Orange Sour Cream Cake

It was an important evening for the Memeoirs crew.  After months of hard work at the Tech Peaks accelerator, they’d finally released the newest version of their amazing site which allows you to create a book from your emails.  If you’re an emailer, or know one, definitely check it out (www.memeoirs.com)!

To celebrate the new release we were having dinner at Ivan and Simone’s place (other Tech Peakers) and I knew that I should make a dessert.  I had some oranges on hand, leftover from something I’d wanted to make but never got around to, and decide to repurpose them for this recipe.

The Best Berry Smoothie

So...clearly I’ve been slacking on the food blog lately. I’ll blame it on a combination of moving to Lisbon, Portugal (my favorite city in the world thus far), work and just general life. Regardless, I’ve made many recipes in the meantime and therefore have a backlog of tasty dishes (okay, okay, mostly desserts) to share with you all, my tiny readership.

Now, however, I’m posting a tasty, but simple, smoothie recipe which I suppose falls under the breakfast category. Whenever I’ve made this smoothie I’ve gotten great reviews and people are always shocked by the ingredients, especially the one which makes this so creamy. Avocado. Avocado in a smoothie, you ask? Why yes, avocado in a smoothie.

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with Homemade Marmalade

After making margaritas the other day I realized that we have triple sec just sitting around. By we I mean my friends whose house I bake at on a frequent basis. Minor correction. My friends had triple sec sitting around and who knew when we were going to make margaritas again. Too much lime squeezing for poor Migs to merit making them all the time.

Roasted carrots and cauliflower with orange

It’s not summer here in Chile (in fact it’s quite cold with none of the buildings having central heating) but I wanted to continue my stream of delicious summer dishes for everyone back in the U.S.   As such, this entry features yet another dish from my Comidista summer dinner, which I introduced with previous entry of Summer Lasagna.  Having free reign to choose whatever recipes I wanted for this meal, I decided I needed to have a theme to narrow down my choices of what to make. Looking over my list of recipes to make, I realized I had a ton of from, my favorite Spanish food blogger, which I’d never had the chance to prepare.  Seizing the opportunity to experiment, I decided my meal theme would be cold foods (for our hot summer weather), using healthy, fresh produce, and recipes from Mikel López Iturriaga’s blog, El Comidista.

One of the side dish recipes I settled on were these roasted carrots and cauliflower with orange. Great for a summer day, these have a zesty flavor and can be served warm or cold.

Roasted Carrots and Cauliflower with Orange (adapted from El Comidista)

Yield: 4-6 servings

Ingredients:
2 small heads of cauliflower (one white and the other green or purple or both white if you can’t find other colors)
4-8 carrots, depending on their size
1 large orange
1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
1/2 teaspoon of spicy paprika
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Directions:
1) Fill a large pot with water, salt it, and put it to boil over high heat.
2) Peal the carrots and cut them into pieces. Cut off the trunk of the cauliflower leaving only the florets and break it into pieces. Set aside.
3) Preheat the oven to 445ºF.
4) Boil the carrots in the pot of water for 5-10 minutes or until they’re a bit soft, but not cooked all the way. Remove the carrots from the water. Add the cauliflower to the same water and boil for a minute. Rinse both carrots and cauliflower. Drain well.
5) Cut the orange and the lemon in half and set aside one half of each. Juice the other two halves and mix the juices.
6) In a small bowl, mix 2 teaspoons of the juice with the cumin, paprika, 2 cloves of garlic, crushed, vinegar, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper.
7) Place the cauliflower, carrots, and unsqueezed halves of lemon and orange on a baking sheet. Cover with the marinade, using your hands to mix, making sure the carrots and cauliflower are evenly coated. Place in the oven for 20 minutes until the cauliflower is soft and golden. If it’s browning too quickly, put some aluminum foil over top.
8) While that’s in the oven, mix the combined orange and lemon juice with 8 tablespoons of olive oil, the brown sugar, salt and pepper. Toss the dressing with the roasted carrots and cauliflower and serve. If you’d like it a bit bitter, you can add the juice from the roasted orange and lemon to the dressing.

Orange Ricotta Cookies with Dark Chocolate

Ahh! I have completely broken my promise to myself to post once a week this quarter! I can hardly believe the time has flown so quickly though! I have now cooked so many things that I have a backlog of recipes. No promise I’ll post once a week until the quarter ends, but here’s a super tasty cookie recipe after a long hiatus.

Several weeks ago, when my co-cook, Laura, and I started planning a menu for our previously mentioned picnic meal, I knew that I wanted to make Pasta Salad with Sun-Dried Tomatoes as my centerpiece. For dessert, I also knew I had to make something delicious and portable because, after all, you're more likely to take a cookie on a picnic than a rack of cupcakes or a pie.  So I dug up my list of cookies to make and ran across these amazing Orange Ricotta cookies with dark chocolate drizzle.  Just the name of these cookies was enough to elicit oohs and awws from the people who passed through the kitchen.

What's more, I was able to use local ingredients to make them. And when I say local, I mean outside our front door. Fortunately for me, my house boasts both an orange tree and a lemon tree simply laden with fruit this quarter. It was an awesome resource for our entire picnic meal and especially great for these light, summery cookies. As an aside, this recipe is great for a crowd, in fact just one recipe made enough cookies for my entire house of 40 so if you’re making for fewer people I suggest halving this recipe. Also, this recipe works with all kinds of citrus fruits so if you don’t have oranges but have lemons or grapefruits, don’t sweat it, just use those instead!

Orange Ricotta Cookies (lightly adapted from Two Peas & Their Pod)

Yield: 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups ricotta cheese
3 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1 orange, zested

Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 375º F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. 2. In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Whisk until ingredients are combined. Set aside.
3) In the bowl of a stand mixer, or using a hand mixer, combine butter and the sugar.  Beat the until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Add the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.  Add the ricotta cheese, orange juice, and orange zest.  Beat to combine.
4) Stir in the dry ingredients. Spoon the dough (about 1 tablespoon for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.

Orange Glaze
Ingredients: 
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons orange juice
1 cup chopped dark chocolate, melted

Directions: 
1) Combine the powdered sugar and orange juice in a small bowl and whisk until smooth.
2) Spoon about 1/2-teaspoon onto each cookie and use the back of the spoon to gently spread.
3) Let glaze harden for about five minutes. Using a plastic bag with a small hole cut in the corner or a pastry bag, drizzle cookies with dark chocolate stripes.