Foodie Friday: Geo's Birthday Dinner

Well I did it! Not only did I figure out a way to make a rainbow Star Wars cake not look like a shout out to June at Disney but I successfully made a cake (from scratch), icing (from scratch) and pizza lasagna (you guessed it, from scratch) all from the foreign kitchen of our condo in South Padre Island, Texas that was lacking in several of the necessities such as a mixer, a 9 x 13 pan, and a whisk.

 But it is indeed the mother of invention, for instance, did you know you can stiffen egg whites in a blender?  Well most of the way, then you have to use a fork to whip up the final bits- but not bad for having no mixer.

Pizza Lasagna, pg 74

This dinner was by request from Geo for his special birthday meal.  I didn't have a 12 x 8 glass baking dish so instead I used a longer roasting pan, balled up foil at the ends to make it not so long and used a 4th lasagna noodle on each layer to account for the width.  It still ended up kind of separating into 4 rows, but it tasted too good to care.  I used store-bought pizza sauce instead of making my own, but when I'm back trying this in my own kitchen, I'll be sure to go totally pioneer on this thing and make it all the way from scratch ... well minus the lasagna noodles I'm sure I see no need to make them from scratch.  And I was surprise to find a can of tomatoes that includes the green peppers and onions.  The recipe calls for it and I thought it would likely be something I would never find but by golly, Del Monte to the rescue!  For the mushies, Tanya only asks you to use three fresh ones, but I'm such a fan of mushies that I sliced a small container of the fresh ones.  I also heaped the parm cheese on top because I didn't think too much parm cheese would be a bad thing.  However, when cooked it got really (and I mean really) hard.  No one at the dinner seemed to mind, but next time I'll be heaping more of the mozzarella cheese on top and only sprinkling the required 2 TBSP of parmesan.  This one served all 10 of us (probably because of the extra row) and only 1 little piece of leftovers.

Laughably Simple White Cake, pg 155

I can see how in my kitchen this would be laughably simple.  In the foreign land of condo kitchen, I'm going to call it mild-little-chuckle white cake (mainly because I had no mixer- no fault of Tanya's).  Other than still not using the unbleached flour she calls for I followed this one to the letter.  And on my! It's easy and the almond extract is key.  I don't think I will be able to bring myself to buy a box mix after this one.  I didn't have the 9 x 13 that she called for and I needed to use part of the cake batter for the Tie-Fighter part of the cake, so what I made ended up flatter than I know a 9 x 13 with all the batter would have been.  But my BIL decided it made for a better cake to icing ratio.  Normally I'd agree because normally I'm a way bigger fan of icing than cake- but with this cake, I might have to opt for more cake in the ratio.

Cream Cheese Frosting, pg 156

Last year I spent hours trying to turn store-bought white frosting into red and not pink frosting.  The year before, when I was ignorant of the strong frosting dye you can buy at Hobby Lobby, I gave up that quest and Geo had a pink cake.  But this year- I cannot explain to you the vibrant color this frosting gives.  Red was R-E-D and the blue was SOOO blue. No baby boy or valentine's day colors here.  HELLO! This frosting kicks up the color wheel into a pinwheel party.  And the taste is excellent to boot.  I did omit the pecans from the recipe because I was using it to frost a cake, but I'm really looking forward to making it nuts and all to top some oatmeal cookies.  So very yummy.


And so... drum roll please ... I now present the final outcome of ... Geo's rainbow Star Wars birthday cake

ta-da!