That's Sweet!: Angel Food Cake

If I have ever made one in my life, I cannot remember it, so I think it is safe to say I made my first angel food cake today.

Certainly the first in my married life - I did not have the right pan before, but my Aunt Sib set it aside for me out of my Nanny's things and my parents brought it to me when they came to visit. This picture is of the cake's "good side". You are supposed to let them cool upside down, so the egg foam can "set", but it was really hot and I dropped it, so half of the cake kind of fell, but this one side is pretty.

I used Alton Brown's recipe.
The cake was served with strawberry sauce (pureed strawberries and sugar) and met with much approval :)

Biscuit Revolution

I have blogged before that I had reached contentment with my biscuit making, but I was wrong - I have found a method that is easier and produces a better biscuit. Basically I have combined the Joy of Cooking biscuit recipe with the Alton Brown method of making biscuits.

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp very cold butter
3/4 cup milk (I use whole because that's what Annalise drinks)

Preheat oven to 450.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt and sift or stir thoroughly with a whisk. Cut in butter (Joy of Cooking says 4-6 tbsp, but this is what I use every time - I have tried many options for cutting in the butter, but here is what I like now - I freeze the butter and then grate it with my cheese grater into the flour mixture. After that just stir it up and rub it in a little with you finger tips.) Pour milk over everything and stir just until all the milk is mixed in.

Set it aside and prepare pan and get a big sheet of parchment paper (not waxed paper). I wait until this step to prepare my pan because the flour needs a few minutes to absorb the milk - very important!!! Then I dump everything out onto the parchment paper and fold the paper over the lump and press into a rectangle - usually the dough is so sticky that there is no way to avoid adding more flour, but the parchment does not stick so bad as my fingers :) then unfold the parchment and using the parchment fold the two sides in - like folding a letter or a wallet. Press it down into about the same size as it was and then repeat - make a wallet, then the rectangle - then STOP! No more. Dunk your biscuit cutter in flour and then cut out the rounds (they will be STICKYYYY) and bake for 12-15 minutes.

Italy Day

Ever since "Grandma stood next to the volcano", Caleb has been interested in Italy. And who can blame him? The country looks like a boot kicking a tree! Where else can boast that? So he's had lots of questions about Italy and finally I decided we'd do something about it and have "Italy Day".

Besides learning how Italians say Mommy and Daddy and dog and fish, we ate Italian food all day!

For breakfast we had Mini Frittatas, cinnamon toast, and cappuccinos. For the kids I watered down some cappuccino mix (easier and cheaper than going to Starbucks). I decided to make cinnamon toast because I found a recipe for some cinnamon biscotti that sounded too complicated to make! And the Mini Frittatas are a Giada DeLaurentiis recipe and were really good and easy to make. Here's how you do it:

Mini Frittatas

2 eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp milk
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt
1 ounce diced ham, fully cooked
1 1/2 tbsp grated Parmesan
1 tsp dried parsley (she called for fresh, but my fresh parsley hasn't gotten to the eating stage yet)

Spray a mini muffin tin with cooking spray and preheat oven to 375. Mix all ingredients and spoon into mini muffin cups. I poured them in, which was the wrong idea. The ham sank to the bottom and some of the Frittatas were just scrambled egg muffins (which is actually how I described them to Caleb to sell him on the idea). Bake for 8-10 minutes, then using a rubber spatula turn them out and serve immediately. Really, I'm no omlette eater, but these were tasty.

I got 8 mini frittatas, just fill the cups up to the top and when you run out, fill the empty cups with water.

We were going to have Nutella on toast, but the Nutella was $10 a jar!

For our morning snack, we usually have crackers, but today we had biscotti. (On sale this week at Publix.)

Lunch was a thin crust cheese pizza. I'm sure real Italian pizza is much thinner, but we got the gist. I topped half of it with fresh basil from my garden. I have to say, even if you aren't interested in growing any other fresh herb, you should grow basil, it is so fast growing and so fragrant. I grew mine from seeds - I think it was a 75 cent packet and I have more basil than I can possibly use.

For dinner we had Beef Scaloppine and Maccheroni con la Ricotta. I forgot to take a picture.

For dessert, we had storebought Tiramisu. I read a few recipes, but decided they all called for too many expensive ingredients that I do not keep on hand. Caleb and Annalise LOOOOOOOOOVED it!

And Caleb learned a few things about Italy - including it is no where near Australia (even though both of them are far away from Miami), if there are sidewalks in Venice, they are not underwater sidewalks, and the happy birthday song in Italian has the same tune, but different words.