Vacation

This week, I'm on vacation with friends of mine from college.  We went to Cape Hatteras in the Outerbanks of North Carolina, and since I was going to be in a house with 6 other people, I decided to make some goodies for the week.

I made pie.

Cookies.

And brownies.

All stuff that is fairly easy to transport, and appreciated!  Really, I just needed to use up the eggs and butter in my fridge before we left our house.  Happy vacation, I'll see you all next week!

Dining Adventures

On occasion, I go on a dining adventure with my roommate Bryan, or other friends.  I have yet to blog about any of these adventures, so I decided to start documenting these.  This week, Bryan and I visited Pho Yum in Albany.

I passed this place on the way to a catering consultation for my wedding, and was excited.  I'd always wanted to try Pho, and was happy to give it a try sometime.  That time was this week.  Pho is a flavorful rice noodle soup, that can have a variety of meats, or other proteins as well as a variety of condiments to put on top to custom make your soup.

I ordered beef brisket Pho.  This was delicious, the brisket melted in my mouth, and the broth was so satisfying.  The bowl was also the size of my head.

Bryan ordered Beef Tendon.  This actually was pretty good.  As far as taste, it absorbed the flavor of the broth, so there wasn't much flavor to the tendon.  It also had a bizarre texture for the Western palate.  It was chewy, but no worse than slightly overcooked squid.  It was pretty cool

This was a great find.  It's a bit of a trek to get to from where we live in downtown, but the food was quick to come out, and cheap!  I'll be bringing family and friend here in the future.

Derby Pie

This past weekend many people tuned in to watch the Kentucky Derby.  My good friend Jen from the Elka Almanac suggested that I make Derby Pie.  What is Derby Pie?  Well, I didn't know, so I did what any sensible person would do.  I consulted the internet!  According to Wikipedia the confection originated in Prospect Kentucky at the Melrose Inn.  It's was originally a walnut and chocolate tart, and has been associated with the Kentucky Derby.  Now comes the fun part, making it.

I doubled the recipe, so I'll give you the single pie recipe.  Combine 1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted butter

With 1 tsp vanilla

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup flour

2 eggs well beaten

and 3/4 cup of chocolate chips

and 3/4 cup of pecans.

Bake in a 9 inch pastry shell for 45 min in a 350 degree oven.

This was a very simple recipe, and it's easy to personalize.  You can easily replace some vanilla with Kentucky burbon or brandy.  You can interchange nuts, or chocolate.  It looks like a shoo fly pie, but with stuff in it.  This was a very fun discovery.  I might be returning to this recipe come Thanksgiving.

Enjoy!

Orange Cream Cupcakes

I really like the combination of fresh orange and sweet vanilla cream.  In fact, there is a popular ice cream treat that combines these two, as well as a popular drink.  I decided to try my hand at making a cup cake version of this.

I used the key lime cupcake recipe from Bon Appetit, but instead of using lime juice and zest, I used the zest and juice of an orange.

Beat 1 stick of butter until fluffy.

Beat in 1 cup of white sugar until combined, then beat in 2 eggs one at a time.

Next beat in 2 1/2 Tbsp of orange juice and 1 tsp of orange zest.

It will look a bit curdled, but that's ok.

Next we're going to alternate mixing in 1 3/4 cup of flour and 1 tsp each of baking powder and soda, with 3/4 cup of buttermilk.  You should get three additions of the dry with 2 of the wet.

Once this is combined, mix in 10 drops of yellow food coloring with 3 drops of red.

Makes it look like sherbet.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Take out and let cool.

Now for the "cream" in this equation.  I made a cream cheese frosting (clearly my favorite type) with lots of vanilla!

Once these cakes are cooled, you can ice them how you like.

And for a nice touch, I used orange zest to top each cupcake.

Enjoy!