Birthday Celebrations

I'm such a bad girlfriend, I almost forgot to write about Cody's birthday this last Thursday. Whoops!

But hey, at least I didn't forget it!

For breakfast I made some yummy french toast with a blueberry compote/sauce. I completely forgot that we were out of syrup when I planned on making french toast, but thankfully Cody and I are chefs and could figure something out with what ingredients I had. I ran the problem by him and he came up with a blueberry sauce/compote (pretty much the exact same thing I was thinking of). When it came time to make the sauce it was pretty simple: blueberries, white sugar, and some water to loosen it up. Cody had never actually made this sauce before and started the pan up high, thankfully I had taken enough pastry classes and seen enough catastrophes that I turned it way down so the sugar didn't burn. Good thing there were two of us around! It's a nice balance having a chef and a pastry chef in a relationship, one of us will know the answer to a food problem!

The sauce was super super delicious!

Once breakfast was done I started the German chocolate cupcakes Cody requested I make.

German Chocolate Cupcakes

Recipe by Martha Stewart

Yields 24 cupcakes

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temp

2 cups cake flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups sugar

3 large eggs, room temp

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

5 ounces dark chocolate, melted and cooled (It's supposed to be semisweet, but I used dark chocolate)

Coconut-Pecan Frosting (recipe follows)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray cupcake pans with nonstick spray. Whisk together cake flour, baking soda and salt.

2. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Slowly add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 additions of buttermilk, beating until combined after each. Beat in chocolate until combined.

3. Fill cups about 3/4 full. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until a cake tester comes out clean, 20 minutes.

4. Once cooled, split cupcakes in half horizontally. Spread a heaping tablespoon of frosting on top of each bottom half; replace top halves. Spread more frosting on top of each cupcake.

Coconut-Pecan Frosting

Yields: 4 cups

3 large egg yolks

1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk

1 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar

3/4 cups unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 package sweetened flaked coconut (I used shredded since that's all I had)

1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted, and coarsely chopped

1. Heat egg yolks, milk, brown sugar, and butter in a saucepan over medium, stirring constantly, until thick, about 10 minutes (should be consistency of sour cream). Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl.

2. Stir vanilla, salt, coconut, and pecans into frosting. Let cool completely, stirring occasionally. 

 They were freaking amazing!! I overdosed on sugar and ate two of them in one night.

The birthday boy enjoying his homemade cupcakes

We spent the morning baking and watching Despicable Me, went out to see Brave again (it's the best Disney princess movie...go see it) and then relaxed to watch Gladiator until we went out to dinner at Chilis.

We shared chips & guacamole for an appetizer

I had margarita grilled chicken with beans and rice. It was pretty damn yummy and something I'll get again if I ever go back to Chilis. Big IF right there, Cody and I both got sick after dinner.

Cody got chicken fajitas

After dinner we went home to rest and try to feel better so we could go to a comedy show downtown. 

The comedy show was pretty good, some not so funny ones, but mostly pretty funny. There were 4 girls next to our table that had to comment outloud in the middle of the comedians act and it got pretty freaking annoying. I had the best rum and coke I've ever had (yes, I just turned 21, doesn't mean I haven't had alcohol before, I'm a rebel).

Once the comedy show was done we headed home where we indulged in those delicious cupcakes and then promptly passed out.

Happy (couple days late) Birthday to an awesome man!