Tuesdays with Dorie: Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart

I was pretty sure this was going to be a winner, creamy custard, toasted coconut, a splash of rum, yum. Coconut is also a very popular flavor in our house. My only alteration was to make a graham cracker crust instead of the tart crust because save for the strawberry tart when I first started TWD, my success with tart crusts is lackluster at best. Graham cracker I can do though. Sorry about the dull pictures, I missed the good light today. It all worked, a graham cracker crust + silky coconut custard + a sweet whipped cream topping = delicious. Thanks to Beryl of Cinemon Girl for this week's selection!

Crafty things

Inspired by this post at A Beautiful Mess, I put together a butterfly wreath yesterday. I used a foam wreath shape, some cream-colored acrylic yarn from my stash and feather butterflies from Michael's. I wanted to use the more realistic butterflies but couldn't find any. It took one episode of Big Love for me to wrap the wreath in yarn. I didn't want to glue anything onto the yarn itself so I can change it out if I want to. Instead I used some of my pearlized pins to pin the butterflies and a ribbon hook on the back. I think it turned out well, plus it's very spring-like.

I'm also working on a cross stitch project, the basic instructions came from the Subversive Cross Stitch book that was a birthday present last year. I took a little bit of screwing up for me to figure out how to do everything properly. The last cross stitch I ever did was when I was twelve, i.e. a super long time ago. The phrase is lyrics from a Mountain Goats song. It's a nice little activity to pick up between knitting projects.

Our anniversary & a resolution crossed off

On Saturday the Mister and I celebrated six years of marriage. We wanted to take a trip somewhere but Doug is currently heading up a big project and didn't think it was a good time to ask for vacation. So instead we decided to do something neither one of us has ever done - go to Graceland. I have lived in Memphis for 9 years, before that I lived my entire life 45 minutes from Memphis, Doug is also a life-long Memphian, yet we had never managed to go see the King's house. Plus going to Graceland was on my list of things to do in 2010.

We began the day with breakfast at Blue Plate in East Memphis, we've been having breakfast there since we started dating. After breakfast we headed to Graceland. It wasn't too crowded for a Saturday morning. There's a shuttle that drives you from the ticket/shops/restaurant complex to the mansion across the road. The house is actually pretty small, at least the part they let you see and everything's original too. The photo highligts are below, all the rest of the pictures on my Flickr account.

The front room

Kitchen
Monkey!The infamous Jungle Room
The former racquetball court Outside the mansion
Inside the Lisa Marie

After the Graceland visit we had lunch downtown at the Majestic Grille and then went to Stax, where we got married all those years ago (well not *that* many years ago). We hadn't been back since we got married so it was very sweet to visit again.

After our foray into local tourism we had dinner at Woodlands Indian restaurant (which had some amazing Chicken Madras). It was a really nice little way to spend our anniversary.

Vanilla bean panna cotta

Panna cotta - also known as one of the easiest desserts you'll ever make. I really didn't *need* to make any more desserts last weekend but after stumbling upon David Lebovitz's post from last April, I had to make them. It's ridiculously easy, heavy cream, sugar, vanilla bean, water, powdered gelatin - that's it. It's takes mere minutes to put together and then you stick the cups in the fridge for two hours to let them set and then they're ready to serve. Mine didn't unmold as nicely as I would have liked them to, but they were delicious so who cares? I served them with frozen blackberries but the possibilities are really endless as to what you could flavor the panna cotta with or serve along side it. Delicious!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Honey-Wheat Cookies

Based on some on the comments I read on the TWD site it seemed like at first some bakers were a little skeptical about these cookies. However, after making them almost everyone had a positive comment. I wasn't skeptical, I was actually excited to be making something sans chocolate. Every other February recipe this month was chocolate-based and I was kind of tired of chopping chocolate. These little cookies were almost healthy, only one stick of butter, plus wheat germ, honey and lemon zest. I had no problems putting the dough together, though it did crack a lot while I was rolling the balls out and flattening them. I used Meyer lemon zest since I had an extra lemon left over from making the yogurt cake yesterday. In the end I liked these a lot, they're a perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea. Thanks to Michelle of Flourchild for this week's selection!

Lemons taste like spring

Lemon flavored baked goods make me daydream about our impending spring. In my head I've been concocting a layered sponge cake filled with homemade lemon curd and local strawberries. Alas, there's quite a few weeks standing between me and locally grown strawberries. Until then I can make some lemon things though, especially since I found Meyer lemons at Whole Foods over the weekend. Meyer lemons are what would happen if regular lemons and oranges had a citrus baby. They're sweeter and less tart than plain jane lemons, and the skin is smoother and less bumpy. With these little yellow fruits I made the Lemon Yogurt Cake from Barefoot Contessa (recipe here). It's a deliciously moist, citrusy cake that calls for oil and whole-milk yogurt instead of butter. I've made this several times and it always comes out perfectly, it's practically fail-proof. After the cake bakes you pour a simple syrup of sugar and lemon juice over the cake which makes it even more moist. The recipe also calls for a final glaze of powdered sugar and lemon juice, but I was out of powdered sugar so I skipped it. So if the dreary winter days have you feeling melancholy, I suggest you whip up this cake and try to enjoy the last few weeks of winter. In Memphis it'll probably be 90F by May....

All about the 'stache

The mustache phenomenon is so 2007 but that didn't prevent me from purchasing this cookie cutter from Bake It Pretty. It's silly and fun and I made three dozen sugar cookies with it. Cookie recipe is Alton Brown's found here and the icing recipe is here. Kind of looks like Grover Cleveland's 'stache right?

Red Velvet

I have my friend Christiana to thank for this one. We were at Republic Coffee last Tuesday and she wanted a piece of Red Velvet cake but they were out. To which I said "I should make a Red Velvet cake" and she said "Why haven't you?!" So I did. I think I vaguely remember making a RVC once before but it was probably waaay back. For this one I made cupcakes, using the RVC recipe from the Sweet Melissa book, but halved. The cupcakes came out well, the last batch got left in the oven a little bit long though and developed an extra crunchy top. I fixed that problem by sawing off the hard top and covering it up with the cream cheese icing. I liked these but I still think they were missing something. I was pondering melting a little semi-sweet chocolate to add, but I don't know how badly that would throw off the red color.

Tuesdays with Dorie: My Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

Who doesn't love a chocolate chip cookie? Very few people. This week's selection was My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, chosen by Kait of Kait's Plate. I've made these before with espresso powder, they were excellent. The first go-round I learned they spread like mad because of the two sticks of butter. So this time I made them plain, omitting the nuts and lowering the butter content to one and a half sticks instead of two. I like a more cakey cookie anyway and you get that result with a little less butter. All the hand-chopped chocolate creates that bumpy, tweedy texture Dorie talks about in the book, when you take a bite you don't really know what size piece of chocolate you'll get, there are tiny slivers and bigger chunks and they just add to the charm of the cookie.

Hearts

I know lots of people find Valentine's Day over-commercialized and a made-up holiday and hearts are cheesy, blah, blah, blah. And really my significant other and I have never done anything over the top for each other. But I think anytime you have the opportunity to be sweeter to the important people in your life you should.

Have some hearts, cheesy or not.

Extra sweets

I say 'extra sweets' because normally I only do my TWD dessert and we work on eating that all week. However this past week I made three extras. First was the Jam Cake with Brown Sugar Rum Glaze from this book. It's a delicious, moist cake with a giant swirl of jam running throughout. The recipe calls for two cups of jam (any kind) and I used a jar of homemade strawberry jam one of my aunts gave me at Christmas. The glaze is cream, brown sugar and butter with a tiny bit of rum added at the end. I loved this cake, I think I might have had some variation of it during my childhood because it tasted very familiar to me.The second thing was Cardamon Crumb Cake from Dorie's Baking book. I made it on Monday during out surprise snow day. I'm really surprised no one has chosen this for TWD yet, it's delicious. Extremely moist and sweet with citrus flavors as well as a hint of espresso. It would be so good served at a brunch, a keeper for sure.Third, was Orange Scented Scones from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. A simple scones recipe was orange zest and ground oats, pretty tasty for a weekend breakfast.

The kitchen workout

So this book got opened again over the weekend. This time the challenge was homemade ravioli. Lots of the food blogs I read have made homemade pasta like it's no big deal so I had to try it, even if it might turn out less than great. The dough came together quickly, mainly I just got sticky hands. The recipe was eggs + water + flour (amazing what you can make with just those three things).Then the dough needed to rest for a bit, wrapped in a damp kitchen towel, while I made the filling.The filling recipe also came from the book, it was ground round, ricotta, onion, garlic, & some spices. The recipe in the book also called for spinach but I omitted it. After the filling was made it needed to cool and I set to work rolling out the dough, and herein lies the workout part. It's hard on your hands and forearms to get that ball of dough down to a manageable size. It took what seemed like ages (in reality probably 15-20 minutes) to flatten it out. to this.Now it was time to fill it up, which was pretty tricky to get the filling in there without having it ooze out the sides.Once the ravioli was filled and cut into squares it had to set out for 30 minutes to get a good seal and then I popped it in the freezer for about an hour before cooking it. The end result was okay, I made a few mistakes and the dough should have been thinner but okay for a first try I think. Plus I got that great upper body workout.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

This week's chocolate-y little selection was chosen by Tanya of Chocolatechic. These brownies had just a few basic brownie ingredients but it was the technique of putting the batter together that made them different. Half of the egg/sugar mixture was whipped up separately from the rest of the batter to create a lighter but still very fudgy brownie. These were a hit at the party I shared them at. A simple recipe I'm pretty sure I'll make again.