Vacation Catch-Up

I haven't been updating much because I have been attempting to squeeze every last second of fun out of this vacation week!  This does include baking and cooking, but blogging has not slipped its way in yet ;)  With two days left to go, and more recipes to try out, I knew I had to do some catching up this afternoon!

I have made three different things this week.  First, my mom mentioned that she saw a Mardi Gras special on the Today Show and they made a special Mardi Gras cake called a king cake.  It's kind of like a coffee cake that gets rather garishly decorated with green, gold and purple (the Mardi Gras colors).  Inside the cake, you bake a little plastic baby Jesus, and whoever gets the Jesus in their slice gets good luck for the year (or something).  I was intrigued by this cake and decided to give it a try. 

Pre-decorating, this braided cake is sooo pretty!

Scary attempt at making a baby Jesus...

There was one problem: no baby Jesus.  Mom and I tried to figure out what we could do to solve this, but we ended up grabbing an old  oyster shell and drawing a Jesus onto it.  The end result was so bizarre that I left Jesus out altogether and our cake was luck-less! ;)

Decorating the beautiful braided yeast cake was wonderful, because this is one time when it is supposed to look bad!  I am an expert in that.  The frosting's secret ingredient was evaporated milk, and came out great... I was a little afraid since I have had numerous bad frosting experiences lately.  Then I frosted the cake, and shook the colored sugars on top.  Like I said, I was supposed to use green, purple and gold.  I had green, so that was no problem, but we do not regularly use purple or gold sugar!  I improvised with yellow, and a mixture of blue and pink.  Perfect?  No.  But it wasn't supposed to look great, so I'd have to say I did the king cake justice!   I love the end result.  Tacky and ugly, but absolutely delicious.

Post-decorating, and ugly but delicious!

The cake called for a ton of egg yolks, so I was left with my usual problem of tons of leftover whites!  I wanted to try something different than my go-to pavlova, so I found a recipe for meringue cookies.  You may notice that there are no pictures of these... and that is because they look like mushroom caps and I hate them!  I followed the recipe to a T - I did the mix-in flavors of vanilla and rum - and I think the recipe is definitely wrong.  With what I already know about meringues and pavlovas, I know that it's pretty uncommon to see the oven at 300 degrees, and then to bake for two hours!  It's usually a much lower temperature, and not that long in the oven.  I had my doubts but I tried it anyway.  The house smelled great for a while, and then started to smell like burning.  I took them right out, and while the consistency was right for meringue, the taste was a little burned.  Luckily I took this in stride and didn't do my usual meltdown because I can definitely say this was no mistake of mine; do not try this at home!

I also made my family's favorite dinner of the lettuce wraps this week.  These absolutely delicious little babies came courtesy of Laura and when I made them last time, Kenzie, Mom and I devoured them.  The sauce is so good, I could practically drink it.  I was excited to let Mark try them this time, and was slightly (very) disappointed to find that he wasn't a huge fan.  He claims he hates ground chicken.  I claim that he went into the dinner planning on not liking them!  Regardless, Mom and I still scarfed them down and think they were great :)

Be ready for another update, hopefully tonight; I have a new brownie recipe I am going to try!

Recipes:
King cake
Meringue cookies
Lettuce Wraps

Watch Out, PF Chang!

I am not the best cook.  Baking is more my thing because I never feel the need to rush frantically.  Cooking just makes me nervous because I have something on the stove, and suddenly I need chopped garlic, but I can't chop and stir the pot at the same time... ay.  I have been doing way more baking than cooking lately, though, so my resolution needs to balance out a little better.  At work, Laura often talks about good meals that she has made, and she told me about a recipe for PF Chang's lettuce wraps.  I used to love my mom's turkey lettuce wraps, and these are made with ground chicken - which sounded good to me because I don't like turkey that much.  I also knew that Kenzie loved lettuce wraps that she got at Not Your Average Joe's.  So bring on the lettuce wraps!

I had to do it all alone - Mark and Rachael are at work, and Mom and Kenzie were getting Dad to bed.  I was a little nervous, and I did have that panicked couple minutes where I had to turn the pan on low to chop garlic and fresh ginger, but I prevailed!  And if I do say so myself, they are delicious!  If you don't want me to say so myself, take it from Kenzie, who said it is the best thing I ever made.  Actually the quote was, "write in your blog that it is the best thing you ever made."  :) 

The only thing I changed about the recipe was leaving out the chili garlic sauce (we don't like spice) and half of the scallions (because I ran out).  Also, I used honey roasted peanuts and definitely recommend those because they add the perfect sweetness to the sauce.  Mmmmmm... just typing about them almost makes me want to eat another one - but they are so filling! 

Definitely going to be making these again.  Delicious and good for you: can you beat that!?  Go buy lettuce and make these this week.

Recipe:
PF Chang's Lettuce Wraps