Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 29, 2012

Chances are today is not your birthday. However, it is mine! And since February 29th only comes around once every four years, we should all celebrate. I decided to make a cake for my birthday because you only turn 8 once! If it’s not your birthday today, here are some other reasons to celebrate Leap Day. If you watch 30 Rock, you may have also seen their Leap Day-themed episode:

“Nothing is impossible on Leap Day!”

I decided to make a traditional vanilla birthday cake! I was originally of a really rich Devil’s Food Cake with a Coconut Frosting or a Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Layer Cake, but this description of the vanilla cake in the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook really struck a chord:

“Frost with pink buttercream icing and lots of colored sprinkles as we do, and feel as though you’re at your seventh birthday party all over again!”

This cake definitely brought out the spirit of my inner eight-year old! I went with a blue-green shade of buttercream:

Leap Day Vanilla Birthday Cake

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 and 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and lightly flour two 9×3 springform cake pans.

In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer on medium speed to cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes Add the eggs one a time, beating well after each egg is added. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl. Add to the butter mixture in four parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla extract, beating well after each addition.

Divide the batter among the cake pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Let cakes cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

When cake has cooled, ice between the layers, then ice top and sides of cake with buttercream frosting. Top with sanding sugar.

Leap Day Vanilla Buttercream

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, very soft
8 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and the vanilla extract. Beat until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, until icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency (you may very well not need all of the sugar). If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. Use and store icing at room temperature, as icing will set if chilled. Can store in an airtight container for up to three days.

Source: Adapted from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook: Old-Fashioned Recipes from New York’s Sweetest Bakery (this cookbook can be found in our Amazon store under the Products We Love tab)

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Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 26, 2012

It’s a quiet Sunday morning and Baby T has decided to take his morning nap on the early side today (maybe since he woke up so darn early this morning!) I’ve been using the time to clean up some household paperwork and plan our meals and grocery list for the week. While I was starting to file away all the recipes I had clipped out of magazines or had printed, I came up with all our meals for the week.

Last week, I found a free printable menu planner and grocery list at mommy trackd. I’m all about these adorable printable lists lately! My week is looking very organized with this printable, although I’m sure baby boy will tear this list to shreds as we are grocery shopping.

Our menu for the week starting Monday, February 27th:

Monday: Cod Al Forno with Roasted Tomatoes
Tuesday: Broccoli-Cheddar Soup with Toasted Bread
Wednesday: Go out for my birthday! Leap day only comes along once every 4 years, so I need to celebrate 4 times as much :)
Thursday: Slow Cooker White Chili
Friday: Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry
Saturday: Spaghetti and Meatballs
Sunday: Chicken Tikka Masala

What’s on your menu plan for the week? Can you believe we are heading into March this week? Time to get in all those winter comfort foods before spring arrives!

-m

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Posted by Meaghan Barry on August 21, 2010

The day before we left for our 10 day vacation in Nantucket, Husband M had his 30th birthday. Since we were pretty busy packing and tying up loose ends before we left, we were only able to have a small celebration. I made one of his favorite easy summer recipes…Martha Stewart Everyday’s Grilled Steak with tomatoes and scallions and a brownie from the farmer’s market. His Aunt T had thrown him a big birthday party in Maine the weekend prior and I also had plans for a lobster bake while we in Nantucket. His work also threw him a afternoon party with freshly baked cookies, so all in all, he had 4 birthday parties this year.

For the Nantucket lobster bake, we ordered pre-cooked lobsters and steamers from Sayle’s fish market. Our little cottage did not have air-conditiong and the day of the party happened to the hottest day we were in Nantucket. Thank goodness we bought pre-cooked lobsters…I can’t imagine how much hotter the place would have been if I had been cooking lobsters for hours. They did a great job packing them and they stayed warm for quite awhile.

For a starter, I decided to make a batch of clam chowder. We were having 10 people over in all and this recipe I put together made well over this amount (if served as an appetizer). I used Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything No-Holds-Barred Clam Chowder recipe as the base and tweaked it based on a few other recipes I have made in the past.

Nantucket Birthday Clam Chowder

Serves 10+ as an appetizer

Ingredients:
-1/2 pound applewood smoked bacon (or similar high quality), chopped
-2 cups minced onions
-5 cups peeled and chopped baking potatoe
-4 tablespoons flour (I used wheat)
-2 teaspoons dried thyme
-7 five-ounce cans of clams
-4 eight-ounce bottles of clam juice
-S&P
-2 cups milk
-2 cups heavy cream
-2 tablespoons butter
-fresh chopped parsley
-oyster crackers

Directions:
Fry the bacon in a large stock pot or dutch oven over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove the bacon with a with slotted spoon and put aside. Cook the onion and potatoes in the bacon fat until the onion softens and is translucent (10-15 minutes). While they are cooking, drain the canned clams and reserve the drained clam juice. Add the flour and thyme to the onion and potatoes, and combine. Add the 4 bottles of clam juice and the reserved clam juice from the cans. Cook until the potatoes are tender (an additional 10-15 minutes). At this point, I turned off the heat and put the lid on the pot to keep it warm until the guests arrived.

About 5 minutes before I was ready to serve the chowder, I added the salt, pepper, milk, and cream (put the milk and cream out for about 20-30 minutes to get to room temperature so it does not curdle when you add it). Add the drained clams and bring to a low simmer. Add the butter on top of the chowder- the clams will be finished cooking once the butter melts. I served the chowder with the chopped parsley and oyster crackers on the side.

-m

Posted by Meaghan Barry on March 2, 2010

This past weekend, my husband and I took a quick weekend getaway to Miami for my 30th birthday. My actual birthday is February 29th, making me a leap day baby. So technically, I was celebrating my 7 1/2th birthday. This is a terrible time of year for a birthday in my opinion because it is still in the dead of winter and everyone is beyond sick of the weather. My younger sisters all had summer birthdays, and therefore were able to have huge pool parties. Not I…always an indoor party for poor little me (my sisters are definitely going to be rolling their eyes as they read this!)

Before we went on a cruise 2 years ago, we stayed at the South Beach Marriott overnight before we embarked. We really enjoyed our stay there and have always thought about going back. My 30th/7.5 birthday seemed like the perfect opportunity. We were able to fly directly to Ft. Lauderdale after a series of mishaps with Jet Blue. Our plane getting into Boston was delayed an hour, the Jet Blue systems went down and they grounded all flights for an hour, and then a plane on the Ft. Lauderdale runway lost communications with air control and we had to suddenly avert our landing and circle again. Fortunately, our dinner reservations were for pretty late….it’s Miami!

On Friday night, we had dinner at Nobu, a famous sushi chain. It was really delicious food, but our meal got cut a bit short when our tables got cleared and we were given dessert menus (we had been planning on ordering a bit more sushi). Afterwards, we hit up the Sky Bar which was outdoors and was very nicely decorated. They also had gas lamps, which I parked under all night as it did get a bit cool.

The next morning, we grabbed brunch at a place right around the corner from our hotel called The Big Pink. We hit up the beach after and we were pretty much the only people for the 4 hours we hung out there. It was a bit windy and overcast, but we got occasional bursts of sun. It was really relaxing to just read, talk with my husband, and watch the water. One of my friends from college, who now lives about an hour from Miami, met us up in the afternoon and we grabbed drinks and apps at the hotel bar. It started to downpour while we were there and the whole crowd watched in dismay (ok, slight amusement) as the wedding decorations set up in the area adjacent to the outdoor bar all blew over and fell into the hotel’s water fountain!

For dinner that night, I had done some researching on OpenTable and Yelp and decided to try out Wish. The food was excellent and they had menus that actually lit up as you opened them. The back garden was closed due to the weather, but we were still able to eat outside. On Sunday morning, we woke up on the early side to sit out at the beach for an hour. We then got ready, checked out of our room, and hit up the Sunday brunch downstairs. Here is the view from the South Beach Marriott:

We then headed to the airport and we were back in Boston by 6. It was definitely a very fun birthday and one I will always remember!

-m

Posted by Meaghan Barry on February 25, 2010

Since I am officially turning the big 3-0 this weekend, I wanted to follow-up on my goals for the year before I embark on the next decade of my life:

M’s 2010 Goals:
1. Start letterpress printing! This involves getting my new poco press cleaned up and ready to go. I need to make a trip out to Chicopee, MA to a warehouse called Letterpress Things to stock up on tools, inks, and cleaners. I also need to buy a base and determine what software I need on my computer to start designing plates- Done, I did everything here and just need to start designing some plates, ordering them, and then start printing!
2. Try yoga again – Took one beginner class. Purchased a series of 10 classes off of Gilt for Exhale Spa…just need to actually use them now.
3. Cook more meals and do more prep on the weekend– Kind of…I’ve been cooking a lot, but not necessarily doing more prep on the weekend.
4. Organize my kitchen -Done, bought a ton of wooden crates (maybe too many) off E-Bay. Found kitchen cabinet hooks at the Home Depot and installed them this weekend.
5. Read more books off the NY Times Best Seller list– Done…new book review of past 5 books coming soon. I have about 30 books on hold at the library as well.
6. Spend less money on clothes– Done…haven’t really been in much of a shopping mood for clothes at all lately. This probably has more to do with the fact that all the stores are showing spring clothes, none of which will be wearable in Boston until about June.
7. Take more classes at the Boston Center for Adult Education. I am currently thinking about taking a digital photography class and an Adobe design class- Done…took Adobe Illustrator class, signed up for digital photography and 2 other classes.
8. Buy a headboard for our master bedroom- Still working on this.
9. Finish painting our master bathroom or hire someone to finish it.– Decided to install crown molding instead…still need to find a contractor to do this.
10. Post on a regular basis to this new blog! – Getting better at it…definitely room for improvement on content and frequency!

-m