baby shower onesie cookies

I recently flew to Chicago for my cousin Angie's baby shower.  I grew up with Angie, and we've been best friends for as long as I can remember.  Her friends in Chicago were organizing her baby shower, but I wanted to contribute something, so I offered to make some onesie cookies!

I used my favorite homemade sugar cookie recipe, and used the same onesie cookie cutters (from my previous attempt at baby shower cookies) to cut out the shapes.  Once those were baked and cooled, I outlined the cookies with white royal icing.  After the outlines had dried, I filled them in with thinned royal icing, and then let that dry overnight.

I wanted to make the cookies match the baby shower invitations, so I used orange royal icing to outline half of the cookies, and blue/grey royal icing to outline the rest.  It took me a while to match the blue color to the one in the invitations, but I ended up mixing in royal blue, black, and a teeny bit of purple to achieve the right shade.

Angie's friends did an awesome job with the baby shower - everything was beautiful, and the food (Korean food made by Angie's cousin-in-law) was deelish!  I was so happy that I was able to make the trip to participate in the celebration!

another rhubarb tart

While my cousin Angie was in town visiting again, we had a chance to do a little shopping together, and I found these adorable plates at Anthropologie!  I made another rhubarb tart that same night, and couldn't wait to use my new plate for the pictures.

This time around, I arranged the rhubarb batons in a different pattern - instead of lining them perpendicular to the edge of the tart pan, I lined them up to follow the curve of the pan, which ended up looking like an octagon design.

To accompany the tart, I made fresh strawberry whipped cream again (I could eat this whipped cream by the spoonful, all by itself!).

This is such a perfect summertime dessert - tart rhubarb, flaky crust, and smooth sweet whipped cream.  I hope rhubarb season stays around for a while longer!

light and crispy waffles

While my cousin Angie was in town visiting, I decided to make waffles for breakfast.  I had found a new recipe on America's Test Kitchen that promised crispy waffles and called for rice krispies in the batter, and I was curious to see how it would come out.

The first waffle to come out of the waffle maker - fail!  I had forgotten to spray it with cooking spray first.  But after that first hiccup, the rest came out beautifully.  And they were crispy!

I froze the leftover waffles so that we could toast them up another day.  Later on in the weekend, my husband made his famous fried chicken wings, and we had plenty left over.  So for breakfast the next morning we had, you guessed it, fried chicken and waffles for breakfast!  It was a delicious combination (even though I left the waffles in the oven too long and they got a little too crispy) - the sweetness from the pancake syrup and the waffles was perfect with the saltiness from the crispy chicken.

I can't wait to make these again!  I might even try making savory waffles, perhaps with a little bit of cheddar and crispy bacon in the waffle batter?  Stay tuned!

triple chocolate mousse cake for angie and yvonne

My cousin Angie flew in from Chicago last weekend, specifically to run in Bay to Breakers with a group of friends.  My other cousin Yvonne planned to run in it as well.  So on Angie's first evening in town, we all had dinner at my house.  For dessert, I made a triple chocolate mousse cake - a 6-inch version of the individual triple chocolate mousse cakes I made a few months ago.

The bottom layer was a moist chocolate cake (I again used my favorite homemade chocolate cake recipe instead of the flourless chocolate cake recipe from ATK), the middle layer was a bittersweet chocolate mousse, and the top layer was a white chocolate mousse.  Then I piped on a good luck message in melted chocolate.

After I unmolded my mousse cake, the top edge was really wonky and uneven.  So I thought I would pipe on a nice shell border (to hide the wonkyness).  But, it only made the cake more ugly (sigh).  I had the urge to pipe a shell border on the bottom of the cake to even it out, but I resisted, as I have messed up cakes in the past by continuing to add things such as this.

In the end, the cake tasted great, and that's all that matters, right? :)

Hope you enjoyed it Angie and Yvonne!

rhubarb tart with strawberry whipped cream

My cousin Angie was in town visiting over the weekend, and the day she arrived I picked her up from the airport and immediately whisked her off to the Chez Panisse Cafe for lunch.  Everything was delicious.  And my favorite part, of course, was dessert.  We shared a rhubarb tart with strawberry ice cream, and it was such a perfect combination.  I often see rhubarb-strawberry combinations in pie form, but I've never thought of having those same flavors in separate components served together.

Later on in the weekend, I decided to attempt a rhubarb tart, inspired by the one we'd had at Chez Panisse.  I made my favorite all-butter pie crust recipe (which is just flour, salt, sugar, butter, and ice water), and pressed it into a 9-inch tart pan with removable bottom.  Then I sliced my rhubarb stalks into skinny batons, and tossed them with flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt.  Finally I arranged them nicely on top of my prepared tart dough, and baked it at 350 F for a little over an hour.

I loved the way it looked when it came out of the oven ... the pattern from the rhubarb, the beautiful pink color, and the look of the crust dotted with sanding sugar that I had sprinkled on before baking ... and it smelled great too!

I had wanted to make strawberry ice cream to go with it also, but forgot to put my ice cream freezer bowl in the freezer that day, so it wouldn't have been cold enough in time to make ice cream in time.  Angie had the brilliant idea to make a strawberry whipped cream to go with it instead, which turned out to be a delicious compliment to the tart.  And it was so simple - after whipping the heavy cream with a bit of confectioner's sugar, I added pureed strawberries to taste, and whipped it until just combined.

When I served a slice of the cooled tart with a scoop of the strawberry whipped cream, we decided that the tart alone was a bit too tart, but with the strawberry whipped cream it was perfect!

madeleines

My cousin Angie gave me her old madeleine pan a few years ago when she was spring cleaning (thanks Angie!!!), and since then I've used it quite often.  The batter is pretty easy to whip up on short notice, and they only take 10-12 minutes to bake!  The only tedious part is having to wipe clean and re-butter/flour the pan for the second batch (since my pan only holds a dozen, and the recipe makes two dozen!).  

I use a recipe from my Barefoot Contessa cookbook for coconut madeleines, but I just omit the coconut (although one of these days I'll have to try it with the coconut).  The batter can get thick, so I use a mini-ice cream scoop to fill the shells.

The madeleines end up tasting like mini buttery pound cakes - perfect with your morning coffee, or as an afternoon snack with tea!