More Maui...Old Lahaina Luau...(plus video!)

Deb did wonderfully selecting the luau...she and Christine had been to other luau's on the island on previous visits, but this was my first, as well as Christy's.  Reviews dictated the Old Lahaina Luau was the best, and it surely was.  We were pleased with the gorgeous view and sunset on the Lahaina coastline...

We also watched them dig up our dinner, PIG!  They call it "Kalua Pua'a."  It's roasted in the underground oven called a "imu'."

 Additionally, they had all sorts of Hawaiian favorites to eat...and drinks kept flowing.  Here's the menu if you are curious...menu link.  I had no shame drinking the Pina Colada's, the Lava Flows, and Mai Tai's.  I love tropical drinks with rum, they definitely are something you can drink in Hawaii without much judgement.  I know I won't order them here in Houston while out with friends...I don't need to lob that one in for jokes!

After we were done with our amazing food, we had entertainment.  I don't know exactly what entertainment you typically expect during a luau, but it was great.  They told a story about Hawaii, the history, the culture...all through song and dance.

I kept thinking of the "hips swing" song...

I highly recommend the Old Lahaina Luau...

Like Mother, Like Son

I am going to steal a page from Debbie and blog about cooking/baking. I have always loved cooking and used to love watching my mom cook, bake, and such. I, unlike Debbie, am not a fan of recipes though. See, I would rather throw a little of "this" and a little of "that" and come up with some sort of awesome dish. Unfortunately things don't always come out the way I want or intend. Sometimes I find myself failing miserabley (i.e. homemade butternut squash stuffed tortellini) but stumbling upon a gold mine (i.e. butternut squash stuffed chicken). Things even out really...

However, this is not one of those blogs...it's a success story in following one of my mom's family recipes. I love her cooking and baking, as any child would, especially her turkey casserole, potato salad, beef stew, and stuffed cabbage. The last is what I tackled last night...finally!

Overall it was a little intimidating because as I thought more and more about it...it is one dish I never helped her make, never watched her make, or knew really how to make! I found her old email from a few months back and went to work.

Coring, steaming, and peeling the cabbage, cooking the meat and mixing with the rice, seasoning, and herbs. Finding a way to peel off the soft cabbage leaves without breaking them. And subsequently stuffing and rolling them effectively without falling apart in the pot!

It was a challenge, but it was one of those things that got easier with time. I'm not going to post her recipe because I can't imagine it'd be one that many people would want (more of a cultural dish). Debbie had never had it before and thought it was good, but I think she was just being a great wife (which she is of course!) and saying it. We got to talking about where the food came from, it's origin, and such. We speculated a lot, so I went on a quick search and found an informative blurb, yes it's Wikipedia but it seemed to sum things up nicely for the blog! So it looks like my mom's eastern european roots come out in this dish (Ukraine, Slovakia, Croatia).

Of course it went with saurkraut and mashed potatoes!

Not sure what dish I'll attack next but I'm enjoying trying new things. Perhaps making homemade potato pancakes...bringing in my Polish roots?

Props to my sister (or the "annonymous" person who keeps leaving comments!) on a great eggplant recipe. We've cooked that one twice. But this post is for mom!

My Second Wilton's Cake Course

I finally have time to blog about my second Wilton Cake Course, it literally pains me to write about this, staring at cake pics, since I am on a liquid diet today after getting my wisdom teeth removed.

The course was titled "Flowers and Borders" and that pretty much sums up everything we did. We learned how to make Color Flow Icing and Royal Icing, which are pretty much the same thing except the Wilton Color Flow mix has something in it that makes the icing shiny when dried. The first class we made the blue birds that will go on the final cake using the color flow, unfortunately mine made it all the way to the final class and cracked as I took them off the wax paper, so no pics. The following class we worked on the royal icing flowers.

I ended up making most of them from home throughout the week since my icing had gotten too soft and I had to remix in some powdered sugar. Overall I think they turned out pretty good and I made at least one of every kind!

The last class, this past Tuesday, we had to bring in cake made with the special oval/egg shaped pans. I decided to go to my Ghirardelli cookbook and made the Devil's Food Cake and decided to make a peanut butter frosting for the filling. The Wilton buttercream taste is getting pretty old, so its fun to add in a little flavor in the cake.

In class we learned how to do roping and basketweaving (this makes me think of underwater basketweaving, hehe)

And Voila! I finished my cake IN class and was excited to come home take some pics and dive in! And it was YUMMY!

I have definitely enjoyed the classes so far, but with everything going on lately I really needed a break. Well, Wilton and my instructor Mandy read my mind! I guess Wilton is changing up how they plan to do the last two classes, since they both involve tiering and fondant hopefully they will just combine them! Because we don't know exactly what is going on yet, the class is taking the month of March off. So look forward to some non-cake baking to come, well once I can eat solids again!

Chocolate Chocolate Stout Cupcakes

with a cream cheese icing!


A few weeks ago a friend of mine had a going away party as she had gotten a job at the National Weather Service in California, awesome! I decided to bring some cupcakes for dessert, which really just gave me an excuse to get out a recipe I had been wanting to make.

I used Epicurious' (from Bon Appetit) recipe for Chocolate Stout Cupcakes, but instead of Guinness I decided to use Young's Double Chocolate Stout (so Terence could drink the leftovers)! I later determined that there wasn't so much of a Stout taste in the cupcakes and this may have been due to the overwhelming chocolaty-ness.

Lots'o'butter, Paula Deen would approve!

This recipe filled my 5 Qt. KitchenAid mixer to the brim, or in cupcake terms it made about 4 dozen.


I then used Brown Eyed Baker's recipe for Cream Cheese frosting. I chose this recipe because I was looking for something a little fluffier and not so heavy since the cupcake flavor was so intense.


After the cupcakes were cooled to room temperature, I used my Wilton tips and bag to get them to look a little professional. I think I left the icing out too long because it was pretty soft and the design didn't hold that well.

I ended up throwing all the decorated cupcakes in the fridge to harden the icing up a bit, but I really don't prefer this as it tends to dry out the cake. I still haven't figured out how cake/cupcake shops can not refrigerate their cakes iced with cream cheese frosting, wouldn't it go bad!? If anyone has answers I would really appreciate the advice!

End result: Yummy! They were super moist, thanks to the beer, and had a very dark chocolate taste. The cream cheese frosting was eh, I think I will keep hunting for that ultimate fluffiness.

Hope you enjoy!

The Wilton Rose

Tonight was the last class of my first Wilton Cake Decorating course.

Since Terence is out of town this week visiting his family in Florida, I decided to bring the cake to work, because honestly at this point it doesn't even sound good! I made a 9-inch double layered funfetti cake, smooth iced at home. As you can see I did get down that 90 degree angle on the edges, but it appears that I skimped too much on the icing and I think it looks a little bare. The 90 degree angle was achieved by using a blade to scrap the sides, THEN across the cake, not from the bottom of the sides up across the cake (like I did last week).

Throughout the course we have been learning parts of the Wilton rose technique. The base of the rose, built with a tip #12, and the petals in rows of 1, 3, 5, and 7, tip #104. You can even watch a how-to video on wilton.com. I can't say that I mastered the rose, there may have been some cursing, but I did end up getting a few good ones out. I eventually got the leaves to come out right as well, using tip # 352. Although the "leaf green" Wilton icing color looks more like neon green to me! After the centerpiece was in on the cake, I added some simple dots, tip #3, and a seashell border, tip #21 and voila!

Hope everyone enjoys work tomorrow!

Oh and if anyone is interested, Michael's is offering 50% off classes for the month of February.

Warning...clowns are involved!

Tuesday was my 3rd Wilton Cake course one class. We had to make a clown cake, umm yeah?! Well it's done and I learned some good lessons from this cake so it was all worth it.

As you saw my earlier post, Babka and Cake Prep, I smooth iced the cake and if you look my corners are curved at the top, well ideally they would be a perfect 90 degree angle. So I learned how to fix that and will hopefully have it go much better for next week. This week I made the perfect medium consistency icing so I was able to practice dots, writing, stars, and the beginning of the Wilton Rose! One thing I did learn about my icing, was to not be cheap! I went to Walmart to buy up all of my cake supplies for the entire class because they are the cheapest grocery store around here. I bought Walmart brand vegetable shortening and you can totally tell. The icing isn't as smooth as my practice book and not as smooth as the others in my class. So this week I will be buying the name brand shortening because I don't want my roses to be all crinkly!

As for the taste of the Red Velvet cake with cream cheese filling, eh. I told you I used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, well you can definitely tell. The cake is not as soft and fragile as I would have hoped, but the cream cheese filling was awesome! I guess I'll know for next time!

Babka and Cake Prep

Since prior to Christmas I had my eye on a recipe, but knew it was a lengthy one and needed some time and patience. I decided after running on Sunday to tackle this Chocolate Babka recipe courtesy of Cakespy.com. Maybe it wasn't the smartest idea as for some reason today my back is killing me!

What is Babka you ask? It is a filled twisted bread with a streusel topping, this one specifically is filled with dark chocolate and baking cocoa. Anyways, I love making homemade bread, but the furthest I have tackled is plain egg bread and if you count banana bread and what nots. Also, I broke out my KitchenAid Artisan mixer last week for icing prep and I wanted to see how it handled bread making! I seriously don't know why I waited so long to break this baby out. My mom and Grandmother got this for me for my bridal shower, yep back in August! Thanks so much again!

She handled great! I think my only complaint was that I had to wash the bowl out so much because I wanted to use it for everything.

Too bad I didn't take any other pictures of my Babka, it was amazing!! This is the only picture I got and it was half way through eating it already! It was sooo yummy!

Today I prepped for my cake class, I didn't want to make a box cake again so I decided to bake a red velvet cake with cream cheese filling. I used the recipe from Smittenkitchen.com. I think it came out pretty darn good, except if you look at the picture it is more like red-swirl velvet cake!

I think this may have been due to the fact that I used red icing gel dissolved in water and well, it didn't exactly dissolve that nicely. I did make some substitutions in the recipe, mostly because I already have 4 kinds of flour in my pantry and I didn't want to buy cake flour. I sifted 3 cups of all-purpose flour instead and I used vegetable oil instead of the called on canola oil.

Then I had to smooth ice the cake in prep for decorating tomorrow and prepare decoration icing. This was a bit more frustrating than I imagined. In class it looked so easy and tonight it was ummm NOT! I'll cross my fingers it gets better with practice and less cursing. See for yourself...

I chose blue and yellow as we are supposed to make a clown cake, yippee!

Tune in tomorrow for the final cake and tasting!! For the rest of my cake class writings...

Wilton Cake Class #2

Kitchen Krazyness

Kitchen Krazyness

So as some of you probably knew, I baked up a storm over this past holiday season and it will keep on going well into the New Year!

It all started with Thanksgiving, after we found out my sister was coming to visit we decided to make an actual menu, our first holiday with all our new cookware! We made turkey, green bean casserole, Kadlec famous stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and homemade bread.

Turkey, Turkey, Turkey

Then came the desserts...this was my first real excuse to bake since we got back from our wedding/honeymoon and oh boy did I miss it. I had been dying to make my first cheesecake, so I made a yummy New York chocolate chip cheesecake, NO cracks! I also decided to make Eli's famous rum cake for Terence, knowing he would love it, and in a last minute attempt to stay true to the season I baked up a pumpkin pie.

Cheesecake and Rum Cake...does it get any better

Post-thanksgiving we were in full baking swing. I decided, of course, to send cookies out for Christmas so I started baking cookies on the weekend and freezing them. This included my boss' recipe for cowboy cookies, chocolate dipped sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, my new favorite red-velvet cake balls (which deserve their own blog), and coffee chocolate toffee.

Sugar cookies dipped in a white chocolate/mint chocolate chip mix and christmas sprinkles

PB cookies with dark chocolate chips (my favorite cookie)

Coffee Toffee (via Smitten Kitchen)

Cake Ball preview... :-)

Now, to start out the New Year, I decided to start taking the Wilton Cake Decorating Class at my local Michael's. There are three courses, plus a fondant course, that Wilton sponsors at local craft stores and bakeries. You have to start with Course I and my first class was last night, I definitely came home smiling! Last night we went over the the basics of all things icing, including how to smoooooooth ice a cake. Every week we bake a cake and prepare the Wilton buttercream icing at home then off to class to learn the different icing techniques. I cannot wait to blog about all my cakes, wish me luck!

Happy Baking!

What we eat...

With the wedding coming up Terence and I have both been trying to eat better. I somehow talked him into doing the South Beach Diet with me and his gym motivation has finally worn off on me :-)

So for two weeks it felt like all we ate was celery! This was the so called "Phase 1" and I think we both did well...here is a pic after grocery shopping one day. I have never bought so many fresh vegetables!

This obviously isn't all we eat, but this is the majority! We became pretty adventurous with recipes...aka Terence tried recipes that I found, like cauliflower mashed potatoes and shrimp scampi! Phase 2 is now in full swing and the more weeks that go on the better it gets and the more people I talk to about it the more I learn. Like cheese chips...just bake some low-fat shredded cheese on a baking stone and you've got chips for dipping that are Phase 1 friendly! Thanks Kristine! Oh and thank you Sam's Choice for your frozen stuffed chicken breasts!

Wish us luck in the next 4 weeks!

Astros Win!

It took the Astros over four calendar months to finally win a game that we went to! Granted we've only gone to few, but still...a 1-6 record is pretty bad.

Deb surprised me with game tickets, which was really nice. Probably because we've been so busy with the wedding, plus trying to save for it and the honeymoon. It's been okay not going to games for the most part, as watching baseball in HD on a 46" screen has much to be happy about anyways! (I lobbied against it, but now don't know how we did it before!)

Here we are:
A view of our seats (before the game and the seats got filled):
And during the wave, was really impressed by how well everyone did on it. Many times it is so bad only a few participate, but this time it was rolling around the stadium with good motion. Deb and I paid homage to JR, like always, with his how do I say "girly" way of doing it. We had a great night!
After the game we headed to see Julie & Julia.
I must say I was not thrilled about going from my favorite game to see a girly movie, but overall it was okay. Amy Adams playing Julie Powell was quite funny as it reminded me (and the way Debbie was laughing and giving me those looks) related to her at times. I think my evidence is in her blog posting from last night! :-) But in all reality, she doesn't give herself enough credit. She has made me some pretty incredible dishes that I haven't been able to duplicate when I've tried...the souffle, this one penne pasta with sausage, and ALL her baking! Her baking is insane!

Best Cake Ever

So I don't want to turn this into a food blog, but I just have to tell everyone about the cake I made for our Anniversary. It was a triple layer chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and a chocolate ganache drizzled on top. I got the recipe from a co-worker (Thanks Jen), but you can find it online at smittenkitchen.com blog. 

I thought it would be really hard to make, but it wasn't too bad and the blog gives lots of hints as to icing the cake. 

 

Here is a pic of the final product...Yummy!

Wholly Guacamole!

For those that haven't had the pleasure of Terence's Guacamole yet, its REALLY good! It even got certified by a true Honduran! So when Leslie went to Honduras over Christmas she brought back this awesome Guacamole Bowl and avocado smasher, so here it is in action...

Just start with an awesome avocado (from Mexico?)...

Then mash it up and add your mixins...

and voila Wholly Guacamole in a Honduran bowl!

Thanks Lezzer!!