Comunidad Health Foods

I mentioned in Monday’s post from L’s graduation party that I get a kind of thrill out of planning events. I love to think up themes and create a party around them, from the food to the decorations and everything in between. Unfortunately, I rarely get the opportunity to implement such extravagant plans – I’m almost never the actual hostess, and my family seems to be less and less into actual festive gatherings now that there really aren’t any kids running around. It’s really a shame, but I know that in time, when I own my own house and start my own family, I’ll have the chance to throw the kind of celebrations the nerd-factor-ten part of my brain loves to imagine.

My graduation party last weekend gave me the opportunity to throw one of these celebrations on a miniature scale – I couldn’t go all out on decorations and other thematic elements, but I could create my own menu, and I definitely took advantage of it. Being early June, I felt like it was the right time to do a pseudo “afternoon tea” spread, just, you know, without the tea. I wanted to capture an elegant Sunday brunch in hors d’oeuvres form, and I think it turned out pretty well in the end.

So without further adieu, after much anticipation, here is the Floptimism Graduation Party Recipe Round-Up:

These little brunch appetizers were my favorite of the entire party. The pancake was soft and pillowy, not incredibly flavorful yet certainly not bland, making it the perfect base for the flavorful 1,2 punch of the horseradish sauce and salty-sweet lox. The only true changes I did make were to use lower fat cream cheese in the pancakes and to substitute plain Chobani yogurt for the sour cream in the horseradish “cream;” and the only changes I would make if I were to make these again would be to buy nova smoked salmon to cut the saltiness just a little bit. I also would like to know why my pancakes didn’t puff up as nicely as the ones in the original post’s pictures, but that’s ok.

This almost didn’t happen, but at the last minute my mom decided that we didn’t have enough food, and I pulled out a dip mix that I had bought at a craft show earlier that year. The link is to the company’s site. I’m usually all about 100% homemade, but this dip turned out pretty well and the ingredients are impeccable. It was a good, quick fix to the solution of not-enough-food without needing to panic, run out to the store, or scramble for a recipe when I was already knee-deep in cooking tasks to get everything done in time. I ignored the instructions on the package and made it with 100% plain Chobani instead of a mixture of mayonnaise and sour cream, and I have to admit that I found it to be a littletoo potent with that Greek yogurt tang, but everyone else fawned over it. You can without a doubt get away with making these dips with partial Greek yogurt, but some people might prefer it with at least the addition of a more subdued base to even it out.

This recipe was the simplest to think up, the easiest to execute, and bar-none one of the most popular. One thing I’ve learned in planning parties is that as intrigued as people get by the fancy, sophisticated, and intricate dishes, it’s the simple ones that really light their sparks. At least, that’s what I’ve learned from my experiences. The two biggest hits of the day? Store-bought crackers and brie cheese, and these caprese bites. Here’s what you do: (1) Buy 1 pack of cherry tomatoes, 1 pack of mozzarella balls, toothpicks and a few sprigs of basil. (2) Halve the mozzarella balls and any large cherry tomatoes. Cut little leaf-shapes or strips out of the basil leaves. (3) Stick a mozzarella half through the toothpick, followed by the basil, followed by the tomato. (4) Refrigerate or serve. It takes a little bit of time to assemble since everything is so miniature, but it’s easy as pie and totally stress-less. I think a little cup of balsamic would be great for dipping, but everyone seemed to enjoy them perfectly fine on their own.

The above link will bring you to a much more gourmet-looking “Puff Pastry Squares with Pea and Tarragon Puree,” but I wanted to offer some gluten-free options (as one of my relatives has Celiac) and overall wanted something a little lighter and less indulgent than the puff pastry. I immediately thought of endive, and simply used an endive leaf as a boat for the dip. I look each leaf, smeared it with a scant ¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard, and topped it with about 1 teaspoon of the dip. Overall it made around 16 endive boats of varying sizes (I just used 1 endive). And let me tell you, this dip is fabulous. It’s not a very overtly flavorful dish – all of the flavors are somewhat demure – but calling it plain would practically be blasphemy. This dip is naturally sweet with salty-savory undertones from the cheese and a hint of almost licorice from the unique flavor of tarragon. I couldn’t get enough of this dip, and spread the extra on crackers and raw vegetables long after the endive boats themselves were gone. Ok, not long after – both the endive boats and leftover dip were mostly eaten that day and finished off by yours truly less than 48 hours later. Further proof of how delicious this was.

 

My family member with Celiac also has an egg allergy, so I thought these egg-less and crust-less quiches would be the perfect addition to my spread. It uses lite firm silken tofu (it’s the Mori-Nu shelf-stable kind; the recipe is very specific about the type of tofu used, as apparently other varieties fall apart) instead of the eggs, and turmeric to give it a yellow color. I think some of the party-goers were slightly suspicious, as the texture is not quiteeggy, but no one questioned me and I suspect that no one knew that what they were eating was not actually egg^* (except my family member with the egg allergy, who I very quietly told off to the side and who graciously helped cover for me whenever someone inquired about the recipe). I did run into some snags with this recipe and want to play around with making it again before I say too much, but I did provide the link to the original in case you wanted to take a stab at it yourself.

And then there was dessert. You don’t get a link because I took about 4 different websites and smooshed them together into one fantastic cake. Except, you have to wait for the recipe – la piece de resistance – because it deserves its own post. This cake is phenomenal. It rivals the one I made for my sister’s graduation two years ago, and that was truly one of my finest “creations” (as in, I followed the recipe well – I still can’t take credit for creating the recipe itself). It was certainly sweet enough to be addictive and qualify as dessert, but it wasn’t overtly or overpoweringly sweet. The cake was soft in texture and flavor, pairing well with the frosting and ganache which explode on your taste buds with decadence. I mean really, this cake is out of this world, and I promise that you will be hearing from it again many times on this blog. First, of course, I’ll give you the recipe. But then…ohhhh, then. I have this scheme that I’ve been devising for the most decadent, extravagant cake imaginable, and it involves these two cakes plus five more. That’s all I’ll say for now. 

 So there you have it, after nearly a full week of taunting and teasing you with the promise of revealing my graduation party spread, I’ve finally come through. I hope it was worth the wait!

There’s a part of me that dreams of becoming a caterer. I briefly considered that career path, until I realized how much I value my weekends and holidays. The hours just aren’t for me, yet I still get so excited when I have to opportunity to plan and execute a menu for an event, no matter how big or small. Usually, that’s pretty limited, but L’s and my graduations gave me two new excuses to get in the kitchen and bake/cook up a storm. Unfortunately for my sanity, they fell on the same exact weekend. Fortunately for my sanity, I was only taking care of a portion of the desserts and none of the main dishes for L’s, and although I was “catering” my own from start to finish, it was a much more intimate gathering and therefore significantly less stressful. And since I’m sitting here typing this update for you, it means I survived to tell you all about it.

Almost all of the recipes I made were a success, yet I didn’t really change much about any of them so I thought rather than featuring each individual recipe on this blog, I would write two round-up posts: one for L’s graduation from Saturday, and one for mine, which was yesterday. I have plans to tweak and play with some of the recipes so you’ll surely be seeing more of them and in more detail in the future, but for now, you can at least see all of the delicious food that tore me away from blogging this weekend!

So for L, his mom had ordered a cake from a local bakery and had asked me to supplement it with essentially whatever else I wanted. This, I translated to whatever else L wanted. He had previously told me that he wanted gingerbread, but I teased him into embarrassment accidentally because I thought it was endearingly uncommon to choose such a Fall-associated flavor for early June. I threw out a ton of options, mostly focusing on his school colors as my inspiration, all of which were met with total unenthusiasm. Needless to say, it took some back and forth before we settled on a sure crowd (and L) pleaser: cookies. Lots and lots of cookies.

 

The first request was for a peanut butter cookie, one of L’s favorites yet one that he doesn’t get to eat all that often. I made him a batch for a birthday a few years back (one of the most popular recipes on the blog!), but used Jif peanut butter because people swore to me that my beloved all-natural varieties would crumble to pieces when used in a cookie. And while L loved them and they looked beautiful, it was time for me to defy all the nay-sayers and give my natural peanut butter a chance to shine. I found a recipe from Joy the Baker for cookies that specifically called for natural peanut butter, and decided that was the one. The ingredient list was short and the preparation was simple – what more could you ask for? Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of them because I knew they weren’t blog ready after I snuck a bite from the cooling batch. Don’t get me wrong, everyone loved them, but they’re not quite it. The recipe isn’t perfect. I found it a little too sweet, and although L didn’t use those same words, he did say that the peanut butter flavor could have been stronger. The dough wasn’t the easiest to work with, either – the cookies did not crumble in the end, but the dough was delicate and not as cohesive as I would have liked. I think I can remedy this without adding chemical-laden artificial peanut butter to my dough, so I’ll be experimenting with those little tweaks and hope to have The Perfect Peanut Butter Cookie for you in the somewhat near(ish) future.

Next, we pinpointed a dining hall favorite of L’s: Oreo cookies. No, I don’t mean actual Oreo’s or homemade versions of actual Oreo’s. I mean cookies, coated completely in Oreo crumb deliciousness. These were hands down the hit of the party. People couldn’t get enough of them! The dough is pillowy and rich – breaking one in half is like eliciting a symphony straight from heaven, and taking that first bite brings you one step closer to nirvana. And believe me, it is with great pain that I say this, because I recently gave up high fructose corn syrup only to find out that Oreo’s contain it, meaning I let myself try half of one (for experimental purposes, folks! The things I do for you…), and then cut myself off. I’m not really sure what to do about it, either, because these cookies are absolute perfection and there’s no way around the HFCS. For the Oreo crumbs I bought an Oreo pie crust and crumbled it with a fork, and though there may be knock-off Oreo cookies, there are not knock-off Oreo cookie crusts. I also don’t think it’d be possible for me to go the rest of my life without ever having these again. It’s quite a conundrum, but I’m actually considering breaking my rules for the occasional batch of these beauties. Me, little type A personality, stick-to-the-rules-for-the-sake-of-sticking-to-them, me. If that doesn’t convince you how good they are, I really don’t know what will.

 

After the Oreo cookies, we decided on a Snickerdoodlerecipe. If there’s one thing L loves, it’s cinnamon, and a soft and chewy cookie rolled in the stuff is right up his alley. I ran into some snags with these – to be fair, already that day I had baked up nearly 7 dozen cookies and was probably not in the clearest state of mind. I was pulling out raw cookie dough from the oven thinking they were done, knocking a few of the unbaked dough balls right off the cookie sheet and onto the scorching hot oven floor (and then nearly blinding myself when later trying to reach into the oven only to be met with stinging smoke from the burnt cookie remnants from those dough balls), running out of oven space, baking them for nearly twice the amount of time the recipe indicated…I was terrified that I was going to wind up with little saucer bricks of cinnamon and sugar. They weren’t as pillowy as the ideal snickerdoodle is (in my book), but people still loved them and could not say enough nice things about them. They were not little sauce bricks – they were soft, cinnamony, and enjoyable. I just don’t know if the recipe has a few flaws or if I need to give them a second try on a day when I’m not on cookie overload, so I don’t want to feature them on here just yet. You’ll definitely be seeing versions of these in the hopes of redemption in the future of Floptimism, though – I promise.

 

And, finally, I was given Baker’s Choice – I could choose any fourth cookie I wanted. I still wanted L to be pleased with the results, so I settled on this little gem – a Strawberry Shortcake Cookie. These were the last cookies to be baked on Friday. By the time they went in the oven I had been in the kitchen for 12 hours and had over 10 dozen cookies packed up in Tupperware. If I thought my mind was elsewhere with the Snickerdoodles several hours earlier, I was really in questionable shape by the time this dough was ready to come together. Still, it was easy to do, and interesting in that it employed mixing techniques more akin to a pie crust or scone than a cookie. They wound up being like little cakes in cookie form, very delicate but ultimately a pleasant surprise that everyone raved about. The strawberries had a bit of a tang to them, a little bite that was almost reminiscent of a cranberry baked good. It really countered the sweetness of the cookie itself beautifully. I wonder if the cookies were meant to be sturdier, but then I added a little too much extra heavy cream and consequently changed the texture a little bit. Like I said, I was more or less delirious by the time I was going through the motions of this dough so, like the Snickerdoodles, I want to play around with the dough more before I devote an entire entry to them. However, people also went crazy over these, so I couldn’t leave them out of this round-up. In fact, last night L was just slightly hungry so he opened up the container, took one out, closed the container, and ate it…and then opened the container back up and ate three more because they are “so good that they make you hungry.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So there you have it, the 13+ dozen cookies from L’s grad party in all of their glory. I couldn’t have been much more pleased with how they turned out, and hope to have the opportunity to play around with them and share the absolute, hands down, perfected versions with you later on.

It’s almost out of hand how many Mexican-inspired recipes have graced the pages of Floptimism. I couldn’t, then, let Cinco de Mayo pass by without paying homage to all of the wonderful dishes that incorporate the flavors and spices of a typical Mexican dish. Unfortunately, today got the better of me, and between unexpected errands and appointments that dragged out longer than I expected, I wasn’t able to post this sooner. Now that it’s nearly dinner time, I’m sure everyone who’s celebrating has their meals all planned out, so consider this more of a commemorative post than an incredibly useful one. Next year I think I’ll compile this list earlier on so that people have more of a chance to use the recipes if they’re still in search of something good to try. And to anyone out there who didn’t think to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with a fun menu, why miss out? Celebrate Seis de Mayo, or Siete de Mayo, or even Doce de Mayo (that’d be next Saturday – yes, I had to look that up; no, I cannot count much past the number 3 in Spanish, I confess). You don’t need a holiday to justify enjoying the flavors that Mexican cuisine has to offer – at least not in my book!

One Year Ago: A Cinco de Mayo Trifecta: Chicken Chile Verde Tortilla Stack, Easy Black Bean Dip, & Black Bean Tortizzas