Pantry Revisited

So for Valentine's this year we decided to cook together.  Now my DH is not a cook at all.  He barely knows how to open a can and heat it up.  But he was game for this.  So we started out Saturday morning making our grocery list.  I gave him one item to prepare - a side dish.  "Aren't you going to tell me what to cook," he asked.   I told him no that was part of the fun - the surprise of it all.  So I gave him a cookbook and he chose cauliflower.  Strange. . . I know, but it was delicious.  I chose to make a chicken dish I had seen on Rachel Ray's show last week and for dessert, some Nutella pastries. Here is the cauliflower dish.  For me, it would have been better without the dijon mustard.   He did an excellent job of preparing it.  And he opened a bottle of pink champagne we had in the fridge for like four years.  I wondered if you could keep it that long, but it seemed to taste okay still.  It was so cold ...

Every year around Valentine's I get a hankering for strawberry cake.  The best one I have made is from Paula Deen's collection.   As you can see from the photo however, my frosting is a bit runny.  I can attribute this to the fact that I "tried" to cut back on the amount of confectioner's sugar the recipe called for in an effort to be a tad healthier.  In this case, the recipe was correct and I needed to use all seven cups of sugar.  The cake itself is moist and delicious and the strawberry smell coming from your oven is divine!  Paula makes hers as a layer cake but I made mine a sheet cake just because it is easier and quicker to do a sheet cake.  Since this type of frosting is just too sweet for me, I have decided the next time I make this cake I will put a whipped cream topping on it. You can find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/simply-delicious-strawberry-cake-recipe/index.html