Instead of aiming for a post a week, I'm going to try once a month. School, work and church have me plenty busy but I'm sure I can squeeze in one blog post every 30 days.
A dear friend is moving to Alaska on Saturday so I had her, Jordan, over for dinner with a few other friends to say farewell and do a joint birthday for another friend, Jessie, as Jordan will be gone when her birthday rolls around. I made calzones with ground turkey meat, spinach, mushrooms, garlic, onion, some seasonings and cheese with a little tomato sauce. They turned out awesome! Why didn't I take any pictures? That's right, they were consumed too quickly.
I did get pictures of the desserts. Jordan (some may know her as Erika) requested pumpkin pie while Jessie requested chocolate cake with strawberry. I bought a devil's food cake mix for the actual cake but I made the filling myself. Debating on what frosting to buy, Greg suggested getting vanilla, as to make the cake Neapolitan. If it works for ice cream, it was worth a shot.
Strawberry Filling recipeIngredients:
2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped hulled strawberries 1/2 cup sugar 2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch Directions:
- Bring all ingredients to a boil in a heavy small sauce pan, stirring constantly and crushing berries slightly with back of spoon.
- Boil 2 minutes to thicken, stirring constantly (mixture will be slightly chunky).
- Pour into bowl and cool completely.
It really was just this simple and very tasty. As it isn't strawberry season, I used frozen and they worked just fine. I just made sure they were defrosted first.
When the cakes were cooled after baking, I flipped them out of the pan and put in the layer of strawberries. This being my first time with any sort of filling besides frosting, I over filled it. As I was frosting the rest of the cake immediately after, the filling started oozing out the side, so the vanilla frosting had a pink hue to it. I should have chilled the cake more in the fridge before frosting but live and learn! It still tasted pretty good.
You can see where my hand accidentally grazed the side when I was putting it in the fridge. Oops!
Layer close-up
Dessert
To my surprise, this case of strawberries was only $10. Less than half this size is $8 at the grocery store. Thank you to the man on the side of the road selling them! I was in San Jose teaching piano lessons as I usually do each Saturday morning and saw all these glorious strawberries waiting to be eaten. I had to eat one in the car on the way back to Fremont. When I got home I melted about a 1/3 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and dipped a few strawberries in it. They are hardening in the fridge as I type this. I'm sure they'll be divine. This is also the first time I've used my silicone baking liner. Strawberries should have no trouble coming off the pan. (Pics were taken from my phone, hence the poor quality).
