So What? Saturday

I can blog about Saturday on Sunday.  So What?

The truth is while yesterday was a culinary success, it was in reality a pretty crummy day involving me spilling lots of things, and the death of a family pet :(

Nevertheless I had reason to celebrate! Yesterday was my dear friend Geneva's birthday.  She is coming over this evening for a belated celebration, and when she said she liked red velvet cake, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get all Martha-y.

I used this cake recipe, and my own frosting recipe, which I will get to later.

As is tradition, I lined up all my ingredients and gave myself a little "you can do this" pep talk.

I followed the recipe exactly, because, well, you don't mess with Martha.  She knows her stuff.

The batter involved two WHOLE bottles of red food coloring, and turned out this lovely red shade.

Here they are ready to go into the oven!

They baked for what seemed like an eternity...and came out still a lovely red color.

At was at this point that Matthew and I had to force ourselves to go on a few errands to let the cakes cool, as I have a habit of frosting cakes too early out of sheer excitement.

When we got home I made the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 8 oz pkgs of cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract


I beat the butter and cream cheese together, and added the rest of the ingredients.  Should you make this recipe for a layer cake, resist the urge to eat the whole bowl of frosting.  There was JUST enough frosting to frost the whole cake.   I cut the top of one of the cakes off to level it, and frosted them together.  And.....

BAM! I have mad, martha-like, cake skills!

The worst part about this cake?  We had to wait over 24 hours to eat it...stay tuned for the taste.

For dinner?  I ventured into the world of risotto...

Vegetable Risotto

1 qt chicken stock
1 cup water
1 cup white wine
3 cups risotto
2 cloves garlic, sliced (EWWW!)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 batch roasted veggies
1 cup baby spinach
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup feta cheese
1 tbsp sage
Salt
Pepper


I heated the oil in a pan, and added in the garlic, and sautéed for about 3 minutes.  I then added in the risotto, and white wine.  I reduced the heat to medium, and simmered the chicken stock and water in a separate pot.  I then ladled in the stock one ladle-ful at a time, until all the liquid evaporated, repeating this step about 70 billion times.

All the while (hello multi-tasking), I was roasting my veggies (an old recipe if you recall) in the oven.  When the risotto had cooked, I folded in the veggies, spinach, cheese, and seasoned it to taste.  I thought it could have used more salt, but Matthew is eating the leftovers as we speak.

Risotto was not my favorite tiny kitchen feat, it got quite warm in there.  But it was tasty, and thanks to my crummy day, we had Ben and Jerry's for dessert.