Lite summer meal...and a desert to boot!!

So last night D and I had our first official guest over for dinner. Now we have had a few friends over to the new house, but it was just to meet up really quick, or drop off, or something like that. Nothing really special to say I need to fancy up our house and make a nice meal. But in this case, we invited D’s Chief PO over for dinner. He has become a pretty good friend in the last year and we hang out pretty often. His gf is deployed so we try to do a lot so he isn’t lonely.

We all went to the beach on Saturday to get some sun and play some horseshoes and I had been planning on making dinner last night so I went a head and invited him. He cooks pretty often himself so I new he would be game to try a new recipe.

Again, I got this recipe for dinner from Homemade by Holman….Lemon spaghetti. YUM!! Like ridiculously yum. I didn’t take any pictures of it as I was making it because I was trying to hurry, but it is literally the perfect summer time warm pasta dish.

If you love lemons and spaghetti, then this dish is perfect for you. I ran to Wally World and grabbed a lemon pepper rotisserie chicken which was just perfect to throw into it. Here is what you need:

3 good size lemons, plus zest of ½ lemon

1 rotisserie chicken, warmed

1 tsp fresh chopped thyme

3 tbs fresh chopped basil

Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound spaghetti noodles (I used ½ box, but ¾ box probably would have been better for 3 with leftovers for D)

¼ cup Olive oil

Up to ½ cup pasta water

½ tsp fresh garlic (optional)

½ generous cup of coarse grated Parm. cheese

I used the juice of 3 good sized lemons for this dish. You could use the juice in the little fake lemon bottle if you like, but with lemons as cheap as they are, why not use the real deal?? So I rolled my lemons on the countertop applying firm pressure to get the juices all moving around and squeezed them out in my serving bowl. I zested ½ of a lemon and threw that in too. Next I added some garlic, chopped thyme, parm. cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Take the rotisserie chicken and just shredded it up with your fingers without the skin. I used most the breasts, but some of the thighs and legs went in to. But the breasts were really enough chicken, and throw that all in. For the basil, I took a good bunch of leaves (maybe 4 or 5) and rolled them up together length wise and just chopped them into thin ribbons. Throw that into your lemon mixture. Drizzle in about ¼ cup olive oil and let that sit.

Meanwhile, get your pasta water bubblin’ and throw in your pasta. I use whole wheat spaghetti and cooked it al dente. For me it was about 7 minutes to get it how I liked it. Now when that is done, you can either drain it, reserving a little pasta water or you can just leave it in the water and scoop it out into your serving dish. I just took my spaghetti spoon and just scooped it out, letting a little water drip off before I threw it in my bowl.

Scoop out all your pasta and toss it with your lemon cheese mixture. You can add a little more parm (which I did) and basil if you so like. Serve warm.

It is perfect and light…not super saucy like most pasta dishes, and it was really easy! D raved about it and so did our guest. I will for sure be making this again!!

Now on to desert….

I grabbed this recipe from a combination of different websites and sort of made my own recipe/cupcake. I made vanilla cupcakes with strawberry curd swirl and strawberry cream cheese frosting. Sounds terrible huh??? Lol…

I really made these for D to take to work today because I love to bake and I have all these recipes that I want to try, so for the next several weeks…they will be getting cupcakes!!

Here goes nothing….

Strawberry curd

Adapted from A cup full of Cake

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 ½ cups coarsely chopped fresh strawberries (the original recipe I copied this from called for 2 ½ pints of raspberries or a 12 oz pack of frozen raspberries, thawed)

5 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

2 to 3 tsp fresh lemon juice

Take a medium sauce pan and heat your butter over medium heat and get it all melted. Add all ingredients to melted butter. Smoosh up your strawberries and mix around with all ingredients, stirring frequently at first and then more constantly towards the end, which is about 10 minutes.

It will begin to thicken up towards then end, you will notice this. After that turn heat off and drain mixture through mesh sieve. Now on this…make sure you don’t have a teeny little sieve like I used…had I thought about it, I would have bought the next size up, but I didn’t realize how small it was until I started working with it. SO get a bigger one to work with. Work your mixture through the mesh and try to push as much liquid out that you can into a separate bowl or container. Set aside to cool.

Vanilla Bean cupcakes

From Loves to Eat

3 cups cake flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

5 large eggs, at room temperature

1¼ cups buttermilk, at room temperature

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 and line 2 cupcake pans with your liners. I tried to find some pretty liners, but I was short on time and didn’t have a lot of time to search. Oh well…

Now in a medium bowl measure out your cake flour, powder and salt…whisk it all together. Next add your butter to a mixing bowl of an electric mixer with your paddle attachement (I jusut used the regular beaters because my mixer doesn’t have a paddle). Take your split vanilla bean (if you have one, which I was unable to find) and scrape out the seeds and put in in with your butter. Beat on medium high speed for about 3 minutes until it is creamy looking and lighter in color. Scrape your bowl down and beat 1 more minute. Add your sugar ¼ cup at a time and beat 1 minute after each addition, scraping the bowl before adding another cup. Next mix in eggs 1 at a time, again mixing until well incorporated and scraping in between each addition. Combine your butter milk and vanilla in a liquid measuring cup. Put mixer on low speed and add the flour mixture and liquid mixture alternately to butter mixture, a little at a time. Begin and end with flour mixture. Make sure and scrape down your bowl after each addition. For me, I just left my mixer on and scraped my bowl as it was going…it was a lot easier that way than to start and stop over and over. After your last scrape down, mix again another 15 seconds just to finish incorporating.

Now it is time to fill up your cups! Fill each cup 2/3 of the way full. For me, I always use my Pampered Chef medium cookie scoop to fill cupcakes. It is a lot easier and no where near as messy. So for me it was one very full scoop and 1 half full scoop to fill the muffin cup. After that I took my cooled strawberry curd (which I don’t have a picture of, but it was not very thick…maybe you could add a little cornstarch while cooking to thicken it, but I didn’t think of it) and put a spoonful on top of each cupcake and swirled it in with a toothpick.

Then bake for 18 to 22 minutes…I did 20 minutes and I probably could have done a little less since the bottom of my cakes were a little too brown. Make sure when you test with a toothpick that it comes out clean. Allow to cool before frosting.

I had some batter left over so I made a 6 inch round with my remaining batter and it took about 20 minutes to cook through.

Now the most delish part of all!!! The cream cheese frosting!!

Okay…so I forgot to take a picture of all my ingredients, but they are pretty standard, so…use your imagination!

Strawberry Cream cheese frosting

From Loves to Eat

½ c. strawberries

8 oz. cream cheese, at room temp.

1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temp.

1 ¾ cups powdered sugar, sifted

½ tsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. vanilla

Take your strawberries and put them in a food processor (I used my blender with a splash of water) and puree. Now…I would probably do more strawberries than the recipe calls…maybe ¾ cup chopped berries. I found ½ cup just wasn’t enough. Next, take your butter and cream cheese and place it in your mixer bowl and turn it on medium. Let it get all fluffy. Scrape your bowl!! Next slowly add your sifted powdered sugar. I highly recommend taking the time to sift the sugar. It makes a huge difference in the texture and it was soooo smooth and creamy. After that is all done add your vanilla and lemon juice. Now comes the strawberry puree. Make sure before you add it to your frosting, your push it through a sieve again to get all the seeds out. Add as much or as little strawberry puree as you want to get desired consistency. In the picture posted on the blog I got this off of, you will notice the intense pink color. Well, she must have added pink food coloring because it is the palest of pale baby pinks after adding all the strawberry puree. So I threw in some pink Wilton coloring until I got the color I was going after.

Then I put the icing into a piping bag and piped out my cupy-cakes. The frosting was very soft so I added, probably another ¼ powdered sugar to the mix to set it up a little more. But it was still pretty soft, so when piping it on, the frosting wasn’t really working with me. I mean my technique could use a little help, but it was just going all over the place and I didn’t have much control over it.

Either way, they were done and beautiful nonetheless!! D loved them and out guest had 2 and took 2 more home! D has already told me they were a big hit at work and they can’t wait until next time I make them some cupy-cakes!!

Enjoy!!