Prepping for Tet and pound cake while waiting

Of late my pictures have been less then appealing. And if you noticed the tags on the bottom you will see what camera I am using. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tim’s Canon 850 IS. It’s his camera but I have it all the time, what more can you not love. And Canon point and shoot are the very best! Please don’t let me get started on Canon P/S, because once I do I can’t stop! The point is the P/S, although an awesome camera, just don’t cut it when it comes to taking pictures of food, unless I have the best lighting, which my kitchen does not. So the focus is off, the color is off, but the food is good!

Also, my family is slowly but surely getting ready for Lunar New Year/Chinese New Year/Tet. This year it falls on Valentine’s Day, which isn’t that big of a deal to me, Valentines that is, since Tet is far more important, but it being on Valentines, it will make flowers to much more expensive. And Tim has been trying to set a date for our Valentine Dinner, eh? I can go without, but won’t tell him that if he wants to treat me to a nice dinner. Love that man, I really do.

This past weekend was a weekend full of clean up the house, removing and replacing. Cleaning out the refrigerator so that there will be space for the bounty of food we will be having. My mom has been making Vietnamese Ginger and Coconut Candy and dua mon. I’ve been trying to catch as many pictures as possible while she is doing this, but she is super fast and get it done before I get home so you will only see the end results of it. It’s an ongoing process, hopefully I will get a post up before Tet starts.


Muc Dua - Candied Coconut Candy - This is the end product. It's been years since my mom made this. I'm trying to learn, but she did it so fast that I didn't get a chance to learn.

So for filler I will tell you about the lemoncello ricotta pound cake I made this pass Sunday. It’s been a recipe that I’ve been dying to try for a very long time and it was worth it. Like I’ve mentioned above, I’m cleaning out my refrigerator and noticed that I had some ricotta cheese, so what better way to use it than make something I’ve been dying to make.
I just wish the picture was better so you can really see how wonderful this pound cake is. I first found it on Proud Italian Cook. It just sounded so yummy. The only change I made was omitting 1 teaspoon of vanilla and added 2 teaspoon of lemoncello and 1 teaspoon of lemon extract. Oh it was just so yummy! And remember I have issues with cake flour, but this came out AWESOME!

P.S. I found this site, FoodGawker, today while browsing Annie's Eats. I don't know what took me so long to find that link! Oh! I've been having food-gasim all AM!

P.S.S I also made a Pecan Pie for my family. Oh gosh it was so good! Please go do it now!!! You must!

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Shirley's Surprise Baby Shower

When I bake for a special occasion, I have to plan it out. I have to also make sure I have enough space in our refrigerator , if not then I clean it up or hope that outdoors is cold enough so that I can put a few of the veggies outside for the night and it won’t ‘harm’ them in any way. Yes this is the only way I can bake without putting stress on my dad, he hates a cluttered refrigerator, I don’t get it ether! So for Shirley’s Surprise Baby shower I had to do her cupcakes and cakes in three phases.

Friday – I baked the cakes and cup cakes. It was getting late so I wasn’t able to put the bake goods inside the fridge, because I also needed to wash the dishes and clean up my mess. But because I made HummingBird cake I knew that it will not dry up over night. I also made the fondant giraffe and curly “O” disc for the cup cakes. That took the longest, rolling out thin ropes to make the “O” for Oliver.

Saturday – After the kids left and before I had to make a mad dash to get ready for Tim’s friend (Kowloon) Surprise Birthday dinner, I made my Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Butter Cream. I quickly did a crumb coat and did a middle layer. But I also accidently added gel color into the icing. I wanted the crumb coat to set before I put the rest of the icing on, but got ahead of myself and put Blue gel color for the cup cakes, so I iced those instead. I really didn’t want to because I knew that when I close the cap of the container, my peaks would disappear, but oh well.

Sunday – I woke up extra early and did another batch of icing to ice my cake so it can set for 2 hours before I put on the fondant. It was getting to be crunch time so all of my ideas I had on my head (circles of colored fondant or ribbons of colored fondant down the sides of the cake) few out the window. And because I wasn’t able to get rid of all of creases I decided to put a 2 inch ribbon as the edging. Topped the cake with the giraffe/dinosaur/great dane and hurried to the shower before the guest of honor got here before I did.
But really, all that planning is because of the time limited that I have. I can probably do all of this in two days if I didn’t have to watch the kids, get lunch for the family, have space in the refrigerator, but I don’t so I plan, so planning is not a bad thing :D

When I got there the hostess were just unloading their car and setting up. We were getting things ready while the guest sat back and watched the madness!
The table was set with beautiful hydrangea. AKT did a great job with the flowers and limes.
Isn't that just beautiful! We all had key limes to take home too!
Ann did a candy bar for the Thank You gifts. This was the sweets center. As you can tell Shirley is having a boy. Ann wanted to coordinate with my colors but really none of us knew what color Shirley had chosen for her baby, but knowing her she really didn’t care much for that, I’m just like her :D
I just love this picture of Shirley. I know she was very against showing her baby bump. I have no idea why, the girl is beautiful!
Although this is a posy posy picture, hate posy pictures, but I just love how the light hits her. And how cute is the word ‘BOY’ is nicely seen.
Hummingbird cup cakes with Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Butter Cream. Remember how I said I was afraid of my peaks being squished by the container. I found a solution to it! And it worked! Love this picture that Trica took. The colors are so vibrant.
6 inch hummingbird cake with cream cheese Swiss meringue butter cream with fondant on top. You can see that the fondant is not perfectly straight. But as you can see I found a fix! Improvise is my best friend.
AKT, Trica, Shirley, Ann, and I. Shirley said she wasn’t mad at us for throwing her a party she didn’t want. :D
All the ladies at the brunch. We took a quick picture before we parted ways. It was a lot of fun and I know Shirley enjoyed it too!

A month back I made a birthday cake for Tim. Ann finally uploaded them.
I'm not very good at decorating or piping words. 9 inch Italian Cream Cake with Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Butter Cream (can you see I love this icing?)
Tim loved the cake and he didn't expect it at all. For that matter he didn't even noticed that it was in the car with him. LOL

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Saturday mornings...is never free

I smell like bacon.. well the whole house smells of bacon, smokey, yummy bacon. I love it but I hate smelling like it. I had bought a whole bunch of bacon before thanks giving to make one of my side dishes, but due to us all not eating meat I had to put it in the freezer and there it stayed for 3 months. So today I finally got to make it. I learned this on FoodTV, on Paula Dean’s show. One of her guest made bacon by putting it in the oven on a cookie rack and let the bacon grease acculate on the pan rather than in the bacon. So before putting it in my 400+ degrees oven I peppered it and it just gives that extra kick. If you re going to try this, you must do it with a thick cut, but it just so much better!
Oven baked bacon! Nice and crispy with out all that grease!

Oh I also made butter milk pancakes too! I wish I had time to take proper pictures, but I was in a rush since my niece and nephew are here and I needed to feed them. Blue berry buttermilk pancake. They were nice and fluffy and yummy. My younger brother is eating it in a blow. Oh and because of the extra bacon, I made bacon pancakes! Oh it reminded me of San Diego! Would you like the recipe?

But the real reason why I’m her to day is to give you a sneak peak at what I’m doing. It’s going to be my first fondant cake so hopefully it looks ok. Here it the topper.
It's a giraffe. I know it looks more like a cow, but it's my first one. I just hope it looks better when the whole cake is complete.

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