Happy Birthday

I'm preparing birthday foods today, and I'm going to get Bobby in here in the kitchen to help me

What Bobby doesn't know, though, is the surprise is for him. I'm cooking up delicious golden mini filo cups filled with a creamy shrimp salad

and then one of my boy's all-time favorite recipes. It's a hearty and spicy goulash

And of course you can't have a birthday without a cake. So I'm going to be making the most scrumptious caramel cake

with the sweetest frosting you ever put in your mouth. So get ready to blow out the candles, y'all

because it's Bobby's birthday. Ooh, that looks good

Doesn't it look good? Listen, I want you to help me. Okay. Do you mind getting in here in the kitchen and..

Not at all. Working with me today. I'd love to work with you. Do ya? Okay, great. I'm making some wonderful little phyllo cups that I'm gonna fill with shrimp salad

Nice. I love them. You do? Mm-hmm. Okay, good. Well, I've almost got all my shrimp diced. Why don't you finish those up

Okay, I'd be glad to. How did it end up where it's just you and me in the kitchen? This is very, very nice

I know, isn't this wonderful? Mm-hmm. How do you like my barbells

I love them. How do you like them? Yeah, yeah. The Poladene workout? This is..

You're going to love it, y'all. What are those? Let me tell you about these, Bobby

It matches. You're using these for what? To press the cuts out? To press the phyllo dough

All right, when you finish that, Bobby, if you would, son, I've got the celery already diced

but I love the leaves in it. I know you do. You know, a lot of flavors in these

Plus, you got the pretty green from it. So if you would just dice up the leaves

Okay, I can do that. So while you're doing that, I'm going to take a stick of butter

No, you're not. Are you really? Yes, I really am. Only one

Just one. And I'm going to toss in some garlic, some fresh minced garlic, about a tablespoon or two

All right, now, Bobby, we're just going to kind of let that butter melt and kind of just get that flavor from that garlic blooming through that butter

Smells good already. I'm gonna take each phyllo sheet and I'm gonna brush it with that garlic butter

Phyllo dough you have to be very, very careful with because it'll dry out on you in just a matter of seconds because it's so thin

So actually we need to cover this with a moist rag. Brush, brush, brush

So yeah, I just felt like getting in here and making some kind of party food today

I was going to say, this is like, you and I are the only ones here, but it's like you're having a party. Are you having a party

No, I'm not having a party. Am I having a party? No, you're not having a party

All right, well, I'm done. No, you're not done. You've got to mix the rest of your ingredients together

Okay. Now, I'm going to dice up your parsley real quick for you

Salary onions. Uh-huh. I've got about a tablespoon of green onions. About a half a cup of celery

Do you want me to go ahead and mix these ingredients together? No, we're going to mix our wet first, but you can go ahead and add all this

By our wet, you mean our mayonnaise? Yes. Okay. Yes. So what do you want me to do

I want you to add the celery and the onions, and then I want you to squeeze about a tablespoon and a half of fresh lemon juice in it

and just measure out a half a cup of mayonnaise. This is a half a cup measure

I'll start with a little bit because you always taught me that you can always add

Yeah, but you know what? A half a cup should work out perfect

All right, now I'm going to come over here and I'm going to get my phyllo dough. And I'm going to cut this into four by threes

And I've used three sheets of phyllo dough. and these should fit just about perfect in our cups

All right, I've got some Parmesan cheese here. I know you like Parmesan cheese

I do. I'm going to sprinkle a little bit of that on it

Good. So am I adding the mayonnaise to the shrimp or to the celery

To this. To this. And add your salt and pepper. And then just mix them together and you can put it over to the side

while I finish up our cups. How long, once we get this in the oven

how long is this going to take? These are pretty quick. Well, the shrimp salad's already done

Yeah, I'm going to bake these at 350 for like maybe 10 minutes

So there we go. I love phyllo dough. All right, now I'm just going to sprinkle

a little fresh parsley. All right so here we go Just mix that up son Now I need about a tablespoon and a half of fresh lemon juice in there please

And that lemon juice is just gonna give it a nice citrusy taste

And let's go ahead and get our little cups in the oven

and that's 350 off of about 10 minutes. There we go. and you can make your little phyllo cups ahead of time

And then just pull them out. You just want to keep them in an airtight container

And then just pull them out at the last minute and stuff them with whatever you want to stuff them with

In this case, it's going to be... Shrimp salad. Is it great

Gosh, it's perfect, Bobby. It is out of this world, son. You did a great job with it

Thank you, Mama. Thank you. The lemon juice was fabulous. Well, listen, we're gonna take a quick break, Bobby

while our phyllo cups are cooking. Okay. And when we come back

I'm gonna be preparing Bobby's all-time favorite dish. It's Bobby's goulash. In fact, you girls out there

if you were to win Bobby's heart over, get this recipe. And later, the perfect caramel birthday cake

All right, Mom. I think your phyllo is perfect. Great. It is hot, though

It is hot. They look perfect. Great. All right, so we'll let that cool a little bit

and then add the shrimp salad to it in a few minutes? That's great, yes. Oh, this is my favorite

Now, how do you know what I'm making? Are you because I'm sitting here looking at it

Are you kidding? So you think you can figure it out? I see the black Dutch oven

I see the ground beef. I see the onions, the tomato sauce

I see the elbow macaroni. It's not very often that I get to come to your house and help you make goulash

Goulash. My goulash. Which, you know what, Mom? I never have been able to reproduce this

Well, son, I don't know why. You know what I think makes the difference? Why

I don't have a Dutch oven. Well, son, I got... I'm just using a regular stainless steel pot

No, you got that. I bet that's part of it. I got Dutch ovens out there in the garage. I've always got plenty of cast iron sitting around

Before you leave today... I'll get one. We'll go out to the garage and get you a cast iron pot

Now, I'm going to add two pounds of lean ground beef. And turkey

Uh-huh, and a pound of turkey. Is this the way you always made it

Yeah, but you know what? To me, I've always made my goulash just by tasting

So let's come back down here while that's browning, Bobby. Oh, yeah, it's cool enough

I'm going to take these out. Look at these beautiful little cups, y'all

They look great. They're so delicate and so light. They look great

And the shrimp salad is outstanding. I'm telling you, that shrimp salad is as good as any I've ever tasted

Is it just like this? Is this all you're doing? Yeah. Look how simple these are. I could do this at my house

Sure you could do it. And you would just have people begging for more

If I was having a party. Yeah. Why don't you have a party one day

Well, since you're not having a party here, I might take all this food with me to my house and have a party

No, it doesn't work that way, son. Oh, it don't? No. Now, we don't want to put those in the refrigerator

because it would really mess up our filo cups. So we'll just leave those sitting out

because we're going to be digging in them shortly. All right, now, in the meantime, over here

I got our ground beef and our turkey going. It's browning away nicely

Smelling good. Now, if you want to, at this point, you can drain off some of your fat

But I have to say, most of the time I don't. Is that why it tastes so good

Yes, yes. Because, see, I think one of the mistakes I'm making is when I brown my ground beef and onions together

I drain it. I put it into a colander and drain it completely. No, see, I don't do that

What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to take our diced onion and throw that in the pot

along with about three cloves of diced fresh garlic. All right, so we're just going to stir this up

And now if you'll grab that tablespoon, Bobby, please, and toss in a tablespoon of house seasoning

And I'll just stir it up for you. Mm-hmm. So the house seasoning, this is a little salt, pepper

and a little garlic powder, right? Yeah. That's it? All right, now our seasoning salt, about a tablespoon of that

Okay, one tablespoon. Okay, now that's Italian seasoning, and you might want to just pop that top off

And I'm going to need two tablespoons. Now I'm going to need about two tablespoons of that

Make sure you get a full tablespoon, because that Italian seasoning is really

going to give this a big kick There we go You got it Two full tablespoons How about three bay leaves Okay So uh Three bay leaves And those are off my tree out there

Are they? Yeah. All right, now we need about three tablespoons of soy sauce

Have you always used soy sauce and gullet? Mm-hmm. Or either Worcestershire, either one

Never use either one. You've never used it? No, no wonder mine's not good. Mm-hmm

All right, so we're going to use one 29-ounce can of tomato sauce

Okay, you ready for it? Yeah. I've been doing it wrong all along. Well, now, I formulated this and gave it to you so you wouldn't have that problem

Okay, now we got two 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes. All right

Do you want me to stop? Uh-huh. No, I was just putting the spoon there so it wouldn't splatter on us

All right. we're gonna cook our macaroni noodles in this. So I need three cups of water

I am getting the best lesson today. And we're gonna let this simmer

for about 20 or 25 minutes. Okay. And then we're gonna come back

and add our elbow noodles. Okay. 20 minutes here, and then how long after we put the noodles in

Yeah, another 20 minutes. So about 40 or 45 minutes, yes, you can. Mine takes all day

But... And it's not good. Let's take a quick break, get cleaned up, and when we come back

you know what you're making next? No. Coming up, y'all, it's Bobby's Caramel Cake

We'll see y'all back in a minute. Mm. Well, Mama, the goulash is smelling and looking real, real good

I think it's time to add the noodles. It smells wonderful. All right, Bobby, pour you in about two cups

Now, you've got like a three-cup jar right there. There's three cups in here, so I'm going to leave one in

Leave one cup. All right, now in this bowl, y'all, I've gotten Bobby's cake started

And this particular cake, Bobby, is called a one, two, three, four cake

So Bobby, you can step on over here, son. Yeah. Okay. You use a cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs

So there you got it. Your one, two, three, four cake. Let's get started

Okay. All right, now in there I've got the butter. in the sugar. Now we're just going to add

one egg at the time and we want to kind of beat

it pretty well after we add each egg. I'm playing hooky from work and I'm baking cakes

It's not a bad life, is it? It's not a bad life at all. Alright, there's our fourth egg. That's the last egg

Alright, now I'm going to get on this side of you and I'm going to

alternately add a pre-sifted flour. Okay. Self-rising? Now, this, yes, this is a self-rising flour

so we don't need to add any leavenings to it. We're going to alternate our flour with a cup of milk

and it's very important that you start with flour and end with flour

Okay. It just makes it creamier, and you can see how this almost looks like

it's breaking a little. Well, if you add your flour last, it won't have that look

It'll have a creamy look to it. Okay, so you can keep your mixer to going

All right, a little flour. Little milk. And you just keep that bowl of turning, son

And I'll come in there with a spatula and just kind of keep it down the sides for you

Right after Michael and I started dating, I made this caramel cake

And like I said, we hadn't been seeing each other long. And somebody asked him one day, you know

when did you know that Paula was the one? And he said, the morning I walked in the house

and that caramel cake was sitting there on that counter, he said, I knew that that was the girl for me

He was in love, huh? Oh, he was in love, honey. So this recipe kind of sealed the deal

Okay. Okay. So this is going to be a layer cake, right

Yes, this is going to be a layer cake. All right. So I'm going to slowly add the rest of our milk

There you go. You're doing great, son. Got it. Mm-hmm. All right

It's looking pretty good. So we're ready now to put in the last of our flour. There you go. Just mix that up

And I'm going to add about a teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. I think every cake's got vanilla flavoring in it, hasn't it

Yeah, but, you know, it depends. If I was making a coconut cake, then I'd use coconut

I'd use coconut flavoring. Cut off your mixer, son, just a little, little bit

And give it... Cut it up a little bit all the way to high

Yeah, a few good mixes. All right, now, while you're doing that

I'm going to come over here, and I gonna talk a little bit about our filling This is my mother filling that I could just never get quite right I worked on her caramel icing and worked on it

and I could not get it to do right. So I said, I do want to use Mama's recipe

Well, I found out it made the perfect filling. I've got two sticks of butter

I think this is done, Mama. Yeah, I think it is. Two cups of light brown sugar

and a fourth of a cup of milk. And I'm going to cook this for about five to eight minutes

While I'm doing that, why don't you bring your bowl of batter over here

Okay. So just come down here, and let's just make three layers today

And it's important that you do it evenly, because when you cut your cake

you want all your layers to have the same thickness. You do want them to be perfectly..

All right, so here, you want me to... Yeah, I'm going to need some help. You want me to scrape some of that batter in there for you

I think the first one's going to be a little light. The first one's going to be a little light

Here we go. Got it. There you go. So just kind of spread that out, son, in your cake plates

and then take it, take each pan and kind of bang it on the counter

Okay. And that will release the air bubbles. Okay. Just cut it

Uh-huh. Just let it drop. Just take them and let them drop, just like that

And this is coming along nicely. Coming up, Bobby and I are going to top off this cake

with a sweet caramel frosting. So in the oven, son, 350, 25 minutes for our cake layers

We'll see y'all back in just a second. All right, Bobby. We're about to get everything pulled together

It's looking good, huh? It is looking good. All right, now I've got Mama's recipe for filling

that I never could get right. Now you're making the frosting. I've got a cup of dark brown sugar

Now it's important that you use a dark brown sugar, a stick of butter that I've melted on top of the stove

and Bobby's gonna add one box of powdered sugar. Just beat that, and your frosting is ready

Now, some people like to use toothpicks to put holes in their cakes

but I tell y'all what, I found that a toothpick just didn't make a big enough hole for me

Now, I'm just going to pour this onto my cake, and you can see how it's running down in those holes

Now, when you're stacking your cakes together, if sometimes you have a cake that's not quite level

like this side is shorter over here, So I'm gonna look at my cake layer

and I'm gonna look for the thicker side on this one and put it right there so see we have a nice level cake

So we're doing the same thing with the next layer, and we got one more layer to go

All right, so on goes the last layer. We've got more filling going on

Oh, you can see those holes where that filling has gone in down there, Bobby

This frosting will work every time for you, Bobby. And I start by dropping some frosting on top of the cake

and then I bring it down. That looks beautiful. Mmm, mmm. Okay, Bobby, while I'm getting this last little corner

you want to get us a couple of bowls out? Oh, for the goulash? Yes, for our goulash

because it's about time for us to taste. I'm going to stick just a few pecan halves around like that

because I just love pecans on my caramel icing. It kind of reminds me of like a praline

Okay, I'm all ready. Well, they say timing is everything. Look at your cake

Is that for me, for my birthday? Happy birthday, son. Oh, Mom, I love you so much

Wait, wait, wait, wait. How is this for a trick? Did I just make my own cake

Yes, you just made your own cake. Isn't that beautiful looking? It is beautiful

The whole time, this was a party for me. Yes. Mmm. Mmm

That's my mama's gulag right there. All right. Look how beautiful. Here we go

Okay. Happy birthday to me. Your wish is going to come true, son

Awesome. Look. Mmm. So beautiful. Happy birthday to me. Until next time, you know that Bobby and I send y'all best dishes and love from our birthday

kitchen to yours. Happy birthday, y'all