entertaining

march 2003

Each month we receive many e-mails asking for recipes for a birthday cake and/or birthday party for a loved one. This month we bring you the recipe for one of the best cakes we have tasted whether sugar free or not. We decided to make strawberry genoise cake for your early spring party, but the good thing about this cake is that you can frost it with your favorite icing for any time of the year, and the results will be excellent.

When we first presented you with this recipe in our Gourmet cookbook, we sweetened the cake with fructose. Today we sweeten with Splenda, but you can certainly use any artificial sweetener that can take baking in the oven and not lose its sweetness. We are aware that the Splenda people suggest that you add 1/2 cup of dried skim milk and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for every cup of Splenda you use in a cake recipe, but here we use many egg whites and only 1/2 cup sweetener so it is not necessary. As you can see from the picture, we used "lite" whipped cream to make our rosettes on our cake, and "lite" whipped topping everyplace else. If you need to make the cake a few hours before your meal, do not use the aerosol whipped cream as it will evaporate quickly. When we were trying to come up with a main entrée for your meal, we decided to plan this party as a casual spring party that both men and women would crow about. As you know we have a new cookbook on the shelves titled The Joslin Diabetes Great Chefs Cook Healthy Cookbook, and we thought we'd share one of its recipes with you to whet your appetite for the excellent recipes that talented chefs from around the world have shared with all of us. If you like this one, we know you'll love all of the recipes in the book. Our menu is simple but dynamite. We took our recipe for Grilled Turkey and Vegetable Tacos with Mango and Avocado from Biga on the Banks, and have decided to share it with you changing only the protein. We selected this recipe because it's so easy to make for a party. It's slice and dice and marinate and there you go. Do remember to squeeze lemon juice over the avocado to keep it from turning brown. For this recipe, we substitute grilled shrimp and scallops because this is a party after all. But, and here's the very big but, using grilled turkey cutlets will make for a meal to remember also, so feel free to grill up 6 4-ounce turkey cutlets or boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Also this is a recipe that can be doubled easily if you have more people at the party and watch out as the food flies off of your table.   Grilled Seafood and Vegetable Tacos with Mango and Avocado Strawberries and Cream Birthday Cake (for the recipes, click on the individual recipe above) BSP