Today I made an All-American Carrot Cake from page 66.  But instead of doing it as a layer cake, I decided to use the recipe to make a carrot Bundt cake.

This cake was so good!  It was so moist it just melts in your mouth.  I’ll admit that in the past when I’ve made a carrot cake (which is one of Jeff’s favorite cakes in the whole world) I’ve used pre-packaged cake mixes and added a few individual touches to it — the sorta-homemade approach if you know what I mean.  Now I’m not against pre-packaged cake mixes, because they’re easy and they often taste pretty darn good, but cakes from scratch are just so much better.  You can’t achieve these rich flavors and velvety texture with a cake mix.  The cream cheese frosting is easy to make and as we all know, nothing compliments a carrot cake like a sweet, creamy cream cheese frosting.  Add a bunch of pecans and you have the perfect cake!

I decided to go with a Bundt cake both because it’s a little easier to put together than a multi-layered cake is and also because Bundt cakes just look so cool!  I think I’ll make another one tomorrow to bring to my neighbors, because they’re such nice people and I can’t think of a better way to show your appreciation to good friends and neighbors than giving them a beautiful and delicious carrot Bundt cake!  I think that Martha would agree.

If you’ve followed the Me n’ Martha Project one thing you know about me is that I love avocados!  I love them so much that I’m always finding ways to use them and one of the very best ways to use avocados is in the classic Guacamole.  Martha has three different recipes for guacamole on page 349 of the Western section: traditional Guacamole, Tomatillo Guacamole and Pear and Pomegranate Guacamole.  I decided to start with the original before I get into the more exotic varieties.

Now some like it hot and Jeff and I like it even hotter so I used more jalapeño than the recipe called for and kept the ribs and seeds in — whoa, this was one smokin’ hot guacamole!  With the cooling cilantro and the creamy avocados to balance the heat it was just perfect.  It’s traditional to eat guacamole with tortilla chips, but Jeff was really craving some potato chips tonight so we used them instead.  When you have a great dip you can dunk whatever you want in it, whether it’s chips, vegetables or even small pieces of pita bread.

This is such a simple recipe to prepare, it’s just a handful of ingredients that’s sure to be a hit at any party.  I can’t wait to try all of Martha’s guacamole recipes and report back with the results.

To celebrate my 50th day of living la vida Martha, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite sweets in the world, marshmallows.  I made some Tennessee Marshmallow Cookies from page 220, which is Martha’s take on the classic Moon Pie.

This is one of those desserts that looks easier to make than it actually is, in part because I wasn’t having the best luck while making them.  First I burnt myself on hot sugar when I made the mistake of trying to get all the sugar out of the pot to add to the gelatin by scraping it with a rubber spatula and a big drop whacked me on the thumb!  240° of burning hot sugar against fragile flesh = no fun at all 🙁

Then my on first attempt at melting the chocolate it seized up on me, which left me with woefully little chocolate to work with.  To top things off, my graham crackers kept breaking, making it very difficult to put the cookies together and even more difficult to effectively dip them in the melted chocolate.  As much as I enjoy cooking, there were moments that I wished I had simply bought a pack of Little Debbie Moon Pies and called it a day!

So after all that how were the results?  Yummy! I loved the way the salty peanuts balanced with the sweetness. In spite of the pain involved in making them, homemade marshmallows are light years better than the ones you get in a big plastic bag.  And like s’mores, chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallow are a classic combination that’s hard to go wrong with.

This would be a dessert that your kids will adore!  But if you decide to make them, try to use me as a bad example and be very, very careful when you’re working with hot sugar, because that stuff is no joke!

Today I took my culinary road trip with Martha down to New Orleans for a traditional creole Red Beans and Rice recipe from page 188.

Creole blends French, Spanish, Portuguese, Native American and African cuisine, along with traditional Southern cooking – talk about fusion!  Red beans were bought to Louisiana by wealthy plantation owners who were fleeing the Haitian slave revolt of 1791.  It was out of this complex history that red beans and rice was created in the French Quarter.

I’d never made rice and beans in this way before.  When I was young my mother would stretch our food budget by making Spanish style rice and beans frequently.  But this is a more interesting and flavorful dish while also being economical.  I loved the way the andouille sausage gave it a rich, spicy kick that took it to another level.

Martha’s red beans and rice recipe is hearty and soulful.  Like so many new dishes I’ve learned since I’ve started this project, it’s something Jeff and I probably would never have thought about trying but now we’re both really looking forward to eating it again.

Yesterday I kept it light and healthy with a Three Bean Salad, and today I rewarded myself with some All-American Chocolate Chip Cookies from page 54.

I love baking cookies!  Especially rich, gooey chocolate chip cookies.  They’re easy to make and way better than any pre-packaged dough you can get in the supermarket.  Martha’s recipe is especially good, with lots of brown sugar that gives them a great caramelized texture.  I added plenty of chocolate chips and some chopped pecans that made them even more special.

My hand is making a special guest appearance in this edition of the Me n’ Martha Project, getting ready to dunk my cookies into a glass of coconut milk, a delicious low-fat alternative to dairy.  It gives the cookies a nice little hint of coconut, which is always a good thing!

Today I embraced some light and healthy eating with Martha’s Three Bean Salad from page 50 of the All- American section.

This salad takes less than 15 minutes to make — you just need to cut and steam some green and wax beans, open a can of kidney beans and make a simple vinaigrette dressing.  That’s it!  It’s not a big production at all, but it’s both delicious and nutritious and you can have a big old serving that will fill you up without stretching your waistline.  Jeff liked this three bean salad a lot and noted that this was the kind of salad he never would have thought about trying but now he can’t wait to have it again. I’m always excited about finding new ways for my hubby to enjoy healthy eating.

I’ve never been interested in becoming a vegetarian, mainly because I enjoy eating meat too much.  But unlike Jeff, who never goes a day without any meat, I sometimes like to have a meatless day.  I find beans to be one of the best all vegetable meals because they’re filling and full of proteins, a homemade hummus is one of my favorites.  This three bean salad will definitely be one of those good, hearty dishes for me on days I just want to lighten up a little and go meatless.

Today we broke out the grill again for Grilled Chicken With Spicy Peach Glaze from the South on page 178.

I was actually a little worried about this recipe, mainly because I don’t like peaches.  I know that may sound strange, after all, peaches are juicy and tart and sweet and as Martha would say, those are good things. But I’ve always been a picky eater even since I was a little kid and for some reason peaches never appealed to me at all.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this chicken!  The glaze is terrific, and very easy to make, it’s basically just peach jam and kicked up with some spices — Jeff couldn’t get enough of it and I was worried he’d eat it all before it made it to the chicken!  The part I wasn’t crazy about was the grilled peaches.  I think I grilled them a little too long which made them too mushy, but also I realized that it’s not the taste of peach I dislike, it’s the texture, which is why I loved the glaze so much.  It’s funny the things you find out about your own tastes when you try things you normally wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole!

The chicken was delicious, with a smoky grilled taste and the caramelized sweet and spicy glaze.  This glaze could work with so many different things, I’m going to try it on a pork roast soon, I think that would be awesome.  Who knew that I’d ever be looking forward to using a spicy peach glaze?  Martha sure is opening my eyes up to exciting new ways to cook.

Today I made a real down home Texan favorite, Chicken Fried Steak, from the Southwest section on page 306.

I love finding out the history of how these American dishes were borne.  It’s likely that chicken fried steak came from the German settlers who came to Texas from the 1840s -1860s as a variation of wiener schnitzel.  Tough cuts of beef were more readily available to them than veal so they simply adapted the recipe to reflect this.  Much of American cuisine comes from this tradition of early immigrants bringing their culture to their new home and adjusting it to the popular and affordable meats and vegetables of the region they settled in.  This is what makes American food so diverse and so special.

Not only is this a yummy and filling meal, it’s also a great way to take inexpensive cuts of beef and make them more tender.  Martha’s recipe calls for minute steaks, but I used top round and pounded it with a meat tenderizing mallet.  The chicken fried steak was so easy to make and so was the gravy.  With a side of mashed potaotes and a simple side salad, this was a real stick-to-your-ribs satisfying recipe that’s also easy to make and easy on the wallet.

As I promised yesterday, I was ambitious tonight and took on a two-layer Coconut Cake from page 69 of Martha’s All-American section.

Instead of just going on and on about how delicious this cake is (and it sure is!) I wanted to talk a little about the art and science of working with pastries.  Some people think that if you graduated from a top culinary school you know everything about pastry, but culinary arts and pastry arts are two different things and two different programs.  The truth is that most non-pastry chefs hate working with pastry with a passion!  That’s because it’s considered an exact science that inhibits creativity.  At the school I attended, all students are required to learn a little bit of pastry, which inspired a lot of grumbling from my fellow classmates.

I’ve actually enjoyed woking with pastry since I was a child.  I grew up with an Italian grandmother who would spend hours in the kitchen making wonderful cookies and cakes, especially around Christmas time.  I had a particular fondness for cookies and I would give them as gifts to my co-workers for the holidays, much to their delight.  However, pastry instructors didn’t like me at all!  I think I came off as laid back to them, a trait they despise.  Now you can ask Jeff if I was laid back and casual about culinary school … he’d bring up the sleepless nights, and the occasion that I bought 15 chickens so I could time myself butchering them until I finally fell to the floor weeping, all the cuts and burns I endured, the wrenched neck muscles from lugging around 50 lbs vats of stock.  No, I was hardly laid back about making it through that program!  But the school I attended was the culinary equivilant of training to be a world class Olympic swimmer when all I could do was flap my arms around wildly and keep from drowning.  To pastry chefs, this came off as not being serious, and pastry chefs are deadly serious people.  I was dead serious as well in that I paid a fortune to be there and I wasn’t going to let anyone, be it the young hot shots in my class or the chef instructors, roll right over me.  The irony of my nasty relationships with the pastry instructors is that I actually enjoyed the art of pastry far more than most of the students they adored.

So what’s the difference between our grandmothers and professional pastry chefs?  The finished products are almost always heavenly, so I would say that’s something they have in common.  The main difference is that a pastry chef works in an environment where if certain elements aren’t just so, your dessert is doomed and that breeds a certain tension and a mystique around precision.  Your grandmother didn’t bake for a profit driven restaurant so she did it out of pure joy for making something special for her family.  Her results might not be as beautiful to look at as a dessert at a Michelin starred restaurant, but they just might have tasted even better!

Whenever I work with Martha’s cakes and pies, I follow the recipe exactly as it appears in the book.  As you know if you’ve been following the project, I don’t always do that with savory dishes.  That’s because even in home cooking, working with pastry, especially those you’ve never done before, requires the discipline to try to replicate the recipe if you want the best results.  This coconut cake took a lot more eggs than I’m used to working with in a cake, the results rendered a cake that was dreamy and lighter than air.  That doesn’t make it any less creative than going off and doing your own thing, it only means you’re channeling your creativity in a different way.

Martha Stewart is an amazing pastry chef, and quite honestly, based on her television shows alone, I’ve learned more about the art of working with it than I ever did in culinary school because it’s easier to learn from a person who’s smiling at you than one who is sneering at you and calling you stupid.  This project is turning me into a real expert at pastry and I couldn’t be more grateful for that!

After all the eating and partying yesterday, I needed to take the gluttony down a notch today.  Jeff was so stoked about the grill he decided to break it out again today and make some grilled chicken.  I was more than happy to let him be the chef in the family tonight.  This left me in a bind about what to do for the Martha Project.  A big dessert just didn’t seem like a good way to go, because of the taking the gluttony down a notch thing, so I decided to try a simple appetizer — Cheese Straws from the South on page 156.

This was easy to make and tasty little snack.  The cayenne kind of sneaks up on you while you’re eating them and gives them a nice little kick.  Ideally, you should make these with a cookie press for the traditional ribbon appearance, but I don’t have one so I rolled and cut them myself, giving them a more rustic look.

These cheese straws are very nice for entertaining.  I also think that if you tone down the spiciness a little, they would make a great snack for the kids as a healthier alternative to highly processed and oily cheesy puff snacks.

Tomorrow I’ll be more ambitious in my Marthaing*, but for a lazy evening like this one these cheese straws really hit the spot!

*Yes, I did just use “Marthaing” as a verb!