Easter Dessert #2 - light and fruity

To balance out the dessert platter with the chocolate piece, I decided to cook something fruity. When I went to the supermarket and saw that strawberries were only 99 cents I knew they would be the winner! The recipe I picked was for a Strawberry Creme Caramel Tart. It looked delicious and I had such high hopes for it!

Making home-made caramel:
Did you know all you do is heat white granulated sugar? Nothing else in the pan. It eventually gets VERY hot and turns into a brown liquid. It is imperative that you stir constantly though or it will burn.

Then I cooked up the custard portion on top of the cooled caramel. The recipe said to cook it for about 40 minutes, but that wasn't enough for mine to solidify, so I left it in there for about 7 minutes more until it looked like this:

The most interesting thing about this recipe was that it required you to bake the crust separately. When it was cooked you remove it from the pie plate, flip it upside down to lay on top of the custard and then flip the whole thing over so that the caramel drips down the whole thing.

Here's the final product:

Easter fun - cookies, eggs and a basket!

Sometimes I am still such a little kid at heart, and Easter is such a great time to enjoy doing the little things in life. My friend Ali says I need a child. I think I'd much prefer to borrow my friends kids or have a little niece or nephew, but for now I will still enjoy doing them myself!

Friday night Ali and I had a girls night. We ordered pizza, chatted for hours and had a ball making Easter cookies. Since I wanted to spend the time to decorate them we just popped in some of the pre-made sugar cookie dough while we entertained her son Caleb and Mooshu. I had some ideas (that I totally stole from pictures in magazines) and Ali was more of a traditionalist, but it was a lot of fun.

Here's some of the finished products:

Saturday I was busy being domestic (cleaning the house, laundry, etc.) so I decided to take a break and try out the coolest things in egg dying history from Paas. They are q-tips with the dye in them already!

They worked so nicely for making more complex patterns (or would if you have more creative talents than I do), though they did leak a bit when you first cracked them. However, it was still much less of a mess than the traditional bowls of dye.

Next I whipped up a little Easter basket for Brad. It's kinda silly I suppose, but he's my "sugar baby" and I enjoy doing it. I added some Peeps (his favorite things EVER), Reese's peanut butter eggs, some of the Easter cookies I made, some home-made chocolate-covered strawberries, and a bottle of Echinechea (because he's been sick). I thought I took a picture of the basket because it was so cute, but I guess I forgot! Oh well.

Hope you all had a fabulous Easter and enjoyed the festivities too! =)

Easter Dessert #1 - Chocolate

Last year I got the opportunity to host Easter dinner at my house. I had a wonderful time planning, cooking and hosting, so I'd hoped to do it again this year. Due to a series of interesting/odd events this would not be possible, so my mom offered to host it at her house. She put me in charge of bringing salad, desserts, and wine. Since the salad and wine choices are pretty simple I decided to get creative with dessert.

In a recent search through Cooking Light's "Lighten Up" section, I ran across something un-creatively named "Cool, Creamy Chocolate Dessert". I am not a huge cream cheese or "mousse" textured dessert fan, but it got rave reviews from readers so I decided I would make it as my chocolate dessert. It looked fairly simple to make, so I was determined to make it look good too.

Look how pretty the crust is!

The recipe said the cream cheese and sugar mixture should come out "fluffy". I'm not really sure what that means, but I beat it for a good 5 minutes until it became creamy...

The final product - pretty if I do say so myself! The cocoa powder decided to over-pour a little just as I was finishing it up, but nevertheless I'm pretty pleased with the final product.

Will let you know how it tastes after Easter!

Easter Dinner Party

Since I moved into my new apartment, my parents have been wanting to see what it looked like. So, I decided to host an Easter dinner w/ my parents, and Brad and I. It gave me an excuse to have them over and an excuse for me to get fully unpacked and the apartment decorated in time for guests to come over.

I've also never held my own dinner party before, and growing up with a mother who could win awards for Best Hostess, I really wanted to make a good impression! I also wanted to make a good meal that everyone would enjoy and not be too stressed out as well.

So I planned a menu...
Appetizers:
Cheese & Crackers
Wasabi Almonds
Deviled Eggs

Sides:
Fresh Green Salad
Warm Sour Dough Rolls

Main Course:
Honey Baked Ham
Yukon Gold Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Roasted Asparagus w/ Hollandaise Sauce


Dessert:
Vanilla Ice Cream w/ Spiced Pear Compote -- Provided by my mom

My new table all set up - isn't it pretty?


And let everyone drink wine, enjoy good food, and play a fun game called "Blokus"!


Overall, I was pleased - seemed like a success!