Portillo’s Chocolate Eclair Cake

Today I’m bringing you something so simple a child could do it. Literally guys, if you have kids get them in the kitchen to do this with you. Its very straight forward, no bake, no huge mess, nothing to worry about. Keep on reading to get the scoop (or shall I say slice)!

Party! (On a budget)

The holidays are here! That means shopping and parties and general stress all around. Its only as stressful as you make it. Seriously. You can throw a great holiday party without going over your budget or breaking the bank. Its not as hard as it sounds, its all about knowing where you get the best bang for your buck. Obviously if you’re on a budget you aren’t going to be serving Kobe beef. (On a side note, Kobe beef is illegal in the USA. If you go to a high end restaurant and see Kobe beef on the menu, its not real). That being said, you don’t have to serve canned tuna either. There are ways to throw a great party on a budget and have it be a huge success. Let me show you how.

Pasta for Breakfast

As an Italian, there are certain things I enjoy the bother some people. They don’t understand my inextinguishable lust for neck bones, when I talk about making gravy they think its something you put on mashed potatoes, snicker when I talk about cuccidati, and become confused when I say I want a lobster tail for dessert. By far the most humorous reaction is when I make breakfast pasta. Most people think of pasta as something for dinner, maybe even lunch, but it is a wonderfully diverse food that can be used for almost anything. Today we explore pasta for breakfast. 

Learning from the experience

As I sit down to type this I’m questioning whether or not I should. I would loved to be seen as the perfect little kitchen dweller who makes everything with great success. Why would I want to ruin my “street cred” as it were? Yet, here I am preparing to share a somewhat embarrassing baking blunder I made. I’ve been cooking and baking for years, I should not be making these basic mistakes. However, I think its important to share these things because no matter how much experience you gain, failures are bound to happen now and then. Thankfully I don’t experience them often. I’m not going to pretend I’m a true professional. I didn’t go to school for cooking and baking. I studied business and accounting. I didn’t even take foods in high school for my home economics requirement, I took clothing and textiles. You don’t need to take a class or study under some renown chef to learn how to cook. I’m sure it helps and is an invaluable experience, but it isn’t required. All you need to do is experiment and learn from your mistakes. So today I’m going to share mine and how I learned from them.

Cleaning out my Kitchen

As I mentioned in my previous post, my kitchen had turned into a no counter space nightmare. The biggest part of my problem is that I have no pantry. So I really don’t have much space to store things, I need to solve that problem very quickly. It’s very difficult to bake and cook when you don’t have counter space, and you just keep shoving stuff farther and farther into the corner, until you forget you have it. This is just how I got my kitchen in shape, it won’t work for everyone but it worked well for me and I hope that it can help some of you out too.

If you or someone you know has a gambling problem…

I don’t have a gambling problem. I am, however, a compulsive over-baker. I can’t help myself. If there’s butter in my house (and there is always butter in my house) I feel the need to bake. Yesterday was no different, with the exception that I cleaned, gutted, and reorganized my kitchen first. That’s not finished yet, when it is I’ll be sharing the details. After I got as much kitchen cleaning as I could stomach done, I realized I had enough counter space to start baking, and start baking I did.

Fall Baking

Yesterday was crazy. Not only was I making a huge pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner, a little tradition we have since the company my aunt works for gives all its employees a 13 lbs turkey at the beginning of October, but we had some weather. I live in the Midwest, and I have my entire life. Thunderstorms do not phase me. So there I was the a bird in the oven, my fiance had just left and the tornado sirens go off. In complete disbelief I get my 14 year old little brother, who is having a breakdown from fear of losing his Xbox, and get him settled in the bathroom with the baby with all of the baby necessities and close the door. I’m now trying to call my fiance to find out where he is and I’m looking around out the windows trying to determine if its worth me ripping everything out of the coat closet to fit inside. I came to the conclusion that it was not worth making that much of a mess. So I just stayed close by the bathroom to talk to the kids and keep them calm. Once the sirens stopped I went outside to have a look around to make sure the coast was clear. Went back inside, got the kids out of the bathroom and back to playing, and I went back to cooking. That was when I realized how much I’ve changed in the past year. The sirens go off at least once a year out here. Every time that’s happened in the past I’ve been the first person outside, wanting to catch a glimpse of the funnel cloud. This time was different. I didn’t actually go outside until after the sirens had turned off and my response wasn’t one of excitement. That was a pretty heavy realization, and after that there was nothing I needed more than a glass of wine and a slice of pie.

The Limitless Vehicle For Flavor

Recently I cleaned out my garage, and I found a treasure. I found my Grandmother’s church cookbook. I cannot begin to describe how excited I was to find this buried in a box. This is the collective knowledge of hundreds of women in one book. I also found some of her recipes that weren’t on the half of her index cards that I got. The Butter Cream recipe below is hers. I now have, in my opinion, the most incredible cook book ever assembled. Just goes to show you never know what you’ll find when you clean your garage or attic, I highly recommend it to anyone. Just yesterday I decided I wanted to make one of her recipes, and found the butter cream recipe. That meant I had to find something to make with it. I went for pound cake …

The Wisdom of your Grandmother

I often find myself thinking of my Grandmother. Sadly she passed when I was very young, but I do remember her well. I think about how things would be different had she lived longer. What would it have been like to learn her recipes from her instead of handwritten note cards yellowed and faded with age? Would I feel differently about them? Would I love them more because she guided me through it, or would I love them less because some of the adventure would be lost from having an expert standing over my shoulder? Whatever conclusion I may come to on that subject doesn’t really matter, because my Grandmother died when I was young, and I will never know what it would have been like to bake with her. What I do know, is that some of the recipes I have from her are a little on the screwy side. Using tin can size 212 to measure dry ingredients isn’t something I can do today, not to mention my Grandmother was not above omitting an ingredient so no one could make it quite like her. I’ve been left to fill in a lot of blanks in her recipes, but I have gained a lot of experience and knowledge in the process. Knowledge and experience that I am more than willing to share.

My Story

It all started when I was pregnant. I had a friend who grew the most incredible vegetables and would pickle them. Up to that point I had no weird cravings or urges, but as soon as a jar of pickled veggies and eggs came out, it was all over. I became obsessed first with the art of pickling and quickly after making my own jams and butters. I started scouring the internet for baking and cooking blogs and would make almost anything I came across. Needless to say, there were many people in my life more than willing to reap the rewards of my new found domestication.

Its now been quite awhile since I was pregnant and to this day I am still obsessed with baking, cooking, and canning. However I’ve also found new interests that fit in perfectly with my lifestyle. I’ve been making DIY projects for things around the house, new ways to save time in my morning routine, and the fastest way to clean up messes.

What good is the knowledge I have amassed through trial and error if I don’t pass it on. After all, I had quite a bit of help navigating the path to where I am now, its only fair that I pay it forward. Hopefully I can serve as a bit of a guide to anyone else out there trying to find their way down a similar path or even just looking to broaden their interests.