Easter

For Easter Sunday we went to my husband’s side of the family for lunch and then to my parents house for dinner.  This meant that I had to make two dishes to share.  My Mother-in-law requested a decorated cake and I decided to make a pasta salad for the meal with my family.

After work on Saturday, I had my work cut our for me!  I got home from work at 4:00 and was busy until 9:30!  I started by baking the cake.  While it baked and cooled, I made the pasta salad as well as our supper for that night which was spaghetti and meat sauce.  I’m not going to blog that meal because it was very basic and I’m pretty sure everyone already knows how to make it.  I’ll blog my homemade sauce recipe some other time.

Pasta Salad (adapted from Allrecipes.com)  This makes a ton, feel free to cut in half!

Ingredients:

16 oz. dry pasta {I like the tri-color rotini}

6-8 ounces hard salami, diced  {or 1 package mini pepperoni}

1 red onion, chopped

1 medium cucumber, thinly sliced

3/4 cup chopped green bell pepper

3/4 cup chopped red bell pepper

1 (6 ounce) can pitted black olives, sliced

2 or 3 medium carrots, chopped small

2 small heads of broccoli, chopped

Dressing:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard seed

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1-2 tablespoons sugar or to taste

I needed more dressing, but it was at the last minute so I added about 1/2 cup of bottled Italian salad dressing.  You will probably want to go ahead and double the dressing especially if you make this salad in advance.  As it sets it absorbs the dressing and more is needed before serving.

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add rotini pasta, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until al dente. Drain, and rinse with cold water.
2. In a very large bowl, mix the cooled pasta, salami, and veggies.
3. In a medium bowl whisk the olive oil, vinegar, garlic, basil, oregano, ground mustard, salt, and pepper.
4. Pour the dressing mixture over the pasta salad, and toss to coat. Cover, and chill 8 hours in the refrigerator.

My brother-in-law can’t eat dairy, so this recipe doesn’t contain cheese.  Normally, I would add 1/4-1/2 cup of grated Parmesan, mozzarella, or provolone cheese right before serving.

CAKE

I took the Wilton cake decorating courses a few months ago, so now I get the pleasure of baking and decorating a cake for just about every family function that we have.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to do it, but with working 6 days a week now, I don’t have the time that I wish I could devote to doing it!

For this Easter cake, I used a boxed cake mix.  I normally would not do this but I didn’t really have a choice due to time restrictions.

I borrowed a cross shaped pan from my mother in law.  And decorated it with some roses, the only flower I’m good at making…

Here’s a close up:

Medium Consistency Buttercream frosting: (recipe adapted from my Wilton instructor)

1 Crisco stick {=1 cup}

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp clear vanilla extract

1/2 tsp butter flavoring

2 lbs powdered sugar, sifted

1 Tbsp meringue powder

1 tiny pinch of salt

Directions

Cream Crisco, water, vanilla, flavoring and salt in bowl of stand mixer until smooth.  Slowly add sugar and meringue powder, scraping side of bowl 2 or 3 times.  Once all of the sugar is incorporated, turn mixer to medium high and mix until fluffy.