Strawberry Shortcake

First of all, Happy Strawberry Shortcake day!!  Yes this is a holiday and definitely one worthy of celebration.  Not only are strawberries one of my favorite fruits but Strawberry Shortcake happens to be a nickname of mine.  The nickname comes from the food, not this adorable lil lady (although maybe there's some resemblance between us?):

So in honor of this day I give you one of my favorite strawberry shortcake recipes.  I actually made it last week before I even knew about this holiday.   love this dessert (even though it's not chocolate, it's probably in my top 10 favs) but I've never actually made it.  This meant I had to find a yummy recipe.  Well Google Reader makes it super simple to search through alllll the blogs I read (and let me tell you, there are a lot!) and helped me to find this one.  I love it because it's an Alice Waters recipe and I have a serious girl crush on her.  Google her, she's THE California cuisine/eat fresh foods/get schools to have gardens pioneer!  She is also the founder of the restaurant Chez Paniesse restaurant which we ate at a few months ago and I took all the pictures but forgot to do the blog post on.  Anyways, I think she's cool.  You had me at Alice.

Anyways, the shortcakes tasted delicious.  I even made then special by cutting them out with a fun cookie cutter - in the shape of the US (why yes, I am a US history nerd!) - instead of circles like suggested.  And at this point I wish I had a picture to show you but we gobbled them up too quickly/I completely forgot.  Oooppsies.

Pizza Pizza!

Pizza is one of my favorite things to eat.  My mom always made us home made pizza growing up and it was the best.  We never had delivery pizza growing up because my mom's was just so good.

But pizza can be a lil tricky to make because you need to use...yeast.  Now for bakers out there yeast can be intimidating.  Yeast can be temperamental, the water has to be the perfect temperature and if you mess up then the whole recipe could be ruined.  Pressure, I tell ya.

But fortunately my mom told me I had nothing to be worried about and I trust her.  So I went off the make my pizza dough.

So here's what you do:

Put 1 teaspoon of sugar in 1 cup of warm water (just make sure the water is warm to the touch, like bath water.  Other people might say to use a thermometer but I was good without it) then you add 1 packet of yeast (ok, so I got over zealous - shocker - and bought a whole jar of yeast instead of just a packet because I WILL make pizza and yeast breads more often!) and stir.  Let it sit for about 5 minutes.  The yeast will bubble and I wish I took a picture of this but I was kinda shocked by it so I tots forgot about the camera...sorry.

Next you add 1 teaspoon of olive oil (I used my tasty rosemary flavored olive oil from Croatia) to 2 1/2 cups of flour.

Then you mix it all together and knead it until it forms a dough, like below:

Now cover this with a damp towel and let it rise in a warm oven for 30-45 minutes.  (Sorry that wasn't very exciting so no picture.)

Then you punch the dough down - the fun part - and you then roll/pat the dough into pizza shapes, like below:

Now, I forgot to do this next part even though my sister Jeannie told me I should (yes, Jeannie was right.  There I said it!)  You need to pour the tomato sauce on the pizza shapes before you let them rise a second time.  Otherwise they puff up too much and it's kinda tricky to put the sauce on then.  Anyways, with the sauce on let them rise another time for an hour.

Then you can put on any toppings you want and bake them at 425 degrees for 10-20 minutes.

And above are the tasty pizzas displayed by the lovely models.  Sorry about the poor picture quality but I'm still learning to use Jeannie's camera.

Yummmmmm!

Boozy Baking

So this post is a little late for Cinco de Mayo - lo siento.  But it can really be used any time of year.  For example, most weeks we celebrate Taco Tuesday.  It's a very festive day of the week filled with guac, salsa, Coronas, margaritas and of course tacos.

But this Tuesday since it was just after Cinco de Mayo I decided to make these yummy Margarita Cupcakes.  I figured that margaritas are good and cupcakes are good so combine 'em and it must be great!  I was right.  There's tequila and lime in the batter and frosting and then more poured on top of the baked cakes.  Seriously might get you a lil bit of a buzz...

A while ago I did some more boozy baking and made Champagne Cupcakes.  I know, right?!  De-li-cious!  And they were.  Wow totally sounds like I'm tooting my own baking horn here but I actually have all of these other blogging bakers to thank.

First of all, pour yourself a glass of champagne because you have to open up the bottle to bake with but you don't need the whole bottle so lucky you there's a lil extra for sipping as you go.

You bake the cupcakes and then hollow out party of the center to add some champagne filling.  Yeah there's lots of the bubbly stuff in here.  Then you fill 'em and put the tops back on.

Put some frosting on and yes, you guessed it there's more champagne in the frosting!

Yummmy!

Awesome Times in Austin!

Last weekend Jeannie and I went to Austin for our friend's Rachel and Dave's wedding.  It was a blast! Not only is Austin a cool town but we had so much fun celebrating the wedding.

Austin is known as the live music capital of the world and while we didn't get too much of a chance to partake in that you could see it everywhere.

Although we did catch a sweet 80's cover band at a bar.  Love it.

 Austin is also known for it's yummy BBQ, Tex Mex and Southern cooking.  We definitely hit that up! Also plenty of tasty drinks around so it was good that we had our special wedding koozies around to keep 'em cold.  Best.wedding.favor.ever.

 There is also the beautiful Colorado River is Austin - not to be confused with the one that runs through Colorado and California, thanks Allison!

 Austin is also the government state capitol.  It is made completely of granite and looks similar to the California state capitol.

 And while Austin is very different from the rest of Texas you can still see TEXAS written everrrrywhere in the state capitol building.  And it does appear that everything is bigger in Texas.

 Here we are with the gorgeous bride!  Seriously so pretty and such a fantastic wedding!  Can't stop talking about is a week later!

 Such a wonderful sissy to travel with.

And since the groom is in the military they did a sword arch for the bride and groom to pass under.  Jeannie and I made sure that the boys were in tip top shape and that they didn't start sword fighting with each other - a bigger task than one would think when an open bar is involved.

And what would one of my blog posts be without a food pic?  This was a de-licious eggs bene I had for brunch one morning.  It was served on a croissant with brie cheese.  Um, brie, croissant, hollandaise sauce...did I just die and go to heaven?  That or a heart attack.  An regrettably this is the only food photo I have.  I blame my lack on pictures due to the fact that there were many open bars at meals.  Lo siento!

All in all we had a blast in Austin and can't wait to go back!

Thank goodness it's baseball season!

This was my first Giant's game of the season and it feels good to be back at AT&T Park (arguably one of the best ball parks out there) with a beer in hand cheering on the Giant's! Yes the coldest baseball games happen here (sadly SF doesn't get summer until Sept) but with every seat having a view of the bay, I can deal with the chill factor. And yes I'm repping a Giant's mascot, Lou Seal, hat. Let's paint the town orange and black!!! ;)

How Erin got her (baking) groove back

Hello, apologies for not blogging in forrreevvverr!  It's been a time of moving and transition and I honestly haven't had time for baking.  But now I do and I am back!  And of course I'm back with cupcakes.  Seriously, it's still me here.

I love to take pictures of food almost as much as I love to make and eat it.  And with my new fancy phone, I've been doing that a whole lot more :)  So a few weeks ago we went out to dinner in Walnut Creek and I saw this yummy confection:

I don't want to toot my own horn or anything but I consider myself a pretty good baker, therefore, I hate to buy baked goods anywhere when I'm pretty sure I can make it just as well myself.  Plus we had plans to visit a fabulous creamery for sundaes later that night so an additional cupcake would have just been too much (even for me.)  So I took this picture and made a mental note to look up a recipe for that.

Well, surprise surprise that mental note got buried until last weekend when I felt like baking and busting this baby out.  Yes, this fire engine red Kitchen Aid mixer is my baby.  I love it!

I scoured baking blogs for a yummy Brown Sugar Cupcake recipe and deiced to use this one.  (mostly because it only made 12 cupcakes.  I really don't need more than that around my lil apartment.)    And for the frosting I used this one.  Mostly because we share the same last name.  It was a toss up between brown sugar frosting and brown butter frosting.  I seriously took me a good half hour to decide.  Thank goodness I have friends that help me out by flipping a coin!

And the end product was delicious!  But seriously it's not hard to go wrong with that much sugar :)  But we all know my math skills are less than stellar so while I only made 12 cupcakes, I made enough frosting for 24.  Ooopps, guess I have to look for another project to use all that frosting...

Stay tuned and I pinky promise to be better about blogging now.  All four of my readers out there can now breathe a sigh of relief ;)

Food Across the Nation

Hello!  My name is Helen and I was asked to be a guest blogger on this cute blog.  After all. . .the little red-haired girl is my daughter.  I had the good fortune this summer of driving across the country from the East Coast to the West Coast.  And I love food almost as much as the little red-haired girl.  So I decided to take pictures of many of our local and regional meals.  We did have some incredible meals along the way.  Pictured above was our first stop in Philadelphia.  I have always heard about the yummy Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches.  According to another one of my daughters who has spent time on the East Coast, Geno's in Philadelphia is about as good as it gets.  Arguably one of the finest sandwiches ever!  Most folks in Philly have their preference - it's either Geno's of Pat's.  And oddly enough, the two eateries are right across the street from each other.  Ironically, both establishments had line about the same length.  Fun place to have a great sandwich in downtown Philly!  

 Next stop on our cross country trip, was Hershey, PA.  What a delightful little town.  It's located not far from the capital city, Harrisburg.  Located in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, the sweet smell of chocolate can be detected from many miles away.  We took a tour of the factory and enjoyed seeing how the chocolate comes from all over the world and is processed here.  Hey. . . don't you wish that these huge containers were actually filled with York Peppermint Patties and Almond Joys?!

 We decided to stop in Morgantown, WV before our stop in Ohio.  This is a cute little town in the mountains of West Virginia.  Breathtaking views from the mountain tops.  We did learn that actor Don Knotts was born and raised in this area and the town folks even named the main street in town after him. We had dinner that night at a nice, upscale restaurant called Madeleine's in the downtown area.  The ambiance was friendly and the food outstanding.  I choose the Risotto du Jour which that day happened to be mushroom with a sun dried tomato sauce.  Not only was it delicious but the presentation was nice.  

 As we traveled through Kentucky, we stopped in Clermont to tour the Jim Beam Bourbon Distillery.  Located just off Interstate 65, the minute we drove into the little burg, there was the pervasive smell of bourbon throughout the town.  We were pressed for time so consequently couldn't take time for the tour but enjoyed the beautiful countryside in central Kentucky.  

We have always heard about the wonderful barbecue food in Kansas City, but we weren't sure which Kansas City it was supposed to be - Missouri or Kansas.  So we decided to try Kansas City, KS, especially since that was about dinner time.  We got a recommendation from some locals in Kansas City, Missouri and they said the best BBQ fast food was at a fun place called Arthur Bryan's.  And you can see the look of delight on my daughter's face when she is about to eat a huge portion of Pulled Pork.  She is holding just one portion - I had another huge plateful to eat.  It was so tender and made an excellent sandwich.  Too bad this was about 9pm and we didn't want all that food so late.  So we saved more than half for the next day.  Succulent, tender pulled pork at Arthur Bryan's!  

We had stopped earlier in Missouri and talked to some locals who found out we were driving across Nebraska on our way to Denver.  They impressed upon us that we really needed to stop in Paxton, NB at this roadhouse called Ole's.  Not only was the food impressive (delicious home cooking), but they had the largest collection of stuffed animals I have ever seen.  Including the fictional animal, the Jackalope.  I bet you have never seen one of these guys hanging from a restaurant before.  Quite a sight to be sure!  While I traveled most of the way across America by car (actually 2,800 miles) with my husband and daughter, I needed to fly home from Denver.  My experiences driving that distance, seeing most of America and spending time with my family is something I will always treasure.  I'm just grateful I was able to taste and experience such wonderful regional foods.  I hope you might be able to travel across our country at one time in your lives.