New Year's Eve 2011

Dale and I stayed in tonight. We made a chicken pot pie and had left-over Yule log cake for dessert. Some years it's fun to go out on New Year's Eve and some years it's fun to stay in. This was a year for staying in. It was wonderfully cozy. We even got some snow.

Holiday Entertaining - Yule Log Cake

My friend Noel had Dale and me over last night and I made another yule log cake to bring along. It turned out great. Here's the recipe that came with the Nordic Ware cake pan.

Marble Yule Log

1(13.25 oz) box yellow cake mix [I could only find a 15.25 oz. box so I left a little of it out.]

4 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup sour cream [An 8 oz. container did the trick.]

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted [To melt chips I put them in small microwave safe bowl, added a little half and half and nuked for 90 seconds stirring every 30 seconds.]

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour yule log cake pan [I used Pam.]; set aside. In large bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, sour cream, oil, water, sugar and vanilla. Beat on medium speed, 2 minutes, scraping bowl often [I didn't use electric mixer.]. Remove one-third of the batter and place in smaller bowl; set remaining batter aside. Stir melted chocolate chips into batter in the smaller bowl. Spoon half of the vanilla batter and half of the chocolate batter into prepared pan. Using a small spatula, gently swirl batters together. Spoon remaining batter into pan and swirl again. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick [I used a butter knife.] comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan; invert onto cooling rack and cool cake completely [I let it cool in the pan the whole time.] Decorate as desired [I used red and green "cake writing gel" for the berries and leaves.].

Holiday Entertaining

Last night we had our friends Warren and Gary over for dinner. Dale and I made lasagna and green beans amandine. For dessert I made a marble cake in my Nordic Ware yule log pan. Warren and Gary are also our neighbors and we found out that they are going to be moving soon. Thankfully not too far away.

Christmas Day 2011

Mom came over to our place on Christmas Day and we had Christmas dinner at about 5:00 p.m. We had turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans amandine and dinner rolls. It was all very delicious. Dale did almost all the dinner prep although I did help baste the turkey. I also carved the turkey and Mom made the gravy. We had chocolate roulade for dessert. It was all very delicious.

Christmas Eve 2011

Dale and I went to Mom's for Christmas Eve dinner. We started with some lovely hor d'ourves of brie cheese and jelly on crackers. For dinner we had cheese fondue and steak. Brownies for dessert.

Golden Hour - December 17, 2011

Delicious beef stroganoff for dinner tonight. Dessert was a roulade from Kowalski's. Divine.

Holiday Entertaining

Two couples that we know from the gym came over for dinner last night. Michelle, who teaches a spin class that Dale takes, and her husband Steve, along with Fred, who also takes the spin class, and his wife Linda arrived around 6:30. Appetizers included cheese, tapanade and crackers. Everyone drank wine except Steve and me who had Tanqueray gin martinis [Note to self: Steve loves Hendricks].

Dale made rigatoni and green beans amandine. Fred and Linda brought the most divine chocolate cake from Cafe Latte in St. Paul (see above photo).

It was a lovely group of people and a good time was had by all.