Obie Turned Two!

Obie turned two years old on May 7th. We decided to throw him a birthday party because earlier that week, there was a Groupon for Maribelle Cakery for $20 and I wanted to eat cake.

If you have not signed up with Groupon yet, please do so by clicking HERE. They will send you daily deals for the cities you choose. They have some really great things. To date, I have gotten 5 bottles of wine for $25, a car wash and wax for $14, $35 gift certificate to a local restaurant for $15, and the cake for $20. It's free to sign up and if you use the link above, I'll get a referral bonus, so thanks in advance!

Back to the party. It was actually really cute. We invited a few friends over and two of them brought their dogs. The adults got cake and ice cream and the dogs got lots of dog treats and doggy ice cream. Obie threw up about 30 minutes later, like a real kid who ate too much and got too excited

Our friends brought him lots of presents as well. After the cake and ice cream, we took the dogs to the dog park that is down the street. They played at the park for awhile, but it was so hot that there were not that many people there. Soba swam in the lake for a bit, but we left shortly after that because our friend's dog got stung by a bee.

I think the humans were more wore out from the party than the dogs because after the park, I promptly napped for about 4 hours. Happy Birthday lil guy!

Cold Soba Noodles

Summers in Southern Arizona gets ridiculously hot so one of my favorite things to eat for lunch is cold soba noodles. It's so quick, refreshing, and delicious!

I cooked the soba noodles in a large pot of soft boiling water (no rolling boil like you do with pasta and no salt!). Drain and rinsed in cold water. You can soak them in an ice bath, but I was too hungry to wait so mildly cold and not completely chilled was fine with me.

Then, you can add anything you like to it. We used shitake mushrooms, green onions, dried seaweed, and added a raw quail egg. I know making the tsuyu sauce is not too hard, but nowadays there are so many brands of tsuyu in Asian markets, it just makes things easier. I bought the Danya sobatsuyu the other day at Lee Lee's and it was just as tasty.

T had these Asian dishes and platter lying around so we finally used them. We're not usually this fancy ;)

Tortoise, Too Cute!

You all know how much I love animals (except for cats-domestic ones, yuck. Lions and tigers, okay). One of my favorite things are when animals dress like other animals. Think dog in a bee costume, duck in a panda costume, etc.

A new animal favorite though are these videos of tortoises eating things. Their little mouths, the way they stick their necks out, ahhh they are just so freaking cute.





I only wish they were not spotted. I am very creeped out by random spots. Can't win them all.

Lemon Bundt Cake

In the middle of April, my boss was out of work for about two weeks because of knee surgery. I really like my boss so on the Monday of her return, I decided to bake her something. She loves lemon flavored things so I decided to make her Ina Garten's Lemon Yogurt Cake, which I had made a similar version in the past.

I made one and a half of the recipe so it would fit into a bundt pan because it was easier to serve at work. T made fun of me because he said, "What is this? The 1970s?" But after it was done, he even said it looked nice.

This cake has a really nice texture and is very moist. The lemon sauce that you pour onto the cake and the glaze gives it an extra oomph!

Dulce de Leche Duos

From Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours, she had a recipe for dulce de leche cookies and I just had to make them. I made my own dulce de leche (peeled off label from a can of sweetened condensed milk, put two tiny holes on top, put it in a sauce pan and made sure it was constantly filled with water 2/3 way up and let it cooked for about 3 hours), but the store bought stuff worked just as well and is way faster.

The recipe is a little time consuming because the cookies are small and you have to spread dulce de leche on each one to make a sandwich. I used a teaspoon to drop my cookies, but someone had suggest pipping them- just make sure you don't go much bigger than a teaspoon because the cookie does spread and when they are too big, they are a little too crispy.

It is rare that I eat a lot of my own baked goods, but these were so delicious that I must have eaten a good amount of them myself before sharing. They were so good that I made them twice that week and everyone LOVED them. I highly suggest these!

Dulce de Leche Duos
by Dorie Greenspan from Baking From My Home to Yours

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cups dulce de leche, plus more for filling
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs

Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until soft. Add the 3/4 cup of dulce de leche and both sugars and continue to beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Don't be concerned if the mixture looks a little curdled- it will smooth out when the flour mixture goes in. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear into
the batter.
Spoon the dough onto the baking sheets, using a heaping teaspoon of dough for each cookie and leaving 2 inches between them.
Bake the cookies 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pans from top to bottom and front the back at the midway point. The cookies should be honey brown with a light sugar crust, but they will still be soft, so remove the sheets from the oven but don't touch the cookies for another minute or two. Then, using a wide metal spatula, transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to room temperature.
Repeat with the remaining dough, making sure you cool the baking sheets before spooning the dough onto them.
When the cookies are completely cool, spread the flat bottoms of half the cookies with a small amount of dulce de leche, and sandwich with the flat sides of the remaining cookies.
Makes about 30 sandwich cookies

Vanilla Panna Cotta

I love my friend N and she loves panna cotta. It was over a month ago that I decided to make her some panna cotta. I do not remember the occassion, but she did help me immensely when I was having car troubles so perhaps I was being nice? Can't remember.

Panna cotta is super easy to make since baking is not even necessary. I tweaked a recipe for vanilla panna cotta that I had found on epicurious.

The recipe ask that you mix 4 tsp of unflavored gelatin into 2 cups of cream until it gets soft, but I was afraid the finished product would be too stiff so only used 3 tsp.

While the gelatin softens, heat 2 cups of whole milk, 1/2 cup of sugar, and the beans from 2 vanilla beans until the sugar has dissolved, amount 2 minutes. If you do not have vanilla beans, you can add 4 tsp of extract after the sugar has dissolved.

Whisk in the cream mixture to the milk mixture slowly. If you see lumps, make sure to strain this through a fine mesh sieved. Ladle the mixture to ramekins. Cover and refrigerate until the mixture has stiffen (about 6 hours).

I did not have enough ramekins for the amount of mixture so I used some of my white stemless wine glasses, which actually looked really nice.

I made my own quick strawberry sauce (heated 2 pints of strawberries, half cup of sugar, quarter cup of water, until the strawberries have broken down- adjust sugar and water if necessary) and spooned some on top.

I still have not figured out my light box and it's driving me insane! Photo above is with no flash and looks too yellow. Photo below is with a flash, white but horrible!

Pon Pon Patapon and Kingman

We went to Kingman, Arizona to visit T's family during his Spring Break from school in the middle of March. The day we left for Kingman was also T's birthday. He said he wanted a funfetti cake. I haven't made a box cake in ages and I thought it was funny that I was going to make one for the love of my life. I even said I could make him something fancier, maybe a chiffon cake or something more challenging, but he said nope, only funfetti- so funfetti it was.

Before we left, he had bought himself a PSP and was obsessed with this game called Patapon. I decided to theme his cake with the characters from Patapon (they are really cute afterall). I printed out pictures of the characters onto cardstock and staked them to wooden skewers. I used food coloring to make the frosting purple. I wanted to make a two tiered cake, and since his mom did not have wooden dowels, drinking straws worked just as well.

For not having a box cake in awhile or funfetti for that matter, I actually really liked it.

Also, Soba saw snow for the first time. She was so cute bouncing all around!

Back from Hiatus

Wow, can't believe I only wrote one blog in April. Life and work just got so busy. But, I'm back. A bunch of food things to come.

Look how big Soba got!