Oh, dearest readers!I'm so sorry for the long delay between posts. Hopefully, your lives have been filled with other frivolities and you have not been made desperate by the dearth of posts on this blog.
/apologies and beseeching for forgiveness
Here's what I've been up to while away from the blog.
1) For Kate and Dimitri's wedding, I baked about 120 cupcakes (see picture at left). All my practice sessions this summer really paid off and the lemon and devil's food cupcakes were a hit. I had a little help from some of the wedding guests, but, all in all, I spent about 8 hours baking and frosting these tiny, cakey, cup-sized, bits of joy.
Most importantly, the bride and groom loved them.
PS- check out their wedding buffet! It was beautiful and delicious.
2) I made an awesome mushroom, caramelized shallots, and fontina cheese quiche, but I won't go into details since Shelly already posted about quiche.
3) For Ilya's birthday, I made a fig jam crostata. It's super simple to make. Take a pie crust, either store bought or homemade, put in the pie pan. Mix 1 and half cups of fig jam with tsp of almond extract and two teaspoons of lemon zest. Pour into pie crust. Then top it off with another pie crust (or cut up the second pie crust into strips and criss-cross them). Bake for 45-50 minutes at 350. It's super easy.
Here's a link to a more complicated (and more authentic?) recipe for Italian fig crostata.
By the way, you can use whatever jam you like and some people may even like to mix different jams together. Experiment! Have fun! Mangia!
4) Also for Ilya's birthday, I made homemade pasta. Kate's mother sold me this beautiful pasta machine. I love it so much, and it's not as scary to use as it looks.
Here's my beautiful machine. Her name is Pastalina and she's the prettiest pasta maker in all of pasta-dom!
Sooooooo shiny! Don't get too mesmerized by her beauty. She's mine, all mine.
I'll tell y'all all about making pasta from scratch when I can cajole someone into taking pictures while I make it. My hands get way too messy to take pictures myself.
5) Coming up this weekend, I'm going to make Halloween cupcakes (Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm addicting to making cupcakes). Look out for pictures of those too.
Hopefully, my fellow bloggers will post soon too. Hint, hint, hint...
The cupcakes look beautiful! Will have to try those lemon ones for sure. I'm also insanely jealous that you have Pastalina and that you are making fresh homemade pasta!!!
I will say that as your Aunt, up in Boston...I am hanging up my apron (metaphorically of course) and demanding that the cooking mantle be passed on to you. Does Pastalina like to travel? And how about that quiche? Damn girl - where DID your cooking gene come from?
I am very excited to see homemade pasta in process, and I therefore volunteer to witness a pasta-making session and take plenty of pictures. The world deserves to know about your pasta prowess!
I loved my cupcakes so much! One of these days, my dear Sarah, you will run a wonderful little cupcake store, and I'll say I knew you when...
Love and Kisses!
Sarah
I am so glad you love your pasta maker. How does it compare to store-bought? Is it hard to make? Is Pastalilna behaving?
XOXOXOXOX
Mommy Gail