Martha has a beautiful two page spread in January Martha Stewart Living (pp. 26-27) about organizers. I cannot live without my calendar. I remember when I a student, I had one of those checkbook sized calendars that showed a month at a time. I really liked being able to see an entire month spread out before me. Then I became an attorney and had a giant calendar that showed only day per page. This made me totally nuts. I couldn’t see ahead to what the rest of the week or month held.

Today I use a weekly engagement calendar and though I still miss seeing a whole month at a time, it’s nice to take things week by week. Every year I start the search for a new calendar in November. I’m pretty picky. For a while I went with Impressionism calendars, but lately I’ve been buying this Inspiration calendar that has photos of gorgeous landscape scenes.

I am not one to use electronic calendars or organizers. I keep all my work deadlines and payment information in a blue spiral notebook. I like to be able to page through it and make quick notes. Mr. MarthaAndMe loves anything electronic and so he keeps his calendar that way. Because he can’t easily see ahead to the next day or week, he never seems to know what is happening when. I also always think that if your device crashes, you lose the entire thing.

I would be lost without my calendar and notebook. Sometimes I feel as though they contain my entire life!

Martha has a beautiful two page spread in January Martha Stewart Living (pp. 26-27) about organizers. I cannot live without my calendar. I remember when I a student, I had one of those checkbook sized calendars that showed a month at a time. I really liked being able to see an entire month spread out … Read more →

Mini-Martha is having a birthday next week. To celebrate, he had some friends over last night. I approached the cake topic cautiously. I have made lots of crazy things for my kids’ birthdays – a brownie pizza, a spaghetti and meatballs cake (for an April Fool’s Day theme), pumpkin pie, strawberry pie, a bowling pins and bowling ball shaped group of cakes, red velvet cake – you name it. I have also purchased grocery store cakes (I know! The sheer horror of it). I wasn’t sure what he wanted this time around. I suggested baked Alaska and once I showed him the photo in Martha Stewart Living (January issue) he was hooked!

I made baked Alaska once many moons ago when Mr. MarthaAndMe were dating. Clearly it convinced him to marry me. When I made it before, I am pretty sure I made one big one. Martha advocates small individual Alaskas.

Now, what kind of a fool am I to think I should make baked Alaska for a group of 10 and 11 year old boys, to be served after an excursion to Dave and Buster’s (gaming place)? A big silly one I guess.

 

 

I made the cake the day before. What a strange cake this was – you beat egg yolks with sugar then add chocolate. Separately you beat 12 egg whites with sugar till they make peaks.  Then you fold it all together. There is no flour, but you absolutely would never guess that when you taste it. You cut out circles from the cake. There is a LOT left over and you can’t really do much with it since it is scraps.

You coat small bowls with plastic wrap then layer strawberry and vanilla ice cream into them. You place a cake circle on top. The recipe does not say this, but you really have to press that cake circle down into the ice cream so it will adhere.  I had a couple where I did not press hard enough and it did not attach. You then wrap it up and freeze it. I

 

 

did all this the day before.

The night of the party (after returning from the headache inducing Dave and Busters at 9 pm) I made the meringue. You beat egg whites then add a syrup you cooked using a candy thermometer. The egg whites turn a pale caramel color once you add the syrup. The recipe says to add the syrup slowly, but I would say to be careful not to add it too slowly – I had some syrup crystallizing on the side of the

 

 

bowl and I had to pick it out.

Ok, so once the meringue is ready, you’re supposed to pop the desserts out of their molds. The recipe says to let them sit for a few minutes and then they will come right out. Yeah, right. We ended up dipping the bottoms of the molds into hot water to get them to loosen. Once we did that, they did pop right out and you could easily peel the plastic wrap off.

Then I spread the meringue over them. This is where things started to get

 

 

loony, in more ways than one. As I am frantically trying to get this together and into the oven before it melts, it is announced that one of the party guests is having an allergy attack and needs meds. I am not about to hand out Zyrtec without parental permission, so Mr. MarthaAndMe had to make the call to get clearance while I worked on dessert.

There was definitely not enough meringue. Double the meringue recipe for this if you make this. I had ice cream peeking out and meringue that was too thin. You really want a nice thick layer of meringue in my opinion.

The recipe says to preheat the oven to 500 degrees and put the desserts in for 2 minutes (you can also use a blow torch, but oddly enough, I just don’t have one laying around).  This oven setting was not a good idea.

 

 

Everything started to melt and the meringue was not cooking. Disaster in the making! I quickly switched over to broil and that did the trick. So, my recommendation is to broil not bake!

Despite the melting situation, these turned out pretty well. The meringue was SO good, even if it did kind of slide off some of the desserts. It was crunchy, sweet and delicious and in nice contrast to the ice cream. Most of the ice cream was intact and the cake on the bottom was good. I served this with chocolate sauce, which really added to it, so I highly

 

 

recommend that.

I mentioned to some people that I was making this and they asked if it was going to be flaming. Apparently, they serve this on cruise ships and set it on fire (they must put alcohol on it to do this, I imagine). So, no, there was nothing flaming at this party, but I think it was a hit. Everyone scraped their plates clean and I think I got points for the novelty factor. And really, you can’t go wrong with cake and ice cream, which is what this basically is.

 

 

 

 

Mini-Martha is having a birthday next week. To celebrate, he had some friends over last night. I approached the cake topic cautiously. I have made lots of crazy things for my kids’ birthdays – a brownie pizza, a spaghetti and meatballs cake (for an April Fool’s Day theme), pumpkin pie, strawberry pie, a bowling pins … Read more →

Didn’t you just love the cupcake show Martha did on Wednesday this week? OMG, cupcakes are so cute and so good. I have been to Magnolia (the famous cupcake shop in NYC Martha mentioned) and I have to be honest – I thought their cupcakes were kind of dry. They did not wow me at all.

I loved the parchment paper wrapper idea that one of the chefs showed. So cute!

In addition to bringing on two NYC cupcake chefs, Martha made Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes, which is in the February issue of Martha Stewart Living (pp. 149-150). I imagine this is also in the soon to be released cupcake book.

We were having a dinner guest last night, so I decided to give these cupcakes a shot. Prepare yourself my friends – this is another one of Martha’s all day recipes.

Things started off well enough with the batter for the cupcakes. You essentially beat the cr** out of the eggs until they are light and poufy. No problem. Martha said to fill the cupcake tins only half full. I would ignore this advice next time – I felt my cupcakes were too short.

Next I baked the cupcakes. They needed a little less time than the recipe

says. They turned out nicely – soft and spongy. They were easy to cut in half.

Next, I moved on to the vanilla cream, which is the pudding-type filling for the cupcakes.  I followed the instructions on this to the letter. I cooked it and refrigerated it, and when I took it out, I had a bowl of runny glop. It was far too thin – and it was somehow thinner than it was when I first stuck it in the fridge. I was in a total panic, because I

needed to get these assembled in time for dinner. I dumped it back in a pot and heated it up again, but it did not thicken. Finally I added some more cornstarch and it immediately came together. I refrigerated it again and when it came out, it was too thick! Aaaahhh!!! Now, in the rational light of day, I think I should have probably just whisked in a little milk to thin it, but I didn’t think of that. I used it as it was and actually, you really couldn’t tell when you ate the cupcake that it was too thick (and it had the added effect of not running out the sides at all). If you make this recipe, I would recommend doubling the amount of cream. I didn’t have enough to fill all the cupcakes (I ended up with 24 cupcakes).

The final step is to melt some chocolate with cream and corn syrup to make the ganache glaze. This was easy. It melted nicely and I spooned it over the cupcakes. It did need a little help to drip down the edges, but once I got it to run, it looked great.

These tasted great. We ate them with a fork, but you could definitely just pick them up like a regular cupcake. This is a fun twist on cupcakes, which sometimes can be sort of boring, no matter how pretty they are.

Didn’t you just love the cupcake show Martha did on Wednesday this week? OMG, cupcakes are so cute and so good. I have been to Magnolia (the famous cupcake shop in NYC Martha mentioned) and I have to be honest – I thought their cupcakes were kind of dry. They did not wow me at … Read more →

I’ve tackled another one of Martha’s Superbowl party foods, Spicy-Sweet Chicken Wings (page 38 of January Martha Stewart Living). First let me say this. I’m from Buffalo. Home of the chicken wing. When we order wings here we get them from some of the very best places in the entire world. Tough to beat.

I do occasionally make my own wings. So I was eager to give Martha’s version a try.

First you make the sauce – a mix of hoisin, orange zest, hot sauce, honey and sesame oil. I felt right away it could not possibly be enough. You marinate the wings in part of it, then bake them. Halfway through you put the rest of the sauce on them. The wings did not get as crispy as I like them and they were on the edge of burning. They had a slightly mushy texture. I like them crunchy.

The sauce had a nice taste, but there just was not enough of it. Having the dipping sauce definitely helped, but usually a dip has a different flavor, not a repeat of the same tastes.

Everyone agreed these wings were ok, but not terrific. I would recommend cooking them longer at a lower temp so that the sugars in the sauce do not burn, yet the wings have time to crisp.

I’ve tackled another one of Martha’s Superbowl party foods, Spicy-Sweet Chicken Wings (page 38 of January Martha Stewart Living). First let me say this. I’m from Buffalo. Home of the chicken wing. When we order wings here we get them from some of the very best places in the entire world. Tough to beat. I … Read more →

Can I just say, sliders do not strike me as Martha food. Can you see Martha eating them? I just can’t. Although I do understand it’s in the January issue of Martha Stewart Living as part of the Superbowl food section (does Martha have a Superbowl party? I doubt it).

My son loves sliders and orders them in restaurants every time they are on the menu, so I decided to make this for dinner. Really there’s nothing to this – all you do is make small hamburgers and serve them on dinner rolls. I didn’t make the shallot butter in the recipe because my family is very specific about what can and cannot go on a hamburger or slider. My son will not eat cheese. My husband likes mustard and ketchup. My daughter likes just ketchup. I require ketchup and relish. So I skipped the shallot butter and left several without cheese. I, of course, used organic, grass fed hamburger, which is something I am rigid about.

I did cook these under the broiler as Martha directs, even though I normally would have made them on the Jenn-Air grill. This was easy to make. I just wish I could have found whole wheat or multigrain dinner rolls, but I had to use white. I cannot tell you how long it has been since I’ve tasted regular white bread.  A real indulgence in this house.

The sliders were good. There’s something fun about cute little hamburgers like this. They’re easy to pick up and eat. This would be a nice thing to serve at a casual party, so it’s definitely something that would work for SuperBowl.

I’m going to be making more of the SuperBowl items from this issue in the coming weeks.

Can I just say, sliders do not strike me as Martha food. Can you see Martha eating them? I just can’t. Although I do understand it’s in the January issue of Martha Stewart Living as part of the Superbowl food section (does Martha have a Superbowl party? I doubt it). My son loves sliders and … Read more →