Bisquick is a life-saver.

For the second time this weekend, Mack and I turned to the dry mix to simplify a meal, this time using the off-the-box recipe for pancakes, supplementing them with a handful of chocolate chips. Mack finished his off with some sliced bananas and syrup.

Not difficult or a cooking accomplishment, Bisquick pancakes are still a great way to start off a morning!

For Jeanie and Chris’s housewarming/Jeanie’s birthday party, Mack and I made Better Butter Chicken, an Indian favorite from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry. I had helped with this recipe at May’s house last year, but for some reason, couldn’t really remember the steps involved.

I wasn’t sure if using a rotisserie chicken (as opposed to cooking raw chicken) would result in dry-tasting meat, but actually, it turned out fine. Mack did a great job de-boning the bird, flaking off large chunks of meat, while I prepped the ingredients for the base. We followed the instructions closely, with the exception of adding an entire ~750mL can of diced tomatoes. To Mack’s surprise, between the two of us, we were able to pull this recipe together in just over a half an hour.

While some of the guests complained that the dish wasn’t spicy enough, I personally prefer a milder version of butter chicken. Of course, with the ease of the recipe as a whole, it wouldn’t be difficult to incorporate chilies or more chili powder into the sauce to taste.

Thanks for inviting us to your house, Jeanie (and Chris)! And happy birthday!

Inspired by a food trend as reported in Cosmopolitan (yes, Cosmo), Mack and I decided to make Savoury Waffles for dinner.

Given that it was Friday and we were both lazy, we resorted to using Bisquick to make the waffle base. It was the first time either of us had used a waffle iron, so it took a bit of trial and error for us to know how much batter was needed for the “perfect” sized waffle (not too thin, etc.).

Once the waffles were done, we topped them with shredded turkey breast, sliced white mushrooms, and a generous handful of medium cheddar, and placed them under the broiler to melt the cheese. Five minutes later, the “pizza waffles”, as Mack called them, were done.

I chose to garnish mine with a bit of green onion, which provided a nice sharp bite, but really, any food item with that amount of cheese would taste satisfactory. Mack wanted to know how we might make the waffle portion taste less like a breakfast dish for next time, but I wasn’t sure.

The savoury waffles weren’t bad for a quick dinner fix, but they definitely weren’t the picture of healthy that we should have been going for.

With a resolve to eat healthier, Mack and I prepared a relatively balanced meal on Friday for dinner.

Seared Salmon with Balsamic Glaze was on the menu, as was an interesting recipe for Dirty Rice, which incorporates coffee as one of the liquid additives. A side salad of Italian greens (packaged, we cheated), completed our plates.

The salmon was quick to prepare – though we had skinless fillets instead of the recommended skin-on type. I delegated the searing job to Mack (a splatter screen would have been a good idea), and though one end of my fish ended up slightly charred due to the thickness differential, the salmon ended up deliciously crispy and cooked through. The balsamic glaze was a wonderfully easy way to punch up the flavour of what would have been a perfectly fine entree on its own, and is something that elevates salmon to a “fancy” dinner party dish.

The rice didn’t turn out as well as it could have as I should have left it on the stove for another five minutes or so. Still, the coffee flavour was negligible, and all we could taste was the oregano.

The best thing about our dinner was the fact that it took virtually no time or planning at all. With a well-stocked pantry and the will to continue driving past restaurant and fast food alternatives, a good, healthy meal can be had at home.

Though I was thoroughly exhausted from the experience of hosting a dinner party last year, at the end of it, I knew I had been bitten by the entertaining bug.

The concept behind a gathering of friends with food is inherently appealing to me – a blank slate to develop an appropriate menu and design an unobtrusive setting and ambiance. Ideally of course, the edibles and the décor will fall away, unnoticed, to allow for conversation and connection.

Though I’m pretty sure the idea of a dessert party was introduced to me by Real Simple Celebrations, the desire to host a sweets-specific shindig has been with me for so long now that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get the planning off the ground. In March, I finally stopped dragging my feet, picked a date, and actually committed my mental fantasy to paper.

Planning

Like my dinner party, I decided that paper invitations were a must. While Facebook (cough) or Evite e-mails may be more convenient, there is nothing like a handmade paper invitation to help set a tone of simple elegance.

I downloaded a fill-in-the-blank template from Real Simple, printed it with Mack’s help on kraft-patterned cardstock, and attached a bright segment of ribbon in place of baker’s twine. While we could have mailed the finished invitations, we ended up hand-delivering most of them on a Sunday afternoon two weeks prior to the party for an added personal touch.

Though Mack blogged that we officially began cooking on Saturday afternoon, it was actually closer to 5pm when we finally got going (he Twittered progress updates throughout the evening).

Tablet station

I wished all of the desserts were as easy as the Panna Cotta to prepare (which I’ve blogged about in the past). What I failed to recognize until that night was that most of our recipes required the creation of both a base and an icing or a filling, which, if we had access to an unlimited number of disposable bowls and/or a behind-the-scenes Food Network staff to assist us with cleanup, would have been much less painful.

One of many rounds of dishes

After the glasses of Panna Cotta were tucked safely away in the fridge to set overnight, we tackled the Vanilla Cupcakes. A Crumbs Bake Shop recipe from Gourmet Shops of New York, this was one of the two recipes we were preparing for the first time that day. The batter was easy enough to put together, though because we had to use the extra-large muffin tin liners I had in the house, we ended up with only 10 cupcakes instead of the suggested number of 24.

Using an ice cream scoop to measure batter

Awaiting icing

While the cupcakes were in the oven, we moved on to Beatty’s Chocolate Cake, something we had made last month.

Pouring cake batter

Before heading out for a much-needed dinner break, we finished the icing for the cupcakes. Mack still thinks I switched bowls on him when he turned his back, but in reality, the butter just needed a little more time with the electric mixer to attain the right consistency.

Perfect!

“Sprinkles make me sneeze”

What turned out to be the most difficult item to make were Donna Hay’s Melting Moments – essentially shortbread sandwiches with a lemon filling. While the preparation of the cookie mixture involved nothing out of the ordinary, I had no idea how we would be able to pipe such stiff dough through a fluted nozzle.

Doing my best to make a cookie out of a trail of dough

Luckily, Mack came to the rescue – he was a piping machine! The warming of the dough after working with the piping bag for a while made the process slightly easier, but I wouldn’t hesitate in saying that Mack earned his baking stripes with this trial.

Piping expert!

Out of the oven

The last item for the oven that day were the phyllo pastry cups that would be filled the next day to form White Chocolate Tartlets (I decided to forgo the hazelnut toasting).

Phyllo cooling

Our last concoction before we could rest was the chocolate icing for the two-tiered cake. I left Mack alone on this one, and with flash-chilled baking chocolate, he beat a smooth, nearly perfect icing. Spots be gone!

Mid-icing

Packing up for the night

Bright and early the next morning, infused with the goodness of an Egg McMuffin, we set out to finish and plate the desserts. I’m thankful that my parents were able to lend me a hand in tidying up the house, so I could focus on food just before the party started.

Prep table

Though we lost Mack’s iPod Touch in the final moments, resulting in a CD rotation of too much Norah Jones for his taste, we were ready for our friends by 1pm.

Ready to serve

Flowers and cake

Cupcakes

Melting Moments (we axed the lemon filling and opted for jam from a jar instead)

White Chocolate Tartlets

Panna Cotta

The table is set!

Party

After all of our preparation, I was happy to finally be able to share the fruits of our labor. Our friends seemed to enjoy themselves, and though we had some leftover desserts, it was a manageable amount for my family to consume.

Waiting to start

Andrea pretending she didn’t get her arm stuck

Annie finished her massive cake slice!

We ended off the afternoon with some wine and (More) Dirty Minds. I think this was the first time I played the game based on the prescribed set of rules, and boy, was it difficult! Or maybe we’ll just blame the sugar high.

Strategizing

Janice, May and Mack

Double D-i-r-t-y

I had no idea a dessert party would end up being more work than a dinner party, but it was. Of course, though I won’t be immediately hosting another gathering, it’s just a matter of time before my next idea rears its head.

Thanks to everyone for coming! The rest of my pictures are here.

Dessert party practice-run #2 involved a Giada recipe for White Chocolate Hazelnut Tartlets. As neither of us had worked with phyllo pastry before, I knew we had to try it with time to spare before attempting to duplicate it without error next week.

After finding out that toasting hazelnuts would take nearly half an hour, I decided to leave them out this time. The white chocolate and whipped cream mixture was a cinch to whip up, and after it had chilled in the fridge for an hour, it was time to move on to the phyllo.

I had let the package thaw on the counter since the afternoon, so the thin sheets of pastry were more than pliable. So much so that a tear appeared in more than one sheet. Thankfully, the layers of brushed butter and phyllo covered any small mistakes we made.

We scrunched them down in large muffin tins, doing our best to create “artful” edges, and baked them for about 8 minutes. We figured the mini-muffin tins would be better for dessert-party servings, and will be making smaller versions next week.

A drop of Nutella into a cooled phyllo cup, a dollop of white chocolate whipped cream, and a sprinkling of chocolate shavings later, the tartlets was done. One that should be made just prior to serving, it may be the only dessert that we will be creating from scratch (the Nutella doesn’t count, Andrea), the morning of.

Just over a week to go!

Before my string of cooking experimentations, I was quite used to biscuits made from dry mix. Just recently, I found out how much better from-scratch, cold butter-incorporated biscuits are. Ina Garten’s Cheddar-Dill version turned out great, and this afternoon, Mack and I decided to give Bobby Flay’s Buttermilk Biscuits a try.

I gave Mack the most difficult job of creaming the butter with the dry ingredients, and then having to try to form a ball of dough with the small amount of buttermilk we were permitted to wet the mixture with. I will admit to cheating a little and adding slightly more milk than called for in the recipe, but who wouldn’t? Also, because we had the intention of forming sandwiches out of our biscuits, we used a 3 inch circular cutter instead of the recommended 2.5 inches to allow for a more hearty serving.

Scooping up slices of chicken breast and shredding some marble we had sitting in the fridge, our sandwiches were born (we considered scrambling eggs briefly as well, but by then, we just wanted to assemble and eat them). The biscuits were flaky and crunchy, just the way I like them, though really, with the butter content, this recipe is almost fail safe.

I’d be interested in playing with different filling combinations (basil/buffalo mozzarella/tomato, crushed fruit), and making this recipe a weekend breakfast standby.

I was feeling uncharacteristically uninspired this week in choosing a dish for a potluck with a few friends of mine. Lately, I seem to work better with parameters of some kind, whether it be the need for portability, a dish theme, or a color ideal.

I decided finally to browse the Food Network site to see if anything would strike my fancy, and came across an Ina Garten recipe for chocolate cake. It seemed straightforward enough, and as I still hadn’t found a suitable “statement cake” for my dessert party (I wasn’t happy with how my tiramisu turned out a few weeks ago), I thought it could be a potential candidate.

I enlisted Mack’s help as my sous chef (hee), and we plodded through the recipe using a KitchenAid stand-up mixer. I typically prefer combining ingredients by hand, and after this go-around, I found it wasn’t necessary to use the mixer at all.

We didn’t have any trouble with the cake portion of the recipe (except perhaps knowing to forgo the parchment paper lining next time), but the icing was another story. By the time the baking chocolate had cooled to room temperature, some of it had actually hardened, thus streaking our icing with chocolate chunks. “Spotted” in the title refers to the overall appearance of our cake, though even I must admit our mistake made for a textured icing that garnered no complaints.

The cake turned out moist, and the mocha-flavoured icing was something I’d definitely make again. My Mum commented that the cake wasn’t too sweet (translation: she liked it), and all of my friends had seconds at the potluck. Have I found a dessert party winner?

In part for a dessert party practice run and in part because I was craving something sweet, I decided to finally try and duplicate a tiramisu recipe that a client had given me last year. I was unfortunately unable to locate the exact recipe on the web, but I found a wonderful collection of tiramisu varieties here, worth perusing if you’re interested. Also, in the purchasing of a container of mascarpone or bag of ladyfingers, it is without a doubt that a similar recipe to the one I used will appear on the packaging.

Anyway, I was amazed at how easy it was – I made sure to make coffee and allow it to cool a few hours ahead of assembling the cake, but after that, the most time-consuming recipe item was beating the egg whites until stiff. I did find that the ladyfingers (my client recommended the “Tina” brand, which can be found at the Italian Centre) very quickly soaked up the coffee, so I had to be careful with the few seconds that they sat in the liquid.

Despite getting a few requests to make my salad rolls again (who knew they were such a hit?), I wanted to take the latest potluck opportunity at work to test out a new recipe.

I thought Laura Calder’s Mimosa Eggs would make a good candidate for portable, made-in-advance food, so I gave it a shot (turns out, only portable as long as a seat on the bus, without a brake-happy driver, is secured).

I’ve been learning my egg boiling lessons, albeit slowly. The first time, a few weeks back, I ended up with a watery, still-uncooked egg, essentially poached in its own shell. The second time, I left them in the hot water too long, and the yolks turned that unattractive musty grey shade.

This time, I didn’t quite get it Goldilocks (just right), but I came pretty close. I used shallots instead of the green onion, and a little less mayo than called for (I wanted the solid yolk to still have some crumble in each bite). It’s really a pretty easy recipe that would make a great cocktail party hors d’oeuvre, beautifully yellow on a plate, nicely accented with the vibrant red pinch of paprika. They’re nothing special, but are satisfyingly filling in two bites or less.