2011.02.10 - Pink Pasta, Apple Radish Salad, Rose Cake

I like doing a Valentine's Day/Anti-Valentine's Day dinner around the holiday.  This means, of course, having food that is pink and/or heart shaped!  In 2007, we made pink pasta and I wanted to revisit that idea with my KitchenAid pasta attachment, rather than the challenging-to-use handmade pasta roller we used last time!

Pasta with peas, ricotta, and sausage made with gluten free pasta

Homemade pasta is an easy food to make pink.  I actually forgot to color the dough, but adding a good amount of red food color to the cooking water did the trick.  This pasta isn't very "saucy" because it is just some ricotta with pasta cooking water, but I like it that way.  I like the combination of the cheese, peas, sausage, and pasta.

I've made the gluten free pasta before, and had similar issues this time with the rolling of the dough.  It takes a few turns to get the dough to stick together and make a sheet to go through the roller, but I think I'm managing to speed up the process.

Modifications: Omitted garlic and basil.

Apple, radish, walnut salad

I wanted to cut the apples and radishes into hearts, but unfortunately ran out of time.  I liked the orange juice-based dressing a lot and the apples and walnuts gave a good crunch.

Modifications: I used bagged salad mix instead of radicchio and used canola oil instead of walnut oil (who has that in the pantry?)

Gluten Free Chocolate Cake decorated with rose icing

I had a leftover 6" chocolate cake made from a gf cake mix in the freezer, and thought that would be the perfect base for experimenting with those beautiful icing roses.  I made the buttercream mentioned in the blog post (halving the recipe) and dyed it pink.  I am still having trouble getting smooth edges on my star tip decorations, need to investigate how to fix this!