Smoked Salmon, Sweet Potato Blinis, and the last remnants of Valentine's Day

Okay, I am forcing myself to post nothing new until I've finally posted photos from the Valentine's Day event that I did way back when!  I'm actually quite proud of how everything turned out, despite the fact that I didn't get a chance to snap very good photos.  But, I do have a recipe at the end of it for you all--and a savory one at that!

So first, a bit of back-story to this Valentine's Day event that I did.  At my 'day job,' we are required when we are first year newbies to run Friday afternoon social events, which is basically food + beer + equally-attractive-non-alcoholic-beverages.  Everyone goes through it, and it's sort of a hazing ritual of "how good can you do a Social?"  When I was a first year, we were particularly competitive about it, and our Friday afternoon social events began to get more and more intense and involved and finally culminated in an eleven course gourmet dinner, served entirely in miniature at the end of the year.  I think that clearly established my year as the undisputed Social champions for quite some time to come.

Being the proud winner that I am, I find it necessary (and, I admit, a tad bit egotistical) to remind everyone of our dominance once every year.  And so on the Friday social of Valentine's Day every year, I step in and show them how it's done.

This year's menu included:

Red velvet cupcakes

Pina colada cupcakes

Orange, pomegranate, almond dark chocolate tartelettes

Chocolate-dipped tuxedo strawberries

Handmade dark chocolates

Apricot+goat cheese open-faced sandwiches

Red pepper hummus + pita bread

Smoked salmon, avocado cream, and sweet potato blinis

And, I love the tag-holders that I found!  Aren't they brilliant?  :-D

The event went really well, I think! though my kitchen still hasn't quite recovered from it all.  But, hey--as a one person job, I think I'm allowed some bit of mess in the kitchen.

Some of the things that I made were old favorites, like chocolate covered tuxedo strawberries and apricot goat cheese open-faced sandwiches:

Others, like icing shots, were new ideas that I was really itching to try out.  (They were popular, too!)

And, of course, you always need savory things to balance out the sweet, which is where platters like the red bell pepper hummus came in.

By far, one of the favorites this time around was a new savory dish: Sweet potato brown butter blinis, with smoked salmon, avocado sour cream, and chives.  It was a runaway HIT.  This is most definitely a dessert blog, but because these blinis were so good, I have to post the recipe for you all!  The blinis themselves have such a smooth, dense, earthy texture from the caramelized sweet potato and brown butter.  The fresh avocado sour cream adds a freshness to it all.  Top with the smoky saltiness of the salmon and the garlicky bit of chive, and you get one delicious bite of, well, delicious.  These work great as an appetizer and finger food, but they're so yummy that I could just sit down to a whole meal of them!

Finally with this post, we can bid adieu to all of the Valentine's Day festivities from this year!  Moving on to spring!!!

Ah, and one last thing that I learned from this whole experience: I desperately need to invest in an off-camera flash so that I can get decent on-site photos of food and events!


Read on for recipe...

A Sunflower and Pastry Wedding

So here goes the long-awaited post about Maria and Nicholas's fabulous September wedding! I've already been posting recipes from the various desserts at the wedding for a while now (vegan chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, key lime heart pies, pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecakes), but I have yet to give you all the big picture, so here goes.

This was most definitely my largest order thus far in the history of my little pastry start-up. I not only made Maria and Nick's wedding cake, but also a whole dessert bar! We'll get to that, though. First--the cake.

Chocolate cake

with cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache,

cream cheese frosting, and sugarpaste flowers

Maria is a huge chocoholic, so she most definitely insisted on a chocolate cake, and they wanted cherry, so I decided to make a chocolate cake with dark cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache, and cream cheese frosting on the outside to balance out the darkness inside! (I don't believe in fondant and try to avoid it whenever possible.) The sunflowers were all made by hand out of sugarpaste.

I have to admit, though, as much as I liked the final result with the sunflowers and ducks (Maria and Nick have an awesome rubber duck collection!), the cake looked even better after they had cut into it and taken the first slice. I'm so glad that I was around for it--it makes me feel so special that a couple is eating a cake that *I* made for their special day.


Anyways, so now on to the good part: the dessert bar! I have to say that I love this new trend at weddings. I did another similar dessert bar set-up in August for another wedding, but that one was far simpler and involved a lot more miniature cupcakes. Maria is also a huge tea connoisseur, so she wanted to have a fabulous, miniature pastry spread for everyone to enjoy with tea post-dinner. *Right* up my alley! So I whipped up the most fantastical menu I could think up for them:


Dark chocolate truffles with crushed cacao nibs

Espresso dark chocolate truffles

Amaretto dark chocolate truffles with almonds

Chocolate cupcake with pumpkin buttercream (vegan)

Fresh fruit tart

Pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecake

Key lime pie

White and dark chocolate dipped strawberries

Lemon pie meringues

Man, was it a spread! Three different types of handmade truffles (for the chocoholics, of course!), cheesecakes, tarts, pies, cookies, tuxedoed strawberries! Everything turned out to be quite a hit, and the desserts really flew off the tables... Yes, that's tables. Here's just one half of the set-up:


*whew* It was so much fun to do a large mini-pastry order like this, I really have to thank Maria and Nick for the chance!

Oh, and before I'm done, a quick peak at those truffles:


(What you see there off to the sides are the lemon pie meringues--basically, the best parts of a lemon meringue pie, minus the crust--and fruit tarts.)

Congrats on your marriage, Maria and Nick!

Key (Lime) to My Heart

Yet another dessert from the vast dessert table I did for Maria and Nick's wedding this past weekend (comprehensive post coming soon, I promise)!  At our first meeting, Nick mentioned that he really liked key lime pie, so I knew that I wanted, no matter what, to include it in the dessert menu.  But man, oh man! Squeezing key limes is one hell of a pain.  I've joked with several people now that if I were to open my own bakeshop and sell key lime pie, I would *have* to hire someone I couldn't stand and force them to squeeze key limes for by hand.  Or, just get someone who really enjoyed eating key lime pies.  Anyways! if you dare, I'll include the recipe here.  Or, if you have one of those handy dandy juice squeezers, you're golden, and I'm very jealous.

Key lime pie

with graham cracker crust

and dark/white chocolate hearts

By the way, these heart shaped mini-pans are just awesome.  I got mine at Sur la Table, though I couldn't find them online when I looked.  I also have the round version, which I did find on the website.  They're great pans, and mousses, cakes, cheesecakes, or tarts that I make with them always slide right out.  (of course, if you're paranoid like me, you'll take the time to line the bottoms with parchment and spray a bit of non-stick...)

Now onto the recipe (and chocolate hearts)!

Key Lime Pie

makes ~24 mini hearts

for graham cracker crust (this will make a bit more crust that you need, but better to have too much than not enough, in my book)

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (I just run store-bought graham crackers through a food processor)
1/2 tspn ground cinnamon
1/3 cup melted butter

1. Combine graham cracker crumbs and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Mix in butter.
2. Press the crumb mixture into (sprayed and lined) the bottoms of the pans, about 1 Tbspn per heart.  Use something like the side of a small rolling pin to press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan and a little bit up the sides.
3. Put the crust in the freezer while making the filling.

for filling

2 14oz. cans condensed milk (Trader Joe's has great organic condensed milk for cheap)
8 large egg yolks (save those whites for meringues/macarons!)
2-3 Tbspn key lime zest
1 cup key lime juice (~25 key limes... have fun!)
green food coloring (I used gel coloring, so please adjust as needed)

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Combine milk, yolks, zest, and juice in a bowl.  Whisk until smooth.  Whisk in one to two drops of food coloring for a light green color.
3. Pour mixture into the crumb-prepared pans, filling about to about two-thirds full.  Bake for 13-15 minutes until the center looks set but moves like jello when you give the pan a bit of a gentle shake.
4. Remove from oven and let cool completely.  Keep the pies in the pans until you are ready to serve.

To make chocolate hearts:

Melt chopped chocolate gradually in the microwave in a microwave-safe bowl or in a double boiler.  Pour the melted chocolate into a disposable piping bag or parchment triangle.  Be careful! The chocolate is very hot!  If it's too hot to hold, wrap a dish towel or paper towel around it so you don't burn your hands.  Then, pipe small heart shapes on a piece of parchment paper or Silpat.  Allow the chocolate to cool completely, and then peel off the parchment paper.  These hearts are made of untempered chocolate, so they are very delicate and should be kept in the fridge.  I use a pair of chopsticks to arrange them on the pies, but food-safe tweezers are also useful.  :-)











So one last story about the key lime pies.  As I was cleaning up the dessert table and consolidating the few remaining morsels onto two platters, a wedding guest comes up to me and asks, "Are there any more of those key lime pies?"  When I told him no, his face just completely fell!  He was so disappointed that I felt so bad I hadn't made more.  But, at the very least, I take it as a sign that all that key lime squeezing and juicing really paid off.

Something blue

For M & D's wedding, I put together a dessert bar for ~140 guests.


Chocolate, yellow, and funfetti cupcakes
with cream cheese and chocolate cream cheese frosting

The dessert bar consisted of three tables:
1. a strawberry shortcake station, with strawberries, strawberry sauce,
angel food cake, pound cake, and whipped cream

Angel food and pound cake for strawberry shortcakes.

2. A table of cookies of various sorts, brownies, and cupcakes.

and... 3. a sundae station (not pictured).

the CLRF Reception

120 people + early evening reception = a three-table spread of serious food. Yes, everything (with exception of cinnamon twists) was made by me.

A sample of the spread:

Apricot-goat cheese baguettes
Broccolini, wrapped with carrots, with vegetarian oyster sauce
Fruit plate, with cantaloupe, grapes, watermelon
Twists plate: cinnamon twists and garlic-parmesan herb twists
Chocolate and vanilla meringues
Mini fruit tarts
White/dark chocolate-dipped, tuxedo-ed strawberries

Not pictured above:
Mozzarella, artichoke, cherry tomato skewers
Cheese plate
Red bell pepper hummus + pita
Baba ganoush + pita
Tzatziki + pita
Buffalo shrimp with celery and blue cheese dip
kalamata olives + pimenton-salted almonds

TREND @ Stanford 2009

Lemon poppy seed pound cake with blueberries and vanilla mousse.

Vegan Carrot Cake - (this one's won awards!)

Dark Chocolate Truffles, 3 ways: (from L to R)
Lavendar
Spicy
Blood orange

(also on the menu, but not pictured: pomegranate-basil cheesecakes)

Le Petit Dinner

This is the menu from last year's End-of-Year party that I co-catered for the department. It was a complete 11-course dinner, all in miniature. Dessert, which is cut-off from the menu, included two entries: lemon-lavendar teacakes and raspberry mocha chocolate cakes (again, all in miniature). Preceded by my tuxedoed strawberries and followed up by spicy chocolate truffles.

In the foreground: lemon-lavender teacakes, with hand-coated sugared lilacs and almond slivers. At the sides: tuxedoed strawberries. In the background: raspberry mocha chocolate cake, and spicy dark chocolate truffles.


Close-up of the raspberry mocha chocolate cakes and lemon-lavender teacakes