Baby Rice Cereal

Baby's First Rice Cereal

Serving Size: 1/4 cup

4 Tbsp warm Breast Milk or Formula

1 Tbsp Rice Cereal (We used Gerber's Organic)

Simply combine the two in a small bowl and presto! Baby cereal. 

Basically, Gerber (and our pedi) recommend a 4 to 1 ratio for the first few feedings. The first feeding, we did the 4/1 Tbsp but we had a LOT left over. Today, we did a 4/1 tsp and Nathan ate almost all of it. And we didn't waste any breast milk.

As a mom who loves to cook, I am committed to making sure my son gets the best I can give him for food. My husband and I will be making almost all of Nathan's first foods ourselves. Yes, I am buying cereal and oatmeal, but the rest will all be homemade. So stay tuned for recipes in the upcoming months!

Baby Product Recommendation:

I recommend the spoons made by Nuby. I love that they are BPA free and change color if I made his food too warm. The angled handle is also nice for feeding him.

Nuby Hot Safe Spoons, BPA Free Baby Spoon, Non Toxic Baby Spoons

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 Class 4

Tonight was the last class in Course 1 and I can't believe that 4 weeks has flown by so quickly! And I am proud of myself for accomplishing what I set out to do; ice a cake properly.

For my last class, I baked the Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake and it was perfect! Moist, light, and airy. I used Hershey's Chocolate Butter-cream for the filling between the layers and icing the cake, and added the Meringue Powder so that it would crust correctly. I also mixed up two batches of class icing to use for decorating; one medium consistency and one thin.

I was surprised that three of our classmates didn't show up for the final class!

The rest of us all arrived early, and already had our cakes iced. We started by mixing colors; green for leaves and whatever color we chose for the border and flowers. I picked leaf green and lavender (which I kind of made too light and under certain lighting conditions appears light blue).

First we learned to make a cursive "e" border around the bottom of the cake. Then I did a zig-zag border around the top. During our course we learned the shell border, star border, zig-zag border, and cursive "e" border. Out of all of them I prefer the shell border, even though I find it hard to do. 

Next we used a #3 tip to make rounded lines for ivy vines in any pattern we wanted. Nobody chose the book's pattern...

Then we learned to make sweet peas. I thought they would be hard but they really weren't. I got them on the first try. A few ladies had difficulty with them, though.

Then we learned to make the ultimate butter-cream decoration! The Wilton Rose! When I read about it in our course book, it looked really difficult. I confess that I was pretty intimidated by it. The four roses I created in class, though, looked really good... They are just as good as the ones in the bakeries. (I'm not sure if it means that I'm that good or they are that bad. Probably both.) Sadly, only three roses actually made it onto my cake because, as I was transfering the rose from the nail I dropped it onto my cake. You can see the lavender lines of icing on my cake below my roses from where it hit. Another of my roses was messed up by my teacher, who accidently hit it and smushed the center in. Oops. But hey, it's the first time I didn't smush my own cake! Progress, right?

Finally, we learned to make leaves to surround our roses and sweet peas. My teacher showed the class how to create them on my cake, which was fine until she showed them how to insert a leaf in between the roses. So now I have a leaf sticking up in between my roses and I think it looks silly. But oh well. It tasted good. :)

I can not wait for Course 2! It's all about learning Royal Icing, which I have never worked with but it looks cool. At Michael's during April, Course 2 is going to be on Tuesdays which would normally work well for me. Unfortunately, I will be out of town from a Tuesday through a Tuesday, so I would miss two classes. I am going to check at Hobby Lobby to see if I can go to those and just miss one class. If that doesn't work, I will have to wait until May. If I had to wait I think I will learn to bake bread.

Hershey's Chocolate Butter-cream Frosting

Hershey's Chocolate Butter-cream Frosting

Makes ~3 cups

Ingredients:

6 Tbsp butter or margarine, softened

2 2/3 cups powdered sugar (sifted if clumpy)

1/2 cup Hershey's cocoa

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp Vanilla

Instructions

1. In a small mixing bowel, beat the butter until creamy.
2. Slowly add the powdered sugar and cocoa, alternate with milk.
3. Beat the mixture to a spreading consistency. (Add more milk if it is too thick.)
4. Blend in the vanilla.
5. Ice cake, cupcakes, or cookies.

I love this recipe because it is not ridiculously sweet. This is also the recipe I used to ice my cake for my last Wilton Class. I added some of the Meringue Powder (1 Tbsp) that I used in my class so that it would be stiffer and it worked really well.

Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

Serves 8-10

Ingredients

2 cups sugar (try Baker's Sugar, it's awesome)

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup Hershey's cocoa

1.5 tsp baking powder

1.5 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup boiling water

Instructions:

1. Grease and flour 2 9" round or 1 13"x9"x2" pan (Try Wilton Cake Release. Seriously. It works just as well and is much faster.)
2. In a large mixer, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Blend well.
3. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla.
4. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.
5. Stir in the boiling water. The batter will be thin. 
6. Pour into the pans.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes for round pans. 35-40 minutes for rectangle.
8. Cool 10 minutes on wire rack, then remove cakes from pans onto the wire rack.

This is my go-to cake recipe that my Grandma passed on to me. It is from the Hershey Company, and is still listed on their website. If you have never baked a cake before, I recommend this one. Try it with the Hershey Chocolate Butter-cream Frosting.

Fresh Raspberry Sauce

Fresh Raspberry Sauce

Makes 1/2 cup

Ingredients

6 oz (1.5 cups) Fresh or Frozen (Thawed) Raspberries

1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 Tbsp sugar

Instructions:

1. Fresh Raspberries: clean, Frozen Raspberries: thaw and save juices
2. Place Raspberries (and juices) in blender. We used our Magic Bullet and it worked great.
3. Puree Raspberries.
4. Pour Raspberry puree into a strainer. Push mixture through strainer firmly repeatedly until only seeds are left.
5. Stir in lemon juice.
6. Add sugar to taste.
7. Refrigerate until needed.

This recipe came from my awesome new cookbook, The Art and Soul of Baking. I used it as filling in my most recent cake and it worked pretty well, although it was a little thin. I think if I refrigerate it before I use it it will work even better. I am also thinking about getting a squeeze bottle so I can use it for plating in the future.

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 Class 3

So tonight, I got to decorate my second cake. It was an adventure, to say the least.

I chose to make a Silver White Cake again, this time using some new baking techniques. 

Since I created a character cake last week, I didn't get the chance to practice icing or filling a two layer cake. My instructor recommended going ahead and filling the cake and putting the crumb coat on top.

I went ahead and put a thick layer of icing around the top of my bottom layer (as a frosting barrier). Then I filled it was raspberry filling (I'll post the recipe later). Then I went ahead and put my top layer on, which was a huge mistake. 

In retrospect, I should have made the frosting barrier larger and let it sit longer for the icing to harden. I also should have refrigerated the raspberry filling for a good half hour or longer so it would thicken up some. 

In any case, as soon as I put the top layer on, raspberry filling began bleeding out the sides of my cake. It was just a mess! The more I tried to clean it up, the worse it got! So, when I finally got to class, I was already a little frazzled. 

My instructor, though, helped me scoop some of the filling out and clean up my tray. Then I had to put on a crumb coat; it was hard to do without getting raspberry in my icing. Then she used the cake icing tip with a 16 in. featherweight bag to put a thick coat of frosting around my cake. The icing tip works really well because you can apply the icing without touching the cake (i.e., so you don't get filling everywhere).

In this class, our instructor went against the curriculum and taught us to do a gel pattern transfer of the rainbow in our course book. (Which was supposed to be the alternate cake in Lesson 2.) For this, you place a sheet of wax paper on top of the shape you want on your cake, and then you trace the shape with clear piping gel. You place the sheet gel side down on your cake, smooth the gel onto the cake (we ran a small paintbrush over the gel), and then lift off the wax paper. We filled in our rainbow with colored icing using the star tip.

Then we got to learn the first 3 flowers that are in Course 1, which are all accomplished with tip 2D. I went ahead and put three on my cake, and I was so excited that I didn't space them properly so they are just kind of... on there, lol.

All in all, though, I am pretty proud. It tastes fantastic and it doesn't look as dumb in person as I thought it did in the book. lol 

The Secrets of Baking

I think the reason I love baking is that it is so precise. It is like a chemistry experiment; if you add the correct things, under the correct conditions, in the correct order, you will get something amazing. The only problem was, I didn't really know what those correct things were. My mission is to find out. Here is a bit of what I have learned so far.

First off, there are several different types of flour; cake flour with 5-7% protein, pastry flour with 7-9% protein, self-rising flour with 7-11% protein, all-purpose flour with 7-12% percent protein, and bread flour with 12-14% protein. Some, like cake flour, need to be sifted before measuring. The types of flour are not interchangeable. There are conversions you can do to make one type into an imitation of another, but they are far from precise and give less predictable responses. 

For baking, superfine sugar dissolves better then regular granulated sugar. You can either purchase it, called Bakers Sugar, or make it by putting granulated sugar in a food processor for 60 sec. Superfine and granulated sugars are interchangeable. (All other types of sugar are not; like confectioners sugar.)

Eggs should always be the large size (unless your recipe calls for a different one). They should also be room temperature.

Butter should always be between 65 and 68*. Certain types of baked goods can fall if the butter was too warm. (It should be moldable but not squishy or liquid.)

I tried these principles with the new cake I made for my third Wilton class. For this class, I again did my mother in law's Silver White Cake. The difference was incredible! This cake was so much lighter and had a much smoother texture. Stay tuned for photos!

Lotawata Creek Restaurant Review

As their t-shirts say "This is not a chain restaurant." Lotawata Creek is located in Fairview Heights, IL. They are famous for their delicious steaks and their huge portion sizes. People drive for an hour or more just to eat there.

We went to Lotawata for dinner the other night, but it wasn't quite as good as usual. The ambiance was the same as always; country music playing in the background, cheerful wait-staff, and their steak house stuff (deer antlers on the wall, etc). 

The food just wasn't as great as I know it can be. The steak was good, but not phenomenal. The baked potato was a little smaller then usual. The broccoli was saturated with lemon and a little on the chilly side. 

I was just bummed. I have never had a bad meal there before. And, while I will say that it was bad by Lotawata's standards, it is still better then Outback, Lonestar, or any of the other chain restaurants. So I will go back.

www.lotawata.com

Food: ++++

Drinks: ++++

Service: +++++

Overall: +++++

Lemon Chicken

Lemon Chicken

Serves 6

500 g (1lb 2oz) skinless chicken breast fillet

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

1 spring onion (scallion), finely chopped

1 tbsp finely chopped ginger

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 egg, lightly beaten

90 g (3/4 cup) cornflour (cornstarch)

oil for deep-frying

Lemon Sauce

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp roasted sesame oil

3 tbsp chicken stock  (or water)

1/2 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)

Instructions:

1. Cut the chicken into slices. Place in a bowl. Add the soy sauce, rice wine, spring onion, ginger, and garlic. Toss lightly. Marinate in the fridge for at least 1 hour, or overnight.
2. Add the egg to the chicken and toss lightly (to coat the chicken). Drain away the excess egg. Coat the chicken pieces with cornflour. (Place in a plastic bag and shake.)
3. Fill a wok 1/4 full of oil. Heat the oil to 375* F (190* C). (Or until a piece of bread fried golden brown in 10 sec once dropped in the oil.)
4. Add half the chicken to the oil, one piece at a time. Fry the chicken, stirring constantly, for 3.5-4 minutes (or until golden brown). Remove with a wire sieve and drain.
5. Repeat with the remaining chicken.
6. Once all the chicken is fried, reheat the oil and return all the chicken to the wok. Cook until crisp and golden brown. 
7. Drain the chicken, pour off the oil, and wipe out the wok.
8. To make the lemon sauce, combine the lemon juice, sugar, salt, sesame oil, stock, and cornflour.
9. Reheat the wok over medium heat until hot, add the lemon sauce and stir constantly until thickened. 
10. Add the chicken and toss lightly in the sauce. 

Matthew made this for me for dinner tonight, out of our new cookbook, The Food of China. We picked it up on the Border's sale rack last weekend and, I have to say, it is a pretty impressive cookbook. The photography is really good and the recipes sound delicious. This was the first one we tried and it was sooo good!

The Most Dangerous Cake Recipe in the World!

I was browsing through some cooking forums the other day, and I kept running across the title to this post, posted by a lady whose screen name is always BettyR. The first time I read it, I knew I had to try it and see if it worked! And it did! I'm still in shock.

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

Serves 2

Ingredients:

4 tbsp flour

4 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp cocoa

1 egg

3 tbsp milk

3 tbsp oil (I used vegetable oil)

3 tbsp chocolate chips

Splash of vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Add dry ingredients to a large coffee mug. Mix well.
2. Add egg and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour in milk and oil. Mix well.
4. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla. Mix again.
5. Put mug in microwave for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
6. Cake will rise over the top of the mug!
7. Allow to cool before eating.

So... I screwed this up and forgot the vanilla... but it still tasted pretty good! I'm impressed.

Website where I found the original recipe: The most dangerous cake recipe in the world! - ChefTalk Cooking Forums

Olive Garden Restaurant Review

On Sunday night, we went to the Olive Garden in Fairview Heights, IL. 

We didn't have an appetizer.

Entree (Me): The Five Cheese Ziti al Forno

Entree (Matthew): Braised Beef and Tortelloni 

Both of our entrees were really good. My Ziti was really good, although a little sweet. After living in Santa Barbara for a few years, I have readjusted to non sweet tomato sauce. Now that we are back in St. Louis, I haven't adjusted back to the sweet sauce.

Dessert (Me): Lemon Cream Cake

Dessert (Matthew): Tiramisu 

Our desserts were good, but still frozen in the center, so we had to take them home to dethaw. Our server gave us one of the desserts for free, so that was a plus.

On the downside, Matthew's glass had a HUGE crack in it, from the middle of one side all the way under the glass. How did someone not notice that?

Food: ++++

Drinks: +++

Service: ++++

Overall: ++++

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 Class 2

Tonight was my second Wilton Class! 

There are 9 people in my class; three of us did character cakes, 2 did heart shaped cakes, and the rest did 9" round cakes. 

We learned how to fill icing in between the layers of a cake, how to set up and fill the different decorating bags (nylon, disposable, and the parchment bags), and began practicing different icing techniques.

For my dinosaur (and the other character cakes), we piped in the outline, then filled the rest of the character with the star tip. Mine didn't come out too badly. I started rushing so my stars are different sizes and there are some gaps in between them. All in all, though, I am proud of myself.

The heart shaped and round cakes were all iced smooth, then given a shell border around the bottom of the cake, and a star border around the top. They then used stencils to create designs on the top of the cakes. The three of us character cake bakers have to learn those techniques next week. I am hoping to practice this week so I'm not behind. I have enough left over icing to practice so I don't really have an excuse not to...

All in all, though, I really did enjoy it. It was work, my hands aren't used to the motion yet, but it was really relaxing. 

And the cake tastes really good too! 

The Adventures in Cake Decorating Continue!

I really love baking!

Matthew gave me the Ultimate Tool Caddy for our first anniversary. It's so pretty! (Yup, I'm a dork.) My mom gave me the course 1 student kit. And I 

have purchased a few... additional items, lol. I now have two spatulas, small straight and large curved, the box of 12 paste colors, a large coupler, and two extra tips (1M for cupcake swirls and the triple star tip). 

We were instructed to bring one cake to class on Tuesday. For the second class, we had the choice of doing either a simple round cake, a simple square cake, or a character cake. Of course, I chose the character cake. Matthew, Nathan, my mom, and I went shopping for pans at Hobby Lobby (since I had a 40% off coupon). We found the same dinosaur pan Matthew had when he was little, and we decided it would be perfect for when Nathan gets bigger.

In the past, I was afraid to make a shaped cake; I have had trouble getting even simple cakes out of their pans in one piece. I actually tried the Wilton Cake Release and it was awesome! Only one small part of the cake stuck to the pan (the part around the dinosaur's teeth), but it came out fairly smoothly. I'm actually impressed. The thing that still has me confused is how to keep the edge of the tail from overbaking, since it is the shallowest part of the cake. 

For the cake itself, I made my Mother-in-law's Silver White Cake. I haven't tasted it yet, but Matthew tells me it smells right and looks right, so hopefully I didn't screw anything up. I might post the recipe on here, if she say's it's ok. (I don't want to give away any family recipes!)

For class, we were instructed to make two batches of icing; one medium consistency and one thin consistency. The class frosting is amazingly thick! And now I know the recipe supermarkets use for their frosting. Next time, now that I know what the textures should be, I think I will try my own butter cream recipe. (In addition, I tried the Wilton Clear Vanilla Extract. That is the only product of theirs I have ever hated. It was just gross. Then again, for imitation Vanilla, it wasn't that bad.)

I can't wait to decorate my cake tomorrow night! Stay tuned for photos!

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 Class 1

Last night was my first Wilton Cake Decorating class! It was awesome! We didn't get to do anything yet, just went over what we need for class, how the class works, and stuff about the other classes.

I guess some people take ALL the classes at the same time. I think that is a little too much cake decorating for me. That would be, like 3 or so cakes a week (plus working on flowers and cut outs and stuff). I wouldn't be able to practice anything I learned.

So I am just doing one this month, then maybe do Course 2 in May, 3 in June, Fondant in July, and then Gum Paste in August (they have 5 classes now, plus extra stuff). 

They are also having a special brownie class this month that I'm thinking about taking, but don't tell Matthew! He might shoot me because I'll need/want more stuff! lol, j/k

For my Anniversary present, Matthew bought me the Ultimate Tool Caddy that I wanted, along with the course kit. It's SO awesome! My caddy is a little empty at the moment, but I will fill it up eventually!

Stayed tuned for photos of my upcoming cakes! (And try not to laugh too hard, ok?)

Harvest Restaurant Review

Matthew and I went out to dinner on Sunday for our First Anniversary. We wanted to go someplace new, that had a great menu, and that was not family oriented. After a great deal of searching, we came across a restaurant named Harvest over in St. Louis. It was phenomenal! Words can not express how good that food was!

For starters, we both had the Creamy Potato Leek Soup with White Truffle Oil

Entree (me) Pan roasted Fillet of Baramundi with Mushroom Risotto, Baby Bok Choy and a wild Mushroom Sauce

Entree (Matt) Pan roasted New England Scallops with an Indian Rice Cake

We were too full for dessert. :(

Most of their ingredients are organic, and almost all of them are local as well. They never use anything canned or frozen and it really shows in their food. Their menu constantly changes to reflect the current growing season. I can't wait to go back!

Food:  lllll

Drinks: lllll

Service: lllll

Overall: lllll

Their website: Menu and Spa Menu

You have to go try this place!