Asparagus with Roasted Garlic Sauce

There's and abundance of Asparagus around here at the moment, which is fine with me: I love asparagus!! So I started looking for new recipes for me to try out. To my big surprise most recipes out there are for green asparagus, whereas most Dutch people eat white aspargus. I love both varieties. Last weekend I picked up a kilo of green Asparagus at the market.

Today I made the most delicious and simple dish: Asparagus with Roasted Garlic Sauce. I found the recipe here and followed Susan's directions (both for this dish as on how to roast the garlic) exactly, except for using pecans instead of walnuts. Let me tell you: this was amazing!! There's no cream in this sauce, but it tastes sooo creamy! I loved that I could taste all the ingredients: the garlic, pecans and lemon juice, Delicious!! I'm definitely making this again!!

Asparagus with Roasted Garlic Sauce

1/2 head roasted garlic
1/4 cup walnuts (pecans work too)
juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp. water
salt to taste
1 pound asparagus

Lightly toast the walnuts. The easiest way to do this is to put them in the oven with the garlic during the last 5 minutes that it’s roasting. When they’re hot but not burning, remove them from the oven and grind them in a food processor (or mash them to a paste in a mortar and pestle). Add half a head of roasted garlic, the lemon juice, and the water and continue to puree. Add salt to taste.

Prepare the asparagus by snapping off the tough ends (just hold a spear at the bottom and in the middle, and it should snap off in the right spot). Steam them lightly for 3 minutes or until they are bright green and just starting to become tender. Place them in a serving dish, and toss them with the roasted garlic sauce. Serve, trying not to fight over the last spear on the plate!

Taste & Create: Mrs. B's Lemon Meringue Pie

Just a short post today. This is the second recipe I made for April's Taste & Create. I was paired with Jen of The Misadventures of Mrs. B and apparently she loves lemony desserts as much as I do. As soon as I found this lovely Lemon Meringue Pie I knew I had to make it. I have always been intimidated by meringue and was super-excited by the thought of finally tackling it!

In fact I was so excited that I made one huge mistake.... I cut the pie when the custard wasn't quite set yet.... Oops!! So the first piece looked like crap, it tasted wonderful though! For the crust I used Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Sweet Tart Dough (page 444 of Baking From My Home To Yours) or here. I used the juice of 5 lemons for this and that amount was ideal: the perfect flavor combination with the tartness of the crust and the sweetness of the meringue.

After some time in the fridge the custard set as it was supposed to and looked gorgeous. The recipe can be found here over at The Misadventures of Mrs. B, go check it out! I know I will be frequenting Jen's blog from now on to see what other scrumptious dishes she comes up with!

CEiMB: Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Lemony Cream Cheese Frosting

Don't forget to enter my Giveaway and/or the Gift Exchange:
the deadline for the Blogoversary Giveaway is August 14th,
the deadline for the Gift Exchange is August 30th.

Leanne of Enjoying my Favorite Things got to pick this weeks recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly, she picked Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Lemony Cream Cheese Frosting.
You can find the recipe here at Leanne's blog.

I made miniature cupcakes so that I could use my new mini-cupcake stand, isn't it cute? I got it using the gift certificate I got from my colleagues for my 30th birthday.

I was a bit dissappointed by the cupcakes, but then again maybe I'm just not a carrotcake-girl. I've never had carrotcake in my life. I had to improvise on the frosting 'cause I seemed to be out of lemons: I used lemon juice instead of zest, I needed 4 teaspoons of lemon juice to get a lemony taste to the frosting. Delicious!! The cupcakes were not my favorite Ellie-recipe so far, I loved the frosting though. Go figures: I like the least healthy part of the recipe!!

Check out what my fellow Elie-istas thought of the cupcakes here.

Next weeks recipe is Stuffed Turkey Burgers picked by one of my favourite bloggers Peggy of Pantry Revisited.

My big 30th Birthday High Tea Party

This was it, Sunday I finally turned 30 and had a wonderfull party outside my apartmentbuilding with lots of my friends and family.

Hours of preparation went into this party searching the Internet for great recipes to make just for this occasion, I even had a give-away back in April to inquire what other bloggers thought I should serve. Some of the suggestions made it and some didn't....

These strawberry cupcakes were made by me earlier this month for Taste & Create, only without the original topping, recipe to be found here. I had run out of butter so I had to come up with my own version, here's what I did:

Creamcheese frosting

200 grams cream cheese at room temperature

2 tablespoons raspberry-flavoured liqueur
1 cup powdered sugar

17 strawberries

Place cream cheese, liqueur in a medium bowl and powdered sugar in a bowl and beat just until blended. Cut thestrawberries in half. Top each cupcake with a dollop of creamcheese frosting and garnish cake with strawberry halves.

The miniature tiramisu cupcakes were such a huge succes at work back in May, that I instantly knew I had to make them again.

Shelby of The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch suggested that I make Cucumber Sandwiches. Instead of going for the traditional sandwiches I opted for these cuties, here's what I did:

Open-faced Cucumber Sandwiches

2 packs of party bread (I found these presliced at my supermarket, of course you could use rolls or baguette)

200 grams cream cheese at room temperature

1 clove of garlic, very finely chopped

1 tbsp Rosa Maria Dipper (herb mixture from Oil & Vinegar, also available in U.S.A. and other countries!!)

salt and pepper to taste

1 cucumber

dill, chopped

Mix the cream cheese with the garlic and Rosa Maria Dipper, add salt and pepper to taste. Slice the cucumber into thin slices. Divide the cream cheese mixture over the slices of bread, put one slice of cucumber on each sandwich and sprinkle some dill on top.

Chicken and Salmon wraps, easily made and gone in 60 seconds.

From left to right: Dorie's Cinnamon Squares, Ina's Lemon Cake and Ina's Outreagous Brownies.

These Cranberry Scones were amazing, my mom actually made them after the recipe suggested by Steph from Obsessed with Baking. They were quite easily put together, we left out the orange glaze and served them with orange marmalade, strawberry jam and Clotted Cream from Devonshire. Delicious!!

I also served two fruit salads: one with red fruits and one with green/yellow fruits, but I forgot to take pictures!!!
As the following pictures show we had a lovely afternoon with great weather!

I hope all my birthdays to come will be equally wonderful!!

CEiMB: Thai Style Chicken with Coconut Curry Broth, Barefoot Bloggers: Ina's Lemon Cake

This week is the first time I'm actually writing two recipes in one post. So I'm going to start with CEiMB for today's main course and end with the Barefoot Bloggers for today's dessert....

CEiMB: Thai Style Halibut Coconut Curry Broth

This weeks recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly was picked by The Not So Skinny Kitchen, she decided on Thai Style Halibut Coconut Curry Broth. I'm not a huge fan of fish and I wanted to empty my freezer for my upcoming vacation, so I decided to use two chicken breasts. I also used red onion instead of shallots 'cause I was totallly out of shallots!

I cooked the chicken for about 20 minutes, just to make sure it was cooked all the way. I halved the recipe, but used the entire two teaspoons of red curry paste. I left one chicken breast whole and cut the other one into small pieces. Boy, this dish sure ticked all my boxes: curry, cilantro, lime and chicken: absolutely delicious!!!

One serving of this lovely dish works out to only 6 WW points!To my humble opinion this was a great pick, check our what my fellow Ellie-istas thought here.

Barefoot Bloggers: Ina's Lemon Cakes

McKenzie of Kenzie's Kitchen got to pick this months Bonus Recipe for Barefoot Bloggers, her pick was Ina's Lemon Cake. Oh my, this tastes amazing: like heaven. I didn't think it would be possible with not even the tiniest bit of chocolate in sight, but it's really good!!

In this recipe Ina combines the perfect pound cake with a lovely tart lemon syrup and a delicious lemon glaze. The cake is nice and moist, sweet but also sour. To sum it up: the perfect summer cake!

The recipe actually makes two cakes, but since I'm planning on doing a lot of baking the next couple of days I halved the recipe and ended up with one perfect lemon cake.

My one lemon cake made 14 slices, that works out to 5 WW Points per slice.

Go check out what the other Barefoot Bloggers thought of Ina's Lemon Cake here!