St. Paddy's Day Pot of Gold Mini-Cakes

03/01/2012

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Hey y'all... I'm doing the holiday thing early (or right on time, in blogger world).  I realize that I posted my 4th of July cake ON the 4th of July, and my holiday cookies on December 30th (oy vey) and that does not give readers enough time to make these holiday items for the actual holiday (unless they have a time machine...if you do, please let me know).  I wanted to make mini-cakes for St. Paddy's day that reminded me (and hopefully you too!) of little lucky pots of gold!  (I have recently been informed that it is actually St. PADDY's day and not St. Patty's day...learn something new every day huh?!)

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My life is a total mess... a good mess... like this risotto

12/16/2011

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So, basically my life is crazy.  I thought studying for the bar was hard but still I found time to post and tweet and facebook etc. during that frantic time.  Now, life seems even crazier.  My caseload is huge and my retail job which started at 10-12 hrs has been bumped up to about 25-35 hrs per week.... totally not complaining because (a) I love it, (b) I love the people who work there, and (c) I could most certainly use the money!  But with all that combined and snowballing I have had much less time to devote to my favorite outlet-- OinK (that's my cheeky name for Order in the Kitchen and YES I know I left out the "the" but come on? OinK? Can't get better than that for a food blog nickname... it just screams "I love to stuff my face".  

So anywayy, as some of you probably know I love Top Chef.  Love may be an understatement as I am mildly obsessed with it.  So I was watching it the other night and a contestant was making risotto (and got sent home for not having it plated in time (tear)).  And the judges kept talking about how risotto was a make it or break it dish on the show because there have been so many times it has gone horribly wrong.  Naturally, this caused me to want to make risotto even though I have been trying to watch my weight and risotto is on the bottom of the list of things I should be eating.  That's neither here nor there.  So I decided to make some risotto, only to find out that I didn't have anything I needed to make it except arborio rice.  I improvised.  It worked (sort of).  By sort of, I mean that I would certainly suggest doing it differently, change it up a bit, and I'll tell you how I would do that.
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American Flag Cake for the 4th of July!

07/04/2011

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melted american flag cake...still tasted delicious!
This blog post will be rather quick, as I have a lot of work to do for Bar Exam stuff, but I just wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of July!!  Happy Birthday America! This year, I decided to try out the "American Flag Cake" created by 17 and Baking with a great version by Glorious Treats.  Below, I have included an instructional video on how to make and assemble the cake, and it's a nice way for you to get to know me better!  Please check it out!  I will also post some pictures from the process and let you know how it went.  The picture above is after the cake had melted for about 3-4 hours so if you served it cold it probably wouldn't be so messy but sometimes I think messy is more beautiful than perfect.
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First "Trial and Error"...how I discovered "Potato Bacon"

06/18/2011

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Well folks, it's Saturday.  And that means, I'm coming up for air.  I've been studying like a maniac for the last few days to try to make up for the 4 days I missed while in West Virginia for my grandmother's viewing and funeral.  I definitely would like to take this time to thank all of you for your incredible support and thoughtful words during this hard time for me.  As you know from a previous post, my grandmother was very dear to me and losing her is the hardest loss I have ever dealt with to date.  Unfortunately, it couldn't have come at a worse time, because as you all know from my obsessively annoying twitter updates and pictures, I am studying for the BAR.  Gross.  Anyway...on to happier things...

Here are some things that make me happy:  Top Chef, trying new things, and bacon.  So here I go trying to mix all those into one.  

I had just watched this episode of Top Chef (season 3) where the contestants in their "Quickfire Challenge" had to make "paupiettes" or potato-wrapped fish.  It seemed simple enough and so I thought I would try it.  I didn't have a mandoline but I thought it would be okay because of my superb knife skills (ok I don't have superb knife skills but I thought I would try anyway)... Well, apparently, using a mandoline is extremely important.  I ended up not being able to slice the potatoes thinly enough so that they would wrap around the fish.  FAIL.

So now here I am, stuck with a beautiful filet of halibut, gorgeous leeks just waiting to be the bed for this potato-wrapped fish, and potato slices too thick to wrap around.  Definition of a trial and error.  So here's what I did instead:
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