we had on hand (mostly the remants of the Swiss/German alpine cheeses from earlier this summer), a couple of eggs, some fresh thyme from the garden, and a dash of half-n-half.  We baked it for about 20-25 minutes.

We enjoyed it with a Gruet Pinot Noir that we picked up at BevMo's 5-cent sale for a great Sunday dinner.

Milkshake

I discovered a new milkshake and it's delicious:  chocolate avocado.

I swear.


1/2 avocado
1-1/2 C milk
2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1-2 T preferred sweetener (sugar, agave nectar, etc.)
1 t vanilla extract
A few ice cubes

Blend them all together and serve immediately.  (My sweetener was two packets of Splenda b/c I had it).

Midsommar

We celebrated midsommar a little early this year with Derellek this past weekend. Gropius was so excited to have a firepit in the backyard and I researched the traditions about jumping over the fire and which herbs to throw into the fire. :)

We started off with some cheese, crackers, and elder flower tonic before moving on to our slices of Swedish "cheese pie" or "vasterbottensost pie". Picked up the Vasterbottensost at IKEA earlier this week and found a recipe online here. The end result was delicious!

Swedish cheese pie

with fresh thyme (instead of the traditional dill--I *hate* dill)

we were also comparing German vs. Austrian Obstler

Then, it was a round of magnetic structure building with Lulu...

Lulu's 1st question the next morning:  "Wo ist Tante Hellen?"

Siggi and Snorri enjoyed some nasturiums in honor of the holiday, too.

And everyone enjoyed the new patio furniture!

The firepit was readied for once darkness fell...

And Gropius gave Lulu a quick bath to get her ready for bed before she came out to tell us goodnight and help us put Siggi back in the rabbit hutch.

Caption Contest!  My entry is, "And suddenly the party took an interesting turn...."

Once Lulu was ensconced in bed, it was time to move on to the savory cheesecake (with prociutto and chives), lox, potatoes with dill, and grilled Nürnberger bratwurst from the local German butcher. YUM!

the only picture of the savory cheesecake--we were too busy stuffing our faces!

The fire was lit and much merriment was had by all! We enjoyed rue, oregano, rosemary, curry plant, and lemon balm in the fire along with the dried almond wood that Gropius picked up at BevMo (the Happiest Place on Earth (tm)).

And last but not least, it was panna cotta for dessert with a strawberry sauce and some blueberries.

The next morning, we recycled the strawberry sauce into breakfast: crepes!

my breakfast plate--delicious and relatively low-fat

My beautiful baby girl!

A few garden close-ups

Just a few snapshots from the garden this week:

Siggi and Snorri enjoying a little fresh grass outside their rabbit run

Texas Tarragon, almost ready to bloom

Lots of Marigolds this year

My white echinacea

And Gropius's latest project, the firepit:

solar half dome lights, compliments of IKEA

He dug a pit underneath the middle two pavers and lined it with some concrete bricks so that we can have our own firepit in the backyard, like Jürgen and Babel did last summer in Nürnberg. He's planning on lighting up a fire this Friday for an early Midsommar celebration with Derellek. :)

Dinner last night...

...was amazingly tasty!  David Lebovitz highlighted a woman's blog where she adapted a Molly Katzen recipe into a pizza.  I forwarded it to Gropius and we both decided that it looked tasty and worth a try.

Rather than following her example and cooking the corn-cake crust in a pie pan, I decided to use my trusty 10" springform pan instead.  The removable sides turned out to be really helpful, but I do wish that we had followed her lead by putting the corn-cake crust on a second pan (rather than doing the second baking on the springform pan bottom).  The cheese made it stick a bit around the edges and I don't think that would've been a problem with a second pan.

Our other modification was to use two whole eggs rather than the egg/egg white mixture in the original.  We aren't that worried about our cholesterol (yet).  Other than that, we baked the recipe as-is.

Our corn-cake crust:




And the finished product:


We put red bell peppers, one spicy Italian sausage, tomato sauce, and red onion on top with a dusting of basil.



Delicious!

Celebration Weekend

Okay, here are the photos I promised in my earlier post yesterday. We left Sacto ~9:45am and arrived in Menlo Park after a short detour through a Canyon between I-880 and I-680. The canyon was very pretty but didn't help us get there sooner.

We avoided the parking lots for the masses by parking on the street in the neighborhood nearby and walking over. I snapped a quick couple of photos of Lulu showing off her "vagrant chic" ensemble this morning:

the shirt is size 4-6 years, ditto the skirt from Polarn O. Pyret

The Sunset people aren't stupid--the first tents we came across upon entering were the beer and wine tasting tables. Yay! I tried some (relatively) local but previously unknown (to me) wines and Gropius enjoyed a variety of beers--the beer selection was better than the wine selection this year, I think.

Then, we made our way over to the Sunset "dreamhouse" which was a converted shipping container this year. I was more impressed by the table that they had set up beside it:

As always, the landscaping is just beautiful. I think we picked up postcards advertising landscaping from a million different people today. I hope our front yard will be beautiful like this someday:

Lulu become absolutely *fascinated* by chickens. You heard it here, folks--chickens and bee-keeping are the latest trends in urban homesteading. We must've seen at least 3-4 separate flocks of chickens as we wandered around and a couple of different bee-keeping demonstrations.

Then, it was time for LUNCH! In the gauntlet of beer/wine tasting, at the end of the tunnel was the food and it was fabulous. Lulu and I enjoyed some Venezuelan street food and Gropius was excited to see the Korean taco truck that was at the Sacto MoFo Festival back in late April. This time he got the BBQ'd pork sandwich, The Sammy, and reported that it was delicious. I enjoyed a pabellon arepa with yucca fries. I'd never had yucca fries before but they were tasty! More substantial than a potato (similar to hushpuppies), and definitely filling.

Look, no lines!!!!

my very filling lunch

grilled skirt steak, plantains, black beans and cheese

After we were full, we wandered through the garden/cooking side of the shin-dig. They had a demo kitchen set up (where Rick Bayless was cooking at 12:30 today, sigh), but we got to watch the Sprinkles Cupcake lady frost some strawberry cupcakes!



Then we found where Safeway was giving away FREE coffee chocolate chip ice cream!

surprisingly unfazed by the caffeine

And Lulu wanted to play with the colored glass balls at this display more than her parents were comfortable with....

glass = irresistible to small children

And, last but not least, I found a nice way to keep mint (among other things) from overtaking my garden:

this bed had mint, strawberries, rhubarb, and blueberries

By the end, Lulu was exhausted (no nap today) and we thought for sure that she'd sleep in the car....um, no. Instead we were entertained with the "spitting" and "song" from the previous post. (although NOT patty-cake which was the rhyme I'd requested before I started shooting the video)