This past weekend my buddy, Chad, drove up from LA with his wife, Kristie, and their two young kids, Chelsea and Brooke, ages 2 years and 4 months, respectively. Chad was coming up for our annual Penn State Football weekend in San Francisco. It's just a get together with my two West Coast Penn State friends, Chad and Chuck, to hang out and watch a PSU game. I think we've held this event since 1998. Unfortunately, Chuck from Seattle couldn't make it this time.

After a weekend filled with Korean BBQ, Hawaiian, Chinese and Burmese food, I was wondering what to make for Sunday night dinner. Thankfully, Jane texted me Sunday morning stating that dinner was at her place. Her brother, Garry, was planning on making a slow-roasted pork shoulder and his wife, Karen, was making a strawberry cream cake. We were definitely looking forward to dinner.

Chad and I went on a 50 mile bike ride to Tiburon and afterwards, we were famished. I told Chad that we should snack on something before heading over for dinner, otherwise, everyone would think we were complete pigs if we devoured all the food ourselves. My reputation as a glutton has already been established, but I wanted to protect Chad's image.

Dinner started with a pasta dish that Garry threw together with hot Italian sausages, mushrooms, peas, onions and tomato sauce. As a side dish, we sautéed some Kale with garlic, olive oil, sea salt and a touch of butter. To make the kale more tender, we blanched it first. The pasta was excellent with spicy sausage and sweet peas. The kale was tender and tasty.

Next up was Karen's strawberry cream cake. Karen is a trained pastry chef, so we are always looking forward to eating her beautiful desserts. This time, she was trying out a strawberry cream cake recipe from America's Test Kitchen. The recipe is from the current season of America's Test Kitchen TV show, and it's free if you register for the site. The cake is like strawberry shortcake and consists of white cake, strawberry filling, whipped cream with cream cheese and fresh strawberries. The cake was amazing! It was surprisingly light and not too sweet.

While the strawberry cream cake was great, it was only a palate cleanser for the slow-roasted pork shoulder. Actually, Garry and Karen were tied up and couldn't get the pork in the oven early enough. Since it takes a few hours to roast, the pork wasn't ready until after dessert. And none of us were leaving without trying the pork!

Garry based the pork roast off of this slow-roasted pork shoulder with melted apples recipe. He omitted the apples and onions and cut the cooking time. Without the apples and onions, there was less braising and more roasting. Garry thought the pork shoulder was too dry, but everyone at dinner thoroughly enjoyed it. The pork had a crispy, caramelized crust and the meat was full of flavor. The two big carnivores of the group, Jane and I, couldn't stop grabbing more pieces of pork shoulder. I definitely want to make this dish again with the melted apples.

Dinner was very fun and scrumptious. It was also great sharing Sunday night dinner with Chad and his family. As we were all leaving with full bellies, two year old, Chelsea, yelled, "tanks for da cake!" 

SNDsters: Chad, Kristie, Chelsea, Brooke, Garry, Karen, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

While in New York City last month, we upheld our Sunday Nite Dinner tradition at our friends', Jeff and Aimee's, place. After a long weekend of non-stop eating festivities and a Sunday morning bike ride to Piermont, I just wanted to curl up for a extended nap instead of dinner planning. We were cooking for several meat-and-potatoes people, so we tossed around making skirt steak or meat loaf. We settled on good old reliable spaghetti bolognese. The rest of the menu was...

Heirloom Tomato and Butter Leaf Lettuce Salad
with avocados, medium boiled eggs, bacon lardons and Dijon vinaigrette

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Vietnamese Green Papaya Salad
with basil, beef jerky and nuoc cham

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Spaghetti Bolognese
topped by basil and shaved Parmigiano Reggiano

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Lemon Pound Cake
accompanied by fresh strawberries

Why the green papaya salad? Well, Jeff invited his cycling club friend, Maggie, who volunteered to make the papaya salad if it fit into the menu. At that point, the menu was "fluid" and we neglected to tell Maggie what we were making. That's how you end up with a tasty and refreshing green papaya salad with spaghetti bolognese. The salad was made with green papaya, basil, shredded beef jerky and topped with nuoc cham (Vietnamese dipping sauce).

Recently, Hungry Bear and I have had a penchant for making salads with avocados and medium boiled eggs. I lost track of the time when boiling the eggs, and as you'll see in the slideshow, they turned into hard boiled eggs. For extra flavor and to complement the creamy avocados, we fried up some bacon lardons. Coupled with heirloom tomatoes and lightly dressed greens, this salad rocks.

Jeff made the spaghetti bolognese and used this simple bolognese sauce recipe by Giada De Laurentiis. It's an easy recipe that requires minimal prep time and ingredients. Compared to Michael Chiarello's bolognese sauce that Hungry Bear made in August, Giada's recipe uses more tomatoes and produces a meaty marina sauce, whereas, Michael's recipe makes a meat sauce with a touch of tomatoes. Both sauces are simple to make and delicious.

We ended dinner with a lemon pound cake and fresh strawberries. I used a classic pound cake recipe found in The New Best Recipe cookbook. The recipe can also be found on Kat on Thyme, a friend of a friend's blog. The cake was turned into a lemon pound cake by adding the zest of two lemons. The pound cake was light, buttery, moist and delightful.

Overall, dinner was a little eclectic and very enjoyable. It was quite a challenge for four people to prepare a meal in a small kitchen (a very nice, recently remodeled kitchen). In the end, we succeeded in making a great Sunday night meal to share with our New York City friends.

SNDsters: Craig, Nicole, Maggie, Ava, Aimee, Jeff, Hungry Bear, Chuck

Hungry Bear and I love cupcakes, but I think our friend, Aimee, is a bigger cupcake fanatic. Last month while visiting Jeff and Aimee in NYC, Aimee organized a cupcake tasting tour around five popular cupcake shops in the city. We even had a scorecard, created by Jeff, to rate the shops and keep our tasting notes.

Since we all love chocolate, and to fairly rate the cupcake shops, we agreed to taste the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting at each store. It was acceptable, and our duty, to sample the other cupcake flavors, but the chocolate chocolate cupcake was a mandatory tasting. We also decided to prevent over eating by sharing cupcakes.

We started the cupcake tour at 4:00 PM on a warm Friday afternoon at Harlem's Make My Cake, excited and full of energy. The plan was to head south and end the tour at Magnolia Bakery in the West Village. After splitting a few large cupcakes at Make My Cake, we were all on a sugar high and headed to Crumbs Bake Shop.

After only two stops on the tour, we all hit the sugar wall and started to feel sluggish. Aimee had skipped lunch and wanted some real food. Hungry Bear and I needed something savory to settle our stomachs. Conveniently for us, we passed Gray's Papaya on our way to Buttercup. To re-energize for the second half the tour, we proceeded to each eat a hot dog at Gray's Papaya. It wasn't the healthiest thing, but we were on a cupcake tasting tour, so healthy food choices were not on the agenda.

Buttercup Bake Shop was the next destination. It was a highly anticipated spot based on its history and high rankings on all NYC cupcakery lists. At this point, there were concerns by some participants whether we would be able to complete all five tour stops that day.

We were at 72nd street and the next stop on the tour was Cupcake Cafe on 40th street. We literally stumbled the thirty two blocks down to Cupcake Cafe and barely beat the 7:00 PM closing time. After sharing a few more cupcakes, we had to call it a night. We were all tired and incoherent from all of our cupcake eating. Jeff said he felt like he had been drinking all day.

On our way back to Columbus Circle, we grabbed a Philly cheese steak and half a pizza for dinner... yes, dinner. Even though we were full of sugary cupcakes, we were still a little hungry. And believe it or not, we all felt better after ingesting some protein. Feeling better was short lived, as we all passed out by 9:00 PM while watching the Dog Whisperer on TV. The night ended with Aimee declaring that she would not eat cupcakes again for a long time.

A long time in Aimee's world must mean a couple of days, because only two days later with her relentless pressure, we completed the tour by queuing up at Magnolia Bakery. It was a strange experience at Magnolia's. First we had to wait in line before the cupcake shop bouncer let us in. Next, everyone in the shop grabs their own cupcakes in the window display and then lines up to pay. It appears to be a very inefficient process, but who's to argue with the mother of all cupcake shops.

Ratings

After reviewing the tasting notes and with careful consideration, I present to you our 2007 NYC Cupcake Tasting Tour rankings. The ratings are only from the participants who tasted cupcakes at all five bakeries.

Cupcake Tour Rankings (1 = Best, 5 = Worst)

There was no clear winner on this tour. Cupcake tasting and judging is very subjective and comes down to your preferences between the cake part and the frosting. Hungry Bear and I use the cake as the main rating criteria. We believe the frosting is there to compliment and enhance the cake, but not to over power it. With that in mind, we both chose Crumbs Bake Shop as the best cupcake shop on our tour. We thought that Crumbs had the best cake in terms of texture, moisture and chocolate taste.

Jeff favors the frosting flavor and the moistness of the cake. He is also values aesthetically pleasing cupcakes. Aimee considers the cake and the frosting equally important. However, she doesn't like cupcakes that are overloaded with frosting. Another key factor for Aimee is the coldness of the cupcake. She prefers cold, refrigerated cupcakes for some strange reason. Interestingly, both Jeff and Aimee chose Cupcake Cafe as their favorite bakery. They serve cold cupcakes.

The clear loser in this cupcake tour was Buttercup Bake Shop. It was the lowest ranked bakery across the board. Maybe it's just the 72nd street location, but the cake was dry and lacked any flavor. The killer was the overload of frosting, which was too sweet. The shop was a big disappointment given all of its hype.

We all agreed that Cupcake Cafe had the prettiest looking cupcakes and that Buttercup Bake Shop should not be on the list of on any future cupcake tasting tours. I find it interesting that given our different judging criteria and tastes, we all ranked Make My Cake as our number two shop. I'm concluding that this shop has the best combination of good cake and frosting.

Tips

The cupcake tour was very fun and the highlight of our visit to NYC. It's a great activity for people of all ages. I highly recommend conducting your own cupcake eating tour in NYC or your favorite city. Here are some tips if you plan on going on a cupcake tasting tour.

• Map out the shops and route in advance. If you are walking, the last stop should be the cupcake shop closest to your home. Walking long distances with a cupcake buzz is not fun.
• Keep a scorecard and notes. After a few cupcakes and the sugar high and crash, you'll forget everything if you don't take notes.
• No matter how hungry you are, make sure you share cupcakes, especially the large ones. I would recommend splitting large cupcakes into six portions. You'll pay the price if you don't limit your cupcake intake.
• Start early and plan the day around the cupcake tour. Visit other attractions on the route to pace your cupcake eating. Also, sprinkle in a few savory food stops between the cupcake shops. Your stomach will thank you for the salty snacks and protein.
• Don't start the day by eating baked French toast casserole, followed by a three-course lunch at Le Cirque, before your cupcake tour!

Tour Participants: Aimee, Jeff, Ava, Hungry Bear, Chuck, Kurt, Craig, Nicole

As I mentioned in the last post, our friend Jane made chocolate devil's food cupcakes for dessert last Sunday. She has made these cupcakes for us in the past and we love them. Jane uses a devil's food cupcake recipe from the Food Network. The cocoa powder and chocolate brand used is Valrhona, so the cupcakes are pure chocolate delights.

In the process of making the ganache, Jane overheated her cream and broke it. The chocolate separated and became grainy, then I made it worse by overheating it more. None of us had broken a ganache before, so we were at a loss on how to fix it. Fortunately, we were able to find a remedy from The Secrets of Baking...

If your ganache looks broken or feels grainy, there is still hope for it. To repair a broken ganache, divide it in half. Warm one half over a double boiler to a temperature of 130 degrees F. The fat will melt and pool at this temperature, making the mixture thinner. Cool the remaining ganache to 60 degrees F by stirring it over a bowl of ice. The fat in this portion will begin to solidify, causing the ganache to thicken.

When both halves have reached the desired temperatures, slowly stream the hot ganache into the cold and stir to combine. You can use a food processor for this step by placing the cool ganache into the bowl of the food processor, turning on the machine, and streaming in the warm ganache. The mixture will not fall below 90 degrees F during this procedure, so there is no risk of creating a grainy texture. Combining the two portions of ganache in this way averages the temperature into the optimal working range, and the fat droplets will be suspended evenly in the water.

We followed the directions and were able to save the ganache. It would have been sad to discard the Valrhona chocolate but thankfully we fixed it and topped the devil's food cupcakes with the ganache. The cupcakes were fantastic!

As I mentioned in the last post, we had ice cream cookie sandwiches for dessert last Sunday. The cookies for the sandwich are thick and chewy chocolate chunk cookies. The cookies on their own are absolutely delicious with a glass of milk or coffee. Our friends have enjoyed the chocolate chunk cookies many times, so we decided to add a new twist and treat them to ice cream too.

The thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies recipe can be found in Cook's Illustrated's The New Best Recipe cookbook. We really like this recipe because it produces cookies that have a great chewy texture. Another reason why we like the recipe is the butter is melted as opposed to softened, so there's no pre-planning required to make the cookies.