Streusel Coffee Cake and The Golden Girls

So much fun this past week. My mom, aka Baba had visitors in from our home town. It's significant because when you're in your late 80's so many of the "friends" have either passed on or are in retirement facilities. To see the three "golden girls" as we've been calling them together and in action was nothing short of hysterical.

They all were catching up on the gossip since they were last together. Who's still alive, who died, who has Alzheimers and where everybody is. This banter went on literally for days. The best is that they're all really hard of hearing and although it's not too funny to poke fun at people with reduced hearing, here's a look at the conversation:

Baba: How was the flight?
R (friend #1): No...my pants aren't too tight.
H (friend #3): What are you talking about, the seats on the plane were terrific, there was lots of room.
Baba: nods and smiles as though she got her answer but in reality didn't hear a thing.
R : Giz, congratulations on your daughter's wedding. You must be so happy.
Giz: Thank you R, yes I'm very proud.
Baba: Why are you complaining, R isn't talking too loud.

You get the drift. A total alien conversation that they all enjoyed and laughed together like old times.

My brother and I planned a BBQ for the golden girls. Usually, I'm the one who brings dessert so I thought that bringing a coffee cake a) wouldn't upset any of their stomachs and b) didn't have sweet icing all over it.

I decided on one of Ina Garten's recipes - Sour Cream Coffee Cake.




Ingredients:

12 Tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks) at room-temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I reduced this to just over a cup)
3 extra large eggs at room-temperature (I used 4 large eggs)
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups sour cream
2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)**
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt

** If you don't have cake flour, you can substitute 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus 1/4 cup cornstarch.

For the Streusel

1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
3 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 4-5 minutes until light. Add the eggs, one at t time, then add the vanila and sour cream. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture to the batter until just combined. Finish stirring with a spatula to be sure the batter is completely mixed.

Sor the streusel, place the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt and butter in a bowl and pinch together with your fingers until it forms a crumble. Mix the walnuts, if desired.

Spoon half the batter into the pan and spread it out with a knife. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup streusel. Spoon the rest of the batter in the pan, spread it out and scatter the remaining streusel on top. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean.

Let cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. Carefully transfer the cake, streusel-side up, onto a serving plate.

The recipe also calls for a glaze made by mixing 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar and 2 Tablespoons of real maple syrup adding drops of water to make the glazy runny and then drizzling over the cake with a fork or spoon. I didn't do this.


The end conversation when this was served was:

Baba: What a beautiful cake - but I don't eat sweets
R: Ok, I'll have your piece
H: I don't eat dessert but maybe just a little piece

...they raved about the cake and while they continued their chatting I cut it into individual servings, wrapped them all up and Baba took it home for "just a little something with tea".

Tilapia and Market Fare

I visited the new area farmer's market. It's only been open for 3 weeks and totally a pleasure to shop at. The word hasn't spread too much yet and getting around and talking to the farmers is a pleasure while they still have the time to chat for a minute or so. I'm sure this market won't be a secret for long but for the time being it's not a crazy place to go to.

I found some beautiful heirloom tomatoes and the fragrance was fantastic. I decided to make a small salad of them combined with cucumbers completely without dressing. As you cut into them, they're so juicy that they actually dress the salad themselves. Absolutely mouth watering. Here are some of the other scenes from the market.










So shopping done, decision made about the tomatoes - now what for the main course. In the category of easy and good for you, I decided to combine the tomato salad with some mild tasting Tilapia. The prep on this fish dish was literally minutes and the result was terrific.



Ingredients

4 Tilapia fillets
1 tsp minced garlic
Juice of 1/2 large lemon
2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Pepper (to taste)

Preparation

1. Spray non stick spray in an oven proof dish that holds 4 fillets. Set oven temperature to 400 F.
2. Wash filets and dry well with a paper towel.
3. In a small dish mix together the remaining ingredients.
4. Place filets in prepared dish and pour prepared dressing over top.
5. Bake filets in oven for approximately 20 minutes uncovered.

Wedding Story: Part IV

I'm very impressed that I was not targetted in R's post about food addiction. Then again, he's stuck living with me and not Giz. So, it's probably a wise move.

R has now progressed to planning a mass intervention for Giz and everyone who commented in Giz's favour on the last post.

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This post is the post you've been waiting for. The wedding day post and pictures. I'm skipping over the Sunday events, another graduation ceremony and a brunch with all of the out of town guests. Sunday night was consumed with last minute preparations: cake and cupcake baking, flower arrangment and last minute knitting.

Despite Kat's warning, I was up half the night finishing my shawl. I had worked too hard and too long to not finish it. Sorry for the cut-off head, but I think this pictures shows the shawl well.

What a relief to finish it! But, the 6:00am hair appointment came way too quickly. With only 2.5 hours of sleep the night before, I was half asleep while getting my hair done.

I gave the hairdresser this picture as inspiration:


I was honest with the stylist and told him that I wasn't sure I liked it. Maybe I had an idea that it would look more like the picture. But, our hair colour and length is different and my face is not as long as hers.

Giz's hair is usually very curly. I'm not sure the stylist liked my "you look like Roy Orbison" comment part-way through the styling. In the end, it was quite nice.


We got married at City Hall. I can't say that I enjoyed the experience. R and I wanted a completely private ceremony, maybe on a beach somewhere. But I guess it's a compromise, somewhere in between a ceremony with all guests and an entirely private one, somewhere romantic.

After the ceremony, we rested for a bit and then finished up preparations for the ceremony. We had arranged for a professional photographer and had to go meet her a couple of hours before the wedding. Since the weather here had been so unpredictable and rainy (still is a month later), we started to panic about getting rained on. By some miracle, the sky cleared up -- maybe even too much (I really shouldn't complain though).

From the beginning of wedding planning, we knew that having professional photography was a must. If having quality photos of your wedding is important to you, get a professional photographer that takes the type of pictures you like. Meet with him/her/them ahead of time to talk about packages and the style of pictures you would like (we wanted more candid/natural shots). We went with Fleischer Photography and are quite happy with the final product. Kathy took our pictures. We went with the package to keep the digital images.

Here are some of the professional shots (we have over 500 of them to choose from):




The reception was held in the Courtyard Restaurant, a stone-brick heritage building that is a common wedding location in Ottawa. They set up the room to your specifications and are clearly very comfortable with overseeing the evening.






One of their features is a personalized menu that is given to each guest at the beginning of the night. Guests can order for a selection of dishes (here's the post about our tasting).

The soup was a carrot squash soup (no pictures because mine are blurry). I warned the restaurant about 5 times that it HAD to be hot. They probably thought we were crazy. In the end, it worked though because it was hot. I would have to say that the soup was good. It seems a bit strange to me to have a butternut squash soup at a June wedding.

The next course was the salad.

I was warned that the salad wasn't great. It tasted like they had dressed it about 15 minutes prior to serving. The dressing was practically non-existent with the exception of the softening effect it had on the lettuce. We requested more dressing.

Apparently the highlight of the evening was the steak:


I had the chicken, which wasn't bad. Not mind-blowing either.

For dessert, I had some maple pie. It was quite sweet, but good.

Toward the end of the evening, we had cake and cupcakes (Giz did a super job on these -- everyone was very complimentary and I did not miss have a professionally done cake).


We were also very happy with the maple syrup giveaways.

So - that's the wedding day. It was small (35 guests), pretty low-key. I felt that it was a good number in terms of the room size and in being able to actually talk to all of my guests but sit down and eat dinner too. I certainly would not have been able to get it all done without Giz's help. Next week we have another reception in my hometown for friends and family.

I must say, I'm relieved that it's done. I enjoyed most of the process, but am quite content to not be planning my wedding anymore.

On to the next...HOUSE SHOPPING! R and I almost put an offer in on a REALLY NICE place today. We decided to bail though. I'm sad about it, but know it was the right decision. The upstairs only had two bedrooms (another bedroom on the main floor and one in the basement). We hope to have a couple of kids -- so we felt that it was important to hold out for a place that had more than 2 bedrooms on one level. I'll get over it. But I really loved the kitchen. :(