Dinner Party, Recipes, and a Sneak Peak!

This past weekend we hosted our first dinner party with a lovely couple we know. This was probably the first one I hosted since living in California. Well besides a family gathering for father’s day mid-renovation chaos I may add. But I digress. Unfortunately, I cannot show the lovely table setting as it would show some areas of the house which I haven’t posted yet, so someday hope to post some holiday festivities.

Instead, I’ll go over some details. We made Barbecue Chicken Pizza and red velvet truffle cake, and my friends brought the salad. I also threw together a tastefully simple cheese spread.

The barbecue chicken pizza was an idea my boyfriend and I had after visiting Tilted Kilt following a white water rafting trip two summers ago. We made it as our first dinner together (collective awe?) and decided to substitute regular pizza dough for crescent rolls for a flakier texture.  I should mention I really don’t measure things besides baking because of all that science-y stuff. I should warn you because of the crescent rolls, the pizza is a bit messy.

Barbecue Chicken Pizza 
Recipe Yield: 1 8.5 x 12.5 inch pizza
Adapted from the tastes of Tilted Kilt

Ingredients:
1 ½ cans crescent rolls
Barbecue sauce (my favorite is Jack Daniels)
Grated mozzarella cheese
2 chicken breasts
Medium red onion
1 Roma tomato
Cilantro

Directions:
1.  Pre-heat the oven to 350°F or the temperature listed on the crescent roll package.
2. Grill chicken breasts and cube. Line the pan with tinfoil (optional) and layout crescent rolls to completely cover the pan, pushing the perforated edges together.
3.  Pre-bake the crescent rolls for ¼ the time listed on the package- I baked mine for 3 minutes but I have a tiny convection oven. In the meantime, remove cilantro leaves from their stems and chop the onion and tomato.
4. Remove crescent rolls from the oven and begin topping the pizza: barbecue sauce then cheese and finish with chicken onions and tomatoes. Hold the cilantro.
5. Bake for 1-2 minutes less than the crescent roll packaging- I baked mine for 10 minutes, again things cook faster in my convection oven. Garnish with cilantro.

So Pinterest was my savior. Of course when grocery shopping I was pretty positive I had white vinegar and it just wasn’t the case, so off I went to find a recipe with distilled white vinegar. I ended up combining a few recipes, so I crossed my fingers when I put some of the recipes together as banking is so scientific.

For some reason I deleted the photo of my red velvet masterpiece, I’ll be sure to update this post when I make it again. We were thinking of making this cake for Christmas and doubling the recipe partly through to make red and green layers. Who knows where we'll end up.

Red Velvet Cake
Recipe Yield: 1- 9" cake
Adapted from recipes from here (directions), here (ingredients), get creative when garnishing.

Ingredients:
1 c + 2 Tbsp flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp red food coloring
2 1/2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 c sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c buttermilk
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp distilled white vinegar
Cream cheese frosting from here.

Directions:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F. Generously butter and flour two 9-inch or three 8-inch round cake pans.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl; set aside.
3. In a small bowl, mix food coloring and cocoa powder to form a paste until lumps disappear.
4. Using a stand mixer, beat butter and sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy. Add egg, then vanilla, then food coloring mixture separately. Slowly add the flour mixture then buttermilk in two batches alternating between them. Beat until well combined; continually scraping down the bowl.
5. In a separate tiny bowl, mix vinegar and baking soda, which will fizz slightly. Add to the cake batter and mix in with a scraper.
6. Divide batter between the cake pans and bake 15-20 minutes if you have a convection oven (otherwise 25-30 minutes). When a toothpick inserted comes out clean, the cakes are done.
7. Cool cake for 5 minutes then freeze for an additional 5 minutes. Cut cake into cubes or break randomly depending on the 'look' you're trying to achieve.
8. Starting with the red velvet cake layer cake then frosting then chocolate chips. Save the crumbs for the top. There will be approximately 3 layers of cake. Top with whipped topping, red velvet crumbles in the center, and chocolate chips on top.

Our guests came baring thoughtful gifts which were these two lovely frames. I cant wait to print some pics and finish these puppies off.

I should back up and say that we stemmed the dinner party idea from the fact that we had photo sessions back in July when she was preggers and early Sept when her baby was a newborn. It took me forever to edit them for various time constraints and then a short fall of technology including losing the color quality in my main monitor.  Thank goodness for Cyber Monday!! I digress again. The intentions of this party were to deliver the pictures and finally give her the pampered chef goods she ordered in November. Ya, talk about patience and understanding (probably why I love them so much!). So without further adieu here’s the sneak peak of this photo session:

I had to make a silhouette (or twenty four):

P.S. It was ridiculously difficult to choose just a few to preview. Once the photography portion of the blog is set up, there will be a lot more eye candy!

And just to be random, it’s been a long time since I’ve used Spotify - boy was I missing out. So much time can be wasted. Check it out if you haven’t already yet, it’s a program kind of like itunes except you don’t have to download anything but the program itself. You can build playlists and listen to a specific song (as opposed to Pandora which is more like a radio tuned to songs based on your taste). It stinks that there is a charge for Spotify mobile. Either way, I love and have both Pandora and Spotify- they’re life savers!