Happy Pentecost!

Sharing a fun Holy Spirit fruit platter to make for Pentecost or even a Confirmation celebration.  It's super easy and healthy too:)

Ingredients...Sliced strawberries (bananas used for eyes and wing tail).

+Come Holy Spirit+

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Cookie Creations

The following guest post was written by Elizabeth, from Following the Trails to Heaven.  Thank you Elizabeth! 

Cookies bring out the child in everyone and a smile to any event.  Everyone loves a good tasting cookie that looks just as pleasing to the eye, as to our tummies.  They are easy to bake and decorating them to suit your needs is fun to do. 

I'm not a stand out baker or anything, so if I'm able to pull these off, believe me you can too.  This is a quick tutorial with links to get you started :-)

Let's talk supplies

You don't need to break the bank in this area.  But there are the essentials for making your decorating time easier and faster.

You'll need:

• an assortment of tips, piping bags (disposables or reusable ones; Wilton sells both kinds and you can find them in most craft stores, including WalMart), couplers, a few of these squeezable bottles and a variety of food coloring.

More on tips.  For outlining your cookies a #3 tip is going to be essential.  For details and finer touches, #1 and #2 tips are more commonly used.  #4 tips and tips with a scalloped edge are great for fun dots and swirls. 

Finding a good cookie & royal icing recipe

The cookies are going to be eaten, so we want them to taste good.  I've tried several recipes and trust me, these are always good!  Here are my to go to favorites!!  Bridget @ Bake at 350, Amanda @ I am Baker, and Michelle @ Brown Eyed Baker.   These ladies are amazing!

Bridget's advice and recipe for Royal Icing is, in my opinion, one of the best.  She gives easy to do details on how the icing should look, it's consistency, some tips, and provided great pictures for us visual learners.

Follow these simple tips in getting working the dough. 

1.  Divide your dough in half and wrap each portion tightly with Saran wrap and chill them for at least one hour.
2.  Roll out your dough onto the actual parchment paper, using a bit of powdered sugar instead of flour.  The parchment paper makes it so much easier to transfer your nicely cut shapes onto your baking sheets.
3.  Lastly, chill your cut out cookies on the baking sheets for at least 10 minutes in the refrigerator.  This helps the cookies maintain their shape and it does make a difference.

They are baked and ready for the icing

It helps to have an idea of what you want the cookies to look like.  I make a quick sketch on some paper and jot down the colors I want to use before I even start baking.

Using a #3 tip outline your cookie according to your set design. Just keep a constant pressure on the bag and release right before you complete the outline. If there are peaks on your edges, take a toothpick and gently press them down.

Use that squeezable bottle filled with your runnier icing to 'flood' the cookie. 

Just fill in towards the edges, but don't over fill (flood).  Over filling equals a big icing mess!  Trust me.  The icing will run a bit anyway, and you'll be helping to fill in the empty spots next.

Depending on how big your cookie is, you'll use either a toothpick, a butter knife, a clean popsicle stick, or whatever you have handy, to spread out the icing.

Some air bubbles may appear after a few seconds, just pop with the toothpick.

After this stage the icing needs to harden before you can decorate.  I'd give them at least 10 minutes.  Since I work with several batches I start outline first, then begin to fill (flood), ending with the spreading.  By the time I make my way around, the first cookies are ready for decorating.

The cool, creative part is the decorating.  These are just a few samples of what you can create, especially for those special sacraments feast days.

and other fun stuff

The possibilities are endless!  Think dragons for St. George,  candles for Candlemas, lilies for St. Joseph or for Our Lady.  I hope this tutorial has helped to inspire you to try some out and I hope to see some of your samples soon.

Thank you Jessica, for inviting me here to share! 

May God bless each of you ladies who contribute your talents and time here at Catholic Cuisine.  I, and my family, have benefited greatly from this site.  May God reward you for your kindness and efforts!

♥ All Glory and Praise to God ♥

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Holy Spirit Cheesecake

Holy Spirit Cheesecake

This is a very easy cheese cake to make for Pentecost, Confirmation, or any celebration of the Holy Spirit.

Ingredients:

8 oz. cream cheese (softened)

1/3 Cup sugar

1 Cup sour cream

2 tsp. vanilla

8 oz whipped topping

10" graham cracker pie crust

(Handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips for topping)

Instructions:

Cream softened cream cheese and slowly add sugar.  Mix in sour cream and vanilla.  Fold in whipped topping.  Pour into graham cracker crust.  Use chocolate chips to design the dove topping!

The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world.  It hold all things together and knows every word spoken by man, Alleluia.~Wisdom 1:7~

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Confirmation Party Foods

People often wonder what to serve at celebrations following the reception of sacraments. "Are there foods that are traditional for the various sacraments?" and "What kinds of foods might be symbolic for the sacrament?" are questions I have heard. Last spring we highlighted First Communion Celebrations in Catholic Cuisine's first From Thy Bounty Fair, but there have been only a few post related to foods which would be fitting for a Confirmation celebration.

Our family recently celebrated a confirmation and I wanted to share some of the ideas we had for the party that followed. Since we are still in the Confirmation season, hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you or spark other ideas. And of course any ideas that would work well for a Confirmation party could also be incorporated into a Pentecost celebration as well.

Our party included some typical buffet-fare (deli sandwiches, potato salad, and chips) which we accented with several special Confirmation themed foods we though would be symbolic of the day. Our buffet included:

• "Fruits of the Spirit" Salad (Though we used only 7 fruits - more like the gifts - rather than the 12 fruits. And no dressing was used, just the fruits.)


• Seven-layer bean dip (7 again to represent the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit)


• "Tongues of Fire" Salad (A green tossed salad with strips of red, yellow and orange bell pepper on top)

A fun and sweet treat for after the meal was Dove chocolate - calling to mind the dove imagery of the Holy Spirit.

And the main centerpiece of the celebration was the cake which we decorated with the dove and tongues of fire representing the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

We first traced and cut out a paper dove the size and shape we wanted for the cake top. We placed that on the frosted cake (chocolate was used so that the white dove would stand out) and traced around the outline with a toothpick.

When the pattern was lifted we had an outline of a dove to fill in with the white frosting. We used a star tip to fill in the body and one of the tips with the elongated hole (either the leaf or rose tip) to form the feathers. We pulled a toothpick through the frosting to give the feathers a more "feathery" appearance. The tongues of fire, the beak and the rays from the doves head were piped on with yellow-orange tinted frosting.

If you have ideas for foods to celebrate a Confirmation, please share then with us. If you have a link to a blog post that would be great. Either leave your link or idea in the comments section or send it to me at mary.cathcuisine at gmail dot com. I'd love to do a follow-up post, a mini From Thy Bounty Fair, if there is enough response.

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Flames of Pentecost Cupcakes

With Pentecost coming quickly upon us, it's a good time to revisit some past posts with ideas for bringing the spirit of Pentecost alive in our meal and dessert preparations. In addition to the awesome birthday cake idea (Happy Birthday Church!) just shared by Robina there is A Cake for Pentecost from last year as well. Don't forget the Portuguese Holy Ghost Sopas shared by Amy or Evelyn Birge Vitz 's Twelve Fruit Salad from A Continual Feast. More ideas can be found in Jessica's Menu ideas for Pentecost Sunday and Pentecost suggestions are also mentioned in Jenn's two part series "Staples of Our Feastday Celebrations" - Wine and Bread.

I always like to have a simple option on hand if time is tight on feast days. For us cupcakes are an easy dessert to pull together. Here is a simple Pentecost cupcake decorating idea with two variations for "flames."

Using white frosted cupcakes add thin sliced strawberry "flames" to represent the tongues of fire.

Or add some red and yellow food coloring to small amounts of extra frosting and dab on swirl frosting "flames."

And check out Meredith's Sweetness and Light blog for her lovely strawberry topped cupcake variation from a few years ago.

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Twelve-fruit Salad

In her book, A Continual Feast, Evelyn Birge Vitz says that, "It has long been traditional to list twelve fruits or graces of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers, Galatians 5 having provided the essential idea. The twelve are charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, and chastity. This is a wonderful season for fresh fruit. What could be more fitting or appetizing for this feast than a mixed fruit salad?"

Twelve Fruit Salad

Ingredients:

• 12 kinds of fresh fruit. Some possibilities include: red or green grapes, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, pineapples, plums, apples, oranges, bananas, grapefruit, kiwi, mangoes, watermelon, cantaloupe and honey dew.
• Sugar (optional)
• Lemon juice (to prevent fruit from browning.)

Directions:

Wash, hull, peel and slice the fruit as necessary. If you are using melons, cut into bite-sized chunks or melon balls.

You can either mix all the fruit together in a large bowl or lay them in an attractive pattern on a bed of greens.

Sprinkle wit ha little sugar if you wish, and then with a little lemon juice.

Evelyn also recommends serving the Twelve-fruit Salad with a Curry Mayonnaise. I haven't tried it before, but it sounds interesting!

Curry Mayonnaise

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Mayonnaise
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 tablespoons lime juice

Combine all ingredients. Yield: about 1 1/4 cups sauce.

There are so many great meal ides for the feast of Pentecost, I am really looking forward to celebrating!!! Pin It

A Cake for Pentecost

Pentecost Sunday, also known as Whitsunday, ranks among the great feasts of Christianity. "It commemorates not only the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Disciples, but also the fruits and effects of that event: the completion of the work of redemption, the fullness of grace for the Church and its children, and the gift of faith for all nations."

To Celebrate, we will be baking and decorating a cake! I just love all the symbolism in this cake. It provides such a wonderfully yummy way to teach the children more about this feast.

Pentecost Cake

Directions:

Start with a white cake representing "Whitsunday." The cake can be home-made or store-bought, which ever you choose. To keep it simple, I usually just use a white cake mix.

Now for the decorations:

• White Frosting - For "Whitsunday"
• Large Candle in Center - represents Christ our Light, who promised to send the Holy Ghost.
• 12 Birthday Candles - represent the 12 Apostles and the tongues of fire.
• 7 red hearts - made of candy or icing, represent the 7 gifts of the Holy Ghost
• 12 strawberries - represent the 12 fruits of the Holy Ghost

Before cutting the cake, let the children blow out the candles representing the "mighty wind."

Serve with vanilla ice cream and even more strawberries!!

Enjoy!!



Update: Here is the picture of our cake from our 2009 Celebration!

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