Monday, October 3, 2011

cooking with gp: part seven + some desserts

it's been a while since i've done a cooking update, so here we go.

fish/chicken tacos
a few weeks ago, i made gwyneth's fish tacos...with chicken. see, i'm not a big fish person, so i sort of panicked when i got to the store and i came home with chicken instead. it still tasted delicious, but maybe next time i'll face my fish fear and go with it.



i used the same marinade for the chicken that gwyneth suggested for the fish, if you wanted to grill it rather than fry it. grilled is much healthier than fried, although fried would also be great.


i also made the lime crema, which is basically really tangy sour cream/mayonnaise with lime. i used sour cream instead of vegenaise or mayo, because i thought it would taste better. i'm also weird about mayo. it was really good, and again, i'm sure it would be really good the mayo way, too. i also made some black beans as another topper, as well as sliced avocado. everyone in my family liked this a lot and it was just enough to go around, so no waste. the lime marinated chicken was a great change for taco night. usually it's ground beef for tacos in my house, but these were light and wonderful and not greasy. make these again? heck yes. 


vegetarian chili
i made this for my birthday party — partly because i wanted to try it and partly because there were going to be at least two vegetarians at my party. and honestly, i love some good meaty chili, but this stuff was soooo good. i had a rather large bowl of it, and my brother said "why haven't you made me this yet?" well, brother, because i'm an idiot and didn't realize it was going to be something i will eat all winter/forever. the thing that throws you off about this is the carrot. seriously? in chili? yes. don't stray from the recipe on this one, as i often do out of fear. put in the carrot. actually, put in two carrots if you want. they are delicious.



bourbon mint ice cream
kyle and i made this for my birthday party. he wanted to try this recipe for months, i think, then when my mother randomly brought home the ice cream attachment for my kitchenaid, he was more than ready to try this. it turned out so creamy and good. it sort of tasted like gum. that's how minty it was. i mean, we used all of the leaves from my mint plant, plus some more store bought ones. so, a lot of mint. but it's so refreshing and ice-creamy at the same time. it's definitely not going to be something that everyone loves. but apparently i'm not one of those people. because i love it.




banana chocolate chip cake with whipped peanut butter frosting
my sister threw a surprise party for her boyfriend, mark, and asked me to make a cake. she thought i was just going to buy a box mix and whip it up. no way. i found this recipe online and thought it sounded perfect. and it was. bananas. chocolate chips. peanut butter. yes. please.





the chocolate ganache on top of the whipped frosting really made the cake so much better. it definitely was better than funfetti.

chocolate blackberry cake
i made this cake for my birthday party. it is chocolate cake with a layer of blackberry frosting in the middle with chocolate frosting on the outside. pretty delicious. however, the blackberry center gave me some serious issues. for some reason, the first time i did it, the butter curdled into the mixture and i had to just throw it out. it wouldn't mix together no matter how hard i tried. and it just looked awful. the taste was still fine but there was no way i could spread that stuff into the middle of my cake. so i tried again. the butter still tried to curdle on me again, but i sat the frosting in the fridge for a while then beat it up again and it smoothed out. thank god, because i was running out of ingredients. the cake turned out pretty great -- i don't know if it was my favorite ever, but still yummy.


i also made the topper for my cake. it was just a wooden letter K i bought at walmart, then i painted it with a couple good coats of a metallic gold paint, then added the gold glitter on top of the last wet coat. i attached a wooden rod to the middle using a hot glue gun, then measured how long the topper need to be for the cake and cut the stick. i think it looked pretty awesome with the candles.


i think i'm about caught up now in the cooking/baking updates. i have some pretty huge news, but i'll wait for kyle to blog about it first. some of you already know - but shhhh. ;)

love.
krq.

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