Six Months Anniversary Dinner

Last month, just a few days before Valentine's Day, we celebrated our six month anniversary! We had a very exciting Valentine's date planned so we moved our traditional Valentine's meal of manicotti to our anniversary dinner night.

We've been venturing into the homemade pasta world recently (see here here and here) so we decided to make an adapted lasagna roll-up (with homemade noodles) that would somewhat mimic manicotti. This turned out okay but not amazing so we'll share a recipe once it turns out a little better. I think what went wrong was our placement of the filling when rolling it up; we placed the filling only on one half of the noodle which meant after rolling it up there were a few rotations of just the noodle and that was a bit heavy. Next time we will slather the whole noodle with filling before rolling it up!

For dessert I chose a chocolate shortcake with strawberries in honor of Patrick's very first Valentine's gift to me. Way back in 2010 he had an Edible Arrangement sent to me with a bear stuffed animal. His accompanying note read "You are berry special to me." So I couldn't resist making him a berry special dessert as we celebrated our first Valentine's as a married couple!

Chocolate Strawberry Shortcakes from Taste of Home
   Prep 20 min | Bake 10 min | Serves 4
Ingredients
1/2 quart fresh strawberries, sliced
1/3 cup sugar, divided
1 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp baking cocoa
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter
1/3 cup + 1 tbsp miniature semisweet chocolate ships, divided
~1/3 c half-and-half cream
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsps sugar
1/4 pint heavy whipping cream
1 1/4 tbsps confectioners’ sugar
1/3 c hot fudge ice cream topping, optional
10 fresh strawberries or grated chocolate for garnish, optional

Directions
   Combine strawberries and 2 tablespoons sugar; refrigerate if desired. In a large bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt and remaining sugar. Cut in butter and 1/3 cup chips until crumbly. Add half-and-half and stir until just moistened.
   Divide dough into 4 patties, about 3/4-in. thick. Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Brush with egg white; sprinkle with coarse sugar and remaining chips.

   Bake at 450° for 13 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, beat whipping cream and confectioners' sugar until stiff peaks form. Refrigerate.
   To assemble, split shortcakes in half. Place cake bottoms on dessert plates. Top with about two-thirds of the strawberries, whipped cream and fudge topping. Replace shortcake tops; top with remaining berries, cream and topping. Garnish with additional berries and chocolate if desired.


We celebrated Valentine's in downtown Durham! We started the evening at King's Daughters Inn for a wine and canape paired tasting. Then we went to the highly anticipated Book of Mormon musical at DPAC. Finally the evening concluded at Mateo's Tapas restaurant. It couldn't have been a better evening!