The Wonders of Pesto

If you don’t have a jar of pesto in your pantry right now, you are seriously missing out! I always make sure to have a jar of this must have condiment on hand. It’s the perfect addition to any quick (or gourmet) meal. Just a dollop can jazz up any dish – chicken, fish, pasta, potatoes, even veggies.

So what is pesto anyway? Basically, it is just fresh basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, and some parmesan and/or romano chesses. Pesto can also be made with sun dried tomatoes, mint, tarragon, etc, instead of basil, if you’re in the mood to change things up. If you’re really bored you can just toss those ingredients into a food processor and wah lah! I however am content to buy the pre-made stuff (Trader Joe’s has an awesome jarred pesto!).
So, just what can you do with pesto? Here are some of my favorite pesto recipes, most of which can be made in jiffy!

Pesto Potatoes
Ingredients:
Small yellow potatoes
olive oil
salt
½ cup pesto
¼ cup milk (or cream if you are daring)
2 tbls butter
2 tbls parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Drizzle potatoes with olive oil and salt and bake until potatoes are tender. While potatoes are baking, prepare the pesto sauce.
2. Over low to medium, heat, melt butter. Then add milk and parmesan cheese, stirring constantly until well blended and mixture begins to boil. If the sauce is too thick, add milk until desired consistency (should be thick and creamy, but not clumpy).
3. Stir in pesto and remove from heat.
4. When potatoes are finished baking, pour pesto sauce over them and coat evenly.

Pesto Torte
Ingredients:
4 oz cream cheese (softened)
½ cup pesto
½ cup oil packed sun dried tomatoes (drained)
Parmesan Cheese (as needed)

Directions:
1. Line a small bowl or container with plastic wrap.
2. Mix pesto with parmesan cheese until thick. Spoon into the bottom of the bowl.

3. Coarsely chop sun dried tomatoes in food processor. Thicken with parmesan cheese if needed. Spread on top of pesto.
4. Spread softend cream cheese on top of pesto (you can also add cracked pepper, garlic, and/or other seasonings to cream cheese before hand)

5. Cover and chill until ready to use. Invert torte onto serving plate and peel off plastic wrap. Serve with crackers or baguette slices. Some other quick suggestions:
-Use on pasta or pizza instead of tomato sauce
-Spread onto french bread slices and bake until crispy (a great alternative to garlic bread)
-Put a dollop on top of grilled fish – especially swordfish or tuna!
-Spread on a sandwich or mix with mayo (especially good on a chicken Panini)
-Make pasta salad with it instead of mayo or Italian dressing
-Add to sour cream for a delicious veggie dipSeriously, the possibilities are endless here!

Tablescapes

So I realize this post is more of a holiday theme, but frankly, Harry Potter comes out tonight and I don't have much time to be creative here. My goal with this blog is to do a post every Friday, alternating between baking, parties, crafts, and recipies. So this week I want to show off some of my crafty skills. Sadly most of my recent projects are on my camera and I am waaaay too lazy to do something about that right now. So, in the mean time, I'll show off my last two holiday tables.

Here is Thanksgiving at home:

I took little white and orange pumpkins, slathered sme of them in glue and glitter, and hallowed others out to be candle holders. We used them at work, for our thanksgiving potluck too:


At Easter I got a little more crafty. I folded up my napkins to look like bunnies:

My "placemats" were actually green paper squares, which I placed over a strip of green ribbon. I just used some tacky putty to keep it in place. The runner was the same green ribbon, with a pin candles, and a centerpiece of pink daisies and limes.

I don't expect much oohing and ahhing over this post, but I swear - next week will be better! Now I'm off to take a nap before my midnight run to buy Harry Potter. I fully intend to make an all nighter out of this! (And yes, I recognize that this makes me a giant geek!)

Cakes

This past Saturday (7/7/07) I attended a coworkers wedding and was dubbed "Official Cake Baker" - and I have the lei to prove it! That' s right, I made my first official wedding cake, and all cheesecake nonetheless!

She first asked me to make her wedding cake last fall. Since I had never really attemped one before, I told her I needed to do a few practice cakes first. I started with a two tiered Frakenstein cake for our office halloween party. The top layer was a cinnamon white cake with apple cinnamon filling, and the bottom was chocolate hazelnut with chocolate ganache filling. Both topped off with my cream cheese frosting.

After seeing that cake, another coworker asked me to make a Mini Mouse cake for her daughter's 3rd birthday. By this time I was up for the challenge! Apparently the chocolate hazelnut cake was a hit because she requested that for the bottom tier. The other two were white cake and chocolate cake with a traditional cream filling. Again - finished off with my cream cheese frosting.By this point I was all ready to do a wedding cake! But then, as we were talking one day at work about the wonders of cheescake, it was decided that is what I would make (instead of the previously requested plain white cake). Now not only is cheesecake my favorite desert, but it is also my favorite thing to make. I've spent the last few years experimenting with different cheesecake recipes and flavor combinations in order to perfect the art of cheesecake making. Now that I have my recipe downpat, I love to play around with different flavors and get creative (key lime, creme brule, carmel apple, etc). After sampling some of my creations, I actually have people offering to pay me for these suckers now! And yes, I am currently taking orders! :)
Anyway, back to the wedding cake. She wanted plain, which is easy enough. But I have never done a 3 tiered cheesecake! So, I turned to Wilton, opting to use their wedding cheesecake recipe, instead of my own (I wasn't too sure how my recipe would stand up as a wedding cake). Having never been much of one to follow a recipe - I followed this one to a T. Well, the folks at wilton haven't let me down yet. It turned out perfectly (despite my many anxiety dreams of all the possible combinations of things that could go wrong). So normally, I would put my own recipe down here for cheesecake, but hey, I spent years on that sucker, I'm not ready to hand it out just yet.

Liana's Wedding

Since we are knee deep in wedding season (according to TheKnot.com, July is the most popular wedding month), I thought I would show off a little of my handy work from my friend's wedding. Shortly after getting engaged, Liana approached me and asked me to her "bridesmaid, and wedding coordinator - of course!" And of course I said yes! Are you kidding? I love weddings! And I love my friends finding love even more!

So, after months of planning, the big day has passed and I've got oodles of photos to share! As bridesmaid/wedding coordinator I was in charge of favors, flowers, decorations, and other miscellaneous wedding related crafts. With the help of my mom, the bride, and all our fabulous friends, the wedding turned out fantastic from start to finish!

Let's start with the favors - 200 dark chocolate truffles (1/2 amaretto with a white chocolate shell, and 1/2 raspberry with a dark chocolate shell). There wasn't a truffle left by the end of the night. Most guests devoured theirs before dinner. Which I must say, is a great compliment!Each guest received one of each, in this adorable little box:

The boxes were handmade, using this handy dandy little contraption (provided by my mom):

With the help of some fabulous girls (really, super incredible!) We folded each box (about 120) and glued ribbon to them. Then the Bride helped roll up each truffle and stuff them into the boxes.

Aside from the favors, I was also in charge of doing the flowers. The Bride and I got up at 5am to visit the Flower Mart in Downtown LA, and spent an hour buying flowers. Then, with the help of some seriously super bridesmaids, we arranged all the centerpieces, bouquets, and ceremony flowers. I designed the flowers, but the gals did a bulk of the work putting together the centerpieces and ceremony flowers (little buckets of flowers that hung on shepard's hooks down the aisle). The bouquets on the other hand, are all me! (Yes, I am bragging, but dang it, I'm proud of those suckers!)

There are plenty more, but I'll spare you - for now! In the meantime, here is my much asked for truffle recipe:

Ingredients:

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese (softened)

3 cups confectioner's sugar

3 cups chocolate chips, melted

1-1/2 teaspoons Vanilla (or any other flavoring you would like - extracts, liquors, etc, seriously, anything goes!)

Directions:

Using a mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar until well blended. Stir in melted chocolate and flavoring until no streaks remain. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Shape into 1 inch balls (a melon baller or small cookie scoop work great).

Part 2

Now here is where you can get creative. You can roll these around in crushed nuts, confectioners' sugar, coco powder, coconut, etc. Or, stick them in the freezer for about an hour, and then dip them in melted chocolate (dip them using a fork and shake off the excess chocolate), and stick them back in the freezer to set.

Stay Tuned...

Here it is! My long awaited food blog! My goal is update weekly, sharing some of my past and present projects, recipes, and random food/craft/party planning ramblings. So stay tuned, and I'll try not to bore you too much!