Birthday Coconut Cake

I made this coconut cake for my mom's birthday this year, and I was really happy with how it turned out.  It's nice and moist with good coconut flavor.  I'm also in love with the frosting - a simple seven-minute frosting topped with sweetened flaked coconut.  This frosting is a lot easier to make if you have a stand mixer; if not I'd suggest finding a friend to help hold the blender while you pour in the sugar syrup.  My sister, Anna, was nice enough to help me out with the frosting - and she's holding the cake in the pictures below.  This really does make the perfect birthday cake - sweet, festive and delicious!

Birthday Coconut Cake (adapted from Diana Rattray, original recipe here)

For the cake:
2-1/4 cups cake or pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
10 tablespoons butter
3 large eggs

For the frosting:
2 large egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
Sweetened flaked coconut, to serve

1. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.  Grease and flour the paper and sides of the pans.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

2. Heat the coconut milk and flaked coconut until hot.  Let cool slightly, and then pulse in the blender until the coconut is finely chopped. 

3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.

4. Beat the butter until light and creamy.  Gradually add the sugar, being sure to beat well.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  

5. Add the flour mixture and coconut mixture in alternating additions (flour-coconut-flour-coconut-flour).  Beat on low speed between each addition until well blended, and scrape down the sides of the bowl regularly. 

6. Divide the batter equally between the two pans.  Bake 30 minutes, until browned and a tester comes out clean.  Cool in the pan for about 15 minutes, and then invert onto cooling racks and carefully peel off the parchment paper. 

7. Frost the cake once completely cooled.  Bring the water and sugar to a boil, and then cover and cook without stirring for 1 minute.  Uncover, and boil, stirring frequently, until the mixture reaches 230 degrees on a candy thermometer (or until hot enough to spin a thread when dropped from a spoon into a glass of cool water).

8. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.  Continue to beat on high speed while you gradually add the sugar syrup in a thin stream.  Beat about 7 minutes until the frosting is fluffy and completely cooled.  

9. Frost the cake: invert one cake onto a serving plate and frost the top and sides.  Place the second layer on top, and frost the top and sides.  Sprinkle flaked coconut on top.

Here's my mom blowing out the candles...

My sister, Anna, with the cake.

A close-up of the cake.

"Happy Birthday to You..."

Snapper with Grapefruit and Rosemary

I am really loving fish in a packet.  I've been trying more recipes with this cooking method, and it produces great results very easily.  You just wrap up fish with various flavorful ingredients, roast in the oven, and you're good to go.  It's particularly nice since it's very easy to make just one or two servings.  The only tricky part is getting the fish cooked through but not overcooked, since you can't see the fish while it's cooking.  This recipe called for cooking 30 minutes, which I found led to slightly overcooked fish.  It wasn't bad by any means, and the thicker pieces of the fillet were nice and moist, but the edges ended up a bit too dry.  So, I'd check after 20 minutes and pop the fish back in the oven if needed. 

The grapefruit and rosemary might sound like a slightly odd combination, but they actually worked very well together.  The grapefruit mellowed a bit in the oven, but still had a great acidity that paired perfectly with the mild fish and earthy rosemary.  I served this fish with pearled barley (toasted in olive oil, then simmered in chicken broth with a sprig of rosemary for about 45 minutes) and a green salad. 

Snapper with Grapefruit and Rosemary (adapted from Local Flavors)
Serves 2

Aluminum foil
1 T unsalted butter
2 snapper fillets, 4-6 ounces each
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 ruby red grapefruit
1 tsp minced rosemary

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Tear off 2 pieces of foil, each about 2 feet long.  Fold in half. Rub the center of each piece lightly with butter (or spray with oil).
2. Rinse the fish, pat dry, and season with salt and pepper. Place a piece of fish on each piece of foil, and divide the fruit among them. Sprinkle with rosemary and dot with the remaining butter.
3. Fold each piece of foil to make a loose but tightly sealed packet. Bake 20 minutes, then check for doneness and return to the oven if the fish is not cooked through.

Cupcake Hero: Almond-Raspberry Mini Cupcakes

I haven't done a Cupcake Hero challenge in quite a while (in fact, looking back it appears the last one was Earth Day of 2008!).  But, the secret ingredient this month totally spoke to me: raspberries!  Raspberries are one of my all-time favorite fruits, and I also happened to have some in the fridge that needed to be used up.

I ended up adapting a raspberry-almond blondie recipe to serve as mini cupcakes. I have to say: I love mini cupcakes!  They're so cute and lots of fun.  Although I'm always a little worried when I try to adapt recipes (in this case, cutting the recipe in half and subbing some almond meal for part of the flour), I knew these were a winner when I took them out of the oven.  They rose perfectly, and smelled amazing.  The smell of cooked raspberry is just so delectable...super jammy and sweet smelling.  In terms of flavor, I'd say these are a bit between a muffin and a cupcake.  They're not so sweet that they'd be out of place at breakfast, but they have a nice pound cake sort of texture that certainly wouldn't be out of place at dessert - especially if you top these off with a bit of sweetened whipped cream!

Almond-Raspberry Mini Cupcakes (adapted from Martha Stewart)
Makes 12 mini cupcakes

Spray oil with flour
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup almond meal
1/2 tsp baking powder
scant 1/2 tsp salt
4 T unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
12 raspberries

1. Spray a 12-cup mini muffin/cupcake tin with oil (preferably the kind with flour in the oil, found on the baking aisle).  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Whisk together the flour, almond meal, baking powder, and salt, and set aside.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar, and then beat in the egg until well mixed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Add the vanilla and beat to combine.
4. Beat in the dry ingredients until well mixed.
5. Divide the batter among the muffin tins, and then top each mini cupcake with a raspberry.
6. Bake about 22-24 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are possibly the best chocolate chip cookies ever - and they're 100% whole wheat!  I was a little skeptical of the recipe for that reason, but gave it a try because the cookbook, Good to the Grain, was very tempting.  I was pleasantly surprised - these cookies are super delicious, with a great nutty flavor from the whole wheat.  Unlike some whole grain recipes, the cookies aren't particularly healthy - they have plenty of butter and chocolate - but somehow they do feel just a bit more wholesome!  Yum.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce)
Makes 32

1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp coarse sea salt or kosher salt
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 large egg
3.5-4 ounces extra dark bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients.
3. Mix the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon. Beat in the egg.  Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined.  Add the chocolate, and mix to combine.
4. Scoop about 1 tablespoon of dough for each cookie, leaving some space between cookies (about 12 cookies per sheet).  Bake 10-14 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway though. The cookies are done when they are nicely browned on top.

Roasted Garlic Guacamole

This guacamole is super simple and not-at-all spicy, making it the perfect condiment to combine with lots of other flavors.  It comes together very easily, since there's pretty much zero chopping of lots of ingredients, like you get with some guacamole and salsas.  The only unusual step here is roasting a clove of garlic in a hot pan on the stove, until browned and mushy.  It really changes the garlic flavor, so that it adds a fantastic smokiness and richness to the guacamole.  If you're really a garlic fan, feel free to add 2 cloves to the recipe.

This recipe multiplies easily (in fact, the original recipe was for six times as much!), but this quantity of guacamole was the perfect amount for four, used as a taco topper.  It really made homemade tacos special, and I liked being able to make a relatively small amount that wouldn't go to waste, since guacamole can be tough to save. 

Roasted Garlic Guacamole (adapted from Fiesta at Rick's)

1 large clove garlic, skin on
Kosher salt 
1 large avocado
1 heaping T chopped cilantro
Lime juice

1. Roast the garlic in a dry skillet over medium heat until soft and blackened, about 10 minutes.  Watch carefully, and turn the garlic occasionally.  Peel, and mash the garlic with a generous pinch of kosher salt.
2. Place the garlic in a bowl with the avocado flesh, cilantro, and lime juice.  Mash coarsely.  Taste, and adjust for salt, cilantro, or lime juice as needed.

Pasta with Peperonata, Summer Squash, and Fresh Mozzarella

This is a quick and easy pasta dish that works well for a weeknight dinner.  The original recipe uses store-bought peperonata, which would definitely make this dish possible to fix up in the time it takes pasta to cook.  But, we found the peperonata was easy to make ourselves (and cheaper), and we were able to add in some summer squash for extra color and flavor.

We also substituted the burrata in the original recipe with regular fresh mozzarella - while I'm sure the fancier mozzarella in the original recipe would have been excellent, I thought the substitution worked well since we didn't have access to the cheese that was called for.  The only thing I would change about this recipe as we made it would be to add a bit more moisture to the dish - the original recipe called for drizzling it with a bit of olive oil, which I just completely forgot to do.  Adding some pasta water would probably also do the trick. 

Pasta with Peperonata, Summer Squash, and Fresh Mozzarella (adapted from The Wright Recipes and Epicurious)

1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 bell peppers, thinly sliced
1 fresh rosemary sprig, leaves finely chopped
1 medium yellow summer squash, sliced
1 T balsamic vinegar
12 ounces dried pasta
8 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, cubed
Salt and pepper

1. Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions, bell peppers and rosemary and sauté until onions and bell pepper are very tender, stirring occasionally. About 10 minutes before the bell peppers are done, add the summer squash to the pan and stir to combine.  Total cooking time should be about 40 minutes.  Off the heat, mix in the vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Meanwhile,cook the pasta in boiling salted water until al dente.  Drain, and add the cooked veggies.  Toss to combine, and add a bit of olive oil or pasta water if needed.  Serve topped with the mozzarella cheese, salt, and pepper.

I'm sending this recipe off to Kitchen Bootcamp: Vegetables.

Black Bean-Corn Salad

I like this salad because it's super versatile.  It's great as a side salad, with lots of flavor to stand up as its own dish.  It also works as a dip/salsa - if you want to go this route, you could serve as is or add a couple more tomatoes.  Although we didn't use it this way, I think this recipe would also be great as a component of another dish - for example, a topper for chicken or stuffed in a quesadilla or taco with cheese.  Any way you serve it, this summer salad is quick to pull together and perfect for a hot day when you want to keep the stove off.

Black Bean-Corn Salad (adapted from Chili Cheese Fries, original recipe here)

1-1/2 cups cooked black beans
1 cup fresh corn, cut from the cob, steamed briefly if tough (may not be needed)
1 small onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 small tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 mild (or one spicy) jalapeno chiles, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
A generous drizzle of olive oil

Mix everything together, taste, and adjust ingredients as needed.