Carrot Cake

For J’s birthday I made him his favorite, carrot cake.  I have a recipe that I always use that is very good but his family has a bunch of people with April birthdays so I needed to make a big cake and I wanted to try a different recipe.  I looked to Martha Stewart and I was not disappointed.

Cake:
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
¾ tsp salt
¼ tsp nutmeg
3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
½ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tbs vanilla
½ cup water
1 lb carrots (8-10 medium carrots), peeled and shredded on a box grater
1 cup finely chopped pecans plus a handful of pecan halves for decorating

Frosting:
16 oz cream cheese, room temperature
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into pieces and at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
½ -1 ½ cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter 2 9-inch round cake pans.

In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg.  In a large bowl beat butter and sugars with mixer until pale and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat 3 minutes.  Add vanilla, water, and carrots.  Beat until well combined, about 2 minutes.  At this point my batter was pretty well separated as either liquid or butter/sugar and I think that was ok.  Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture, then finely chopped pecans and mix until combined.  Once the flour was added in it looked like normal cake batter again, well maybe more like cookie dough.

Scrape batter into prepared pans, dividing evenly.  This is a somewhat stiff batter so make sure you spread it in the pans evenly because it will bake up exactly how it was poured in the pan.  Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until golden brown and toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean, about 30 minutes.  Let cool in pans on a wire rack for 15 minutes.  Run a knife around edges of cake to loosen then turn cakes out onto rack.  Turn them right side up and allow to cool completely before assembling.

To prepare the frosting beat cream cheese and vanilla until light and creamy, about 2 minutes.  Gradually add the butter and mix on medium speed, beating until incorporated.  If you have butter chunks in the bowl you will have butter chunks when you spread it on the cake, so beat until the butter is combined and make sure it’s not too cold when you start.  Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add sugar, tasting as you go until desired sweetness.  Martha suggests 2 cups of powdered sugar and I think   that is just crazy talk.  I used about ¾ cup of sugar and I probably could have stopped at ½ cup, but it’s dependent upon your taste for frosting, I like the cream cheese tartness more than the sugar sweetness.

To assemble the cake, trim off the rounded tops if the layers are lopsided.  Place one layer on a serving plate cut side up.  Spread 1 cup of frosting on top of the layer and top with second layer, cut side down.  Cover the top and sides of cake with the remaining frosting, or as much of it as you want, I think it made too much. Decorate the top of the cake with the reserved pecan halves.  Cover the cake and refrigerate until just about time to serve.  Allow to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes before serving to take the chill off.

This cake was different because most other carrot cake recipes I’ve tried call for oil, not butter.  After refrigerating a stiff cake batter made with butter I was afraid it would be hard and dry, but it wasn’t at all.  I’m not sure that it was quite as moist as my usual recipe, which is a slight alteration of Carrot Cake III on Allrecipes.com, but it was pretty good.  It was very flavorful and had a nice crumb.  My main complaint about this recipe is just that the batter is so stiff so when you put it in the pan you have to actually spread it in evenly, it’s not going to settle evenly.  One of my layers ended up half the size of the other because I had to trim so much off because it rose so lopsidedly.

Rosemary lamb steak and potatoes

This is the second part of my date night dinner, the entrée.

1 leg of lamb steak, about 1 lb
4 small Yukon gold potatoes, sliced thin
~1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 F.
Heat 1 turn of olive oil in a heavy, oven-safe skillet to medium-high heat.  Salt and pepper the steak on each side.  Once the oil is hot place the steak in the skillet and cook for 2-3 minutes per side.  Remove the steak from the skillet and set aside on a plate.

Add another turn of olive oil to the skillet and heat to medium.  Add the potatoes to the skillet and season with salt and pepper and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often to keep the potatoes from sticking to the pan.  Season the potatoes and lamb with rosemary then spread the potatoes out into an even layer and place the steak on top of the potatoes.  Cook in the preheated oven for 15 minutes to finish cooking the meat and potatoes.

My lamb turned out about medium, so adjust your time in the skillet or oven accordingly to your doneness liking.

Remove the skillet from the oven and let the meat rest for a few minutes.  Slice the meat in half and distribute the steaks and potatoes between two plates.

I thought this turned out really well.  We bought one big steak and cut it in half because there is no way one person could eat the whole thing, so the $9 steak we bought really wasn’t that expensive since we split it.  I really liked how the potatoes turned out as well.  By cooking them in the oven with the lamb on top they absorbed some lamb juices and gave them a much richer flavor than plain potatoes.

Melon, prosciutto and mozzarella appetizer

Like every weekend, J has been at work all day and I am just piddling around the house, sort of cleaning and trying really hard not to waste the whole day on the couch.  During one of my “breaks” I started looking up ideas for date nights at home since we are trying not to go out to eat a   lot.  I came across a website that has some generic ideas about making a nice dinner and talking about your hopes and dreams and stuff like that that I wouldn’t even begin to know how to initiate the conversation.  But, some of the menu ideas did peak my interest.  He came home just as I was starting dinner so it was nice that we got to cook together so it actually did turn into a date night, not just me making a nice dinner.  I don’t remember what we talked about now but I remember it being something really silly, not so much hopes or dreams.

12 1-inch cantaloupe cubes
3 oz thin slices of prosciutto
12 fresh small mozzarella cheese balls
¼ cup olive oil
2 tbs fresh chopped basil
Salt and pepper to taste
4 wooden skewers

Alternate threading 1 melon cube, 1 prosciutto slice and 1 mozzarella ball onto each skewer until you have distributed all of the ingredients between the 4 skewers.
To prepare the dressing mix the olive oil and spices the drizzle over the skewers.  Serve immediately.
Serves 2 as an appetizer

This really couldn’t be easier and is a very light and refreshing appetizer.  I put them on a plate and then drizzled the dressing so there was a bit of a pool of seasoned olive oil on the plate when we were done, would have been good to have had some bread.

Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

One of my favorite Mexican dishes is enchiladas verdes, I absolutely love tomatillos and this is really pretty simple I don’t think you could mess it up, but it definitely doesn’t taste it.

1 lb tomatillos, husks removed
2 Serrano peppers
½ small yellow onion, divided in 2
2 cloves garlic
2 chicken breasts
12 corn tortillas
Bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 avocado, diced
¼ cup Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded
2-3 tbs olive oil
2 tsp salt


In a medium pot combine ¼ of an onion, 1 clove garlic, 2 tsp salt and the chicken breasts.  Add just enough water to cover the chicken, about 3 cups.  Boil the chicken until it is cooked through, about 20 minutes then remove from the broth to cool.  Once it is cool enough to handle, shred the chicken.  Reserve the broth.

In another medium pot combine the husked tomatillos and peppers and add enough water to cover.  When picking tomatillos you want to peel back part of the husk and look for a deep green, those will be riper and more flavorful than the lighter green.  Boil until the tomatillos turn from a deep green to kind of an army green color.  Drain off the liquid and put in a food processor.  Add 1 clove garlic, ¼ of an onion and enough of the reserved chicken broth to cover the vegetables.  Blend to a thin sauce then season with salt to taste.

Add 2 turns of olive oil to a skillet and set to high heat.  Once the oil’s hot, lightly fry the tortillas one by one and set aside on paper towels to drain off any excess oil.   Once you run out of oil add a little more and keep going.

Add about ¼ cup of the tomatillo sauce to a small skillet or pot and heat to medium-low.  One at a time, add each tortilla to the sauce to get them pliable again.  After taking the tortilla out of the sauce, assemble the enchiladas by placing on a plate, adding a small handful of chicken down the center, top with some cilantro and avocado then roll the tortilla up and plate seam side down.  Repeat for the rest of the tortillas, one serving is 3 enchiladas.  Top each set of enchiladas with the remaining sauce and some cheese.

Serves 4, 530 calories, 28 g fat

I think this turned out pretty well and it really wasn’t too complicated.  The sauce is of course what made it.

I also used the boiled onion and chicken broth to make Spanish rice.  I make “Spanish rice” a lot, J loves tacos, but this was by far my best attempt.  I boiled 2 cups water with 1 cup rice with about 2 tsp of ground cumin and after all the water was absorbed the rice wasn’t done, this happens to me rather frequently, so I added the rest of the chicken broth that I had left over plus I chopped the onions that were boiled in the broth and added about 8-10 rough chopped grape tomatoes.  Once all the liquid was boiled off I seasoned with salt and holy smokes this actually tasted like Spanish rice. Big pat on back.

Chicken Stuffed Bell Peppers

I know I haven’t posted anything in quite a while and I have two reasons why. I am glad you are still here even though there hasn’t been anything new in some time.  So one of my girl friends did the 21-day sugar detox not too long ago and first I need to point out that she and her husband are paleo and in good shape but by the end of the 21 days her husband lost 10 lbs and she only lost a couple lbs but lost 2 inches in her waist.  There were other positive results that came from the experiment as well but I was more impressed with two whole inches in a skinny girl’s waist.
So we thought we’d try it.  While on this detox you can’t eat dairy, wheat, white rice, any potatoes except for sweet, refined sugar of course, honey, maple syrup, or fruit.  So basically you can eat meat, vegetables, sweet potatoes, brown rice, and other uncommon grains like couscous or quinoa. This was mainly hard for us because I absolutely hate eggs and J (thinks he) doesn’t like the uncommon grains and gets tired of sweet potatoes quick.  So by the end of the week I could not even force myself to eat breakfast anymore and J felt the same way about all of the dang sweet potatoes we were having every night. In that first week J did lose a couple lbs, but I of course saw no change in my weight or how I felt, so it was pretty easy to give it up.
So my point in explaining all of this was that during this time I really didn’t cook anything note worthy.  The food I was making was edible but not really that exciting.  Since then I have been trying to sort of modify the diet to something more reasonable, so we aren’t eating near as much pasta and very little cheese or dairy.  I have started eating cereal again for breakfast; I don’t think I can eat another egg for quite a while.
So this lasted a week, and the modification attempt has been going on for a couple weeks, but the other reason why I haven’t had a lot to write about is because I keep ending up finding recipes that I am not really all that excited about but fit the criteria and it is really easy to say I don’t feel like cooking and just go out.  So this diet actually really backfired for us.
After all of this I do have one recipe that I think is worth sharing.  It wasn’t overly complicated and I liked it quite a bit.

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced small
1 tbs olive oil
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp thyme
1 tsp basil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 large red bell peppers
2 large green bell peppers
1/2 bunch green onions, diced
3 cups fresh spinach
14 ounces fire roasted tomatoes
Salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet to medium-high heat.  Add the chicken and seasonings and cook until no longer pink. Stir in the remaining ingredients except for the bell peppers, reduce heat to medium-low, cover and allow the spinach to wilt and everything else to heat through.

Meanwhile, cut the tops of the bell peppers and remove the seeds and white membrane.   Once the spinach is wilted and chicken is cooked through fill each bell pepper with the stuffing.  Arrange the bell peppers upright in a baking dish and bake until the bell peppers are softened, about 50 minutes.

This was pretty simple and tasty, what made this for me was the roasted tomatoes, it added a nice flavor.