A few recipes to remember

I’ll try to properly post something at some point, but saving these so I don’t forget them..

Gingerbread cake: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2015/12/gingerbread-layer-cake/
So so much messier than she made it, but so so tasty. And I had leftover candied cranberries, so made these for New Years:

Cranberry Moscow Mule: http://girlinthelittleredkitchen.com/2014/12/cranberry-moscow-mule/

 

Antipasto Mushrooms: http://www.food.com/recipe/antipasto-mushrooms-275693
Simple, tasty, easy. A keeper!

 

Piña Colada Sundae

I’ve been on a bit of a piña colada kick lately. I give full credit to this Coconut Layer Cake, which I’ve now made twice – once in layer cake form, and once as mini cupcakes. If you haven’t made that yet – go. Now. Make it. Preferably in cupcake form, because it creates bites of coconut heaven. Oh yes. But I digress. You see, for this recipe, you need to buy canned sweetened cream of coconut… the very stuff that you mix with a bit of pineapple juice and a bit of rum to create the perfect summer drink. So, logically, when I went to make the second batch in cupcake form, I got a few extra cans of the stuff plus some pineapple juice. I’ve already treated myself to a few and I’m full of regret that I haven’t been making these at least weekly for the last 8 years. Oh my so good.

Adam and I wanted to make some ice cream for a simple BBQ dinner we were hosting. We’d had some leftover cream in the fridge that needed to be used (why did we buy such a big thing again?), and in brainstorming new/fun flavours to make I decided to look into the possibility of a piña colada ice cream. Heaven, right?

New Year’s Eve: The Plan vs Reality

Yay for 2010! Gin & Tonics started our last evening of 2009

For the last few years, Adam and I have hosted New Year’s Eve parties with friends. Always a great time, and it really is nice to ring in the new year with good friends. And if you hadn’t noticed, we generally do enjoy hosting gatherings at our house. We’ve got the space, we love to cook, and we’ve got great friends that we enjoy hanging out with – so why not? Well, as great as the last few Dec 31st parties have been, this year we weren’t really up for a big party. We wanted something super low key – with just the two of us.

We considered other options, but it kept coming back to what we really wanted: A fancy meal. Some champagne. Snuggling on the couch. Just us. So that’s just what we did, and it was wonderful.

Seeing as we weren’t going to be hosting a big party and were saving some money there, we decided to splurge and make this meal like no other – full of indulgent food and things we ordinarily wouldn’t touch. We got ourselves a nice mini bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne, bottle of good truffle oil, a few black truffles, some sushi-grade ahi-tuna, and generally didn’t hold back on anything. We came up with the following plan for the day:

Baby It’s Cold Outside: Ideal Warm Cocktail

 

Hot Nuts

Ok, so it’s really not that cold out there yet. In fact, this may be the first November in years that Toronto has gone snow-free. But we are getting into the time of year when it’s dark by the time we’re home from work, and just cold enough that the dark walk home makes you want something to warm up with when you get through the door.

 

Enter the world’s best (and simplest!) warm cocktail: Hot Nuts.

This was introduced to us by my mom, and while I’ve seen other fancier recipes out there, this version is too simple to mess up and too yummy to bother changing. We decided to bring out this winter cocktail early this year partially because Adam happened to be bringing home a small container of whipping cream for a bread pudding recipe I was making (which includes a yummy and decadent bourbon sauce, which has a few tablespoons whipping cream…mmmmm, can’t wait to eat that tonight!). With whipping cream being the only ingredient we wouldn’t usually have on hand, I thought this the perfect chance to make up one of these yummy desserty warm cocktails. Here’s the deal:

• Get a kettle going with boiling water.
• Fill up a lowball glass about halfway with Amaretto
• Fill up the rest of the glass with boiling water, leaving a bit of room on the top.
• Put a dollup of fresh whipped cream on top . (No, it doesn’t *need* to be fresh whipped. Use the stuff out of the can if that’s what you have on hand.)

Enjoy!

Cocktail of the Night: Harvey Walbanger

Harvey Walbanger

We were lucky enough to get a bottle of galiano as a gift from Adam’s aunt & uncle, and decided we’d give it a try in the classic cocktail it’s associated with: The Harvey Walbanger.

Harvey Walbanger isn’t all that far off from an alcoholic Orange Julius. It has a slightly vanilla flavour somehow, and it’s darn tasty.

A Harvey Walbanger:

• 1 oz vodka
• 1/2 oz galiano
• 4 oz orange juice
   

Yum!

Our Latest Cocktail Discovery: Blueberry Tea

And no, we’re not talking about just tea. Once again using Adam’s iPhone app, and finding ourselves surrounded by various bottles of booze at his Aunt & Uncle’s house, we decided to give this hot cocktail a try:

• 1/2 shot Amaretto
• 1/2 shot Grand Marnier
• 1 cup (hot) black tea (Most recipes mention orange pekoe, which is what we used, but I’d imagine any type would work.)

Stir all to combine and enjoy!

None of the ingredients have a blueberry flavour, but somehow it actually tastes like blueberry tea! A wonderful warm drink.

…Unfortunately this means we now want to buy ourselves some Grand Marnier… which is $60 for a large bottle. Ouch.

Toasted Almond (in liquid form)

Neither of us are big drinkers, but we like the occasional after work drink, and our default has always been opening up a bottle of wine. But as our liquor collection grows, we’ve been experimenting a bit with cocktails.

Tonight we made one worth remembering, thanks to Adam’s new iPhone app: Toasted Almond

Pretty simple:

• 1 shot kahlua
• 1.5 shot amaretto
• 2 shots half-and-half 
• 1 maraschino cherry (which we didn’t have.. oh well) 

Stir and serve on the rocks.

YUM

 

Toasted Almond