So I just put a poll up on the blog for you to all vote on our first song! Here are the options if you want to listen to them! Just click on the link for each song!
Rascal Flatt's Broken Road
Helen Reddy's Candle on the Water
A Whole New World from Aladdin
Taylor Swift's Love Story (hey, it's different!)
Monday, June 7, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
First song search
We were considering using this as our first song when we came across this rendition. Click on this link to hear! It's so way better than Peabo's version!
Sushi Newbies!
Two things you need to know before this blog post starts:
1. I am incapable of following culinary directions
2. Michelle always wins
And now let us commence!
Yesterday was such a glorious beach day that we decided what better than to have a picnic on the beach....with homemade sushi and homemade strawberry shortcake ice cream! We'd never made either before, but my friends Jane and Eric (not my Eric but hers) are sushi experts and gave us some advice before we started, and I figured that I use our ice cream maker all the time, so how hard could it be to improvise a little?
We invited our fearless friend Michelle over--who had never had sushi and doesn't like fish, but said she'd try both--and Michelle and I got prepared for the meal before Eric got home from work. We purchased a four dollar sushi making kit from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and then took a trip to Whole Foods where we bought such an awesome assortment of fillings for our dinner: sushi grade salmon (very important to the task, Jane and Eric--not mine--said), scallops (which we cooked, because they were not sushi grade), avocado, cucumber, sushi rice (essential), nori (the seaweed paper), mango, kiwi, asparagus, pickled ginger, wasabi, and...surprise ingredient (drumroll)...garlic and cucumber tzakiki (which we didn't plan on using for sushi but wound up using and was amazing!) Michelle even splurged and bought a bottle of pinot blanc, which--for Julie, Julia, and others who keep track of my wine tastes so I don't have to--I liked!
We came home and began chopping with Eric, who had gotten home from work (yippy). We prepared the rice (anyone know why you rinse it under water until the water runs clear, then cook it and add rice vinegar to make it stick?) Once everything was prepared, we took out our bamboo mat and the nori, which has to go shiny side down (something we forgot often, and I think that made it hard for the sushi to stick to itself when we rolled it up, causing both me and Eric to have rolls that, uh, rolled away).
Then the creativity started! We had a wonderful time experimenting and combining ingredients. The tzakiki was an awesome find--it added such flavor to the sushi! But perhaps the biggest surprise was Michelle. Despite the fact that she dislikes seafood and has never had sushi, she loved both and ate so much that she was telling us how stuffed she was! Moreover, her rolls were the only ones that seemed to truly stick together (hence, Michelle wins yet again!)
While all of the sushi prep was going on, I was also assembling ingredients for strawberry shortcake ice cream. Given that I frequently make vanilla ice cream and cookies and cream, strawberry shortcake seemed like the kind of thing one could wing: just puree the strawberries and add in cake instead of cookies to the mixture, right? Mmm.... Well, I did indeed do just that, and for whatever reason, the ice cream didn't solidify in the ice cream maker and was a bit more like, um, a very delicious, strawberry shortcake soup. I suspect that it may be because I didn't cook the strawberry puree, which would have reduced it and made it less liquidy, but to be fair, this has been a trend with our ice cream maker recently, so maybe it's not me!
Regardless, both the sushi and strawberry shortcake soup turned out to be incredible, and the whole meal was topped off with episodes of the Vicar of Dibley, which Michelle gave me as a belated birthday present. What a perfect evening!
Michelle and I with our sushi success!
Eric tasting one of his "sweet" rolls, which included scallop, mango, kiwi, and banana!
1. I am incapable of following culinary directions
2. Michelle always wins
And now let us commence!
Yesterday was such a glorious beach day that we decided what better than to have a picnic on the beach....with homemade sushi and homemade strawberry shortcake ice cream! We'd never made either before, but my friends Jane and Eric (not my Eric but hers) are sushi experts and gave us some advice before we started, and I figured that I use our ice cream maker all the time, so how hard could it be to improvise a little?
We invited our fearless friend Michelle over--who had never had sushi and doesn't like fish, but said she'd try both--and Michelle and I got prepared for the meal before Eric got home from work. We purchased a four dollar sushi making kit from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and then took a trip to Whole Foods where we bought such an awesome assortment of fillings for our dinner: sushi grade salmon (very important to the task, Jane and Eric--not mine--said), scallops (which we cooked, because they were not sushi grade), avocado, cucumber, sushi rice (essential), nori (the seaweed paper), mango, kiwi, asparagus, pickled ginger, wasabi, and...surprise ingredient (drumroll)...garlic and cucumber tzakiki (which we didn't plan on using for sushi but wound up using and was amazing!) Michelle even splurged and bought a bottle of pinot blanc, which--for Julie, Julia, and others who keep track of my wine tastes so I don't have to--I liked!
We came home and began chopping with Eric, who had gotten home from work (yippy). We prepared the rice (anyone know why you rinse it under water until the water runs clear, then cook it and add rice vinegar to make it stick?) Once everything was prepared, we took out our bamboo mat and the nori, which has to go shiny side down (something we forgot often, and I think that made it hard for the sushi to stick to itself when we rolled it up, causing both me and Eric to have rolls that, uh, rolled away).
Then the creativity started! We had a wonderful time experimenting and combining ingredients. The tzakiki was an awesome find--it added such flavor to the sushi! But perhaps the biggest surprise was Michelle. Despite the fact that she dislikes seafood and has never had sushi, she loved both and ate so much that she was telling us how stuffed she was! Moreover, her rolls were the only ones that seemed to truly stick together (hence, Michelle wins yet again!)
While all of the sushi prep was going on, I was also assembling ingredients for strawberry shortcake ice cream. Given that I frequently make vanilla ice cream and cookies and cream, strawberry shortcake seemed like the kind of thing one could wing: just puree the strawberries and add in cake instead of cookies to the mixture, right? Mmm.... Well, I did indeed do just that, and for whatever reason, the ice cream didn't solidify in the ice cream maker and was a bit more like, um, a very delicious, strawberry shortcake soup. I suspect that it may be because I didn't cook the strawberry puree, which would have reduced it and made it less liquidy, but to be fair, this has been a trend with our ice cream maker recently, so maybe it's not me!
Regardless, both the sushi and strawberry shortcake soup turned out to be incredible, and the whole meal was topped off with episodes of the Vicar of Dibley, which Michelle gave me as a belated birthday present. What a perfect evening!
Michelle and I with our sushi success!
Eric tasting one of his "sweet" rolls, which included scallop, mango, kiwi, and banana!
Friday, May 21, 2010
Prepping for Bachelorette Party #1
My MOH arranged a bachelorette party here in Boston, and A&E Wedding Consultants, Inc. are prepping for the occasion. How would we manage without them! Check out this link to see!
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Elie Wiesel wishes us congratulations!
Many of you know that I took a class with Elie Wiesel last fall. Eric came to the class with me once, and we both think that he is an amazing and inspirational man. We both feel so blessed to have met and learned from him.
As part of the class, we were each able to schedule a meeting with Professor Wiesel and ask him whatever we wanted. During my conversation with him, he said to keep in touch and to write once the class was over. So I did. Since he's a pretty busy man--I guess that talking with world leaders and writing a gazillion books has to take some time--his assistant wrote back. But still, we're both pretty proud of our letter, so I thought I'd share it all with you:
Dear Danielle,
Your letter of February 4 addressed to Professor Wiesel has come to my attention. Professor Wiesel is away from the University, constantly travelling, but I was able to relay to him the content of your letter. He asked me to give you his warmest congratulations on your engagement.
Seriously, how many people can say that Elie Wiesel congratulated them on their engagement? I think this + Cake Boss + all our friends and family and the fun we've had thus far = awesomest engagement ever!
As part of the class, we were each able to schedule a meeting with Professor Wiesel and ask him whatever we wanted. During my conversation with him, he said to keep in touch and to write once the class was over. So I did. Since he's a pretty busy man--I guess that talking with world leaders and writing a gazillion books has to take some time--his assistant wrote back. But still, we're both pretty proud of our letter, so I thought I'd share it all with you:
Dear Danielle,
Your letter of February 4 addressed to Professor Wiesel has come to my attention. Professor Wiesel is away from the University, constantly travelling, but I was able to relay to him the content of your letter. He asked me to give you his warmest congratulations on your engagement.
Seriously, how many people can say that Elie Wiesel congratulated them on their engagement? I think this + Cake Boss + all our friends and family and the fun we've had thus far = awesomest engagement ever!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
He Shouldn't Have Said Yes to This Dress!
So in case you wanted to know what to do when you're done with a wedding dress, here are some options. I learned about this site from my friends Matt, Kat, and Erica, of the annual theme park adventure. At first, I said, "Hey, don't you all think this guy needs to get over his wife?" Matt responded, "Um, I don't think so. It sounds like his ex just said, 'Take the dress and do what you want with it,' and he thought, 'Okay, I'll go get famous on the internet.'"
Our First Wedding Cake!
As many of you know, Elle and Aidan have been huge contributors to our wedding! They've been companions as we've picked out a location and photographer and they've given a second set of eyes to bridesmaid and wedding dresses. They've helped us choose invitations and tested out bridal shoes. So now it's time to give something back to them!
In honor and A&E's one year birthday (and inspired by Sylvia Weinstock), I decided to take on the mission of making the best birthday cakes ever!
Mission, I should say, is probably an understatement. Challenge. Uphill battle. Mount Everest-level adventure might be better terms. Because as my mother (and Eric) can attest: I am the world's worst baker! In my time, I have been known not to cream butter and sugar at the start of the recipe, with the result that the batter turns into a clumpy mess. I have left flour out of recipes. I have burned cookies made from Pillsbury roll out cookie dough, and put layered cakes into one pan instead of two. I have put olive oil in brownie mix (yuck) and flattened crumb cakes by adding too much crumb (seemed like a good idea at the time!). And, of course, I have forgotten to butter pans. Many, many pans.
In short, baking is not my thing.
But nonetheless, I was going to make A&E's one year birthday cakes! And given my track record, I knew I needed practice!
So yesterday, I began. The task: to solve the mystery of how fondant lies flat on a cake.
Eric went out and bought five pounds of white rolled fondant. I baked a Classic White Cake recipe courtesy of the Food Network (thanks Nick Malgieri). And you know what, I almost didn't make any mistakes! I took out two pans and immediately buttered them. I preheated the oven to the right temperature. I didn't start until the butter and eggs were at room temperature. I separated the eggs in a separate bowl. I went to add the milk and vanilla extract....
And then I accidentally added them to the butter and sugar instead of the milk.
Oops.
So of course then I manically tried to extricate the milk and extract from the sugar and butter. I can't say that it worked perfectly, but it didn't seem to damage the consistency fluffy butter-sugar combo. In a separate bowl, I dutifully added the flour, salt, and baking powder. And then I alternated mixing in the liquids with the flour (does anyone know why you have to do that?) I scooped everything into the two pans, baked, and after twenty five minutes, I had two absolutely beautiful cakes. I could have looked at them all night they were so perfectly colored (Oh, did I mention that they came right out when I turned them over?).
I waited for Eric to get home until we added the fondant on. As some of you may know, fondant has to have something to stick to. Oftentimes, it's buttercream but you can also make a glaze with jam if your cake doesn't have too many layers. Not wanting to take on too many challenges at once, we opted for the glaze, which involved boiling raspberry jam and spreading it onto the cake's surfaces.
Then we had to roll out the fondant, which came in a huge five pound package! We didn't use everything for this recipe (this was just test cake #1 after all), but we did use over a pound of it. First we kneaded it and then we rolled it out, careful, as the direction said, to turn it over frequently. As it got thinner, we had to wrap it around the rolling pin and flip it that way.
Of course, no one bothered to tell us that we needed powdered sugar to keep the fondant from sticking to the countertop/rolling pin, so we wound up using flour, which luckily didn't affect the taste or texture at all (it wouldn't be Danielle cooking without some adventure, right?)
When the fondant was rolled out enough, we wrapped it around the rolling pin (for easy transport and to avoid imprinting our fingers into it) and laid it onto the cake. Then we smoothed the sides down and luckily had only one little point where it crinkled up, which we were able to smooth over with our fingers (I'm not sure if that's the best way to do this, but it worked).
Then we took a pizza cutter, rolled it around the edges of the cake to cut off the excess fondant, and voila! A beautifully smooth fondanted cake!
Eric and I got creative with our extra fondant, crafting flowers (me), ribbon (Eric) and our initials (also Eric). When we were done, we knew that while we may have been practicing for A&E's first birthday cake, what we'd really made was our first wedding cake!
We had some for dessert while watching LOST last night, and even though it may not be of Sylvia Weinstock quality (I'm sure Sylvia would be appalled that I used fondant instead of buttercream), it was still a pretty sweet end to the day!
Me rolling fondant! See all the cards behind us? Those are all the awesome cards that you've sent to celebrate our engagement!
Eric rolling fondant! It turned out to be really stiff to roll, and so he took over and got it into shape!
The finished product!
In honor and A&E's one year birthday (and inspired by Sylvia Weinstock), I decided to take on the mission of making the best birthday cakes ever!
Mission, I should say, is probably an understatement. Challenge. Uphill battle. Mount Everest-level adventure might be better terms. Because as my mother (and Eric) can attest: I am the world's worst baker! In my time, I have been known not to cream butter and sugar at the start of the recipe, with the result that the batter turns into a clumpy mess. I have left flour out of recipes. I have burned cookies made from Pillsbury roll out cookie dough, and put layered cakes into one pan instead of two. I have put olive oil in brownie mix (yuck) and flattened crumb cakes by adding too much crumb (seemed like a good idea at the time!). And, of course, I have forgotten to butter pans. Many, many pans.
In short, baking is not my thing.
But nonetheless, I was going to make A&E's one year birthday cakes! And given my track record, I knew I needed practice!
So yesterday, I began. The task: to solve the mystery of how fondant lies flat on a cake.
Eric went out and bought five pounds of white rolled fondant. I baked a Classic White Cake recipe courtesy of the Food Network (thanks Nick Malgieri). And you know what, I almost didn't make any mistakes! I took out two pans and immediately buttered them. I preheated the oven to the right temperature. I didn't start until the butter and eggs were at room temperature. I separated the eggs in a separate bowl. I went to add the milk and vanilla extract....
And then I accidentally added them to the butter and sugar instead of the milk.
Oops.
So of course then I manically tried to extricate the milk and extract from the sugar and butter. I can't say that it worked perfectly, but it didn't seem to damage the consistency fluffy butter-sugar combo. In a separate bowl, I dutifully added the flour, salt, and baking powder. And then I alternated mixing in the liquids with the flour (does anyone know why you have to do that?) I scooped everything into the two pans, baked, and after twenty five minutes, I had two absolutely beautiful cakes. I could have looked at them all night they were so perfectly colored (Oh, did I mention that they came right out when I turned them over?).
I waited for Eric to get home until we added the fondant on. As some of you may know, fondant has to have something to stick to. Oftentimes, it's buttercream but you can also make a glaze with jam if your cake doesn't have too many layers. Not wanting to take on too many challenges at once, we opted for the glaze, which involved boiling raspberry jam and spreading it onto the cake's surfaces.
Then we had to roll out the fondant, which came in a huge five pound package! We didn't use everything for this recipe (this was just test cake #1 after all), but we did use over a pound of it. First we kneaded it and then we rolled it out, careful, as the direction said, to turn it over frequently. As it got thinner, we had to wrap it around the rolling pin and flip it that way.
Of course, no one bothered to tell us that we needed powdered sugar to keep the fondant from sticking to the countertop/rolling pin, so we wound up using flour, which luckily didn't affect the taste or texture at all (it wouldn't be Danielle cooking without some adventure, right?)
When the fondant was rolled out enough, we wrapped it around the rolling pin (for easy transport and to avoid imprinting our fingers into it) and laid it onto the cake. Then we smoothed the sides down and luckily had only one little point where it crinkled up, which we were able to smooth over with our fingers (I'm not sure if that's the best way to do this, but it worked).
Then we took a pizza cutter, rolled it around the edges of the cake to cut off the excess fondant, and voila! A beautifully smooth fondanted cake!
Eric and I got creative with our extra fondant, crafting flowers (me), ribbon (Eric) and our initials (also Eric). When we were done, we knew that while we may have been practicing for A&E's first birthday cake, what we'd really made was our first wedding cake!
We had some for dessert while watching LOST last night, and even though it may not be of Sylvia Weinstock quality (I'm sure Sylvia would be appalled that I used fondant instead of buttercream), it was still a pretty sweet end to the day!
Me rolling fondant! See all the cards behind us? Those are all the awesome cards that you've sent to celebrate our engagement!
Eric rolling fondant! It turned out to be really stiff to roll, and so he took over and got it into shape!
The finished product!
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