My Favorites

New Year's Eve is not my "favorite" holiday. In fact, like many other people, I believe that it is over-rated and over-hyped and often leads to the celebrant being let down. Ben and I decided to forego a party this year and instead go out to eat at our favorite restaurant which, as it turns out, is also the place where we were married. 

As opposed to simply posting a mildly boring recount of a wonderful New Year's Eve (which it was), I decided to indulge you with a list of some of my favorite things (which also means that I have tricked you into looking at a few wedding photos):

Favorite Restaurant: Café Lurcat

Not only do they serve a wonderful meal, they can also put on a spectacular New Year's Eve and, if I may say so myself, a fantastic wedding.

Favorite Part of New Year's: The Gerber, The Kuller, The Gerbler

My husband surprised me at New Year's dinner with the three drinks that we created for our wedding.

Favorite Chocolate Cake: Turtle Cake from Cafe Latté

I am suspicious of any individual who lives in the Twin Cities but has never had a piece of Cafe Latté 's Turtle Cake. And, please, do not try to convince me that there is a better piece of chocolate cake on the planet. 

It just so happened to be our wedding cake! 

Favorite Photographer: Studio306

No words can describe their talent.

Favorite Piece of Art: Our Ketubah

The Ketubah from our wedding which now hangs beautifully in our apartment.

Favorite Photos: Self Portraits in Photo Booth

Here are four of the photos. There are 994 more that are equally great.

Cure for Cancer or New Cookie?

My menu currently consists of four cookie sandwiches plus, what I believe to be, heavenly caramels and dark chocolate truffles.

I have been working on a new cookie/frosting combination and think that I may have hit the jackpot: chewy oatmeal cherry cookies with a rich brown sugar buttercream.

I have been playing around with a few different oatmeal cookie recipes and came up with one that I love. My next step was to figure out how many oats to include as the type and quantity impacts the texture of the cookie. I tested the same dough but used rolled oats in one batch and half rolled oats, half quick oats in the other.

Both doughs are equally delicious.

The two batches look the same...

The winner was the batch with half quick oats, half rolled oats. The mix yielded a softer cookie which was what I was going for.

I filled them with a rich brown sugar buttercream. The cookies hardly made it through the photo

Late Night Feast

I am not usually a fan of restaurants that claim to be fantastic, get rave reviews, but do not take reservations and are always booked...solid.  Hey, I want to try to the food, too!  But, and this is a big but, Ben and I finally made it to Tilia last night and it was wonderful and worth every piece of praise.  [Sidenote: We had a slight mishap with another new/re-opened restaurant this year that also claimed to be phenomenal but turned out to be an utter disaster...I will exclude its name as I need to give it one more chance.]  Back to Tilia: we heard that you can get in later in the evening so we went to a movie and then headed to the restaurant at 930.  It as amazing to see that the entire place was packed, the bar + all of the tables (kudos to them).  Luckily, Ben and I were seated immediately and, not surprisingly at all, we ordered a lot of food and ate it all in mere minutes.

Our feast included the:

1. Butternut Squash Soup: Hands down, the best squash soup I have ever had...although a close second goes to Birchwood.
2. Potted Meat: The meat of choice was duck breast and is served like paté covered with its own fat.  Any concern that you may have of eating this goes out the window once you spread it on grilled toast and devour.
3. Mussels España: Although not as good as the mussels that we had on our honeymoon in Spain, these were delicious.
4. Scallops: These were good but I would not order them again.
5. Brussels Sprouts: One word, mmmmmmm.  Covered in ham and walnuts.
6. And, if we hadn't eaten enough: Toffee Date Cake smothered in caramel.

I am ranking Tilia up there with 112 and Alma...which I believe to be the highest of praise.