Mesclun Salad with Homemade Honey Roasted Almonds and Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette

Yuuummmm. I was mmmm mmm mmm-ing the entire time I was eating this salad. It's pretty much my perfect salad (other than say a beet salad). But I find something like this next to impossible to resist on a menu. I also find that most of the time when I make my own vinaigrette, there is something off with the flavors. Like it tastes good plain, but then I mix all the goods together and it just doesn't mesh. This is NOT the case with this salad. Some might find this salad too sweet bc of the sugar from the nuts and the maple syrup, but I thought it was the jam. My mouth is watering just thinking about it...and it's a salad....My dad and my step mom absolutely loved it too and my mom ate the leftovers directly from the salad bowl at dinner. 

Oh man check out this close up...yeah thats right. A juicy burger couldn't make my mouth water more...maybe not even a breakfast sandwich....blame it on the summer heat...or the goat cheese. I can't resist goat cheese. I just can't. 

Mesclun Salad 
about 4 sliced strawberries
1/3 cup blueberries
full bag (or more) of garden blend greens
about a ¼ cup honey goat cheese, crumbled (or regular, but I prefer the honey)
about a ¼ cup of honey roasted almonds
Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette


Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette 

Depending on the quality of your ingredients, you may want to try one or the other versions of the vinaigrette. My dad tends to have super fancy pants oils and vinegar's that are old and have subtler or stronger flavors. If that sounds more like your pantry - use this version

higher quality ingredients:
1 tablespoon good quality maple syrup
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon aged red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste

more everyday ingredients: 
1 tablespoon good quality maple syrup
1 tablespoon balsamic
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste

The first time I made this vinaigrette I was user more everyday ingredients, so the vinegar flavor was strong enough from the balsamic. When I made it again at my dads house like I did the first, it tasted very flat, so the addition of the red wine vinegar gave it just the right amount of zing. The higher quality/aged ingredients were thicker and almost looked like more of a dressing than a vinaigrette before I added the rwv (if you don't know what kind of ingredients you have)

Honey Roasted Almonds

1 cup sliced almonds

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon canola or vegetable oil 

¼ cup of granulated sugar 

¼  teaspoon of salt 

Bake the almonds on a cookie sheet at 350 for about 7 minutes or until lightly toasted. Heat the honey, oil and water in a sauce pan. When the pecans are finished toasted, pour them into the pan and stir until the pecans have absorbed all of the liquid. Pour the sugar and salt over the pecans and toss until fully coated. Spread out onto a cookie sheet and let dry for at least 30 minutes before breaking apart.

Whole Foods Chantilly Cake

My lovely sister, Melanie, was home for about two weeks over 4th of July week (weird how it wasn't week-end). We also got to celebrate her birthday too, which she apparently hadn't celebrated at home for about 6 years. Since I went to boarding school and then to college, I know exactly how that feels, it I knew it was special that she got to finally celebrate at home with her family. Since I almost always bake something when I go to my grandmother's house and it was also Mel's b-day, I thought this would be the perfect time to bake a cake.

There is no comparison to the Whole Foods Chantilly cake. It is simply fantastic. Sold by the heavenly slice, this cake is exceptionally moist and the most incredible frosting. So naturally, my instinct was to try and make it myself. And I must say, it came out pretty damn good. The cake wasn't as moist, but I'll probably play around with that recipe a bit more before it's perfected. The Chantilly cream frosting however was sensational. I mean, anything with both cream cheese, whipped cream, AND mascarpone has got to be amazing (which it was).

.....I also admit being lazy when I took these pics, and thus I really don't think they do the cake justice. It was delicious and I definitely will be making it again. Maybe I'll have a DSLR camera and I'll finally get accepted onto foodgawker....(yeah right) but a nerd can dream, right? 


Whole Foods Chantilly Cake 
What you will need: 

Simple yellow cake recipe (I used THIS ONE)

Chantilly cream frosting

Macerated strawberry/raspberry puree  

Apricot fruit glaze (or just thinned and microwaved apricot jam)

strawberries 

blackberries

raspberries 

blueberries 

strawberries 

Chantilly Cream Ingredients
8 oz container cream cheese, room temp
8 oz container mascarpone cream cheese, room temp
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon almond extract

Berry Sauce

Blend together strawberries and raspberries (or just raspberries. I didn't have enough so put strawberries in there too).  In a small sauce pan over medium low heat, add the berry puree and 1/4 cup of sugar. Let this sit for about 5 or so minutes until you think the sugar has disolved into the puree.

Directions
1. Whip the cream cheese, mascarpone and confectioners sugar together until light and fluffy.

2. In a separate bowl, whip together the heavy whipping cream and almond extract until stiff peaks form. Make sure not to over mix because it will become grainy and change the texture and appearance of your frosting. 

3. Gently fold the whipped cream into the mascarpone cream cheese mixture until fully incorporated.

 The next steps I show you how to assemble the cake. I think the pictures are pretty self explanatory. Read the captions for more details about each pic

Let the sauce sit and soak in for a bit. I think this adds a bit of extra moisture to the cake

Spread a generous layer of the frosting on top of the sauce. With the spatula, make the outer rim of the frosting higher than the center so the fruit and sauce stay in the center of the cake rather than spill out the sides when you add the top layer of cake.

This is the crumb coat before the second coat of frosting. This is crucial for a smooth finish on your cake. The key is to not let the spatula touch the cake during round 2 of frosting. (for the crumb coat, you do)

Now the fun part - arrange your fruit! I cut the kiwi's in half. I also started with the biggest, aka the strawberries, and gradually worked my way down to the smallest (the blueberries)

Mel tryin to sneak a taste before we dig in. No one wanted to sing. LAME

Slice...

Serve!

Blueberry Muffins

So it's officially my first week in our new apartment - our being myself and Courtney Cooper, the girl in basically all of  my recent facebook pictures (something we decided to improve upon this upcoming year). The apartment is so nice and the kitchen is amazing. I wanted to make something for Courtney and her family before they got here so I made cookies and muffins (I had a lot of free time after my two days full of moving). I wanted to made bread also but harry tits (aka Harris Teeter) was out of active dry yeast. lame.

Anyway, I wasn't very creative with this recipe because I don't consider myself a muffin expert (apart from my muffin top leftover from this summer slash middle school) so I just used a recipe from good ole allrecipes.com that I altered a lil bit. I mean 5,013 people said it was good so why bother trying to drastically change it, right? They were really good and I would probably make them again, but as embarrassed as I am to say it... the Colonnades dining hall at Elon makes them better (when they are warm and fresh that is). I'm pretty sure they cheat and they can't really be compared but i'm pretty tight with them dining hall ladies so maybe I can get the inside scoop on their recipe. I think this is the first time since like lower school that I have gotten to know the dining hall ladies better than the ones health center at boarding school. I practically lived at the Health Center. Those women were like my second family. I went so much my sickness folder was almost as thick as Caroline Moxley's (I'm just kidding Caroline I have no idea how thick your folder was).But Sue and I have developed a friendship at Collonades (she's the sweet old lady missing a lot of teeth?) . We share a common name. It's a quirky kind of friendship.

I also just realized how much I like using parenthesis. I'm assuming it's because i'm not a swell writer and I have trouble staying on one topic at a time. Sorry bout it (p.s. we hate that expression. it makes no sense).