Announcements

My friend, Gail, did a wonderful photo shoot with my baby last week. This was my favorite picture. I used it to make Thank You cards for all the folks who have brought and continue to bring us meals. The cards will arrive in the mail this week. I'm stoked.

Foodbuzz 24,24,24: Happy BIRTHday Meal

Today is our son's half birthday. He thinks he's 4 but he's not, he's 3 and 1/2. Ten days ago I gave birth to our second child, Maria Aurea. We wanted to celebrate our daughter's birth without leaving our son out of the festivities. The Foodbuzz 24,24,24 inspired me to do a BIRTHday dinner celebration where we could celebrate Enzo's half birthday and the birth of our daughter with some friends. Enzo got to introduce his new little sister to our old neighbors. Litle 2 year old Via was just delighted with the baby and with the food.

The company was great and the food was great. What more could we ask for? (a little sleep would be nice but I'm not counting on that for a while...)

Like any good Birthday party the cake took center stage. Christian and I tried very hard to make a cake that looked good and tasted good. I think we finally succeeded.

To accompany the chocolate cake we made Vanilla Frozen yogurt.

And for dinner we had individual pizzas, Ina Garten style.

I wanted the menu to be good but easy(ish) to make. I'm resigned to the fact that for a while I won't have as much time as I used to, to cook as much as I want.

Below are the recipes for the Chocolate Cake, Vanilla Frozen Yogurt, and Ina Garten Pizza dough. Enjoy!

Chocolate Cake

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2/3 cup good quality baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 large eggs

1. Heat oven to 350* and grease bottom and sides of pan
2. Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.
3. Bear on high speed for 3 minutes.
4. Pour batter into pan
5. Bake for 30-35 minutes
6. Cool for ten minutes and then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

We put whip cream in the middle and frosted with with Chocolate ganash. If you do the whip cream make sure it's almost to the point where it turns into butter. You don't want it to melt so it needs to be hard. The ganash should be poured on the cake when it's still warm that way you won't have to work so hard to make it smooth.

Vanilla Frozen Yogurt
a couple weeks ago designmom wrote a post about frozen yogurt. I'm a huge fan of frozen yogurt so I checked out the original recipe a frozen yogurt recipe to rival pinkberry's recipecreamy blackberry frozen yogurt and became inspired to use yogurt cheese to make create my recipe. Yesterday I decided to stick with the original vanilla frozen yogurt recipe. So good. So creamy and rich. So delish! Here is how I made the recipe using yogurt cheese

• 6 cups plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  

1. Place 6 cups of yogurt on a cheese cloth. Gather the ends and fold them over the yogurt and hang it over a bowl in the fridge over night. This will make 2 cups of yogurt cheese
2. Mix together the yogurt cheese, sugar, and vanilla.
3. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions

Ina Garten Pizza Dough (California Pizza)
a couple weeks ago I tried this recipe and fell in love. If you like thin crust pizza you will love this dough.

• 1 1/4 cups warm water
• 2 packages dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook.
   
2. Add 3 cups flour, then the salt, and mix.
   
3. While mixing, add 1 more cup of flour.
4. Knead the dough on low speed for about 10 minutes until smooth, sprinkling it with flour, if necessary, to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
5. When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead by hand a dozen times. It should be smooth and elastic.
   
6. Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl and turn it several times to cover it lightly with oil.
   
7. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
8. Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll each one into a smooth ball. Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover them with a damp towel. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Use immediately
9. Preheat oven to 500*
   
10. Roll and stretch each ball into a rough 8-inch circle and place them all on baking sheets sprinkled with cornmeal. You will be able to fit 2 pizzas on each baking sheet.
11. Brush the dough with olive oil and add any toppings you wish.
12. drizzle olive oil over the pizzas and bake for 10-15 minutes
    

Post-Partum Food

On Monday night our friend Seth dropped by and asked if he could bring us a meal sometime this week. I said "yes" and requested his chow mein. On Monday my friend Melissa brought me dinner and I reminded her to please make her famous rice-krispies treats. My friends are wonderful. They are so patient with me and have brought us wonderful meals all week. Our fridge is full, our freezer is full, and my heart is full.

Thanks friends for all the wonderful post-partum meals.

Would it be too much to ask for recipes too?

Hospital Food Never Tasted This Good

On Thursday we welcomed our second child, Maria Aurea, into our family. I was lucky enough to give birth at a WONDERFUL birthing center. The whole experience was amazing, including the food. It was a little over the top but we took full advantage  of their menu. None of this jell-o none sense. None of this"you eat what we bring you when we bring you" food. At this place I had an awesome menu to choose from and could order any time of day as much food as I wanted.

 

Having fillet Mignon and  NY style cheese cake right after giving birth is the way to go!

The most delicious part of the experience was  holding our new girl. I put up some more pictures of her on my other blog.

I'm participating in the Foodbuzz 24,24,24 meal for this month so visit me again on Sunday when I post our BIRTHday celebration meal. I'm also planning on going to Food BlogHer on Saturday. I have my ticket, now I need to get my energy back. If you're attending the conference look for me and baby Maria and come say hi.

Brazilian Dessert on a Very Brazilian Holiday!

Today is a very important Holiday for Americans but it is THE most important Holiday (except for Carnaval, or course) for Brazilians. It's our Independence day. So in honor of this special day I'm re-posting the recipe for Bem Casado, my favorite Brazilian dessert.
enjoy!






BEM CASADO
mini cakes dough


3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon corn starch
1 teaspoon backing powder


filling
1 can sweetened condensed milk
syrup
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup water


Directions
mini cakes

1. Preheat the oven to 420
2. Separate the eggs
3. Whisk the egg whites in a stand up mixer with the sugar until it is firm*
4. Add the egg yolks one at a time without their skin (use a metal stainer for this) and add the vanilla. Fold into the egg whites.
5. Slowly add the flour, corn starch, and baking powder and fold into the egg mixture.
6. Drop spoon fulls of the mixture on a cookie sheet and bake for 5 minutes.
7. Remove from cookie sheet while it is still hot and place in a cooling rack.
8. When the cakes have completely cooled down spread dulce de leche on them and form a sandwich with a second cake.
9. Dunk the sandwiched cakes in the sugar syrup.
10. Refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.
11. Place a chocolate leaf on top to garnish (optional)
    
    * Egg whites can be tricky. For detailed instructions on how to whisk egg whites visit this post at 101 Cook Books.

filling

1. To make dulce de leche pour the sweetened condensed milk in a glass bowl and microwave on medium for 10 minutes. Stop and stir every 2 minutes.

Syrup

1. Place the water and sugar in a small sauce pan.
2. Stir constantly until it begins to boil.
3. Cool down completely before submerging the cakes.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

The picture isn't great (neither is the presentation) but I guarantee that the cake is good. 'Tis the season for zucchini and I was stoked when I read this post. The original recipe can be found here.

I used round pans and made a double layer cake with whip cream in the middle and rich chocolate ganache as icing.

Confession: I hate making cakes. I want them to look beautiful and I want beautiful cake stands to hold them up. You know like the colorful vintage ones...ohhh lala. I can't get myself to invest in beautiful cake stands because my cakes never turn out beautiful. If you have any tips on how to make pretty cakes please let me know I'm in need of inspiration for my next cake project.

Creamy Blackberry Frozen Yogurt

Summer has been so good to us this year. I'm trying desperately to hold on to any remainders of this wonderful season. I've already frozen tons of slices of peaches for a cold winter afternoon when I need a juicy peach cobbler. I'm now making my way through all the blackberries we have close to our house. Jam will be made, don't you worry. For now, because we've been enduring the craziest heat wave, the blackberries are turned into smoothies and other cold treats. So far my favorite has been the frozen yogurt. We used yogurt cheese instead of plain yogurt and this thing came out insanely creamy.

Creamy Blackberry Frozen Yogurt
(printable version)

• 3 cups fresh blackberries
• 3 cups yogurt cheese (or Greek yogurt)
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk ( 14 ounce can, it's fine if it's a bit more or a bit less)

1. In a blender, puree the blackberries with the sweetened condensed milk.
2. In a medium bowl mix the puree with the yogurt cheese.
3. Pour the mixture in to your ice-cream maker and follow the manufacturer's directions.