German Chocolate Cake

I don't have my limited decorating tools here in DC, but it won't stop me from attempting to make a pretty cake! A friend a work's birthday was last week and his favorite cake is German Chocolate Cake. I had never make a German Chocolate Cake (and actually never even tasted one!) but I'm always up for trying to make a new type of cake. It turned out pretty good and would definitely make it again. I'm discovering that almost any cake recipe that calls for buttermilk is going to be a winner.

A little trick I've learned is to make the actual cake portion a day early. Not only does this give you a little breathing room when putting everything together, it also makes working with the cake a lot easier. Cold or frozen cake just behaves so much better and is a lot easier to decorate than warm or even room temperature cake. I don't know about you, but I rarely seem to give myself enough time when making a cake to get everything done just how I want it and the decorating and assembly is always the step that suffers. Breaking the process up into two portions allows you to focus your efforts appropriately.

Just let the cakes cool down to room temperature and wrap well in plastic wrap and pop in the fridge for a few days. If you need to keep them for more than a few days, put them in the freezer (and if you really want to be sure they are well wrapped, put them in those giant freezer bags).

Oh - and isn't this cake stand just gorgeous?? But seriously, $65? No thanks. But this one, at $20, is just as cute and comes in multiple colors! Oh goodness, once I have a stable house/apartment again, I'm going to be spending so much money on kitchen stuff. And I should really look into taking a class or two on cake decorating because I'm really starting to enjoy it. I'm sure DC has tons.

I hate the fact that this picture turned out so yellow. Darn fluorescent lights.

Buttermilk Biscuits

I've mentioned these biscuits before so I figured it was time I posted the recipe. Homemade biscuits are pure heaven. I don't know how else to describe them. They are comfort food to the extreme. You can do so much with them - covered them with strawberries and cream, fill them with ham and cheese, smother them with gravy, or just eat them butter and jelly. Biscuits make my heart sing.

I found this recipe from Alton Brown about a year ago and I've been using it ever since to make biscuits. As Alton is from Georgia, I knew these would be pretty good. However, I need to get my Nana's recipe because I bet it's even better than this one. This recipe uses half butter and half shortening for the fat. I remember watching Alton Brown make biscuits on his show Good Eats on Food Network once and he said this is because butter gives them a better flavor but shortening gives them a better texture. So half and half is the best of both worlds.

Give them a try! You won't be disappointed. The work is totally worth it.

Georgetown - Pizzaria Paradiso and Georgetown Cupcakes

Moriah, Josh and I decided to wander down to Georgetown for dinner tonight.  I had only been to Georgetown once before and it was very briefly just to stop by the Apple store so I wanted to go again.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with DC (which is likely most of the people reading this), Georgetown is a very nice, wealthy area located in northwest DC on the Potomac River waterfront.  It contains lots of high end, boutiquey stores, tiny restaurants, and hip bars.  

We ate dinner at Pizzaria Paradiso, a local pizza restaurant with two locations - one in Georgetown and one in Dupont Circle.  We had all heard good things about it so we were looking forward to trying it out.  They don't take reservations so we had to wait about 45 minutes to sit down, which actually wasn't a big deal on a Saturday night in DC - in Georgetown no less.  They brought a complimentary assortment of olives to the table when we sat down but as none of us liked olives, we didn't try them.  We ordered the garlic bread as an appetizer, which was significantly different than your traditional garlic bread.  It was toasted bread, served with whole roasted elephant garlic.  It was very interesting but I'm not sure it would be something I would order again.  For dinner, I ordered the Bosco pizza - which was mozzarella cheese with tomato, mushroom, spinach, and red onion but I subbed the spinach out for sausage (because I love sausage on pizzas).  Josh got the Genovese pizza - which was pesto, potato, and Parmesan.  Moriah got the Paradiso pizza - with soy Mozzarella.  Again all the pizzas were good but they didn't blow us out of the water.  I think the pizza at Matchbox in Chinatown was much better.

Before we ate dinner, we walked across the street to take a look at Georgetown Cupcakes.  They are part of a new TV show on TLC called DC Cupcakes and had a line out the door to prove it.  Someone walking around said the line was about 45 minutes.  We really wanted to give them a try, but we had dinner soon and didn't have time to wait.  We finished dinner about 15 minutes before they closed so we ran across the street to get in line.  We ended up waiting about 30 minutes to get inside, which wasn't a big deal because it was really nice weather outside and we made friends with our line mates.  I was fully ready to complain about how people only bought their cupcakes because they had a TV show and not because they had good cupcakes but boy was I wrong.  We ordered 2 red velvet, 1 mint oreo and creme, 1 birthday cake, 1 caramel, and 1 ginger peach.  They were amazing.  I think my favorite was the red velvet.  The cream cheese icing was sweet but not too thick or heavy.  I would really like to go back to try the key lime, strawberry, and lemon berry cupcakes, which they didn't have tonight.  They were $2.75 a piece, $15 for a half dozen, and $30 for a dozen which - yes, is expensive for cupcakes - but they were a good treat and I thought worth the price.

Me in front of the trays of different cupcakes

The half dozen we got - Mint Oreo & Creme, 2 Red Velvet, Birthday Cake, Caramel, and Ginger Peach

BBQ Chicken

Right before I left for DC, Andrew and I visited some friends in Huntsville for the weekend which happened to be Memorial Day weekend.  We all wanted to grill out for Memorial Day but the weather ended up not cooperating so we had to resort to indoor BBQ.  This is my easy way to do BBQ chicken in the oven.  You don't get all of the smoky charcoal flavor that outdoor grilling gives, but you do end up with some pretty darn good BBQ chicken.  This is also a relatively cheap main dish to serve a large number of people as party size packages of chicken drumsticks or wings, whatever your preference is, are usually $5-10.  There really isn't much of a recipe for this but I'll cover the basic steps below.

Lasagna

Lasagna is one of those things that everyone seems to like and everyone has their favorite way to put it together.  There are so many options for what you can put into a lasagna - different types of sauce, hamburger, sausage,  veggies, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese - the list is endless.  This is my mom's recipe and therefore my favorite.  My sauce is a little sweet (and it's also basically the same sauce that I used to make spaghetti) and I prefer ricotta cheese rather than cottage cheese but it's a recipe that I think most anyone would like.  This recipe is very versatile so feel free to add whatever you like.  I've added onion and mushrooms to the sauce in the past, which works well.  You could also sub half the hamburger for sausage, which I think would be amazing.

Easiest French Bread Ever

I love making bread.  It sounds dumb, but I find it very therapeutic.  A lot of people find it a little intimidating, what with all the yeast and rising times and working with dough and whatnot.  I promise, it's not hard!  Especially this recipe.  It doesn't have insanely long rising times (like a lot of bread recipes do) and it's pretty easy to work with.  And nothing is better than the smell of freshly baked bread.

I'm really not sure how I ended up with the shape loaf that's shown in these pictures.  It was the first loaf I made using this recipe and all subsequent loaves have turned out much fatter (like the pictures on Fake Ginger's site - and by the way, I love Amanda's site.  Such great recipes!  Definitely take a look!)  Maybe I didn't let it rise enough?  Who knows.  I'll have to try and replicate it sometime because it's prettier (but the other way gives you more bread!)

The original recipe makes 2 very large loaves of bread so I've scaled it down to 1 loaf here.  Much easier to manage!

I did not get a picture of this (or any loaf from this recipe) before it was cut into.  Impatient boys.

4th of July

Being in Washington, D.C. for the 4th of July was something I had been looking forward to immensely.  I went over to a friend's apartment and we cooking hamburgers and hotdogs before venturing out into the heat.  We took the bus to the Capital Mall between the Capital and Washington Monuments and walked around a bit before the fireworks begin.  We tried to go to the National Archives because there was supposed to be a big Happy Birthday America party but it was over and everything was closed by the time we got there.

So we stopped to dip our feet in the fountain at the Navy Monument.  I apologize for the crappy quality of some of these pictures.  For some reason I took them with my iPhone even though I had my real camera in my purse.  Go figure.

Eli, Moriah, and Josh at the Navy Monument

 Me at the Navy Monument

We headed towards the lawn of the mall when it got closer to fireworks time and managed to find a spot among the throng of people that were there.  Seriously, way more people than I thought!  We brought blankets and ate popsicles while we waited for  it to get dark.

National Lawn with the Capital in the background.

 Actually not sure what this building is, but it was pretty and right next to us!

Once it got dark the fireworks started!  They didn't last as long as I would have liked but they were still beautiful, especially with the Washington Monument.  Though we quickly realized why the spot that we chose was empty.  We had to deal with the giant (thankfully OFF) spotlight that obscured our view.  Regardless, we still had a great time!

Fireworks!

Moriah and I waiting for the metro to go home after fireworks and dinner.