Fun recipes

Last night, Ben and I cooked our dinner and dessert! That's quite an accomplishment for us, and both of them turned out really well. I thought I'd share the recipes!

For dinner, we made Pioneer Woman's Farfalle with Zucchini. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a .pdf of that particular recipe up on her site (maybe it will be in her cookbook!), but the steps are pretty easy. We used chicken broth instead of wine, corn starch instead of Arrowroot, and dried spices instead of fresh ones. Here is what ours looked like:

It was yummy, but a little heavy on the onions for me. Ben loved it! And we have plenty leftover, as you can imagine!

For dessert, I made a blueberry cake from this book that my wonderful best friend Jen gave me for Christmas.

I bought blueberries on Sunday and was planning to make muffins, but this cake was really easy!

Here is (part of!) the final product. It was good for dessert, and it was delicious for breakfast this morning with my coffee!

Here is the recipe if you want to try it:

Shenandoah Valley Blueberry Cake

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup milk

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (do not thaw)

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees and generously grease a 9 inch square or round pan.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl, and stire with a fork to mix well.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the butter and sugar, and beat with a mixer at high speed until well combined.
4. Add the egg and beat well for 1 to 2 minutes, stopping to scrape down the bowl, until the mixture is smooth and light
5. Stir in half of the flour mixture, then half the milk, mixing just enough to keep the batter fairly smooth and well-combined.
6. Add the remaining flour, then the rest of the milk, mixing gently
7. Stir in the blueberries
8. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes or until the cake is golden.

The final result, as I mentioned, was really tasty! The cake was nice and fluffy and it was just sweet enough for me.

I ended up making that blueberry cake last night because I was on a quest for a relatively easy homemade yellow/white cake and vanilla icing. That is Ben's favorite combination for cakes, and it sounds simple enough to make, but finding easy recipes was harder than I thought it would be! I'm thinking the cake part might end up being a basic 1-2-3-4 cake that my mom makes a lot--not the simplest (it involves separating eggs, whisking whites, beating butter and sugar for crazy amounts of time!) but very, very delicious. As for icing, I'm at a loss. I love cream cheese icing, but Ben's not a huge fan. And I've seen lots of cooked icing recipes for vanilla icing that are way too complicated for me! Any suggestions for easy cakes or icings??

P.S. No progress on the second bedroom. Yes, I am ashamed! :-)