A Celebration Weekend

It was an eventful, yet happy and celebratory weekend!

Saturday I had a friend’s baby shower…and there’s nothing cuter than seeing all the cute baby clothes.

And on Sunday I celebrated another friend’s Bridal Shower, AND my aunt and uncle’s 60th birthdays!!

This morning I headed down to my blog-friend-turned-real-friend Elizabeth’s bridal shower!!

She is getting married in November, and today her bridesmaids threw her a beautiful shower down at her family’s house.

There were lots of gifts

Good food

And adorable cupcakes

I was also the first winner at Bridal Bingo!  Booya!

Tina, Elizabeth, and Me :)

I can’t wait for their big day!

Straight from the shower, I headed to my aunt and uncle’s house for a birthday bash that my cousins threw for them!

No lack of amazing food…

Fresh figs on Dubliner cheese…awesome combination!!

Giant bowl of tomato & mozzarella salad!!

The main dish…Lobster Rolls…tons and tons of lobster rolls

On hot buttery rolls.  Drooling just looking at the picture now.  I had one, and then split another with Brian later.

But I think my FAVORITE dish of the day was this Mexican Seafood Cocktail

It was similar to a cold gazpacho, but it had lots of crab meat, shrimp, and big chunks of avocado!

SOOooo delicious.  The recipe is here on Epicurious, and I NEED to make this soon!!       

There was also two huge Pavlovas for dessert (giant meringue topped with fresh whipped cream and strawberries),  along with a pink champagne birthday cake!  

It was a fun and delicious afternoon with family!

This weekend flew by, and sadly work tomorrow!  

Question… what’s you’re favorite meal to make in the heat of the summer??  I feel like I’ve had less and less meals to post on here because I’m just not cooking as much or as creatively in this hot summer heat!!

Dark Chocolate-Orange Cake

But first, apparently my habits are catching on…

Brian: “I learned this from you!” 

Of course, then I made him stay there while I got my camera take a picture of him taking a picture of his beer :)

Ok, back to the dark chocolate!

This weekend was my friend Jenny’s bridal shower!  I offered to make a dessert and was asked to take care of the “chocolate” dessert.  Mmmm no problems there ;)

Of course I racked my brain for a while trying to think of something that would really satisfy a chocolate craving, as well as be very visually appealing.  When I learned there was no cake planned so far, I took that as my sign!

I went with one of my favorite flavor combinations:

Chocolate + Orange

This cake became a compilations of a few different recipes and my own ideas.

The shower was on a Saturday, so to save some time I made the cake on Wednesday night and wrapped it tight in plastic until frosting time Friday night.

The Cake 

I referenced this recipe for Double Chocolate Layer Cake for the cake and the ganache.

It started with a lot of this:

and this:

The cake recipe has coffee in it which I love…you can’t taste the coffee at all but it just makes the chocolate so much more intense!

Instead a round cake, I made 2 9” square layers.  They baked for about 50-55 min…a little less than the original recipe states.
(before going into the oven)

The Filling

The hardest part for me was figuring out what type of filling I wanted.  I didn’t want to make my usual buttercream (it’s delicious, but not the best looking and doesn’t hold up as well).

Then I was thinking more of a mousse-like filling, but really didn’t want to make a mousse.  It was Friday night and I wanted something a little simpler.  My final decision was the Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe from my Joy of Cooking cookbook.  Recipe can also be found here.

It’s very similar to an Italian Buttercream, but a little easier as it doesn’t involve a cooked sugar syrup. 

I made a half-batch as I just needed it for the filling, and added about:

• 1 T Grand Marnier
• 1 T orange zest

The first part involved whipping a meringue-like mixture over heat, then continuing the whipping on high in the stand mixer. 

It was like clouds of marshmallow!  Those are some stiff peaks!!

It was then whipped in with butter…mmmm. 

I then assembled the layers and got to work on the chocolate-orange ganache frosting!

The Ganache Frosting

I went back to the original recipe.

I used Trader Joe’s chocolate

I didn’t have light corn syrup, but used 1T of dark corn syrup and it turned out delicious.  I also added another splash of Grand Marnier and orange zest from about 1/2 of an orange. 

Ganache is very easy to make.  The only pain was waiting for it to thicken up to a consistency where I could spread it.  I put the bowl in the freezer for about 5 min or so to speed that up :)

Then I spread.  I loved how dark and shiny it was…I looks like velvet!  You could pour or spread this on anything!  Let it harden up even more and make some truffles!

                  

Finishing Touch

My final touch was making some candied orange zest for a garnish. 

First some shots of the cake the next morning in some natural light!

I used this zester to peel strips off of an orange.  The strips are then boiled, drained, and re-cooked in a sugar/water mixture until they get kind of clear.

Let them sit and cool for a bit, then coat in sugar!

Garnish     

I LOVE how it came out!  It was delicious too!!  Very rich, very intense-chocolate flavor, with a subtle orange background flavor. 

I need more reasons to make cakes :)          

More Q&A and Winners!

First down to business.

The three lucky winners of the Fiber One Chocolate spa gift packages are:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

11
74
14

Coco
Chocolate mousse, especially those with dark chocolate, the bitter kind!

Sarah
Brownies.  And hot fudge.  Wait - a hot fudge brownie sundae... yes, that's it.

Danielle
Yum! I'd love to be entered :)

Send me your addresses girls and I will make sure these get to you!!

Q&A Part 2:

This question came about after my post about the bridal shower I helped plan for my friend Jen!

Sabrina (aka Rhodey Girl) asked:

Could you do a post on how you managed the time for it all? Did you prep mostly everything the day before? Was the frittata easily sliced?

I'd love to elaborate :)

Whenever you're preparing a big meal for many people (in this case about 3o), it is always a good idea and most of the time NECESSARY to plan ahead and figure out what can be prepared ahead of time.

The Shower was on a Saturday at 11:00AM, at a location 45min away.

I'll go through each item and how it was broken down:
Shopping:

• Most was done on the Wednesday before. I got all the items I could at this 1 store which has the best prices. The items had to sit in my car for a while so I didn't get any of the dairy or meat items.
• I also wanted to get the berries later so they were fresher
• Definitely couldn't get everything at 1 place
• In the end there were 7 trips to 5 places haha...good thing I like grocery shopping, and good thing there is a 24hr Shaws nearby for those last minute "oh crap I forgot..." moments.

Muffins:

• Because the scones are more reliant on peak freshness than the muffins, I chose to do the muffins Friday night. They'd still be served less than 24hours after baking.
• I made both the blueberry corn muffins, followed by the Chocolate Coconut Banana muffins on Friday night and let cool completely before placing in large Zip loc bags

Scones:

• Scones are one of those things that are really best when fresh from the oven, so I really wanted to bake these the morning of.
  
• There was some parts I could do beforehand though. On Friday night I prepped the dry ingredients to which I then cut in the butter. This mixture went into the freezer.
  
• The dry ingredients/butter came out Saturday morning, I added the wet ingredients, shaped, cut, and baked!
• For the Scones I also made clotted cream, this was done Friday night as well and just sat in the fridge until it was ready to serve.

Fruit and Yogurt Station:

• I was really excited about this idea, and 1 reason was that NO PREP NEEDED!
• When we arrived at the bridal shower house, we placed everything in bowls and set it out!

Fruit Platter:

• All the fruit was cut up Friday night.
  
• We also assembled the whole fruit platter and just wrapped it up tight with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.

NOTE: We have an extra fridge in the basement which was KEY to this operation. We would of really had to clean/empty our fridge other wise.

Frittatas:

• There's nothing too appealing about an egg dish that's made the day before, so these definitely had to be cooked the morning of. However, getting all the ingredients prepped saved TONS of time.
• I blanched the asparagus on Thursday night and placed in the fridge until needed.
• I grated the Gruyere cheese Thursday and placed that in a container in the fridge until needed.
• Friday, we cooked up the chicken sausage as well as the balsamic caramelized onions and placed in containers until needed.
• Saturday morning, I mixed up the egg mixture, placed the ingredients in the pan, poured the egg mix on top, and baked.
• When I arrived at the house I placed both Frittatas in the oven on like 250 to keep warm
• NOTE ON THE ASPARAGUS - was it easy to cut?? Well it wasn't hard, but because the egg is so much softer, next time I would pre-cut the asparagus into bite size pieces so that you wouldn't need to cut through the asparagus when cutting a slice of frittata! The other frittata was fine :)

Chicken Salad

• Thursday I cooked the chicken, let cool, then bagged it and placed it in the fridge
• Friday I made the chicken salad; cut/shredded the chicken, sliced the grapes, and cut the celery...mixed it all up with the dressing then placed in large zip locs.
• I didn't want to assemble the sandwiches until we arrived so the pitas would not be soggy. I had some helpers assemble the sandwiches that morning :)

Others:

• Jocy made her penuche cake Thursday night because it keeps well.
• The only prep needed for the salad was slicing strawberries Friday night.
• The little brie/ham/apple crostinis were assembled at the shower with the only prep being cutting the brie and the baguette Friday night.

All in all it was not an overwhelming amount of work. Jocy and I didn't get to bed til about 1am Friday night then were up at 5:30am Saturday...so the lack of sleep wasn't great, but that was the worst of it :) Everything else went smoothly and it's KEY to have a helper. Sous Chef Jocy did a lot of the cutting and interim dish washing!