Dinner Party with Three Cheese Radicchio Pasta & Lemon Glazed cakes

Dinner party one was a smashing success if I do say so myself. It came off without a hitch, in fact me & the hubster praised ourselves for several hours after the event. The two new recipes we tried were simple, easy & very tasty. One was a pasta dish with various cheeses and something I had never tried before Radicchio. I snuck a taste of the radicchio before it was cooked and promptly scrunched my face….I decided to be brave since the internet promised me it would change flavors – it did! I also had a semi home-made dessert of Trader Joes Vanilla cake with a homemade Lemon Glaze, wow.



INGREDIENTS FOR 3 CHEESE RADICCHIO PASTA
1lb box of Penne Pasta
1 Head of Raddichio, shredded
5 or 6 Scallions, sliced thin
1 cup bread crumbs, I used the canned stuff
Ok…now comes the good stuff
3 cups cream
2 small logs of goat cheese (about 2 cups)
3 Cups of Parmesan
1 cup Fontina

The original recipe called for Gorgonzola – I’m just not a fan so I picked a few of my favorite cheeses.

DIRECTIONS
Cook your pasta as directed on the box. Butter a 9x13 baking pan, deeper pan is best. Once the pasta is cooked drain & toss with the Cream, Radicchio, Scallions, Goat Cheese, 2 cups of Parmesan & the 1 cup of Fontina. Now you can dump the whole mixture into your baking dish. On top of the mixture sprinkle your bread crumbs and the remaining cup of Parmesan. Cover your dish with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes at 375. After those 30 minutes are up take the aluminum foil off and turn that oven up to 450. You will want to brown the top a little, about 10 to 15 minutes. Keep an eye on it! Once baked I let it rest for about 15 minutes, serve and enjoy! It is great the next day too, and the next….

Now the dessert was just as good. I baked a Trader Joes Vanilla cake…Actually I made 6 muffin cakes. I thought it would look fancier that way.



INGREDIENTS FOR LEMON GLAZE
¼ cup unsalted butter
1 ¼ cup sifted confectioners sugar
¼ teaspoon of salt
2 tbs of whole milk
1 tsp of lemon juice
Zest of 1 Lemon

DIRECTIONS
Melt your butter over a medium low heat until golden brown. In a medium sized bowl whisk together your sugar, milk, lemon juice, lemon zest & salt. Add your bowl mixture into the butter and stir till smooth, remove from heat. I then poured directly over my cakes which had already cooled. The glaze set’s up real nice after about 15 minutes.



My little diva lived up to her normal standards by refusing the cake, and making mommy feed her the pasta noodle by noodle.