tres leches cake

Hola!

Hope everyone who celebrates had a fabulous christmas, and everyone else is having a fabulous weekend!

our christmas dinner was amazing, and featured our family's traditional christmas enchiladas, brownies and blondies made by my very talented aunt, tamales, and homemade fruitcake. what we really need to talk about, though, is the tres leches cake.

unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures on christmas, and the cake, while still delicious, is a bit mangled from being stuffed in a tupperware in our very crowded fridge. so i borrowed the above image from myrecipes, but you should really look at Ree's (the pioneer woman) photos too.

Click here to read the original post on thepioneerwoman.com

Tres Leches Cake, from thepioneerwoman.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1-½ teaspoon Baking Powder
• ¼ teaspoons Salt
• 5 whole Eggs
• 1 cup Sugar, Divided
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• ⅓ cups Milk
• 1 can Evaporated Milk
• 1 can Sweetened, Condensed Milk
• ¼ cups Heavy Cream
• _____
• FOR THE ICING:
• 1 pint Heavy Cream, For Whipping
• 3 Tablespoons Sugar

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan liberally until coated.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Separate eggs.

Beat egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in milk and vanilla. Pour egg yolk mixture over the flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.

Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With the mixer on, pour in remaining 1/4 cup sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry.

Fold egg white mixture into the batter very gently until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread to even out the surface.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Turn cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow to cool.

Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream in a small pitcher. When cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork several times. Slowly drizzle all but about 1 cup of the milk mixture—try to get as much around the edges of the cake as you can.

Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes. To ice the cake, whip 1 pint heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar until thick and spreadable.
Spread over the surface of the cake. Decorate cake with whole or chopped maraschino cherries. Cut into squares and serve.

-Lola

quick [sausage and] mushroom lasagna

rita found this recipe and made the trek up to trader joe's a few weeks ago (i know! we're super behind on blogging! to be honest, we've been super lazy with cooking lately. its also finals, so chocolate has become a major food group for me) so that we could have a nice home-cooked meal.
we used this recipe from bon appetit,
but left out the sausage. we also halved it, which should have been 4-5 servings, but ended up finishing it between 3 of us (although, in our defense, it was the only component of our meal).

yield: Makes 8 to 10 servings

active time: 35 minutes

total time: 1 hour

If possible, use flat no-cook lasagna noodles: They look and taste more like homemade than the curly kind.

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Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 8-ounce packages sliced crimini (baby bella) mushrooms
• 1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 2 tablespoons dried Italian seasoning blend
• 1 pound hot Italian sausages, casings removed
• 3 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 4 2/3 cups marinara sauce (from two 26-ounce jars)
• 1 9-ounce package no-cook lasagna noodles
• 1 15-ounce container ricotta cheese
• 2 8-ounce bags Italian blend grated cheese (4 cups)

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°F. Heat oil in heavy large pot over high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, and seasoning blend; sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 6 minutes. Add sausage and sautéuntil brown and cooked through, breaking up with back of spoon, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and stir 1 minute. Add wine; cook until almost all liquid evaporates, scraping up browned bits, about 2 minutes. Set aside.

Spread 2/3 cup marinara sauce over bottom of 13x9x2-inch baking dish. Place noodles (about 4) over sauce, forming 1 layer (noodles may overlap slightly). Spread 1 cup sauce over noodles. Top with 1/3 of ricotta, then 1 cup grated cheese. Spoon 1/3 of sausage mixture over. Repeat 2 more times with noodles, sauce, ricotta, grated cheese, and sausage mixture. Cover with 4 more noodles. Spoon remaining 1 cup sauce over; sprinkle remaining 1 cup grated cheese over. Cover with foil, tenting in center to prevent cheese from touching foil. Bake lasagna 45 minutes; remove foil. Bake until bubbling at edges and cheese is browned, about 10 minutes longer. Let stand 15 minutes.

-Lola

potato and cauliflower curry

chopped and roasted potato (drizzled with oil) in the oven for about 30 min at 350 degrees F. Then I sauteed some cauliflower, defrosted some frozen peas, and added a premade curry sauce. served everything over whole wheat couscous.

my brain is dead from finals right now, so that's all the writing you're getting from me. this is, however, a fantastic finals meal because you don't have to think too much about it or walk out to your local indian place in the freezing cold, but its super delicious.

-Lola

pastrami!

pastrami sandwich from mendy's deli. it was an intense experience.

-Lola

kimchee grilled cheese

the other day, rita came home with a tub of kimchee. "i read about some shop where they make kimchee grilled cheese. we should have it tonight", she told me. so i stopped at gristede's on the way home because, in a rare moment in chez twin history, we had no cheese in the fridge. after staring at the variety of cheeses for way too long, i decided swiss was the way to go.

it was a good decision.

this is pretty self explanatory...the recipe is basically in the title. just make grilled cheese as you usually would (i like wheat bread and 2 slices of cheese. grilled in butter or earth balance), but spread a spoonful of kimchee on one of your bread slices. like i said, swiss was good, but you could experiment with other cheeses too. and taste the kimchee before you put it on the bread to see how spicy it is, because you don't want to end up with a too spicy sandwich.

-Lola