An Irish and Indian From Scratch Weekend

There were so many options for our From Scratch Weekends meal, and Ryan really wanted to add in a dessert this weekend.  Since I selected our meal, Ryan selected the dessert.  We did this on Saturday night and planned for our dinner on Sunday. 

Here is what we came up with:

The plan was to do a yellow cake with vanilla butter cream icing and decorate in the Spirit of St. Patrick's Day.  This was the first time we baked a cake since moving overseas.  I should mention that my husband is an awesome cake maker, and that before I met him, he would make cakes from scratch, and cookies, and well many things.  In other words, he is awesome and can bake from scratch, and would rather not make it from the box.

Nice and creamy batter.

Two layer cakes are the way to go.

Icing time.  This may look like a TON of powdered sugar, and well, it is...but we had a good reason for a double batch of butter cream, and you'll see why.

Since this is a From Scratch meal, we made our own green decorating icing from our butter cream and some green food dye.

This is the same tool we use for deviled eggs.  It is really fun to syringe our food.

We also had green sugar crystals to decorate with too.

The idea was to use a shamrock shape and toss the green sugar around it and hope the shape was clear on the cake.

Layer one is ready to go.

Layer two and icing all around.  ryan does all the cake icing since I swear he is way better at it than I am.

He even drew the fantastic shamrock.

Then I came in and finished the decorating off with the green outlined shamrocks.

Ok, here are a few pictures of our St. Patrick's Day cake from scratch.

I love out crystal cake display.

Yummy!  Major sugar rush.

Then on Sunday we made another Indian meal.  These were the recipes.

We basically did this...well...minus the shrimp and the spinach, plus some saffron.  Hey, it's all about experimenting and finding something that works with what you have available.  Ryan is not a big shrimp person, and we had a hard time locating fresh spinach.  Ok, not a hard time, we actually never located it.

Then, instead of naan this time, we tried chapatis, made from whole wheat.

So, for the bharta, these were our eggplants.

Haha, OMG, when I took the flesh out of the eggplants and put it in a bowl, it really looked like octopus!

Chapati time!

This griddle is amazing and we use it all the time. 

We're getting there.  The recipe makes 12.  I think almost every "bread" recipe we do has 12 servings.

Then it was time to get the basmati rice going.  Again, we modified this recipe...TONS.

Grinding the saffron.  I love that it is red but when added to food it turns yellow.

Gorgeous rice.

Time for some onions.  Ryan cuts lots of onions yesterday.

With some chili powder and some ground coriander seeds.  Then the rice was added to the onions and cooked for a little while longer while the eggplant dish was prepared.

This was for the Bharta.  Here we have onions, a chopped green chili, garlic and grated ginger root.  After this was sauteed, the mashed (ok, chopped) eggplant was added and then that was cooked.  I was super slammed with cooking tasks at this point, so I guess I forgot to take a picture when I added the eggplant.  At least the finished dish can be seen below.

The dinner table, set and ready to go.  Candles lit.  Bottle of wine opened and poured.  We went with a local white wine.

The saffron and onion rice.

Bharta

Chapatis, brushed with butter and folded over.

My lovely and extremely delicious plate of food.  I can honestly say this was a fantastic meal and I was super impressed with the bharta as I am not a huge onion fan, but they must be growing on me.

QUESTIONS:  What was the last dessert you baked?  What is your favorite Indian meal?  Did you participate in from scratch weekends?