The company was great and the food was great. What more could we ask for? (a little sleep would be nice but I'm not counting on that for a while...)
Like any good Birthday party the cake took center stage. Christian and I tried very hard to make a cake that looked good and tasted good. I think we finally succeeded.
To accompany the chocolate cake we made Vanilla Frozen yogurt.
And for dinner we had individual pizzas, Ina Garten style.
I wanted the menu to be good but easy(ish) to make. I'm resigned to the fact that for a while I won't have as much time as I used to, to cook as much as I want.
Below are the recipes for the Chocolate Cake, Vanilla Frozen Yogurt, and Ina Garten Pizza dough. Enjoy!
Chocolate Cake
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1 2/3 cups sugar
- 3/4 cup butter
- 2/3 cup good quality baking cocoa
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- Heat oven to 350* and grease bottom and sides of pan
- Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly.
- Bear on high speed for 3 minutes.
- Pour batter into pan
- Bake for 30-35 minutes
- Cool for ten minutes and then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.
Vanilla Frozen Yogurt
a couple weeks ago designmom wrote a post about frozen yogurt. I'm a huge fan of frozen yogurt so I checked out the original recipe a frozen yogurt recipe to rival pinkberry's recipecreamy blackberry frozen yogurt and became inspired to use yogurt cheese to make create my recipe. Yesterday I decided to stick with the original vanilla frozen yogurt recipe. So good. So creamy and rich. So delish! Here is how I made the recipe using yogurt cheese
- 6 cups plain yogurt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Place 6 cups of yogurt on a cheese cloth. Gather the ends and fold them over the yogurt and hang it over a bowl in the fridge over night. This will make 2 cups of yogurt cheese
- Mix together the yogurt cheese, sugar, and vanilla.
- Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions
a couple weeks ago I tried this recipe and fell in love. If you like thin crust pizza you will love this dough.
- 1 1/4 cups warm water
- 2 packages dry yeast
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 3 tablespoons good olive oil
- 4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook.
- Add 3 cups flour, then the salt, and mix.
- While mixing, add 1 more cup of flour.
- Knead the dough on low speed for about 10 minutes until smooth, sprinkling it with flour, if necessary, to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
- When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead by hand a dozen times. It should be smooth and elastic.
- Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl and turn it several times to cover it lightly with oil.
- Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll each one into a smooth ball. Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover them with a damp towel. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Use immediately
- Preheat oven to 500*
- Roll and stretch each ball into a rough 8-inch circle and place them all on baking sheets sprinkled with cornmeal. You will be able to fit 2 pizzas on each baking sheet.
- Brush the dough with olive oil and add any toppings you wish.
- drizzle olive oil over the pizzas and bake for 10-15 minutes
