Mexican Birthday

Sweet Potato Soup with Lime-Yogourt Garnish

My sister and I decided to make a special meal for a friend's birthday, and since she requested Mexican, Mexican it was! I have to say, it was very loose Mexican though. It was still delicious, however, and it seemed our friend appreciated it very much!

Firstly, we made a sweet potato soup with a yogourt-lime garnish. This soup is so delicious, yet so simple. You cook onions and add chili powder, then you add five cups of diced sweet potato and cover with water. Once the sweet potato is tender, the soup gets pureed and some yogourt gets stirred in. The garnish was simple as it was just a 1/4 cup yogourt with 1 tsp lime zest and 1 tsp lime juice stirred in. The addition of the juice makes the garnish easy to drizzle over top of the soup.

Nachos

Tomato-Mango Salsa

Next, we winged it on some nachos. We figured we purchased so many types of Mexican ingredients that we wouldn't use all of, so it made sense to use those to top our nachos. We used taco cheese, some homemade fajita seasoning, pickled sliced jalapenos, re-fried beans, and a homemade tomato-mango salsa, then baked them off. They were very pretty and tasty to eat!

Chicken with Fajita Seasoning for our homemade tortillas

For our main, we made homemade corn tortillas and chicken with fajita seasoning. You can buy bags of corn flour at the grocery store, which you simply add water and salt to, then form into tortillas, and fry. We topped our fajitas with the tomato-mango salsa.

Bean and Corn Salad

For a side dish, we made a bean and corn salad, as this was something specially requested by our friend. It was a mixture of beans, corn, avocado, red pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro, and then it had a tangy dressing of lime juice and olive oil. I cut back the olive oil to 3 or 4 tablespoons, as opposed to the 1/2 cup the recipe stated, and it worked really well.

Caramel Flan

Finally, for dessert we tried our hand at a caramel flan. Despite the lengthy time to allow for setting this dessert, this dessert had one of the fastest preparation times of any dessert I have made. It was light and custardy with the caramel finish on top.

Strawberry Pie

Strawberry Scones

Strawberry season is just finishing up here in southern Ontario, but my family managed to get a strong jump on it this year by both freezing bags of fresh strawberries and making jam. Additionally, my sister and I used them for baking, like for some delicious strawberry scones, or this strawberry pie that I'm going to talk about now.

Strawberry Filling

I'm not a terrific pie maker, although I've been making them on and off for four years. It's really important to find a recipe for pie crust that won't fall apart when you attempt to transfer it to the pie plate. The crust recipe in the joy of baking's strawberry-rhubarb pie recipe did the trick, because it was durable while also being flaky and moist once baked. I followed the recipe for the filling as well, but I doubled the amount of strawberries I used because I didn't have any rhubarb.

Strawberry Pie before it hit the oven

All said and done, the main issue I had with the pie after it was baked was that there was a lot of liquid in the filling that never thickened up. This was odd to me considering the large amount of sugar and the several tablespoons of cornstarch that were used. We came to the conclusion that the berries we got this year must have had some extra water in them. Other than that, the pie was very tasty with sweet strawberries and buttery, flaky crust. I would make it again!

Baked Strawberry Pie

Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

Place Setting with Menu

I know it's late, but since I posted what my sister and I made for our stepfather for Father's Day, I wanted to post what we made for our mother on her special day. We were planning on taking her to a local tea place for an afternoon tea they had for Mother's Day, however, they were all booked up. It was my sister's brilliant idea to make an afternoon tea at home and it was my idea to complete the theme with menus!

Curried Egg Salad

For beverages, we made a pot of hot wild blueberry tea, a blend from said tea shop. It is a delicious black tea with just the hint of fruity blueberries and is really tasty with just some honey stirred in. We decided that an iced tea would be nice to accompany our meal too, so we chilled some strawberry fields white tea from teopia and flavoured it with some honey, lemon slices, and fresh strawberries.

Cream Cheese and Cucumber Sandwiches

We made three types of sandwiches, the traditional cucumber and cream cheese on white sandwich bread, curried egg salad on dark rye, and sliced chicken deli meat with brie and apple butter that was toasted on sliced baguette. Our mother enjoyed the sandwiches a lot, but I think the egg salad was a clear winner for taste and presentation as we topped those sandwiches with some radish slices and chives.

Chicken, Brie, and Apple Butter on Toasted Baguette

For dessert, Megan made lemon curd tarts and I created my own cupcake with a spiced chocolate base and a caramel buttercream. I think we all enjoyed the lemon tarts the most with their tart lemony sweetness and velvet texture. My cupcake was delicious too except that the icing was quite rich after so much food.

Lemon Curd Tarts

My sister and I loved creating this menu and it was finally an excuse for us to use our nice tea sets!

Chocolate Spice Cupcakes with Caramel Buttercream