Long time, no post!

I've done it, I've moved. I live in MA now. I'm not yet a legal resident, but apparently I need to, or else I can't have health insurance (which is such a mess anyway).

I've been having a lot of food worth posting about, but little time to do it. However, this weekend I hosted a cocktail party back in NH, and I made kahlua gelato. This is batch #3 of ice cream, and definitely the best.

Recipe:
scald 2 cups of 2% milk with 8 coffee beans in a medium saucepan.

whisk together 5 egg yolks and 2/3cup sugar, then slowly add half the hot milk into the egg mixture, stirring frequently so you don't scramble the eggs. Add the egg/milk mixture back into the saucepan, and cook until slightly thickened, about 8-10 min.

Take it off the heat, stir in 1/4cup of kahlua (or, if you want the alcohol to burn off (I wanted the alcohol), add it to the egg/sugar mixture before adding in the scalded milk)

Strain and let cool in the fridge until it's cold.

Put it in your ice cream maker, and let 'er rip!


it was delish. I left it at D's, and I was really torn about doing that... but I can easily make more.

I went to a new (for me) bakery last week. Well, I went to two. I went to Sweet in Boston, and had a most delicious madagascar vanilla mini cupcake. The frosting was my perfect buttercream frosting, sweet and not buttery, but not with a crisco feel to it like so many bakeries use. The cake was dense, and not very sweet, a good complement to the super-sweet frosting.

I also went to Sweet in Worcester (the names are a coincidence), which had beautiful cupcakes that I like better after 4 days. The cake was good, but the frosting was a little too light and crisco-y for me. I bought them on Friday, and by Tuesday the outer layer of frosting had hardended to a nice shell, and the cake was not stale at all. I'm definitely going there again (picture soon- you need to see these cupcakes). Parking was tricky, but then, I live in a city now, so I should expect that.

We also did some wedding cake tasting last weekend... more on that later.

Picture soon of my cocktail party spread. The menu included:
chicken sausage and gruyere tart
corn and shitake fritters (my first attempt at deep frying!)
veggie platter
ranch dip
three layer hummus (roasted redpepper, original, cilantro- from Trader Joe's)
coconut macaroons
kahlua ice cream
endive stuffed with boursin and pecans
olive spread
baguette and rosemary sourdough bread
tarragon artichoke dip (which Samantha brought)

The cocktail party was my annual pre-Dartmouth grad student semi formal dance. As always, the cocktail party was a hit, the dance was a waste of time (they didn't even give us free alcohol, we got there too late. But the place smelled so strongly of beer that we hardly noticed the lack of alcohol. Seriously, are they trying to recreate a scuzzy frat party?)