Blood Donation 2 of 13

So I went to give blood on May 6th (a long time ago I know). I am now up to 2 out of the total 13 needed to complete the goal. Next anticipated date is July 8th but its looking like that might have to change.

4 of Cook 5 new different cakes for Golder BDays (#6)

Well this goal is getting closer and closer to being done (1 left to do). It was Carmen’s BDay at Golder on May 9th and she wanted a Black Forest Cake for her BDay Cake (yes, I actually let her pick).

So I took a shot at doing a Black Forest Cake, I got the recipe from HERE. Turns out to be a nice 4 layer cake with lots of good stuff between the layers.

Well my cake didn’t end up looking like the picture on the site, they had chocolate frosting on theirs but the recipe caledl for and had instructions for whip cream on top. Next time if I make this, I am going to go with a chocolate frosting instead of the whip cream topping. Other than that the cake turned out really well (at least thats what people told me).

Here are some pics from this cake building experiment.

1 of Cook/Make 25 new meals (#1)

I guess its time to officially kick this goal off, although I have been cooking new things since I have started I have never gotten around to counting it towards my goals. So here I go, my first new meal.

My title for this meal is “Stuff Chicken Breasts Wrapped in Sage and Prosciutto with Asparagus and Sweet Potato”, I think it turned out really good. I got the stuffed chicken recipe from a new Gordon Ramsey cookbook I have and then just added the sides I thought it would be good with. The chicken breasts were cut so they would open up and I stuffed them with ricotta and sage. They were then wrapped with prosciutto, fried for a few minutes with thyme and then put into the oven. While that was going on I drizzled the asparagus and sweat potato in some olive oil and put them in the oven.

An our or so and a glass of wine later, I ended up with a great meal.  Here are some pics from the cooking process and the final results. Enjoy!

3 of Cook 5 new different cakes for Golder BDays (#6)

Baked another cake for some Golder Birthdays, there was three back-to-back-to-back so I decided to cook one cake for all three of them. Since my last cheesecake turned out fairly well I decided to try my hand at cooking another one, this time Strawberry and White Chocolate Cheesecake.

It was actually fairly easy to make and I even tried a new way of cooking it where you wrap the spring pan in foil and place it in a tray of water in the oven, it’s suppose to cook the cake more evenly. It actually worked (for the most part) and I think it cooked the cake more uniformly.

The cake was a success, here are some pics so you can judge that for yourself (at least on the looks )