Sophia's Birthday Cake

Saturday was my younger daughter's birthday.  She asked for a red velvet cake.  I don't know why.  She never had one before.  I never made any because the recipe I had called for 2 ounces of red food coloring and that was all you tasted.  So I put a call out on the Penzey friends page on FB and got a couple of recipes. One from my friend Donna but it called for red beets to color the cake and Sophia does not like beets and did not want me to try it.  Then Linda added her recipe.  I made the cake but did not use cream cheese icing.

Linda Whitley's Red Velvet Cake

½ C Butter
1½ C Granulated sugar
1 tsp Penzeys Vanilla
2 Large eggs
1 Tbs liquid tasteless red food coloring
Just over 2 1/3 C unsifted cake flour (or 2 C unsifted all-purpose flour)
¼ C Ghirardelli or Penzeys unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp Penzeys kosher or sea salt
1 C buttermilk
1½ tsp baking soda
1 Tbs white vinegar

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla in large bowl. Add eggs and food coloring; blend thoroughly. In separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, and salt; add alternately with buttermilk to creamed mixture. Stir baking soda into vinegar; fold carefully into batter (do NOT beat). Pour into two greased and floured 9-in round cake pans. Bake at 350° F for 30 to 35 minutes or until cake tester inserted comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, remove from pans. Cook completely on wire racks. Frost with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter (1/2 C), softened
4 C confectioners sugar
1 Tbs cream or milk
1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Cream together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add confectioners sugar in parts (2 C, 1C, 1C). Beat until smooth. Add milk and beat until smooth.

 I made 2- 8 inch rounds and let them cool for an hour.

You can really see the color in this photo! 

Only 1 Tablespoon of coloring.

I started putting on the crumb coat of icing and Frank took over.  

His first job in the US was as a cake decorator.

Sophia wanted an animal print cake. 

We found this sugar sheet at Walmart for $4.

That made it easy!

Here's the finished product.

Frank started getting carried away with the icing.

The cake was delicious!!

 Birthday Girl!!

A slice!

Here's a basic buttercream recipe.  I made half this recipe.  I only used butter.

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter or margarine, room temperature (use vegetable shortening when pure white icing is needed)
1/2 cup milk, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla or other desired flavoring
2 pounds confectioners' sugar

Directions

Combine all the ingredients in large mixing bowl and mix at slow speed until smooth. If stiffer icing is needed, or if the weather is very warm, add a little extra sugar. This recipe is enough to cover and fill a 9 by 13-inch sheet cake or 2 (9-inch) layers.

Yesterday's meal

Yesterday the whole family went out to eat at this restaurant
in S. Lucia del Mela.
It's up in the mountains. Beautiful location.

The whole restaurant was set up for banquets. Must be a busy time.
We were seated on the left side of this room.
There was a huge room upstairs.
A very nice place.

Of course I didn't think to start taking photos of
the food until after the antipasto course.
The next course was this delicious shrimp risotto.
The food was served by the wait staff. They
brought around platters of food and served everyone.

Then we were served pappardelle in a Marsala wine
sauce with mushrooms. It was very good.

Next was the first meat course. This they brought out on plates,
one plate for 2 people. On it were spiedini, sausage, lamp chops and lemons.
This meat was grilled. Delish!

The next meat course was agnello al forno (baked lamb)
with potatoes and carrots.

This was the wine we drank along with water and coke.

After a bit they brought us fruit cups and
then some of us got cake, which I didn't care for.

Then coffee and amaro.
We were all so stuffed! It was a great day even though
We had to miss the Formula One race.

Pecans

When we were in Taormina, we saw a guy selling fruits and vegetables out of the back of his truck. That is very common here in Sicily. At first we were attracted by all of the beautiful fruit he had. We told him we would buy something when we were ready to leave the city.
When we got back to him after we had lunch, more on that later! He was sleeping in the cab. An African man helped us instead. We wanted some grapes but he told us they were €7/kilo AND they were from China. No thanks, buddy. We got these pecans (I didn't ask where they came from) and a head of fresh garlic.
This morning I sat outside for a long while cracking the nuts and picking the meat out. Yummy! I haven't had pecans in over 6 months! They aren't sold in the stores here. I made some chocolate chip cookie bars with most of them! It's divine!

Lunch: We ate at "Panoramic" Bella Blu http://www.bellablutaormina.com/index.php It was delicious!! Frank had Eggplant Parmagiana, Lasagna, Veal Cutlet and Insalata Misto. I had Gnocchi, Veal Cutlet and Insalata Verde. Sophia has Shrimp Cocktail (not the same as AMerican Shrimp Cocktail), Steak and French Fries and Insalata Verde. We got Dreher beer (Italian), our favorite! Sophia had a coke! It was so good. The service was great. Most of them spoke English.
The place was pretty and clean.

A Look at an Italian Supermarket

We went to the store this morning and I thought I would snap some photos of a few areas to show you...

The deli section

It's Easter - sides of lamb and sheep for sale!

Cheese!!
(That's only half of the cheese section)

Fish (swordfish, tuna, salmon)

Assorted seafood

Frozen foods

I only thought of snapping a few shots with my phone

after we were almost thru the store.

People were quietly laughing at me taking photos with my phone.

I guess they knew I wasn't Italian! lol

Murphy's Pub

We saw this pub as we were walking into the old part of Cefalu. Murphy's beer is my most favorite beer. I thought if the place opens we are going in there! Plus we might get lucky and be able to actually eat in a restaurant in the daytime. (Where we live the restaurants are not open in the daytime and sometimes only on weekend evenings, if they open at all.)

They were open when we came back.

This is the inside. Looks like
I would think an Irish pub would look like!
But as my luck holds out, no Murphy's beer.
Not even an Italian beer! I had a glass of Carlsbad, not bad!

They had this platter of fish at the door to entice people to come in.

We ate lunch there. Frank had Insalata di mare (seafood salad) and a bistecca (steak). Sophia also had Insalata di mare (seafood salad) and Frito Misto (assorted fried seafood). I had Insalata Caprese (mozzarella and tomatoes) and Frito Misto (assorted fried seafood). Sophia and I also each had Insalata Verde (a green salad). We had bread and wine. Sophia had a coke to drink.

The food was great. The seafood was very fresh and tasted so good!

Free Food!!

Next to the house where we live is a garden. I am thankful that there is not another house there because we would have no privacy at all. Plus it's nice to see the things growing there.

The land is worked by 3 people, 2 men and a woman.

Orange tree on the left.

Nice lemon tree - full of lemons...

Flowering Pea plants

Califlower patch

The lady was over there yesterday morning and offered me this beautiful califlower. It was nice and firm. AND very delicious. I made it for dinner last night. Sophia and I cleaned it, cut off the flowerets and poured olive oil and salt over them and roasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400-450 degrees. YUMMY!

Making fastnachts

Where we come from in Pennsylvania, yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. We would celebrate this by eating fastnachts. Check out this article from the internet: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8521.asp

If you make bread, it's not hard to do but it takes most of the day!

Sophia kneading the dough.

My turn to kneading.


Sophia cutting the dough.

All the fastnachts!

After they are fried.

Ready to get delivered!

Sweets from a roll...

I bought this at Ipercoop the last time we went. I haven't had food like this since before we left the US. I comes from France. When you open the roll and separate the six pieces of dough, you place the little chocolate sticks on there and roll!Then place them on the baking sheet and bake.

They looked and smelled so good!

Boy, were they delicious too! I must buy some again!

Looking for familiar things

We have been here about 2 1/2 months. There are certain things that I have not been able to find here. Some of it is just convenience items like a normal everday trash can. In America, we use larger trash cans in the kitchen. Here the only cans we have found are for the bathroom and not even 12 inches high. People use the bags from the grocery stores for their trash.

The toilets are different too. That's another story.

Litle P loves pancakes but I haven't found pancake syrup. I need to investigate grocery stores in Messina to see if they sell American items.

Other items I haven't come across:

pecans (I knew I wouldn't find them)

brazil nuts

corn tortillas

elbow macaroni

horseradish

frozen corn - There isn't alot of frozen food here but it seems to be the same items from 10 different brands. Only veg I have seen is green beans, peas and spinach. I did get a bag of frozen stuff to make minestrone.

pickles

ground cloves - found whole ones, though

food coloring

In the US we bought a pasta called orzo. It looks kinda like rice. But here orzo is barley...strange!

I can't think of anything else right now...

But I did find this...

Corn nuts...here they are called mais, tostato e salato. I was shocked!

Boy, are they good too! Best snack food I have found here...

Maybe these are more familiar to some of you packaged this way. I grew up eating these in Texas but I think I only found a few bags in Pennsylvania.

I was surprised to find French's mustard, BBQ sauce, avocados, mangoes, taco shells, flour tortillas and other Mexican foods, worchestershire sauce, soy sauce and Asian foods.